An underlying cause was failure of the
sustained effort to hold onto English territories in France during the final
phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). This was followed by a protracted
dynastic dispute between the rival Houses of Lancaster (‘‘Red Rose’’) and York
(‘‘White Rose’’), each claiming the throne via descent from Edward III. More
immediate grievances included the unpopularity of the Lancastrian, Henry VI
(1422–1461), and some nobles at his court; the continuing availability to the
barony of small private armies; and complex relations with powerful nobles in
Ireland and in exile. Ireland itself was valued for its strategic location and
as a ready source of cheap troops.
The Wars of the Roses saw sixteen
significant battles and dozens of skirmishes and small sieges, none of which
were truly decisive. The opening fight came at First St. Albans (May 22, 1455),
where Richard of York’s 3,000 men defeated 2,500 Lancastrians under Henry VI.
There followed four years of uneasy peace. At Blore Heath (September 22, 1459),
in Staffordshire, this ended when Yorkist knights under the Earl of Salisbury
bested a force of the king’s men-at-arms. The rebels then hooked up with a
larger Yorkist force at Ludford Bridge and moved against Worcester, but fell
back when they met a still larger Lancastrian army. At Ludford they spent a
cold night waiting on battle, with the Lancastrians drawn up across the river.
But too many Yorkist troops deserted during the night and even more fled or
switched sides when they saw the enemy in the cold dawn on October 12. The army
scattered and the major Yorkist leaders fled abroad, but only to plot a return
to power. At Northampton ( July 10, 1460), Yorkists defeated the Royal Army
when Lord Grey, who was in command of a Lancastrian wing, switched sides in
midbattle. The king was taken prisoner and agreed that the Yorkist claim to the
succession should be exercised upon his death. This did not end the fighting:
at Wakefield (December 30, 1460) 8,000 Yorkists attacked foolhardily directly into
18,000 waiting Lancastrians only to lose decisively and bloodily. Several
leading Yorkists were executed after the battle, signaling that a new seriousness
and ruthlessness of purpose and method had entered the conflict, while also
clearing the way for a new generation of noble aspirants and rivals to contest
for the Plantagenet crown.
At Mortimer’s Cross (February 2, 1461),
11,000 Welsh Yorkists led by the future Edward IV routed a force of 8,000
French, Welsh, and Irish mercenaries fighting for the Red Rose. Edward headed
to London where he would be crowned two months later. But first he tried to
link with a second Yorkist army. At Second St. Albans (February 17, 1461) the
rival armies numbered 25,000 each. The Lancastrians attacked before Edward
arrived and joined the Yorkist armies. The commander in his absence was the
Earl of Warwick (Richard Neville, ‘‘The Kingmaker’’), who fled at the first
hint of danger. Warwick even abandoned his hostage, no less a person than the
Lancastrian king, Henry VI, whom he left under a tree! Both sides gathered more
forces. At Ferrybridge (March 28, 1461), Edward IV’s advance guard was isolated
and destroyed, but the main force carried the bridge. The next day, at Towton,
the enlarged main armies met in battle. The Yorkist army of 36,000 attacked a
Lancastrian force of 40,000 in the midst of a heavy snow storm. Edward used a
favorable wind to increase the range of his archers and limit that of the
Lancastrians, who were thus enticed to leave their entrenchments and charge the
Yorkist lines. The fight lasted many hours, seesawing at the center during one
of the bloodiest days ever seen in England. The arrival of reinforcements gave
the blood-soaked day to Edward: Henry’s infantry broke and ran while hundreds
of stranded knights floundered and drowned in the River Cock, pulled under by
the weight of their armor.
Towton brought three years of peace to
England, though the Lancastrians sought and received aid from Scotland and kept
the war going in the north. At Hedgely Moor (April 25, 1464), a small Yorkist
army of 5,000 men handed a comparable Lancastrian force another sharp defeat,
but the Duke of Somerset evaded capture with some survivors and began to raise
new levies. Before they were ready, he was attacked at Hexham (May 15, 1464)
and his force annihilated. Somerset was captured and beheaded, the first of
many Lancastrian nobles to die on the block on Edward’s writ. Henry VI was put
in a cell in the Tower of London. Harlech Castle in Wales held out against
Edward until 1468 but the White Rose was victorious, and champions of the Red
Rose mostly dead or in bitter exile. It was only fratricidal quarreling among
the Yorkists that kept Lancastrian hope alive. Edward IV’s choice of wife,
Elizabeth Woodville, and his alliance with Charles the Rash of Burgundy
displeased even his closest supporters and members of his family. Warwick also
resented that the king increasingly appeared to want to rule as well as reign.
In early 1469 an uprising against Edward began in Yorkshire stimulated by
Warwick, who hoped to replace the king with his brother, George, Duke of Clarence.
A major fight took place at Banbury ( July 26, 1469), also called ‘‘Edgecote
Moor,’’ in Northamptonshire when a Yorkist army led by the Earl of Pembroke ran
into a rebel army maneuvering to link up with Warwick. After a close fight more
rebels arrived and frightened Pembroke’s men into fleeing the field. Pembroke
was captured the next day and executed.
Edward sent another army to repress a small
uprising in Lincolnshire. His men surprised the insurgents at Lose-coat Field
(March 12, 1470), so-named because of the number of coats discarded as the
rebels took to their heels. Some key Lancastrians were implicated in the rising
and forced into exile. Warwick now raised an army in France and crossed to
England to force Edward from the throne. Edward fled to Burgundy to raise a
mercenary army of his own. In his absence, Henry VI was freed and placed on the
throne by Warwick, once again playing the role of the ‘‘Kingmaker.’’ The next
year Edward landed at Ravenspur with 1,500 Burgundian and German mercenaries,
scattered the local defenders (March 14, 1471), and raced for London with
Warwick’s army close on his heels. Edward seized Henry VI and locked him back
in the Tower. Then he turned to meet Warwick at Barnet (April 14, 1471), 12
miles north of London, where the armies fought in a fog-obscured and confused
battle. At its end, Warwick was dead and Edward IV held the field and therefore
the crown. However, that same day a Lancastrian army raised abroad landed at
Weymouth and rallied the western counties to war, raising fresh troops in
Wales. At Tewkesbury (May 4, 1471), Edward led an army of 5,000 against 7,000
dug-in Lancastrians. He immediately engaged the enemy, opening with a
bombardment from his artillery. The Lancastrians charged the center of Edward’s
line, mistakenly perceiving a weakness there. The assault was repelled and
Edward counterattacked, routing and killing 2,000 of his enemies. This ended
the war in Edward’s favor.
Upon Edward IV’s death in 1483, his
13-year-old son, Edward V, was left vulnerable on the throne. Civil war broke
out again after a 12-year hiatus when the Duke of Gloucester deposed the boy
king and imprisoned him along with his younger brother, the Duke of York, in
the Tower of London. Gloucester claimed the throne as King Richard III and the
‘‘little princes’’ were soon murdered in the Tower. This provided the pretext
for Henry Tudor to land at Milford Haven in Wales on August 7, 1485, with an
army of 2,000 men. Within days, 3,000 more rallied to his banner. Gloucester
moved to meet him with an army of 10,000. Another 6,000 stood on his flanks led
by the brothers Stanley. The armies met at Bosworth on August 22, 1485. Each
side opened with artillery and archery showers. At a critical moment one of
Gloucester’s lieutenants, the Earl of Northumberland, fled the field. The
Stanleys then turned coats on Gloucester and joined their 6,000 men with Henry
Tudor’s army. Gloucester (Richard III) died fighting for his crown, which he
wore into the battle. A soldier picked it up and handed it to Henry Tudor, who
subsequently donned it as Henry VII. The Wars of the Roses were effectively
over, even if two years later Yorkist rebels crossed from Ireland with several
thousand German mercenaries and Irish kernes to be defeated by Henry at East Stoke
( June 16, 1647). The English gentry henceforth became the solid foundation of
the Tudor monarchy. England was at last severed from its long history of
continental entanglement (except for Calais), and became more clearly a
national kingdom and island realm, increasingly English in its language,
culture, and politics. Next would come nationalization of its religion under
Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I.
Suggested
Reading: Hubert Cole, Wars of the Roses (1973); J.
Gillingham, Wars of the Roses (1981); Anthony Goodman, Wars of the Roses
(1981).
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