A Short History of the Wars of the Roses

David Grummitt

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857733030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The Wars of the Roses (c. 1455-1487) are renowned as an infamously savage and tangled slice of English history. A bloody thirty-year struggle between the dynastic houses of Lancaster and York, they embraced localised vendetta (such as the bitter northern feud between the Percies and Nevilles) as well as the formal clash of royalist and rebel armies at St Albans, Ludford Bridge, Mortimer's Cross, Towton, Tewkesbury and finally Bosworth, when the usurping Yorkist king, Richard III, was crushed by Henry Tudor. Powerful personalities dominate the period: the charismatic and enigmatic Richard III, immortalized by Shakespeare; the slippery Warwick, the Kingmaker', who finally over-reached ambition to be cut down at the Battle of Barnet; and guileful women like Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret of Anjou, who for a time ruled the kingdom in her husband's stead. David Grummitt places the violent events of this complex time in the wider context of fifteenth-century kingship and the development of English political culture.Never losing sight of the traumatic impact of war on the lives of those who either fought in or were touched by battle, this captivating new history will make compelling reading for students of the late medieval period and Tudor England, as well as for general readers.

Part 1

CAUSES

1

THE LANCASTRIAN LEGACY:
ENGLAND 1399–1449

To understand why the Wars of Roses occurred we must go back to 1399 and the deposition of Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster. Contemporaries recognised as much. Edward IV’s declaration of his title in the parliament of 1461 outlined how Bolingbroke, ‘ayenst Godds lawe, mannes liegeaunce, and oth of fidelite,’ had usurped the crown and murdered Richard. This had not been forgotten in England ‘which therfore hath suffred the charge of intollerable persecucion, punicion and tribulacion, wherof the lyke hath not been seen or herde in any other Cristen reame, by any memorie or recorde.’¹ The importance of 1399 was a central feature in Tudor accounts of the civil wars, yet modern scholarship has, in the main, offered more short-term explanations for the outbreak of open conflict. Nevertheless, we do not have to accept the notion of divine judgement to afford 1399 a critical significance in explaining the Wars. The circumstances in which the House of Lancaster took the throne, the nature of their royal power and the constraints upon it, and the ways in which they sought to confirm their legitimacy dominated the Lancastrian polity in the first half of the fifteenth century and provided the essential preconditions for the outbreak of war in 1455.

King Henry IV by unknown artist oil on panel, 1590–1610 © National Portrait Gallery, London

1399–1413: THE QUESTION OF LEGITIMACY

On 30 September 1399 the Bishop of St Asaph read out loud to the assembled lords and Commons in parliament the 33 articles of deposition of King Richard II. They outlined his tyrannical actions in collecting unjust taxation, unlawfully killing his subjects, being in contempt of the Magna Carta, and oppressing his subjects. The accusations were largely grounded in fact, seem to have been accepted on the whole by Richard himself, and demonstrated beyond doubt that he was unfit to rule. When the articles had been read, Bolingbroke got to his feet and announced his claim to the throne through descent from Henry III and his intention to rescue the realm from ‘lack of government and undoing of the laws and customs of the realm’.² The Earl of Northumberland and the Treasurer of England then asked if the parliament would accept Henry as their king, to which they unanimously gave their assent.

The events of 1399 were indeed revolutionary. Richard II had a view of kingship which was increasingly at odds with that held by the majority of his subjects. Simply put, Richard believed he was above the law, made in parliament with the assent of the community of the realm. He was, however, an anointed and unquestionably legitimate king and his deposition transformed the political culture of medieval England. More precisely, the justification offered for his deposition and for Lancastrian monarchy more generally was a radical departure from what had gone before. Henry’s kingship was based on three principles. First and most importantly, the new Lancastrian polity stressed the king’s obligations to uphold his coronation oath and rule for the common good. Richard had been deposed because he had broken his oaths and for the ‘lack of government’. Henry IV thus had a renewed obligation to uphold justice, defend the realm, not to tax unjustly and ensure the stability of royal finances. This expectation dominated the political process during the first decade of Lancastrian rule and revolved around issues of taxation and royal accountability to parliament. On his accession Henry, in an action that underlined the relative weakness of his position, had promised to not to overburden his subjects with taxation. He may have hoped that Richard’s not inconsiderable treasure and the resources of the Duchy of Lancaster would provide the basis for stable royal finances. Before long, however, he was faced with rebellion at home and war with Scotland and was forced to ask for parliamentary taxation. In 1401 parliament demanded redress of their grievances before granting supply, and three years later the grant of a subsidy was made conditional on the appointment of special treasurers who would oversee its collection and spending. Even worse, in 1406 all royal expenditure was put under the scrutiny of the king’s council, appointed by parliament, forcing Henry to complain that ‘kings were not wont to render account’.³

Second, Lancastrian legitimacy was based on an appeal to popular support. Henry IV was king by acclamation in parliament, but the nature of Lancastrian political culture meant that his kingship was not only judged by the parliamentary Commons. As Michael Bennett has argued, ‘it was widely believed that Henry had been raised to the throne on the basis of a covenant with the people’.⁴ By 1402 there were complaints that Henry was raising taxation not for the public good but to enrich his household and retainers. Moreover, Henry was increasingly characterised as a man who had gone back on his word, not only in the way he ruled but also in that he had committed perjury in 1399 by usurping the throne when he had initially claimed his only intent was to recover the Duchy of Lancaster. It was this complaint that lay behind Archbishop Scrope of York’s rebellion in 1405. As early as May 1402 proclamations had been issued throughout the realm denouncing those who were spreading rumours that the king had broken his promises and reminding people ‘that it always had been and will be the king’s intention that the common profit and laws and customs of the realm shall be observed and kept’.⁵ For much of the first decade of Lancastrian rule the king was on the back foot, so to speak, constantly reacting to challenges to his kingship and authority. According to one chronicler, his was even forced to claim publicly that he did not seize the crown, but was ‘properly elected’. If this were true, it was a remarkable admission of the shaky foundations of Lancastrian rule.

Finally, there was his dynastic claim. Henry had initiated searches throughout the realm’s monastic archives to establish that Edmund ‘Crouchback’, Earl of Lancaster, had been in fact the eldest son of Henry III. These had, however, confirmed that Edward I, great-great grandfather to Richard II, had indeed been the rightful heir. Henry IV’s claim, as hinted at in parliament, therefore was a feeble one, based on that of his mother, Blanche of Lancaster. Nevertheless, his descent from John of Gaunt, Edward III’s third son, gave him a stronger title if we accept that Edward had entailed the crown in the male line in 1376. Yet Henry’s implicit acknowledgement of descent through the female line left open the stronger claim of the Mortimer family, descended from Edward III’s second son, Lionel of Clarence, and his daughter, Philippa. The weakness of Henry’s dynastic claim was evident in the fact that on no fewer than four occasions in the first seven years of his reign he was forced to confirm and strengthen the Lancastrian succession by act of parliament.

The reasons for Henry’s weakness are not difficult to see. He had come to the throne as the head of a small faction; in effect, his baronial household was now propelled into being the governing elite of the kingdom. Thus Henry relied on his and his father’s trusted servants, men like Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir Thomas Rempston, Sir Hugh and Sir Robert Waterton, and John Norbury, and a few close companions in exile, such as Thomas, Earl of Arundel. Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, who Richard II had replaced in 1397 for his support of the Appellants in 1386, had also accompanied Bolingbroke on his return to England and emerged as a key pillar of the Lancastrian regime. Henry’s reliance on the Lancastrian affinity in government and his appeal to popular sentiment to strengthen his kingship are also explicable by the fact that in 1399 the nobility was depleted in number. Edmund, Duke of York, was aged and impotent and died in 1402, while his son, the Earl of Rutland, was untrustworthy; Thomas Mowbray, heir to the Duchy of Norfolk, was still a minor, as were the Earls of Oxford and March. The earldoms of Kent, Salisbury and Huntingdon were in the king’s hands from 1400 by reason of rebellion, while the Earls of Devon, Suffolk and Warwick, for various reasons, played little part in affairs of state. The Earls of Arundel and Stafford were young men and inexperienced. Henry could not rely therefore on a powerful nobility to assist in the governance of the realm. Only the Earls of Northumberland, Worcester and Westmorland and their kinsmen (men such as Sir Henry Percy or Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival) were active and able to play a full role in supporting royal government. The king’s illegitimate half-brother, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, (a former Ricardian) was also quickly rehabilitated and became another stalwart of Lancastrian rule. The problem with this narrow basis of support was that Henry felt compelled to reward them with grants of land and money in an effort to guarantee their continued support, a support which he should have been able to count upon unquestionably as king. This royal largesse, however, angered the Commons who resented granting taxation while the king apparently squandered his resources with grants of annuities and lands to his supporters.

The early years of Henry’s reign were thus beset by criticism in parliament and rebellion. The most serious uprising was that of the Welsh esquire, Owain Glyn D[#373;]r. This led to war with Scotland in 1402 and in the following year the king’s erstwhile Percy allies joined Glyn D[#373;]r. In 1406, as a response to parliamentary demands, a new royal council was appointed, headed by Archbishop Arundel. However, from 1407 the king’s eldest son, Henry, Prince of Wales, already with an established reputation as a military and political leader from his experiences in Wales, began to play a more active role in government. As the king’s health deteriorated so the prince assumed the reins of power, backed by Arundel and assisted by his three able brothers and a new generation of young noblemen. During 1410–11 the prince effectively ruled through the council, earning the loyalty of the Lancastrian affinity and consolidating his own military reputation as captain of Calais. He overreached himself, however, and his attempt to intervene in the French civil war on the side of the Burgundians was vetoed by the king and Prince Henry was forced into a humiliating submission to his father. By the end of 1412, however, the prince was again playing a full role in the government of the realm, and his brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, had led a successful raid into France regardless of the accommodation between the warring Burgundian and Armagnac factions. On 20 March 1413 Henry IV died, ‘worn out by the stress and strain of kingship’.⁶ The throne passed, without contention, to his eldest son, who was crowned King Henry V on 9 April that year.

King Henry V by unknown artist oil on panel, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century © National Portrait Gallery, London

The Lancastrian regime had survived the crisis of legitimacy created by the circumstances of 1399. This was a combination of luck, the skill of men like Arundel, and the loyalty demonstrated by the ever-expanding Lancastrian affinity. Nevertheless, there was a price to be paid. First, the cost of the royal household and the other expenses of government spiralled, placing ever greater strains on the body politic. Second, the king’s reliance on the Lancastrian affinity in the localities had led to a re-ordering of local political society in many parts of the realm and a fear that government for the public good was being overtaken by government driven by private interest. Most importantly, Henry IV had compensated for the weakness of his hereditary title by appealing to popular sentiment; the parliamentary Commons, rebellious subjects, and Lancastrian poets all questioned the king’s manner of ruling if not his right to rule per se. In the final analysis the Lancastrian regime was dependent on the support of the political nation in its broadest sense and this simple fact would have far-reaching consequences for much of the remainder of the fifteenth century.

1413–1437: THE ILLUSION OF STABILITY

Henry V has been called ‘the greatest man that ever ruled England’ and many modern historians have agreed with K.B. McFarlane that his reign proved that strong and effective kingship could effectively mobilise the resources of government and provide effective justice and financial strength alongside a robust and successful foreign policy.⁷ At the beginning of his reign Henry benefitted from the unpopularity of his father. The period 1410–11, when as Prince of Wales he had led the royal council, was remembered as a time of effective government, something which Henry IV, on the whole, had conspicuously failed to deliver. Henry also benefitted from the unflinching loyalty of the Lancastrian affinity, something which he had also cultivated as prince, and a new generation of nobility, untainted by rebellion or Ricardian loyalism. Families such as the Hollands, Mowbrays, Montagues and Percies were partially restored and their full rehabilitation made contingent on their loyal service to the new king. Henry personified contemporary expectations of effective kingship and the upholding of his coronation vows were the touchstone of his reign. On his accession he also set about restoring the crown’s credit worthiness. Priority was initially given at the Exchequer to the repayment of royal debts and the defence of the realm, while the crown’s regular sources of income (the profits of justice, prerogative rights and the crown lands) were exploited with efficiency. The new king also set about ostentatiously restoring law and justice. Campaigns against public disorder, especially in the midlands and the Welsh marches, were tangible demonstrations of kingly virtue. In the first months of the reign the Earl of Arundel and Lord Furnival fell foul of the king over the violent actions of their feuding servants in Shropshire. Furnival was imprisoned in the Tower and later sent to Ireland, while their servants, Lancastrian loyalists whose misdeeds had been ignored during the previous reign, found themselves before the justices of king’s bench and punished. Finally, Henry soon established his credentials as a defender of religious orthodoxy. He took a personal interest in the campaign against Lollardy; even his own servants, such as Sir John Oldcastle, found themselves on the receiving end. In 1414 the Statute of Lollards extended the state’s role in the investigation and punishment of heretics, in effect making Lollardy synonymous with treason.

First and foremost, however, Henry V’s reputation was built upon war with France. The king prepared well for the first campaign in 1415, mobilising an expeditionary army of some 10,000 men and amassing a war chest of £130,000. The army, drawing heavily on the resources of the Lancastrian affinity, also represented the familia regis at war; the lords, knights and esquires were bound personally to the king, their loyalty symbolised by pieces of the crown jewels given to them as security for the future payment of their wages. The Battle of Agincourt on 25 October was an extraordinary victory, gained against the odds and won by the individual prowess of the king and his servants against the might of French chivalry. The immediate reaction in England was euphoria, resulting in generous grants of taxation (including the wool subsidy for life in the parliament of November 1415) and an increase in the political capital of the House of Lancaster that would sustain it for another generation. Moreover, the capture of the port of Harfleur opened the way to further conquest. In August 1417 Henry set sail for France once more. By January 1419, when its capital Rouen fell after a protracted siege, Henry had conquered the Duchy of Normandy. Later that year the king concluded a new alliance with Philip the Good, the new Duke of Burgundy, and was in a position to demand nothing less than the crown of France itself. In May 1420 the treaty of Troyes realised Lancastrian ambitions. Henry was recognised as heir to the French king, Charles VI, his status confirmed by his marriage to Charles’s daughter, Catherine of Valois. Victorious in war, celebrated and loved by his subjects at home, Henry was the exemplar of medieval kingship.

Or so it seems. Henry V’s kingship was, however, more ambiguous than many contemporaries or subsequent historians have allowed. In 1413 expectations for the renewal of the English polity were first and foremost expectations of the character and virtue of the new king. Yet, Henry’s character and motivations remain problematic. The conquest of Normandy and the treaty of Troyes represented the king’s personal and growing ambitions in France. Contemporaries recognised that war grew out of ‘coveytise and fals Ambicioun’ and Lancastrian poets, such as Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, struggled to square this fact with their portrayal of Henry as a virtuous king. Moreover, in pursuit of his French ambitions and, above all, in the need for money to finance his campaigns Henry undermined the principles of ‘bone governance’ to which he had committed himself. Henry reneged on his promise to pay his father’s debts, exploited the defenceless widows of several noblemen, and arrested his own stepmother, Queen Joan of Navarre, on trumped up charges of witchcraft in order to seize her dower lands. Moreover, his unwillingness to grant away royal resources may explain his failure to create any new nobles or to endow existing Lancastrian supporters with sizeable estates in Normandy. Most importantly, there were signs that the treaty of Troyes was perceived as being a selfish and opportunistic bargain made by the king, acting in his own selfish interests rather than for the common profit. This was behind the Commons’ fear in the parliament of December 1420 that the treaty might place Englishmen in ‘subjection or obedience’ to future kings of France, and the barely disguised expectation that the treaty would mean an end to wartime taxation.⁸ By 1421, when the king made his final return to England, the strains on the Lancastrian polity were becoming evident. His new request for loans met with widespread misgivings and open refusals, while there is evidence that the landowning classes were becoming less enthusiastic about the prospect of serving in France. The parliament which met in May discussed the mounting royal debt and may have refused the king’s request for taxation (a refusal which would have been made easier by the fact that England and France were officially now at peace). The assembly which met in December did grant a novel peacetime subsidy although this barely made a dent in the growing financial crisis.

Most damning of all Henry failed to provide any means for securing his conquests in France. His early death, on 31 August 1422, left the Lancastrian dream of a dual monarchy in the person of his nine-month old son, Henry VI. Henry’s own will reveals a king more concerned with the salvation of his soul than the legacy he had left his son and servants. His provision of 20,000 masses was double the number that Henry VII would make nearly a century later and may hint at a guilty conscience. More tangibly, by placing much of the duchy of Lancaster’s estates in the hands of feoffees for the performance of his will, he deprived his son’s government of one of its most important sources of revenue. The codicils added to his will just five days before he died reveal a king who had given little thought to the ‘bone governance’ of his realm. His brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was named protector and chief guardian to Henry VI, but they did not define his powers or responsibilities with regard to the government of the realm. Moreover, the impossibility of enforcing the treaty of Troyes was evident even as Henry languished in extremis. The English defeat at Baugé the previous year had revealed the scale of the milit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: The Wars in History
• Dramatis Personae
• Timeline
• Family Trees
• Part 1: Causes
• Chapter 1: The Lancastrian Legacy: England 1399–1449
• Chapter 2: The Prelude to War: 1449–55
• Part 2: Course
• Chapter 3: First Blood: The Battle of St Albans 1455 and its Aftermath
• Chapter 4: The Triumph of York: The First War 1459–64
• Chapter 5: Rebellion and Readeption: The Second War 1469–71
• Chapter 6: Fortune’s Wheel: The Third War 1483–87
• Part 3: Consequences
• Chapter 7: War and Society: The Impact of the Wars
• Chapter 8: War and Political Culture
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• List of Illustrations