Henry VI

Henry VI

Henry V died unexpectedly in 1422 and his son, King Henry VI of England, ascended the throne as an infant only nine months old. Under Henry VI, virtually all English holdings in France, including the land won by Henry V, were lost.

Suffolk eventually succeeded in having Humphrey of Gloucester arrested for treason. Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset succeeded him as leader of the party seeking peace with France. In all these quarrels, Henry VI had taken little part. The increasing discord at court was mirrored in the country as a whole, where noble families engaged in private feuds and showed increasing disrespect for the royal authority and for the courts of law. This growing civil discontent, the abundance of feuding nobles with private armies, and corruption in Henry VI's court formed a political climate ripe for civil war. With the king so easily manipulated, power rested with those closest to him at court, in other words Somerset and the Lancastrian faction. Royal power also started to slip, as Henry was persuaded to grant many royal lands and estates to the Lancastrians.

Henry recovered in 1455 and once again fell under the influence of those closest to him at court.

Disputed Succession

The antagonism between the two houses started with the overthrow of King Richard II by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, in 1399. With the support of most of the nobles, Bolingbroke then deposed Richard and was crowned as Henry IV. As an issue of Edward III's third son John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke had a comparatively poor claim to the throne. Roger Mortimer had died the previous year however, and no nobles immediately championed his young son Edmund's claim to the crown. Henry IV died in 1413. His son and successor, Henry V, inherited a temporarily pacified nation. There was one conspiracy against Henry during his short reign; the Southampton Plot led by Richard, Earl of Cambridge, a son of Edmund of Langley, the fourth son of Edward III. Cambridge's wife, Anne Mortimer, also had a claim to the throne, being the daughter of Roger Mortimer and thus a descendant of Lionel of Antwerp. Her brother Edmund, who loyally supported Henry, died childless, and his claim therefore passed to Anne.
Richard, the son of Cambridge and Anne Mortimer, was four years old at the time of his father's execution. The title of Duke of York descended to him from Cambridge's elder brother, Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, who died fighting alongside Henry at Agincourt. Although Cambridge was attainted, Henry later allowed Richard to inherit the title and lands of his late uncle, who died without issue.

Armies and contestants

Richard II (depicted c. 1390)

The wars were fought largely by the landed aristocracy and armies of feudal retainers, with some foreign mercenaries. Support for each house largely depended upon dynastic factors, such as blood relationships, marriages within the nobility, and the grants or confiscations of feudal titles and lands.

The unofficial system of livery and maintenance, by which powerful nobles would offer protection to followers who would sport their colours and badges (livery), and controlled large numbers of paid men-at-arms (maintenance) was one of the effects of the breakdown of royal authority which preceded and partly caused the wars. Another aspect of the decline in respect to the crown was the development of what was called bastard feudalism by later historians, although the term and definition were disputed. Service to a lord in return for title to lands and the gift of offices remained important, but the service was given in support of a faction rather than as part of a strict heirarchical system in which all ultimately owed their loyalty to the monarch.

Given the conflicting loyalties of blood, marriage and ambition, it was not uncommon for nobles to switch sides and several battles were decided by treachery.

The armies consisted of nobles' contingents of men-at-arms, with companies of archers and foot-soldiers (such as billmen). There were also sometimes contingents of foreign mercenaries, armed with cannon or handguns. The horsemen were generally restricted to "prickers" and "scourers"; i.e. scouting and foraging parties. Most armies fought entirely on foot. In several cases, the magnates dismounted and fought among the common foot-soldiers, to inspire them and to dispel the notion that in the case of defeat they might be ransomed while the common soldiers, being of little value, faced death.

House of Lancaster

The name House of Lancaster is commonly used to designate the line of English kings immediately descended from John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III.

But the history of the family and of the title goes back to the reign of Henry III, who created his second son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster in 1267. This Edmund received in his own day the surname of Crouchback, not, as was afterwards supposed, from a personal deformity, but from having worn a cross upon his back in token of a crusading vow. He is not a person of much importance in history except in relation to a strange theory raised in a later age about his birth, which we shall notice presently. His son Thomas, who inherited the title, took the lead among the nobles of Edward II's time in opposition to Piers Gaveston and the Despensers, and was beheaded for treason at Pontefract.

At the commencement of the following reign his attainder was reversed and his brother Henry restored to the earldom; and Henry being appointed guardian to the young king Edward III, assisted him to throw off the yoke of Mortimer. On this Henry's death in 1345 he was succeeded by a son of the same name, sometimes known as Henry Tort-Col or Wryneck, a very valiant commander in the French wars, whom the king advanced to the dignity of a duke. Only one duke had been created in England before, and that was fourteen years previously, when the king's son Edward, the Black Prince, was made Duke of Cornwall. This Henry Wryneck died in 1361 without heir male.

His second daughter, Blanche, became the wife of John of Gaunt, who thus succeeded to the duke's inheritance in her right; and on the 13th of November 1362, when King Edward attained the age of fifty, John was created Duke of Lancaster, his elder brother, Lionel, being at the same time created Duke of Clarence. It was from these two dukes that the rival houses of Lancaster and York derived their respective claims to the crown. As Clarence was King Edward's third son, while John of Gaunt was his fourth, in ordinary course on the failure of the elder line the issue of Clarence should have taken precedence of that of Lancaster in the succession. But the rights of Clarence were conveyed in the first instance to an only daughter, and the ambition and policy of the house of Lancaster, profiting by advantageous circumstances, enabled them not only to gain possession of the throne but to maintain themselves in it for three generations before they were dispossessed by the representatives of the elder brother.

As for John of Gaunt himself, it can hardly be said that this sort of politic wisdom is very conspicuous in him. His ambition was generally more manifest than his discretion; but fortune favoured his ambition, even as to himself, somewhat beyond expectation, and still more in his posterity. Before the death of his father he had become the greatest subject in England, his three elder brothers having all died before him. He had even added to his other dignities the title of King of Castile, having married, after his first wife's death, the daughter of Peter the Cruel. The title, however, was an empty one, the throne of Castile being actually in the possession of Henry of Trastamara, whom the English had vainly endeavoured to set aside. His military and naval enterprises were for the most part disastrous failures, and in England he was exceedingly unpopular. Nevertheless, during the later years of his father's reign the weakness of the king and the declining health of the Black Prince threw the government very much into his hands. He even aimed, or was suspected of aiming, at the succession to the crown; but in this hope he was disappointed by the action of the Good Parliament a year before Edward's death, in which it was settled that Richard the son of the Black Prince should be king after his grandfather.

Nevertheless the suspicion with which he was regarded was not altogether quieted when Richard II came to the throne, a boy in the eleventh year of his age. The duke himself complained in parliament of the way he was spoken of out of doors, and at the outbreak of Wat Tyler's insurrection the peasants stopped pilgrims on the road to Canterbury and made them swear never to accept a king of the name of John. On gaining possession of London they burnt his magnificent palace of the Savoy. Richard found a convenient way to get rid of John of Gaunt by sending him to Castile to make good his barren title, and on this expedition he was away three years. He succeeded so far as to make a treaty with his rival, King John, son of Henry of Trastamara, for the succession, by virtue of which his daughter Catherine became the wife of Henry III of Castile some years later. After his return the king seems to have regarded him with greater favour, created him Duke of Aquitaine, and employed him in repeated embassies to France, which at length resulted in a treaty of peace, and Richard's marriage to the French king's daughter.

Another marked incident of his public life was the support which he gave on one occasion to the Reformer Wycliffe. How far this was due to religious and how far to political considerations may be a question; but not only John of Gaunt but his immediate descendants, the three kings of the house of Lancaster, all took deep interest in the religious movements of the times. A reaction against Lollardy, however, had already begun in the days of Henry III, and both he and his son felt obliged to discountenance opinions which were believed to be politically and theologically dangerous.

Accusations had been made against John of Gaunt more than once during the earlier part of Richard II's reign of entertaining designs to supplant his nephew on the throne. But these Richard never seems to have wholly credited, and during Gaunt's three years' absence his younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, showed himself a far more dangerous intriguer. Five confederate lords with Gloucester at their head took up arms against the king's favourite ministers, and the Wonderful Parliament put to death without remorse almost every agent of his former administration who had not fled the country. Gloucester even contemplated the dethronement of the king, but found that in this matter he could not rely on the support of his associates, one of whom was Henry, Earl of Derby, the Duke of Lancaster's son [later Henry IV]. Richard soon afterwards, by declaring himself of age, shook off his uncle's control, and within ten years the acts of the Wonderful Parliament were reversed by a parliament no less arbitrary.

House of York

HOUSE OF YORK, a royal line in England, founded by Richard, Duke of York, who claimed the crown in opposition to Henry VI. It may be said that his claim, at the time it was advanced, was rightly barred by prescription, the house of Lancaster having then occupied the throne for three generations, and that it was really owing to the misgovernment of Margaret of Anjou, and her favourites [Suffolk and Somerset] that it was advanced at all.

Yet it was founded upon strict principles of lineal descent. For the duke was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III, while the house of Lancaster came of John of Gaunt, a younger brother of Lionel. One thing which might possibly have been considered an element of weakness in his claim was that it was derived (see the Table) through females — an objection actually brought against it by Chief Justice Fortescue. But a succession through females could not reasonably have been objected to after Edward III's claim to the crown of France; and, apart from strict legality, the duke's claim was probably supported in the popular estimation by the fact that he was descended from Edward III through his father no less than through his mother. For his father, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, was the son of Edmund, Duke of York, fifth son of Edward III; and he himself was the direct lineal heir of this Edmund, just as much as he was of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. His claim was also favoured by the accumulation of hereditary titles and estates. The earldom of Ulster, the old inheritance of the De Burghs, had descended to him from Lionel, duke of Clarence; the earldom of March came from the Mortimers, and the dukedom of York and the earldom of Cambridge from his paternal ancestry. Moreover, his own marriage with Cecily Neville, though she was but the youngest daughter of Ralph, 1st Earl of Westmorland, allied him to a powerful family in the north of England, to whose support both he and his son were greatly indebted.The reasons why the claims of the line of Clarence had been so long forborne are not difficult to explain. Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, was designated by Richard II as his successor; but he died the year before Richard was dethroned, and his son Edmund, the 5th earl, was a child at Henry IV's usurpation. Henry took care to secure his person; but the claims of the family troubled the whole of his own and the beginning of his son's reign. It was an uncle of this Edmund who took part with Owen Glendower and the Percies; and for advocating the cause of Edmund Archbishop Scrope was put to death. And it was to put the crown on Edmund's head that his brother-in-law Richard, Earl of Cambridge, conspired against Henry V soon after his accession. The plot was detected, being revealed, it is said, by the Earl of March himself, who does not appear to have given it any encouragement; the Earl of Cambridge was beheaded. The popularity gained by Henry V in his French campaigns secured the weak title of the house of Lancaster against further attack for forty years.Richard, Duke of York, seems to have taken warning by his father's fate; but, after seeking for many years to correct by other means the weakness of Henry VI's government, he first took up arms against the ill advisers who were his own personal enemies, and at length claimed the crown in parliament as his right. The Lords, or such of them as did not purposely stay away from the House, admitted that his claim was unimpeachable, but suggested as a compromise that Henry should retain the crown for life, and the duke and his heirs succeed after his death. This was accepted by the duke, and an act to that effect received Henry's own assent. But the act was repudiated by Margaret of Anjou and her followers, and the duke was slain at Wakefield fighting against them. In little more than two months, however, his son was proclaimed king at London by the title of Edward IV, and the bloody victory of Towton immediately after drove his enemies into exile and paved the way for his coronation. After his recovery of the throne in 1471 he had little more to fear from the rivalry of the house of Lancaster. But the seeds of distrust had already been sown among the members of his own family, and in 1478 his brother Clarence was put to death — secretly, indeed, within the Tower, but still by his authority and that of parliament — as a traitor. In 1483 Edward himself died; and his eldest son, Edward V, after a nominal reign of two months and a half, was put aside by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, who became Richard III, and then caused him and his brother Richard, Duke of York, to be murdered. But in little more than two years Richard was slain at Bosworth by the Earl of Richmond, who, being proclaimed king as Henry VII, shortly afterwards fulfilled his pledge to marry the eldest daughter of Edward IV and so unite the houses of York and Lancaster.Here the dynastic history of the house of York ends, for its claims were henceforth merged in those of the house of Tudor.

Battles

May 22, 1455 First Battle of St Albans (York)

Sep 23, 1459 Battle of Blore Heath(York)

Oct 12, 1459 Rout at Ludford Bridge (Lancaster)

Jul 10, 1460 Battle of Northampton (York)

Dec 30, 1460 Battle of Wakefield (Lancaster)

Feb 2, 1461 Battle of Mortimer's Cross(York)

Feb 22, 1461 Second Battle of St Albans(Lancaster)

Mar 28, 1461 Skirmish at Ferrybridge (York)

Mar 29, 1461 Battle of Towton(York)

Apr 25, 1464 Battle of Hedgeley Moor (York)

May 15, 1464 Battle of Hexham (Lancaster)

Jul 26, 1469 Battle of Edgecote (York)

Mar 12, 1470 Battle of Loosecoat Field (York)

Apr 14, 1471 Battle of Barnet(York)

May 4, 1471 Battle of Tewkesbury(Lancaster)

Aug 22, 1485 Battle of Bosworth (Lancaster)

Jun 16, 1487 Battle of Stoke Field (Lancaster)

Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information

In which year did the last battle of the wars take place?
1487. This was the battle of Stoke, which Henry VII fought against the impostor Lambert Simnel. The battle of Bosworth field, in 1485, is the battle at which Henry defeated the then-king, Richard III.

What led to the falling-out between Edward IV and his staunchest supporter, Richard, Earl of Warwick, known as the Kingmaker?

Edward married Elizabeth Woodville, thwarting Neville's plans to marry him to a French noblewoman..

In 1399 Richard II was usurped by this man, which led to the establishing of the House of Lancaster, and ultimately to the Wars of the Roses. Who was this usurper?

Henry Bolingbroke.

Which foreign power sided with Edward IV during the wars?

Burgundy.

Hostilities broke out in 1455. Which is considered to be the first major battle of the War of the Roses?

Andrew Trollope. Andrew Trollope was the captain of the Calais troops. It is rumoured that that night, Andrew Trollope deserted from Warwick, taking the Calais garrison and the Yorkist plan of battle over to the king.

Henry VI had a famous or infamous wife, depending on your point of view. Who was this powerful woman?

Margaret of Anjou. Margaret often led the Lancastrian forces during the Wars of the Roses and is said to have dictated strategy. Henry is often seen as a weak king, ill suited to the role of a medieval monarch. Margaret was born in March 1430.

Richard Duke of York had a thin claim to the Crown and tried through force of arms to take it, he never actually got his hands on the crown. But which title did he attain?

Lord Protector. Richard's father, the Earl of Cambridge, had been executed for treason in 1415. In 1452, Richard Duke of York was made Lord Protector, but had to give up this position with the King's recovery from insanity and the birth of an heir, Edward, Prince of Wales, the following year.

Richard Duke of York was killed at which major battle?

Battle of Wakefield. Richard led his troops out of his fortress at Sandal Castle and, perhaps over confidently attacked the Royalist forces. He was defeated and killed, and his head was put on a pike by the victorious Lancastrian armies.

At the battle of Barnet in April 1471 a major figure on the Wars of the Roses was killed. Known as the "kingmaker", what was the real name of the Earl of Warwick?

Richard Neville. Referred to as "the kingmaker", Richard Neville wielded considerable power. The battle was marked by two unfortunate mistakes which contributed to the Lancastrian defeat. Firstly, the Yorkist army by luck drew up in the dark closer than expected to Warwick's army causing their artillery to over shoot. Secondly, in the fog of battle in the morning, Warwick's centre and left flanks mistook each other for enemey troops or traitors and set upon each other.

The Battle of Tewkesbury fought in 1471 effectively ended one period of the War of the Roses, being a decisive Yorkist victory. Who led the ill fated Lancastrian Army ?

Duke of Somerset. The Duke of Somerset led a numerically superior Lancastrian force at the battle and tried to outflank the Yorkist army. When this failed and the Lancastrian army was attacked in the centre it crumbled. Perhaps the most grievous lost to the Lancastrian force was the death of Edward Prince of Wales.

The battle of Stoke Field is usually considered the final battle of the War of the Roses. Henry Tudor's forces overcame the forces of a pretender to the throne. Who was this boy claiming to be king ?

Lambert Simnel. Lambert claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick and nephew of Edward IV and was crowned King Edward VI in Dublin. It is said Henry Tudor considered him harmless and employed Lambert later in his kitchens.