‘Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens’ by Henry Arthur Payne (1868-1940), in the Palace of Westminster. It shows a scene from William Shakespeare’s play ‘Henry VI, Part 1’, in which Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and his rival the Duke of Somerset (a blending of John Beaufort and his younger brother Edmund, grandsons of John of Gaunt) each choose a rose as an emblem of their factions. In fact, the Yorkists already used a white rose, and the red rose of Lancaster was a later invention. The term ‘the Wars of the White and Red Roses’ itself was coined by Sir Walter Scott in his historical novel ‘Anne of Geierstein’ (1829).
Part 1 of 2
IN 1330, King Edward III had a son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. John never became king but his great-grandson, Henry VI, inherited the crown in 1422, aged just nine months.*
As Henry grew up, he suffered from mental problems; and this, added to expensive failures in the Hundred Years’ War* with France such as losing Normandy in 1450, demoralised the whole country. Queen Margaret wanted to rule for him, but she had a rival, Richard of York, the grandson of John of Gaunt’s brother Edmund Langley. In 1455, their two armies clashed at St Albans, and the White Rose, emblem of York, prevailed over the Red Rose of Lancaster. Margaret was forced to acknowledge Richard of York as Lord Protector, and the Wars of the Roses had begun.
Queen Margaret fought back, tooth and nail. Richard won the Battle of Northampton in 1460 and was named Henry’s heir, but never crowned, for that same year he was killed at Wakefield, and Henry held grimly on.*
On Edward III’s death in 1377, the crown passed to his grandson Richard II. Richard was the son of Edward’s eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, who had died in 1376. John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne in 1399, becoming Henry IV. His son Henry V, the hero of Agincourt in 1415, died in 1422, leaving a nine-month-old son, Henry VI, as his heir.
The Hundred Years’ War between the Kings of England and the Kings of France lasted from 1337 to 1453. It began after King Edward III renewed a long-standing conflict over dukedoms inherited from William the Conqueror and his successors, most of which had been lost by King John, and in 1340, Edward formally claimed the throne of France at the request of his allies in Flanders. The war at first favoured England and Henry V was to inherit the crown of France on the death of Charles VI, but died early in 1422, and thereafter the war became a series of expensive losses. Rather splendidly, the Kings of England were styled Kings of France until 1802, in the reign of George III.
Précis
In 1455, tensions between the White Rose of York and the Red of Lancaster, two royal dukedoms descended from Edward III, boiled over at the Battle of St Albans. Richard of York won the right to govern in place of the mentally unstable Henry VI, but Queen Margaret managed to defeat and kill him at Wakefield in 1460. (56 / 60 words)
Part Two
Soldiers prepare for battle at a modern re-enactment of the Battle of Tewkesbury, 1471. This battle ended the second phase of the wars: the first ended with a Yorkist victory at Towton in 1461, and the Yorkists were victorious again at Tewkesbury ten years later. The wars came to an end at last in 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire, where King Richard III was killed, and his crown was taken – supposedly from beneath a thorn bush — by Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII.
AFTER Richard’s death, his son Edward took up the Yorkist cause, and victory at Towton in 1461 saw Henry imprisoned, and saw Edward proclaimed King Edward IV. Yet still Margaret fought on, first from Scotland and then from her native Anjou. In 1470, Edward’s trusted aide Richard Neville defected to Margaret’s side,* and launched an invasion that ousted his old friend and briefly restored Henry.* But Neville and Henry were both killed at Barnet on April 14th, and on May 4th Margaret was defeated at Tewkesbury.
With Henry and his heir Edward of Westminster dead, Edward thought he had eliminated all his rivals. But Henry’s distant relative, Henry Tudor, assembled an army of Lancastrians in France, and returned in 1485 to snatch the crown from Edward’s brother, Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth.* With careful diplomacy, Henry Tudor married Edward’s daughter Margaret of York, and named himself King Henry VII of the House of Tudor. The Wars of the Roses were at an end.*
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (1428-1471), known as ‘the Kingmaker’ for his role in Henry’s brief restoration.
This short-lived restoration is known as Henry’s ‘readeption’, i.e. regaining.
If Edward IV’s brother Richard III had not usurped his nephews, Edward’s sons, and (apparently) had them murdered in the Tower of London, Henry Tudor might well never have thought of trying his luck in 1485. His own claim to the crown was very shaky and his followers small in number, but Richard had obligingly removed Henry’s rivals as well as his own and the temptation was too strong. See The Princes in the Tower.
Of course there were malcontents who did not acknowledge the fact. See Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
Précis
Richard of York’s son Edward assumed the White Rose cause, and was crowned Edward IV following victory at Towton in 1461. Betrayed by Richard Neville in 1470, Edward was forced to regain his throne at Tewkesbury a year later. However, the Red Rose prevailed when Henry Tudor defeated Edward’s brother Richard III at Bosworth in 1485, and became Henry VII. (57 / 60 words)
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