Winning the Wars of the Roses

An extraordinary event happened at St John’s Field in London on 28 February 1461 – assuming that an anonymous chronicler writing in the late 15th century is to be believed. An assembled crowd stood and listened to a list of crimes and misdemeanours that the king, Henry VI, had committed against the realm. When asked whether Henry should remain as king, the crowd emphatically cried ‘Nay’. When then asked if Edward, Earl of March, should be made king instead, the assembled people cried ‘Yea’. The chronicler’s tale may look like direct democracy in action, but that would be anachronistic: democracy was an alien concept in 15th-century England and Edward was no revolutionary.

Four days would elapse between the London crowd’s apparent approval of Edward’s seizure of the throne and his being officially proclaimed King Edward IV on 4 March. Those days allowed Edward and the Yorkists to convene a hastily arranged council comprised of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Salisbury and Exeter, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Warwick and an assortment of other Yorkist adherents. They agreed to Henry VI’s removal as king and arranged a royal entry and coronation for Edward. This decision was the culmination of 18 of the bloodiest months in England’s history. Soon Edward would march north and defeat Henry in the most ferocious battle ever fought on English soil. For the new king there would be much rebuilding to do.

Weak king

To understand the problems facing Edward IV, we need to first consider the circumstances that divided the kingdom. The 1450s was a politically tumultuous decade, rife with dissatisfaction and unrest in response to what was regarded by many as ineffectual rule. In 1450 William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk and favourite of Henry VI, was murdered as he made his way into exile which had been imposed due to his influence over the king. William’s death left a vacuum in royal government filled initially by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. That summer, into this febrile atmosphere Jack Cade’s Rebellion, a popular revolt against the poor governance and abuses of power of the king and his advisers, erupted; the years that followed saw increased factionalism, local feuding and the breakdown of the Lancastrian government, as a succession of favourites began exercising control. At the heart of these issues was a perception that the king was weak: he could not, or would not, rule.

Leading the opposition to Henry VI’s governance was Richard, Duke of York, a powerful English magnate and member of the House of Plantagenet (a name which he had given to it). Throughout the 1450s, Richard’s main concern was his having been sidelined from his rightful role in government; he was resolute that his position as the pre eminent royal duke be recognised and that the accompanying status in government be accorded to him. Richard was able to find supporters among other nobles with their own grievances, such as the Neville family, whose issues with favourites in the Lancastrian court stemmed from historic disputes over rights to lands and offices in the north of the kingdom and the Welsh Marches. Henry VI’s government was perceived as having failed to bring royal finances under control and to administer justice throughout the kingdom, the two pillars of medieval kingship. Unrest came about in part because Henry’s government could not fulfil the expectations of its richest subjects.

During this decade of instability Richard featured prominently. He led an armed demonstration against Henry VI’s favourites at Dartford in 1452 and was declared protector of the realm when the king was temporarily incapacitated by insanity. In May 1455, at the First Battle of St Albans, Richard and his army defeated royal forces led by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. This conflict, traditionally seen as the start of the Wars of the Roses, culminated in the breakout of full-scale civil war in the autumn of 1459. The following year, Richard put forward his claim to the English throne.

To this day, popular memory of the Wars of the Roses focuses on squabbles about claims to the Crown rather than anger about how England was governed and the king advised. There were many causes for the civil war but in the early stages of the conflict the dynastic question of who should be king was not among them. Richard did have a historic claim to the throne. The Yorkist line was descended from Edward III’s third son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, while the Lancastrian kings were descendants of Edward’s fourth son, John of Gaunt. In 1399 Henry of Bolingbroke had usurped his cousin, Richard II, and was crowned Henry IV. Richard, Duke of York’s claim to the throne was ignored and, following Henry IV’s accession, the House of York made no public show of interest in revisiting the issue until 1460. By that point, the continuation of the Lancastrian dynasty had become a direct threat to Richard’s life. It was only at this stage, when his defeat and capture would have led to certain execution, that Richard decided to raise the question of royal succession.

Claiming the crown

At the assembled parliament of October 1460, to the surprise of even some of his closest allies and only three months after the defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Northampton, Richard claimed that he was the rightful king of England. Henry VI had been captured during the battle and remained a captive of the Yorkist forces; his queen, Margaret of Anjou, and their son, Edward, had sought refuge in Scotland. This declaration placed Richard in the line of succession and displaced Henry VI’s son, Edward, changing the dynamic of the conflict.

Two months later, on 30 December 1460, Richard was killed at the Battle of Wakefield by royal forces amassed by Margaret of Anjou and powerful Lancastrian nobles. Richard’s claim was inherited by his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, who in less than five months would go from being the son of a pretender to king in his own right. There are many explanations for this, not least his military capabilities; Edward was never on the losing side of a battle. Yet military prowess was not in itself sufficient to ensure victory. The problems caused by the political turmoil of the 1450s that culminated in 18 months of bloody civil war could not be solved by might alone. A political solution, not a military one, was required. Fortunately, Edward IV had good political acumen and, in 1461, was surrounded by shrewd politicians.

The astuteness of Edward and the Yorkists is most evident in their ability to gain wide support for their cause from different parts of English society. During the first civil war they sent letters across the country claiming that their intent was to remedy the misgovernances that had befallen the kingdom under the Lancastrians. How much of this won genuine popular support is uncertain, since many of the surviving chronicles were written in the aftermath of the war, safe in the knowledge that Edward IV was king. One exception is a popular ballad, pinned to the gates of Canterbury Cathedral in early 1460, that praised the Yorkist leaders. At that time Richard was still alive, but his son Edward was praised, too, as someone ‘whose fame the earth shall spread’. The parts of the south-east where they seem to have gained the greatest support were areas and communities alienated by the commercial policies of Henry VI’s government. The fact that the Lancastrian court moved to the Midlands, particularly around Coventry and Kenilworth, away from its natural centre in London must have irked many in the capital. These tensions presented opportunities for the politically savvy Yorkists.

North and South

Regional tensions had existed in England long before the Wars of the Roses, but civil war exacerbated them. The Yorkists, once firmly associated with the north of England, were particularly successful in exploiting these divisions in 1461. The First Battle of St Albans in 1455 had been more akin to a sprawling street fight: the Yorkist army had been filled with northerners, plucked from the estates of Yorkist lords. John Whethamstede, abbot of St Albans, would later recount how the town was looted by the victorious Yorkists when the fighting ended.

By early 1461, the situation had changed. It was now the Lancastrian army whom southerners feared was stuffed full of barbarous, ill-disciplined northerners. The tales that proliferated of atrocities committed by the northerners in the Lancastrian army were the main reason the Yorkists gained support from Londoners. One southern chronicle written during Edward IV’s reign reported that, before the Battle of Northampton in July 1460, the Lancastrians made proclamations in the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire promising plunder from Kent, Essex, Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire to those who joined. These concerns were clearly in wide circulation throughout the civil war. On 23 January 1461 Clement Paston sent a letter to his brother, the Norfolk knight John Paston, claiming that men from the north had been told to loot and take the livelihoods of men in the south.

The Lancastrians were aware of these rumours and combatting them became a key part of their military strategy. By playing on southern fears of an unruly, almost barbarian, northern army, intent on pillaging and keeping Henry VI as king, Edward came to be viewed as an increasingly acceptable alternative. Two letters survive from this period written by the Lancastrians to the City of London. The first, from late autumn in 1460, assured the people of London that the Lancastrian army would not loot and attack them and rejected Yorkist propaganda stating that the Lancastrians would ‘make assemblies of a great number of strangers that would despoil and rob you [the Londoners]’. The letter was sent in the name of Henry VI’s seven-year-old son Edward, probably written by allies of Margaret of Anjou. After the Lancastrian victory at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460, Margaret wrote to the city once again, this time in her own name, assuring Londoners that they would not be ‘robbed, despoiled or wronged’ by the Lancastrians.

Despite these reassurances, the Lancastrians failed to quell southern fears. This produced an extraordinary turn of events in February 1461 when a military victory actually hindered their chances of winning the war. By the beginning of that year the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies had split, leading to fighting across the country. Edward had spent Christmas in Gloucester and was recruiting supporters in the Welsh Marches. On 17 February 1461 a Lancastrian army, led by Margaret of Anjou, was victorious at the Second Battle of St Albans. They then marched on the capital, presumably to take advantage of their victory and ensure control over the government. But on arrival they were refused entry by the mayor and aldermen who feared the possible actions of an army let loose in the city. The Lancastrians had attacked and looted the town of Dunstable the day before their victory at St Albans, news of which must have reached the capital.

Edward IV became king while his enemies were alive and at large leading armies probably numbering in the tens of thousands. Despite having been proclaimed king on 4 March 1461, his position was not fully secured until he led his forces to victory against the Lancastrians at Towton on Easter Sunday a few weeks later. Towton was England’s bloodiest ever land battle: contemporary estimates of the death toll range from 9,000 to 28,000, with countless more injured during ten hours of fighting. Around three quarters of England’s adult barons are thought to have been at the battle – all with their own armed retinues. This was unusual; nobles tended to stay out of civil wars and rebellions. Their presence was testament to how vast the war had become and how divided England was politically in 1461. 

Reconciliation

While divisions within society could be exploited to win a civil war, once the conflict was over such divisions needed to disappear. Edward’s dynastic security depended upon it. To that end, following his victory at Towton the new king sought reconciliation with key members of the Lancastrian regime. There were some who could not be reconciled, most obviously the deposed Henry VI who fled to Scotland and then returned to England, notably to Bamburgh Castle, with loyal Lancastrians. He avoided the Yorkist victories at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in 1464 and remained a fugitive until his capture near Clitheroe in Lancashire in July 1465 after which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Margaret of Anjou was likewise irreconcilable: her son, Edward, had been deprived of his right to be king. She fled to France where she remained until the brief Lancastrian restoration in 1470-71.

Other Lancastrians, however, were more amenable. One notorious example was Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, whose aggressive tactics in outmanoeuvring the Yorkists had led to the Lancastrian victory at Wakefield, where Richard, Duke of York, his son Edmund and his close ally the earl of Salisbury had all been killed. Beaufort also led the Lancastrians at the Second Battle of St Albans and was a principal commander at Towton. In 1463 Edward shocked the country by pardoning Beaufort and bringing him into his court. When a riot broke out as the court was progressing in Northampton, Edward sent him north for his own safety. The following year, however, Beaufort rebelled again and was swiftly executed.

Edward’s actions in respect to Beaufort have been taken as evidence of his overconfidence or general political naivety. Such criticisms are unfair. Other reconciled Lancastrians remained loyal to their new Yorkist king, such as Henry Percy, who was restored to his family’s ancestral earldom of Northumbria in 1470. Somerset may have betrayed Edward but his actions posed no real threat to the Crown; it was a gamble worth taking as a well-established method of peacemaking after a bloody civil war.

In November 1461 Edward passed the Act of Attainder by which he forfeited and disinherited those Lancastrians he viewed as enemies. An attainder meant that the blood of the guilty had been tainted by their treason; as such, their lands and possessions were forfeited to the Crown. This resulted in permanent ruin, not just for the individual in question but for their descendants, though in reality many forfeitures were later reversed. After execution, attainder was the most powerful punishment a king could wield against his subjects and required astute judgement. To use such instruments of royal power in a frivolous manner could provoke rebellion and further war. The preamble to such acts was an exercise in propaganda designed to justify the attainders.

The Act of Attainder itself laid out the official Yorkist narrative of the first phase of the Wars of the Roses. It emphasised the wrongdoings committed by the Lancastrians and called the death in battle of Richard, Duke of York, a murder. The long list of crimes and treasons enacted by the Lancastrians was sufficient to make the Act of Attainder legitimate and it was accepted at the 1461 parliament.

Medieval parliaments were not permanently sitting bodies of representatives. There was also no sanctioned opposition. Parliament was summoned only when the king required assent for taxation or to discuss an important matter for the kingdom. For usurping kings, parliaments bestowed legitimacy on their rule and afforded them the opportunity to further persecute their enemies. Representatives from all of the shires and relevant boroughs were in attendance, along with those lords summoned by hereditary right. Passing acts of attainder in parliament meant they were consented to by the wider political community and that, by implication, they were justified. The narrative of treacherous Lancastrian nobles who just happened to be committing their treasons in the north replaced the view that inhabitants of the north were treacherous barbarians. With this, Edward attempted to draw a line under previous political conflicts.

Art of politics

In 1470 Edward IV was briefly deposed in favour of Henry VI by a coalition led by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and Margaret of Anjou, bringing about a fleeting Lancastrian restoration. This coalition did not last, however, and in 1471 Edward became king for a second time. This reign was more successful. England was comparatively peaceful and royal finances were brought under control. In his second spell on the throne, Edward mastered the art of politics as well as any medieval English king. He had the chance to learn and develop those skills because in 1461 he had been head of a faction that was politically adept enough to know when to divide and when to unite.

Gordon McKelvie is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Winchester and author of Bastard Feudalism, English Society and the Law: The Statutes of Livery, 1390-1520 (Boydell Press, 2020).