Wars of the Roses (1455-1487): Lancaster Against York

The Wars of the Roses were a series of English civil wars fought between 1455 and 1487 for control of the throne. They pitted two rival branches of the royal family, the House of Lancaster and the House of York, against each other in battles, executions and changes of king. The wars ended with the victory of Henry Tudor in 1485 and the founding of the Tudor dynasty, which shaped England for more than a century.

Background and causes

Both houses descended from Edward III (reigned 1327–1377). The Lancastrian kings came to power in 1399 when Henry Bolingbroke deposed his cousin Richard II and became Henry IV. His son Henry V won fame by defeating the French at Agincourt in 1415, but died in 1422, leaving a nine-month-old son as Henry VI.

Henry VI grew up to be pious and gentle but weak as a ruler. He relied on favourites, his government ran into heavy debt, and England lost almost all its lands in France at the end of the Hundred Years’ War, with Normandy gone in 1450 and Gascony in 1453. These defeats caused anger at court and in the country, and in 1450 a popular revolt led by Jack Cade briefly took control of London.

In August 1453 Henry suffered a mental collapse that left him unable to speak or recognise people for well over a year. Richard, Duke of York, the king’s wealthiest subject and a descendant of Edward III through two lines, was appointed Protector in 1454. When Henry recovered at the end of that year, York was pushed aside and his rival Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, returned to favour. York feared for his position and his life.

Other causes ran deeper. Great nobles kept large private followings bound by fees and badges, a system historians call “bastard feudalism”. Feuds between noble families, such as the Nevilles and the Percies in the north, fed into the national quarrel.

The first phase, 1455–1461

Fighting began at the First Battle of St Albans on 22 May 1455, a short street battle in which York and his Neville allies, Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and his son Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, killed Somerset and captured the king. At this stage York claimed only to be removing evil counsellors, not to seek the crown.

Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, became the leading figure of the Lancastrian cause, determined to protect the rights of her son Edward, born in 1453. After a tense truce, war resumed in 1459. The Yorkists were scattered after a confrontation at Ludford Bridge, but returned in 1460 and captured Henry at the Battle of Northampton on 10 July.

In October 1460 York formally claimed the throne. Parliament reached a compromise, the Act of Accord, which let Henry keep the crown for life but made York his heir, disinheriting Prince Edward. Margaret refused to accept it. On 30 December 1460 York was killed at the Battle of Wakefield, and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, was killed after the battle.

York’s eldest son Edward, Earl of March, then aged 18, defeated a Lancastrian army at Mortimer’s Cross on the Welsh border in early February 1461. Although the Lancastrians beat Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February, London would not admit Margaret’s army. Edward entered the city and was proclaimed king as Edward IV on 4 March 1461. On 29 March he won a crushing victory at Towton in Yorkshire, the largest and bloodiest battle of the wars.

Edward IV and Warwick, 1461–1471

Henry VI, Margaret and their son fled to Scotland. Lancastrian resistance continued in Northumberland until the battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in 1464, and Henry VI was captured in 1465 and held in the Tower of London.

Edward IV’s reign soon produced new tensions. In 1464 he secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, a widow from a family of the lesser nobility with Lancastrian ties, while Warwick, known as “the Kingmaker”, was negotiating a French marriage for him. The rise of the queen’s relatives and disputes over foreign policy alienated Warwick, who allied with Edward’s brother George, Duke of Clarence.

After rebellions in 1469 and 1470, Warwick fled to France and made an unlikely alliance with his old enemy Margaret of Anjou. In September 1470 he invaded England and Edward IV fled to Burgundy. Henry VI was restored to the throne in October 1470, an episode known as the Readeption.

Edward returned in March 1471. Clarence changed sides back to his brother, and on 14 April Edward defeated and killed Warwick at the Battle of Barnet. On 4 May he defeated Margaret’s army at Tewkesbury, where Prince Edward of Lancaster was killed. Henry VI died in the Tower of London around 21 May 1471, almost certainly put to death on Yorkist orders. The direct Lancastrian line was extinct.

Richard III and the Tudor victory, 1471–1487

Edward IV ruled securely for twelve years, although he had Clarence executed for treason in 1478. When Edward died unexpectedly on 9 April 1483, his son became Edward V at the age of 12. Edward IV’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, became Protector, seized the young king, executed several of the Woodvilles’ allies and had Edward IV’s children declared illegitimate. He took the crown as Richard III and was crowned on 6 July 1483.

Edward V and his younger brother Richard were last seen in the Tower of London in the summer of 1483. Their fate remains one of the great mysteries of English history; see the Princes in the Tower. A rebellion in October 1483, involving the Duke of Buckingham, failed, but many former supporters of Edward IV turned towards an exile in Brittany, Henry Tudor.

Henry’s claim came through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, from a legitimated line of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. He landed at Milford Haven in Wales in August 1485 and on 22 August defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Crowned Henry VII, he married Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s eldest daughter, on 18 January 1486, joining the two houses.

Yorkist opposition did not vanish at once. In 1487 rebels crowned a boy named Lambert Simnel in Dublin, claiming he was the Earl of Warwick, Clarence’s son. Henry VII defeated their army at the Battle of Stoke Field on 16 June 1487, usually regarded as the last battle of the wars.

Key people

• Henry VI (1421–1471), the Lancastrian king whose weak rule and mental illness opened the way to conflict.
• Margaret of Anjou (1430–1482), Henry’s queen and the driving force of the Lancastrian cause.
• Richard, Duke of York (1411–1460), whose claim to the throne began the dynastic struggle.
• Edward IV (1442–1483), York’s son, the first Yorkist king.
• Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (1428–1471), “the Kingmaker”, who helped make and unmake kings.
• Richard III (1452–1485), the last Yorkist king, killed at Bosworth.
• Henry VII (1457–1509), the first Tudor monarch.

Consequences

The wars killed a significant number of nobles, in battle and through executions, and several great families were destroyed or weakened. Historians debate how much ordinary life was disrupted. Campaigns were usually short, there were few long sieges, and towns and farmland suffered less than in contemporary wars in France; long stretches of the period, especially 1471–1483, were peaceful.

The crown emerged stronger. Edward IV and Henry VII both restored royal finances, relied on loyal servants and used attainders, laws that confiscated the lands of traitors, to tighten control over the nobility. The Tudors presented themselves as the dynasty that had ended chaos, and their symbol, the Tudor rose combining red and white, advertised the union of the two houses.

Myths and facts

Myth: The participants called it the Wars of the Roses. Fact: No one at the time used the term. The white rose was a genuine Yorkist badge, but the red rose was only one of several Lancastrian emblems. The phrase “Wars of the Roses” became popular in the nineteenth century.

Myth: The wars were thirty years of continuous fighting. Fact: Historians’ estimates of the time actually spent campaigning range from a few months to a little over a year in total, spread across several distinct phases separated by long periods of peace.

Myth: Shakespeare’s scene of nobles plucking roses in the Temple Garden is historical. Fact: It is a dramatic invention in Henry VI, Part 1, written more than a century later.

Timeline

• 1453, August: Henry VI suffers a mental breakdown.
• 1455, 22 May: First Battle of St Albans begins open warfare.
• 1460, 30 December: Richard, Duke of York, is killed at Wakefield.
• 1461, 29 March: Edward IV wins the Battle of Towton.
• 1470, October: Henry VI is restored by Warwick (the Readeption).
• 1471, 14 April: Warwick is killed at Barnet.
• 1471, 4 May: Yorkist victory at Tewkesbury; Prince Edward of Lancaster dies.
• 1483, 6 July: Richard III is crowned.
• 1485, 22 August: Henry Tudor defeats Richard III at Bosworth.
• 1487, 16 June: Henry VII wins the Battle of Stoke Field.

Why it matters

The Wars of the Roses ended the Plantagenet dynasty that had ruled England since 1154 and brought the Tudors to power, opening the age of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Through Shakespeare’s plays and countless later histories and dramas, the struggle between York and Lancaster became one of the best-known stories of English history.