The Wars of the Roses (22 May 1455-16 June 1487) was a series of English civil wars for control of the throne of England fought between two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (associated with a red rose) and the House of York (associated with a white rose). The power struggle ignited around social and financial troubles following the Hundred Years' War, combined with the mental infirmity and weak rule of King Henry VI of England, which revived interest in Richard of York's claim to the throne. Ultimately, the Lancastrian claimant Henry Tudor defeated the Yorkist king Richard III of England at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and married a Yorkist princess, uniting the two factions under the House of Tudor.
Background
A royal usurpation, which took place 56 years before the Wars of the Roses, set the scene for the longest period of civil strife England has ever known. The dynastic claims underlying the Wars of the Roses date back to Henry IV's seizure of power from his cousin Richard II in 1399. Though Richard died without children, another heir had a better title than Henry's to succeed him. Henry's Lancastrian line stemmed from his father, John of Gaunt, created Duke of Lancaster by Richard; the rival Yorkists traced their claim back to Henry's uncle, Edmund, Duke of York. All the future Lancastrian and Yorkist claimants were descended from one of these two siblings. Henry gained the support of most of the barons. Moreover, his claim was accepted by Parliament. His son, Henry V, united the nation through military victories, most notably at Agincourt, leaving little appetite for internal dynastic feuds. In the long reign of his son and successor, Henry VI, military defeat, combined with the King's weak governance and frequent bouts of ill health, allowed the feud to resurface and the Wars of the Roses to begin.
History
Henry VI succeeded to the throne of England before he was a year old. The first three decades of his long reign were marked by military defeat in France, whose armies, under the inspiration of Joan of Arc, won back most of the French lands that his father, Henry V, had conquered. Meanwhile, financial overstretch led many in England to question his governance at home.
Henry suffered a mental breakdown in 1453. Richard, Duke of York was appointed Lord Protector of England until the King regained his wits. As the Yorkist champion, Richard was bitterly opposed by the Lancastrian faction at court and particularly by Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou. Once the King's health returned, Richard was dismissed. Supported by much of the nobility and in particular by the influential Earl of Warwick, he raised an army and defeated the Lancastrians at the First Battle of St. Albans in 1455, the first battle of the wars. The Lancastrian leader, the Duke of Somerset, was killed, so Richard resumed his old position as de facto ruler of the nation, although he did not press his own claim to the throne.
A precarious status quo held for four years until 1459, when both sides again took up arms. This time Richard and his ally Warwick were outmaneuvered and declared traitors, forcing them both to take refuge abroad. But their exile did not last for long. The following year Warwick returned to England to lead Yorkist forces to victory at the Battle of Northampton. Henry was captured, but Queen Margaret managed to escape to Scotland. Richard once more resumed his former position as Lord Protector.
The wheel of fortune
Richard's triumph was brief. Margaret rallied the Lancastrian forces in the north of England, defeating and killing Richard at the Battle of Wakefield. Margaret won another victory at the Second Battle of St. Albans, freeing the captive King Henry in the process. London, though, remained fervently Yorkist, and Richard's son was crowned there as Edward IV, the first Yorkist king.
Edward and Warwick marched north, gathering a vast army as they went. They met an even larger Lancastrian force at Towton in Yorkshire on 29 March 1461. Edward won the ensuing battle, the bloodiest ever to occur on British soil. Margaret and Henry fled to Scotland, but their remaining hopes were dashed at the Battle of Hexham in 1464. Henry was again captured, and imprisoned in the Tower of London the following year.
Warwick the kingmaker
With the 23-year-old Edward secure on the throne and his Lancastrian rivals defeated or in exile, the future looked bright for a long and peaceful reign. Any such hopes were dashed, though, when it was revelaed that the King had married a commoner, Elizabeth Woodville, in secret. His main supporter Warwick, who had been negotiating a match for the King with a French princess, was infuriated. He became even more so when Elizabeth set about obtaining influential positions in the King's administration for her own family members. The rift between the two men grew until 1469, when Warwick deserted the Yorkist cause and joined with his old enemy Margaret of Anjou, who had been raising a fresh Lancastrian army in France. When she crossed to England, the isolated Edward fled to Flanders. Henry VI, now aged 48, was reinstated on the throne.
It was Edward's turn to plot abroad. In 1471, with an army supplied by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy, he confronted his one-time ally Warwick at Barnet. Edward was victorious and Warwick was killed. Edward then defeated Margaret's troops at Tewkesbury. Captured for a third time, King Henry was taken to the Tower of London, where he was murdered. His son and heir had also been killed during the battle, leaving Edward almost unchallenged on the throne. The only remaining Lancastrian with credible aspirations to rule was Henry Tudor, a distant cousin of the King who was living in exile in Brittany.
Richard's usurpation
Onxe restored to power Edward proved himself an able ruler, and the country enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity. Then, in 1483, aged just 41, King Edward died suddenly, leaving his 12-year-old son Edward V as his heir and his brother Richard of Gloucester as Lord Protector until the boy king reached adulthood. In fact the young Edward was to remain on the throne for only two months before Richard had him seized and placed in the Tower of London. It was then announced that the boy's father's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal, invalidating the youngster's right to rule. Richard had himself proclaimed King in Edward's place, being crowned that July at Westminster Abbey. Edward and his nine-year old younger brother Richard, the "Princes in the Tower", were never seen again, seemingly having been killed on Richard's instructions. Richard's seizure of the throne was badly received, and Henry Tudor was able to take advantage of the ensuing disaffection. In 1485, he landed with a small force in Wales, where he soon attracted further support. His army came face to face with Richard's troops at Bosworth in Leicestershire, where Richard was defeated and killed. The victor took the throne as Henry VII, inaugurating the Tudor dynasty. Five months later he married Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York, thereby uniting the warring houses of Lancaster and York, and finally bringing the Wars of the Roses to an end.
Aftermath
Henry VII's defeat of the last Yorkist king, Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth Field suhered in the Tudor dynasty, which would rule England for the next 118 years. The accession of Henry Tudor marked the end of the Middle Ages in England and signalled a change in the relationship between the monarchy and the nobility. Thirty years of sporadic fighting had severely weakened the might of the barons, allowing the Tudor kings to wield far more power than their Plantagenet predecessors. They also sat more securely on the throne: not one of the five Tudor monarchs would be murdered or deposed. Except during the short reign of the boy king Edward VI (1547-53), no aristocrat was ever allowed to grow so strong as to threaten royal power, and Parliament was kept under firm control.
Tudor absolutism formed a backdrop for major social, economic, and cultural change, most notably the flowering of a class of merchants and manufacturers, as well as Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church. Culturally, the Tudor years would set the scene for the English Renaissance in architecture, literature, and the arts, exemplified above all by the works of William Shakespeare, whose history plays would paint vivid portraits of the preceding Plantagenet kings.