The wars ended when Richard III, the last Yorkist king, was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 by Henry Tudor – founder of the house of Tudor.

Here are 30 facts about the Wars:

1. The seeds of war were sown as far back as 1399

That year Richard II was deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke who would go on to be the Henry IV. This created two competing lines of the Plantagenet family, both of which thought they had the rightful claim.

On the one side there were the descendants of Henry IV – known as the Lancastrians – and on the other the heirs of Richard II. In the 1450s, the leader of this family was Richard of York; his followers would come to be known as the Yorkists.

2. When Henry VI came to power he was in an incredible position…

Thanks to the military successes of his father, Henry V, Henry VI held vast swathes of France and was the only King of England to be crowned King of France and England.

3. …but his foreign policy soon proved disastrous

Over the course of his reign Henry gradually lost almost all England’s possessions in France.

It culminated in the disastrous defeat at Castillon in 1453 – the battle signalled the end of the Hundred Years War and left England with only Calais from all their French possessions.

The Battle of Castillon: 17 July 1543

4. King Henry VI had favourites who manipulated him and made him unpopular with others

The King’s simple mind and trusting nature left him fatally vulnerable to grasping favourites and unscrupulous ministers.

5. His mental health also affected his ability to rule

Henry VI was prone to bouts of insanity. Once he had suffered from a complete mental breakdown in 1453, from which he never fully recovered, his reign morphed from concerning to catastrophic.

He was certainly incapable of containing the mounting baronial rivalries that eventually culminated in out-and-out civil war.

6. One baronial rivalry outshone all others

This was the rivalry between Richard, 3rd Duke of York and Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. York deemed Somerset responsible for the recent military failures in France.

Both nobles made several attempts to destroy each other as they vied for supremacy. In the end their rivalry was only settled through blood and battle.

7. The first battle of the civil war occurred on 22 May 1455 at St Albans

Troops commanded by Richard, Duke of York, resoundingly defeated a Lancastrian royal army commanded by the Duke of Somerset, who was killed in the fighting. King Henry VI was captured, leading to a subsequent parliament appointing Richard of York Lord Protector.

It was the day that launched the bloody, three decades long, Wars of the Roses.

8. A surprise attack paved the way for a Yorkist victory

It was a small force led by the Earl of Warwick that marked the turning point in the battle. They picked their way through small back lanes and rear gardens, then burst into the town’s market square where the Lancastrian forces were relaxing and chatting.

The Lancastrian defenders, realising they were outflanked, abandoned their barricades and fled the town.

A modern day procession as people celebrate the Battle of St Albans. Credit: Jason Rogers / Commons.

9. Henry VI was captured by Richard’s army at the Battle of St Albans

During the battle, Yorkist longbowmen rained arrows onto Henry’s bodyguard, killing Buckingham and several other influential Lancastrian nobles and wounding the king. Henry was later escorted back to London by York and Warwick.

10. An Act of Settlement in 1460 handed the line of succession to Henry VI’s cousin, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York

It recognised York’s strong hereditary claim to the throne and agreed that the crown would pass to him and his heirs after Henry’s death, thereby disinheriting Henry’s young son, Edward, Prince of Wales.

11. But Henry VI’s wife had something to say about it

Henry’s strong willed wife, Margaret of Anjou, refused to accept the act and continued fighting for the rights of her son.

12. Margaret of Anjou was famously bloodthirsty

After the Battle of Wakefield, she had the heads of York, Rutland and Salisbury impaled on spikes and displayed over Micklegate Bar, the western gate through the York city walls. York’s head had a paper crown as a mark of derision.

On another occasion, she allegedly asked her 7-year-old son Edward how their Yorkist prisoners should be put to death – he replied they should be beheaded.

Margaret of Anjou

13. Richard, Duke of York, was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460

The Battle of Wakefield (1460) was a calculated attempt  by the Lancastrians to eliminate Richard, Duke of York, who was a rival of Henry VI’s for the throne. 

Little is known about the action, but the Duke was successfully enticed out from the safety of Sandal Castle and ambushed. In the subsequent skirmish his forces were massacred, and both the Duke and his second eldest son were killed.

14. No one is sure why York sortied from Sandal Castle on 30 December

This inexplicable move resulted in his death. One theory says that some of the Lancastrian troops advanced openly towards Sandal Castle, while others hid in the surrounding woods. York may have been low on provisions and, believing that the Lancastrian force was no larger than his own, decided to go out and fight rather than withstand a siege.

Other accounts suggest that York was deceived by John Neville of Raby’s forces displaying false colours, which tricked him into thinking that the Earl of Warwick had arrived with aid.

Earl of Warwick submits to Margaret of Anjou

15. And there are a lot of rumours about how he was killed

He was either killed in battle or captured and immediately executed.

Some works support the folklore that he suffered a crippling wound to the knee and was unhorsed, and that he and his closest followers then fought to the death at the spot; others relate that he was taken prisoner, mocked by his captors and beheaded.

16. Richard Neville became known as the Kingmaker

Richard Neville, better known as the Earl of Warwick, was famously known as the Kingmaker for his actions in deposing two kings. He was the wealthiest and most powerful man in England, with his fingers in every pie. He would end up fighting on all sides before his death in battle, supporting whoever could further his own career.

Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York (Variant). The inescutcheon of pretence showing the arms of the House of Holland, Earls of Kent, represents his claim to represent that family, derived from his maternal grandmother Eleanor Holland (1373-1405), one of the six daughters and eventual co-heiresses to their father Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent (1350/4-1397). Credit: Sodacan / Commons.

17. Yorkshire Yorkists?

The people in the county of Yorkshire were actually mostly on the Lancastrian side.

18. The biggest battle was…

The Battle of Towton, where 50,000-80,000 soldiers fought and an estimated 28,000 were killed. It was also the biggest battle ever fought on English soil. Allegedly, the number of casualties caused a nearby river to run with blood.

19. The Battle of Tewkesbury resulted in the violent death of Henry VI

After the decisive Yorkist victory against Queen Margaret’s Lancastrian force on 4 May 1471 at Tewkesbury, within three weeks the imprisoned Henry was killed in the Tower of London.

The execution was likely ordered by King Edward IV, son of Richard Duke of York.

20. A field on which part of the Battle of Tewkesbury was fought is to this day known as the “Bloody Meadow”

Fleeing members of the Lancastrian army attempted to cross the River Severn but most were cut down by the Yorkists before they could get there. The meadow in question – which leads down to the river – was the location of the slaughter.

21. The War of the Roses inspired Game of Thrones 

George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones’s author, was heavily inspired by the War of the Roses, with the noble north pitted against the cunning south. King Joffrey is Edward of Lancaster.

22. The rose was not the primary symbol for either house

In fact, both Lancasters and Yorks had their own coat of arms, which they displayed much more often than the alleged rose symbol. It was simply one of the many badges used for identification.

The white rose was an earlier symbol as well, because the red rose of Lancaster was apparently not in use until the late 1480s, that is not until the last years of the Wars.

Credit: Sodacan / Commons.

23. In fact, the symbol is taken directly from literature…

The term The Wars of the Roses only came into common use in the 19th century after the publication in 1829 of Anne of Geierstein by Sir Walter Scott.

Scott based the name on a scene in Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4), set in the gardens of the Temple Church, where a number of noblemen and a lawyer pick red or white roses to show their loyalty to the Lancastrian or Yorkist house.

24. Treachery happened all the time…

Some of the nobles treated the War of the Roses a bit like a game of musical chairs, and simply became friends with whoever was most likely to be in power in a given moment. The Earl of Warwick, for example, suddenly dropped his allegiance to York in 1470.

25. …but Edward IV had a relatively secure rule

Aside from his treacherous brother George, who was executed in 1478 for stirring up trouble again, Edward IV’s family and friends were loyal to him. Upon his death, in 1483, he named his brother, Richard, as Protector of England until his own sons came of age.

26. Though he did cause quite a stir when he got married

Despite the fact that Warwick was organising a match with the French, Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville – a woman whose family were gentry not noble, and who was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in England.

Edward IV and Elizabeth Grey

Image Credit: Landscape

27. It resulted in the famous case of the Princes in the Tower

Edward V, King of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York were the two sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville surviving at the time of their father’s death in 1483.

When they were 12 and 9 years old they were taken to the Tower of London to be looked after by their uncle, the Lord Protector: Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

This was supposedly in preparation for Edward’s upcoming coronation. However, Richard took the throne for himself and the boys disappeared – the bones of two skeletons were found under a staircase in the tower in 1674, which many assume were the skeletons of the princes.

28. The last battle in the War of the Roses was the Battle of Bosworth Field

After the boys disappeared, many nobles turned on Richard. Some even decided to swear allegiance to Henry Tudor. He faced Richard on 22 August 1485 in the epic and decisive Battle of Bosworth Field. Richard III suffered a deathly blow to the head, and Henry Tudor was the undisputed winner.

The Battle of Bosworth Field.

29. The Tudor rose comes from the symbols of the war

The symbolic end to the Wars of the Roses was the adoption of a new emblem, the Tudor rose, white in the middle and red on the outside.

30. Two more smaller clashes occurred after Bosworth

During Henry VII’s reign, two pretenders to the English crown emerged to threaten his rule: Lambert Simnel in 1487 and Perkin Warbeck in the 1490s.

Simnel claimed to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick; meanwhile Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of York – one of the two ‘Princes in the Tower’.

Simnel’s rebellion was quashed after Henry defeated the pretender’s forces at the Battle of Stoke Field on 16 June 1487. Some consider this battle, and not Bosworth, to be the final battle of the Wars of the Roses.

Eight years later, Warbeck’s supporters were similarly defeated in a small clash in the port town of Deal in Kent. The fighting took place on the steeply sloping beach and is the only time in history – apart from Julius Caesar’s first landing on the island in 55 BC – that English forces resisted an invader on Britain’s coastline.

After 30 years of political manipulation, horrific carnage and brief periods of peace, the wars ended and a new royal dynasty emerged: the Tudors.

Here are 16 key figures from the wars:

1. Henry VI

All was not well in King Henry’s court. He had little interest in politics and was a weak ruler, and also suffered from mental instability that plunged the kingship into turmoil.

This incited rampant lawlessness throughout his realm and opened the door for power-hungry nobles and kingmakers to plot behind his back.

King Henry VI

2. Margaret of Anjou

Henry VI’s wife Margaret was a noble and strong-willed Frenchwoman whose ambition and political savvy overshadowed her husband’s. She was determined to secure a Lancastrian throne for her son, Edward.

3. Richard, Duke of York

Richard of York—as great-grandson of King Edward III—had a strong competing claim on the English throne.

His conflicts with Margaret of Anjou and other members of Henry’s court, as well as his competing claim on the throne, were a leading factor in the political upheaval.

Richard eventually attempted to take the throne, but was dissuaded, although it was agreed that he would become king on Henry’s death. But within a few weeks of securing this agreement, he died in battle at Wakefield.

4. Edmund Beaufort

Edmund Beaufort was an English nobleman and Lancastrian leader whose quarrel with Richard, Duke of York was infamous. In the he 1430s obtained control—with William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk— of the government of the weak king Henry VI.

But he was later imprisoned when Richard, Duke of York became ‘Lord Protector’, before dying at the Battle of St Albans.

5. Edmund, Earl of Rutland

He was the fifth child and second surviving son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. #

By the laws of primogeniture, Edmund’s father, Richard of York had a good claim to the English throne, being descended from the second surviving son of Edward III, giving him a slightly better claim to the throne than the reigning king, Henry VI, who descended from Edward’s third son.

He was killed aged just 17 at the Battle of Wakefield, possibly murdered by the Lancastrian Lord Clifford who sought revenge for the death of his own father at St Albans five years earlier..

6. Edward IV

He was the first Yorkist King of England. The first half of his rule was marred by the violence associated with the Wars of the Roses, but he overcame the Lancastrian challenge to the throne at Tewkesbury in 1471 to reign in peace until his sudden death.

7. Richard III

The alleged remains of Richard III.

Richard III was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England.

He is the Machiavellian, hunchbacked protagonist of Richard III, one of William Shakespeare’s history plays – famous for supposedly murdering the two Princes in the Tower.

8. George, Duke of Clarence

He was the third surviving son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of Kings Edward IV and Richard III.

Though a member of the House of York, he switched sides to support the Lancastrians, before reverting to the Yorkists. He was later convicted of treason against his brother, Edward IV, and was executed (allegedly by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine).

9. Edward, Earl of Lancaster

Edward of Lancaster was the only son of King Henry VI of England and Margaret of Anjou. He was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury, making him the only heir apparent to the English throne to die in battle.

10. Richard Neville

Known as Warwick the Kingmaker, Neville was an English nobleman, administrator, and military commander. The eldest son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, Warwick was the wealthiest and most powerful English peer of his age, with political connections that went beyond the country’s borders.

Originally on the Yorkist side but later switching to the Lancastrian side, he was instrumental in the deposition of two kings, which led to his epithet of “Kingmaker”.

11. Elizabeth Woodville

Elizabeth was Queen consort of England as the spouse of King Edward IV from 1464 until his death in 1483. Her second marriage, to Edward IV, was a cause célèbre of the day, thanks to Elizabeth’s great beauty and lack of great estates.

Edward was the first king of England since the Norman Conquest to marry one of his subjects, and Elizabeth was the first such consort to be crowned queen.

Her marriage greatly enriched her siblings and children, but their advancement incurred the hostility of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, ‘The Kingmaker’, and his various alliances with the most senior figures in the increasingly divided royal family.

Edward IV and Elizabeth Grey

Image Credit: Landscape

12. Isabel Neville

In 1469 Isabel’s power-hungry father, Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, defected from King Edward IV after his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Instead of ruling England through Edward, he planned a marriage for Isabel to Edward’s brother George Duke of Clarence.

George also saw benefit in the union, as the Neville family was extremely wealthy. The marriage took place in secret in Calais, as part of the rebellion of George and Warwick against Edward IV.

13. Anne Neville

Anne Neville was an English queen, the daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. She became Princess of Wales as the wife of Edward of Westminster and then Queen of England as the wife of King Richard III.

A watercolour recreation of the Wars of the Roses.

14. Elizabeth of York

Elizabeth of York was the eldest daughter of the Yorkist king Edward IV, sister of the princes in the Tower, and niece of Richard III.

Her marriage to Henry VII was hugely popular – the union of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster was seen as bringing peace after years of dynastic war.

15. Margaret Beaufort

Margaret Beaufort was the mother of King Henry VII and paternal grandmother of King Henry VIII of England. She was the influential matriarch of the House of Tudor.

16. Henry VII

Henry VII was the King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 to his death on 21 April 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.

17. Jasper Tudor

Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, Earl of Pembroke, was the uncle of King Henry VII of England and a leading architect of his nephew’s successful accession to the throne in 1485. He was from the noble Tudor family of Penmynydd in North Wales.

A solemn procession on 24 March 1458 marked the culmination of King Henry VI’s personal attempt to prevent civil war following the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455.

Despite the public display of unity this effort – instigated by a peace-loving ‘simple-minded’ monarch – was ineffective. The Lords’ rivalries ran deep; within a few months petty violence had broken out, and within the year York and Lancaster faced each other at the Battle of Blore Heath.

Growing factionalism

English politics had become increasingly factional throughout Henry VI’s reign.

His ‘catatonic’ illness in 1453, which effectively left the government leaderless, exacerbated tension. Richard Plantagenet the Duke of York, the king’s cousin, himself with a claim to the throne, was appointed Lord Protector and First Councillor of the Realm.

King Henry VI, who organised the Loveday in an attempt to pacify his nobility, which by 1458, had divided down clear partisan lines into armed camps.

When the King returned to health in 1454 the protectorship of York and his powerful Neville family allies ended, but partisanship within government did not.

York, increasingly excluded from the exercise of royal power, questioned Henry VI’s ability to perform royal duties due to his infamously gentle nature and persistent illness.

In May 1455, possibly fearing an ambush by his enemies under the Duke of Somerset’s command, he led an army against the King’s Lancastrian army and staged a bloody surprise attack at the First Battle of St Albans.

The personal enemies of York and the Nevilles – the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Clifford – perished.

Relatively minor in military terms, the insurgency was important politically: the King had been captured and after escorting him back to London, York was appointed Protector of England by parliament a few months later.

Richard, Duke of York, leader of the Yorkist faction and bitter enemy of the King’s favourites, the Dukes of Suffolk and Somerset, whom he believed had excluded him from his rightful position in government.

Aftermath of the First Battle of St Albans

York’s victory at St. Albans hadn’t brought him any permanent increase in power.

His Second Protectorate was short-lived and Henry VI ended it early in 1456. By then his male heir, Prince Edward, had survived infancy and his wife, Margaret of Anjou, emerged as a major player in the Lancastrian revival.

By 1458, Henry’s government urgently needed to deal with the unfinished problem that the Battle of St Albans had created: younger magnates craved revenge on the Yorkist lords who had killed their fathers.

Noblemen of both parties recruited large retinues of armed followers. The ever-present threat of a power grab by their French neighbours also loomed large. Henry wanted to bring the Yorkists back into the fold.

The King’s attempt at reconciliation

Taking the initiative, the Loveday – a common form of arbitration in medieval England, more often used for local matters – was intended to be Henry’s personal contribution to a lasting peace.

The English peerage was summoned to a great council in London in January 1458.  To prevent a violent outbreak between the gathered retinues, concerned city officials maintained an armed watch.

The Yorkists were lodged within the city walls and the Lancastrian Lords remained outside. Despite these precautions, Northumberland, Clifford, and Egremont tried unsuccessfully to ambush York and Salisbury as they rode from London to nearby Westminster.

The King mediated over long and acrimonious discussions. These deliberations were carried out through intermediaries. Henry’s councillors met the Yorkists in the City, at the Blackfriars, in the mornings; in the afternoons, they met the Lancastrian lords at the Whitefriars on Fleet Street.

The settlement eventually accepted by all parties called for York to pay Somerset 5,000 marks, for Warwick to pay Clifford 1,000 marks and for Salisbury to forgo fines previously levied for hostile actions against the Nevilles.

The Yorkists were also to endow the abbey at St Albans with £45 per year for masses to be sung in perpetuity for the souls of the battle dead. The only reciprocal undertaking by a Lancastrian was Egremont’s payment of a 4,000 mark bond to maintain peace with the Neville family for ten years.

Blame for St Albans had been placed squarely on the Yorkist Lords.

Symbolic significance of pomp and ceremony

The agreement was announced on 24 March, sealed on the same day with a solemn procession to St Paul’s Cathedral for a mass.

Members of the two factions went hand in hand. Queen Margaret was partnered with York, and other adversaries were paired off accordingly, the sons and heirs of noblemen killed at St Albans with the men responsible for their fathers’ deaths.

Henry’s Queen, Margaret of Anjou, who by the end of the 1450s had become a political force in her own right and an implacable enemy of the Duke of York.

The procession was also important as a public relations campaign meant to reassure Londoners that war, which had disrupted trade and daily life in the capital, was over.

A ballad composed to commemorate the event described the public display of political affection:

At Paul’s in London, with great renown,

On our Ladyday in Lent, this peace was wrought.

The King, the Queen, with Lords many one …

Went in procession …

In sight of all the commonality,

In token that love was in heart and thought

Religious symbolism, such as the start point of Westminster Abbey and the timing of the event on Lady’s day, which marks the Virgin Mary’s receipt of the news she would bear child, highlighted the mood of reconciliation.

Short-lived stability

The Loveday proved to be a temporary triumph; the war it intended to prevent was merely deferred. It had failed to resolve the key political issue of the day- the exclusion of York and the Nevilles from government.

Henry VI retreated politically once again and Queen Margaret took the helm.

Less than two months after the short-lived peace accord, the Earl of Warwick directly flouted the law by engaging in casual piracy around Calais, where he had been virtually exiled by the Queen. He was summoned to London and the visit descended into a brawl. Following a close escape and retreat to Calais, Warwick refused orders to return.

Margaret officially accused the Earl of Warwick, the Duke of York, and other Yorkist nobility of treason in October 1459, decrying the duke’s “most diabolical unkindness and wretched envy.”

Each side blaming each other for the outbreak of violence, they prepared for war.

The Lancastrians were initially better prepared and Yorkist leaders were forced into exile after abandoning their armies at Ludford Bridge. They returned from a short exile and captured Henry VI at Northampton 10 July 1460.

By the end of that year, Richard Duke of York found himself marching north to deal with Margaret of Anjou and several prominent nobles who opposed the Act of Accord, which displaced young Prince Edward and named York heir to the throne. In the ensuing Battle of Wakefield, the Duke of York was killed and his army destroyed.

Within two years of the Loveday procession, most of the participants would be dead. The Wars of the Roses would rage on for nearly three more decades.

Plucking the Red and White Roses by Henry Payne

By the Autumn one figure could tolerate the stasis no longer. Forced into a political corner, Richard, Duke of York, believed that the only solution to the current crisis was for him to finally cross his Rubicon and put forward his own, better, claim to the Throne of England.

And so in Autumn 1460 Richard rode into Parliament, put his hand on Henry VI’s throne and stated that he was claiming the Throne for the House of York.

Richard, himself a grandson of the great warrior king Edward III, believed that this was his only option to alleviate the current political stasis.

Triggering civil war

But it proved an unwise move. Claiming the Throne was a drastic step and this shocked even York’s own supporters for several reasons.

The first was the ‘unconventional’ route York had chosen to make this proclamation. York’s supporters had already warned him that he could not yet make this claim for the kingship – in their eyes Richard first needed to assume clear control over Henry’s government.

The second shock was such a direct attack on Henry VI himself. This was a time when the Church dominated secular life: when people considered a king to be God’s anointed – chosen to rule by God. Defying a king was defying God’s appointment.

This dilemma was only increased by the fact that Henry’s father and predecessor had been Henry V. Deposing this much-loved legendary warlord’s son was far from popular. York could not simply hope to topple a king with such strong religious and secular links.

Henry VI also had time on his side. Richard did have a better claim to the throne, but by 1460 Lancastrian rule was embedded within English society. Ever since Henry Bolingbroke had forced Richard II to abdicate in 1399 a Lancastrian monarch had ruled the country. Changing a dynasty that had ruled for several (medieval) generations was far from popular.

York’s attempt to claim the Throne of England shocked friend and foe alike. In the Parliamentary settlement that followed – the Act of Accord – an agreement was reached. Henry VI would remain as king, but Richard and his heirs were named Henry’s successors.

The Lancastrian dynasty were pushed, well and truly, down the line of succession; the Yorkists were back in the royal picture.

The agreement polarised England like never before. Furious at seeing her son cut out from the succession, Queen Margaret of Anjou started recruiting troops. It was the trigger for civil war.

Richard of York, claiming the throne of England, 7 October 1460. Image shot 1896. Exact date unknown.

Trouble in Yorkshire

Two months later Richard headed north. Civil disturbances had broken out on his Yorkshire estates and Henry VI’s heir marched with a small force to quell this unrest.

After an arduous journey on 21 December 1460 Richard and his army reached Sandal Castle, a strong Yorkist bastion near Wakefield.

There they remained for over a week, spending Christmas within the stronghold. But while Richard and his men were resting within the Castle a large approaching enemy force was spotted.

It was a Lancastrian army loyal to Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou. From the Lancastrian stronghold, Pontefract Castle, this force had marched to catch Richard and his army by surprise as they recuperated behind the walls of Sandal Castle.

The Lancastrians looking for blood

Vengeance-seeking commanders dominated the top tier of the Lancastrian army. Two prominent generals had lost fathers at the First Battle of St Albans and now sought revenge against Richard and his family.

First there was Henry Beaufort, commander of the Lancastrian army and the son of York’s fallen arch-enemy Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.

Second there was John Clifford, one of Henry’s senior subordinates. Like his commander-in-chief, John’s father had also perished during the First Battle of St Albans.

Despite being outnumbered Richard decided to fight. Why he decided to leave the safety of Sandal’s defences with an outnumbered force to fight a pitched battle remains a mystery.

Several theories have been touted: miscalculation, too few provisions to withstand a siege or some element of Lancastrian deception are all candidates for the explanation. The truth, however, remains unclear. What we do know is that York gathered his men and sallied out for battle on Wakefield Green, below the stronghold.

The remains of the motte of Sandal Castle. (Credit: Abcdef123456 / CC).

The Battle of Wakefield: 30 December 1460

The fight did not last long. As soon as York’s army descended onto the plain, the Lancastrian forces closed in from all sides. Chronicler Edward Hall described Richard and his men becoming trapped – ‘like a fish in a net’.

Quickly surrounded Richard’s army was annihilated. The Duke himself was killed during the fighting: wounded and unhorsed before his enemies dealt him the death blow.

He was not the only prominent figure to meet his end. The Earl of Rutland, Richard’s 17 year old son, also died. As he tried to escape over Wakefield Bridge the young nobleman had been overtaken, captured and killed – probably by John Clifford in revenge for his father’s death at St Albans 5 years earlier.

The Earl of Salisbury was another prominent Yorkist casualty of Wakefield. Like Rutland he was captured after the main battle. Although the Lancastrian nobles might have been prepared to allow Salisbury to ransom himself due to his substantial wealth, he was dragged out of Pontefract Castle and beheaded by local commoners – to whom he had been a harsh overlord.

Aftermath

Margaret of Anjou was determined to send a strong message to the Yorkists after the Lancastrian victory at Wakefield. The Queen ordered the heads of York, Rutland and Salisbury to be impaled on spikes and displayed over Micklegate Bar, the western gate through the York city walls.

Richard’s head had a paper crown as a mark of derision, and a sign that said:

Let York overlook the town of York.

Richard, Duke of York, was dead. But Lancastrian celebrations would prove short-lived. York’s legacy lived on.

The following year Richard’s son and successor Edward would win a decisive victory at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Marching down to London, he was crowned King Edward IV, later going on to win his most famous victory: the bloody Battle of Towton.

Richard may have died without laying hands on the kingship, but he paved the way for his son to fulfil this aim and secure the English Throne for the House of York.

What caused the conflict?

In the simplest terms, the war began because Richard, Duke of York, believed he had a better claim to the throne than the man sitting on it, Henry VI.

Ever since Henry II, the first Plantagenet, took power, kings struggled to keep a firm grip on the crown and not all of them succeeded. Edward II, for example, was ousted by his wife and replaced by his son Edward III.

Problems occurred in 1399 when Richard II was deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke who would go on to be the Henry IV. This created two competing lines of the family, both of which thought they had the rightful claim.

On the one hand were the descendants of Henry IV – known as the Lancastrians – and on the other the heirs of Richard II. In the 1450s, the leader of this family was Richard of York; his followers would come to be known as the Yorkists.

A dodgy king

However, all this dynastic arguing was something of a smokescreen. What really mattered were more practical issues and in particular the problematic reign of Henry VI.

A portrait of the ailing Henry VI whose inability to rule effectively due to his illness contributed to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses.

Thanks to the military successes of his father, Henry V, England held vast swathes of France and Henry VI was the only King of England to be crowned King of France and England. However, it was not a title he could hold onto for long and over the course of his reign he gradually lost almost all England’s possessions in France.

Finally, in 1453, defeat at the Battle of Castillon called an end to the Hundred Years War and left England with only Calais from all their French possessions.

The English nobility was incensed by the loss of power and French land, and factional tensions broke out. Mounting pressures on Henry led to a major breakdown in 1453. Historians believe he suffered from a condition known as catatonic schizophrenia which would see him lapse into catatonic states for long periods of time.

Battle for power

Henry’s weakness created two factions at court. One, led by the Duke of Gloucester and Richard, Duke of York, favoured a more aggressive policy in the war, while the other led by the Dukes of Suffolk and Somerset favoured peace. They were supported by the Queen Margaret of Anjou who was rumoured to be having an affair with Somerset.

With Henry in no fit state to rule, Richard was named Protector of the Realm, naming many of his close associates in important positions. However, on Christmas Day 1444 the king recovered, and he set about undoing York’s appointments. His fatal error was to exclude York and his faction, supported by the Earl of Warwick, from a council to be held in Leicester in May 1455.

The two sides met in the Battle of St Albans. It was only a small encounter, but it saw the death of the Duke of Somerset and several other Lancastrian noblemen. This created sons who were out for revenge and turned a dynastic struggle into an even more poisonous blood feud.

Even then there were chances to turn back. The Act of Accord in 1460 named Richard heir, but there was no turning back. Margaret – perhaps grieving for Somerset – was determined to get her revenge on Richard.

She would have it when he himself was killed in battle, but that only left his son Edward who was even more determined to get his revenge. The Wars of York and Lancaster had begun.