Introduction to 'The Wars of the Roses'

The Wars of the Roses’ is the name applied to the civil wars that took place in the late fifteenth century but it is a comparatively recent designation. The opposing houses of Lancaster and York occasionally used the emblems of the red rose and the white rose, and as early as 1761 the historian David Hume used the term the Wars of the Roses which was taken up in the nineteenth century by Sir Walter Scott. The red and white roses were not the most important emblems of Lancaster and York, and it has been argued that the Lancastrians did not use the red rose emblem at all although it was used by the eventual Lancastrian heir, Henry Tudor. The more popular Lancastrian emblem was the SS device and one of King Edward IV’s favourites was the Sun in Splendour in memory of the parhelion that appeared in the sky just before his victory at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. However, the rose emblems suited the mood of a romantic Victorian age which enthusiastically adopted them in history, art and literature.

The Wars of the Roses were a civil conflict that dominated the political scene in England from 1455-1485. The opening battle of the Wars took place at St Albans in 1455 but the causes go back at least five years, and can be traced back as far as 1399 when Henry of Bolingbroke usurped the throne from his cousin King Richard II. In 1485 the battle of Bosworth was fought, the battle that some historians consider to be the final one in the war. However, the Yorkist cause did not die with King Richard III and members of his family and pretenders challenged the rule of King Henry VII. Only with the execution of Perkin Warbeck in 1499 could it be argued that the Wars were effectively concluded. The later conspiracies by the de la Pole family, real or alleged, posed no serious threat to the Tudor kings but it was no doubt with relief that the news of the death at Pavia in 1525 of the last member of the family, Richard, known as the ‘White Rose’, was received by King Henry VIII.

The conflict was so entwined with the political history of the period that it is inseparable from the study of the life, times and career of Richard III. This section of the website, therefore, aims to provide the background to the story of the last Plantagenet king. 

The Wars were a series of battles, skirmishes, sieges, rebellions and uprisings interspersed with long periods of peace. They were in effect a long-drawn-out dynastic quarrel, consisting of four distinct phases, or individual wars, that began between the supporters of the king, Henry VI of Lancaster, and the supporters of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. It was caused, in a sense, by the usurpation in 1399 of Henry IV, son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.  By deposing Richard II Henry displaced the main Plantagenet line for his own junior branch. The senior heirs, the House of Mortimer, subsequently the House of York, acquiesced in this for fifty or so years, until the inadequacies of Henry VI (grandson of Henry IV) led to a breakdown in law and order. The quarrels of the Lancastrian magnates gave Richard, Duke of York an opportunity to present himself as the one man who could bring peace and justice to the country, and as the rightful king.               

This first phase of the civil conflict took place between 1455 and 1461 and was settled by Edward, the son of Richard, Duke of York, taking the crown and defeating his enemies at the battle of Towton. This was followed by resistance from some die-hard Lancastrians, which culminated in two further battles that took place in 1464. The second phase was the rebellion by Edward IV’s former supporter and kinsman, the earl of Warwick, who had become ‘over-mighty’, and who allied himself with the Lancastrians. The conflict concluded in 1471 with the defeat of Warwick and the Lancastrians at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury respectively. The third phase of the wars was the reaction to the ‘usurpation’ by King Edward’s brother Richard, and culminated in the invasion of England by the exiled Henry Tudor whose army defeated and killed the king at the battle of Bosworth in 1485.  The final phase concerned the opposition to Henry VII, leading to the battle of Stoke in 1487. Although this was the final battle of the Wars of the Roses, resistance to the Tudor dynasty continued into the 1490s with the activities of the pretender known as Perkin Warbeck who claimed to be the younger of the two Princes in the Tower. 

The Wars of the Roses spanned three dynasties which all had one thing in common – the first monarch of each dynasty usurped the throne from his predecessor. It is therefore not surprising that civil strife marked the early years of each fledgling dynasty. As the pattern kept repeating itself it seems appropriate that in this ‘Wars of the Roses’ site is extended into the reign of the first Tudor monarch and to recall the uncertainty of those early years of Henry VII’s reign.