Origins of the Wars of the Roses | The Hundred Years' War

The Wars of the Roses were the civil wars fought in England between 1455 and 1485 between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English crown. The wars were, in large part, a direct consequence of the long, exhausting conflict with France that is known as the Hundred Years’ War. The loss of almost all English possessions in France between 1449 and 1453, the political instability of Henry VI’s reign, and the emergence of rival claimants to the throne all contributed to the outbreak of civil war. The first battle, at St Albans on 22 May 1455, was a small affair; the last, at Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485, was decisive. Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth ended the Plantagenet dynasty and the civil war, and the Tudor dynasty would rule England for more than a century.

The standard treatments are A. J. Pollard’s The Wars of the Roses (1988) and the Oxford Handbook of the Wars of the Roses (2015, ed. Doran). The most useful single-volume treatment of the war’s origins in the context of the Hundred Years’ War is the relevant sections of Sumption’s The Hundred Years’ War, vol. IV (2015).

The end of the war and the crisis of the 1450s

The final years of the Hundred Years’ War produced a profound crisis in English politics. The loss of Normandy in 1449, the loss of most of Gascony in 1451, the final English defeat at Castillon on 17 July 1453, and the surrender of Bordeaux on 19 October 1453, were all severe blows to the English political class. The English, who had long defined themselves by their military prowess and their continental possessions, were forced to confront the fact that the long war was lost and that the Plantagenet dream of ruling France was over.

The crisis was deepened by the incapacity of Henry VI. Henry, who was a gentle and devout man, suffered from what appears to have been a form of mental illness, and during his periodic bouts of incapacity the government of England fell into the hands of rival factions. The first major bout occurred in August 1453, the same month as the final disaster at Castillon; the king remained incapacitated for more than a year. The most important of the rival factions were the Queen, Margaret of Anjou, who was determined to protect the interests of her son the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York, Richard, Duke of York, who had a strong claim to the throne and was eager to take a more active role in the government.

The claim of the Duke of York

The Duke of York had a strong claim to the English throne. As a descendant of Lionel of Antwerp, the second son of Edward III, his claim was stronger than that of Henry VI, who was descended from John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III. The claim, however, was complicated by the fact that the Lancastrian kings had been on the throne for three generations, and a strict application of primogeniture would have produced a long period of political instability.

The Duke of York, who was a capable and ambitious man, was appointed Protector of the Realm during one of Henry’s bouts of incapacity in 1454. The appointment, however, did not last: Henry recovered, and the queen, Margaret of Anjou, was determined to remove the duke from power. The result was a long period of political manoeuvring, which eventually led to open war in 1455.

The First Battle of St Albans, 1455

The first engagement of the Wars of the Roses was the First Battle of St Albans, fought on 22 May 1455. The battle was a small affair, involving perhaps 5,000 men on each side, but it set the pattern for the wars that followed. The Duke of York defeated the Lancastrian forces, killed the Earl of Somerset and the Earl of Northumberland, captured King Henry, and was once again appointed Protector of the Realm. The battle was, in effect, a successful coup.

The First Battle of St Albans was followed by a long period of uneasy peace, broken by occasional outbreaks of violence. The political situation in England remained unstable, and the rivalry between the houses of Lancaster and York became increasingly bitter. The second phase of the wars began in 1459, and the conflict would continue, with various periods of peace and violence, until 1485.

The war

The wars themselves were a series of small, bloody engagements rather than a single decisive conflict. The English crown was contested in a series of battles: Blore Heath (1459), Ludford Bridge (1459), Northampton (1460), Wakefield (1460), Mortimer’s Cross (1461), Towton (1461), Hedgeley Moor (1464), Hexham (1464), Edgecote (1469), Lose-coat Field (1470), Barnet (1471), Tewkesbury (1471), Bosworth (1485), and Stoke Field (1487). The casualty figures for most of these engagements are not reliable, but the total English dead in the wars is conventionally estimated at perhaps 100,000 over the 30-year period — a figure that, in proportion to the population, is comparable to the English losses in the Hundred Years’ War.

The political dynamic of the wars was the gradual exhaustion of the Lancastrian and Yorkist factions and the consolidation of the Tudor claim. Edward IV, the Yorkist king (1461–1470, 1471–1483), was the most capable of the Yorkist kings; Henry VI, restored briefly in 1470–1471, was murdered in the Tower on 21 May 1471; Richard III, the last Yorkist king (1483–1485), was killed at Bosworth. The accession of Henry VII in 1485 ended the wars.

The English political class and the war

The Hundred Years’ War had a profound impact on the English political class. The long war had produced a class of experienced soldiers, many of whom had served in France, who were unwilling to accept the new political order. The English aristocracy, in particular, was a deeply militarised class, and the prospect of peace, far from producing stability, only intensified the rivalries that had been suppressed during the war.

The economic impact of the war was also important. The loss of the English possessions in France, the disruption of the wool trade, and the new taxes that had been imposed to pay for the war all contributed to a deep economic crisis. The English government, forced to find new sources of revenue, became increasingly unpopular, and the political class was divided between those who supported the government and those who opposed it.

The veteran French-war captains of the 1440s and 1450s — the Talbots, the Beauforts, the Courtenays, the earls of Salisbury and Warwick — were the principal military actors of the Wars of the Roses. The Bastard of Fauconberg’s rebellion in 1471, in which a veteran of the French wars led a force of Kentish men in an attack on London, was a particularly clear example of the way in which the skills and grievances of the French war could be turned against the English crown.

The end of the wars

The Wars of the Roses ended with the accession of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) to the English throne in 1485, following his victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. The Tudor dynasty, which would rule England for more than a century, was founded on the principle of reconciliation, and the long period of civil war came to an end.

The end of the Wars of the Roses, however, did not mean the end of the rivalry between the two nations. The English, who had long regarded France as their natural enemy, would continue to fight the French for centuries, and the long struggle between the two kingdoms would be a central feature of European history. The Tudor dynasty, in fact, used the French rivalry as a central element of its political identity: Henry VII’s son Henry VIII would reopen the war with France in 1512–1514, and the struggle would continue, with interruptions, until the Napoleonic era.

The long-term legacy

The Wars of the Roses were a direct consequence of the Hundred Years’ War. The long war had produced a deeply militarised English aristocracy, an unstable political system, and a crown that was unable to maintain its authority. The result was a long period of civil war, which ended only with the accession of the Tudors and the beginning of a new era in English history.

The historiographical debate, set out by Pollard and developed in the Oxford Handbook, is about how direct the causation was. The most useful single reading, set out by Sumption and developed in the more recent literature, is that the war was a structural rather than an immediate cause of the civil war. The loss of France, the incapacity of Henry VI, the financial exhaustion of the crown, and the dynastic challenge of the Duke of York are all direct consequences of the war; the political failure of the English state to manage the transition from war to peace is the immediate cause. The Wars of the Roses are, in this reading, the consequence of a state that had been built for war and could not survive the peace.