Their
starting point was
the brief and unsuccessful revolt in 1452 led by the richest secular
magnate in the realm, Richard Duke of York. York was protesting
against the enmity shown him by those favoured by king Henry VI,
notably Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.
King
Henry's grandfather,
Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, had usurped the throne in 1399
as Henry IV by procuring the deposition of his cousin, Richard II. Richard had no
children, so the true succession was a matter of dispute between Bolingbroke and Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.
York was Mortimer's nephew and heir, and arguably had an equal or better claim
to the throne than Henry VI. Henry's inheritance of the duchy of
Lancaster as well as the crown led to his party in the wars being
known as Lancastrians.
In
1455, 1459 and 1460
York again led rebellions against hostile councillors and
courtiers, foremost of whom was the forceful queen, Margaret of
Anjou. After their defeat at Ludford Bridge in 1459, York
and his allies were declared traitors, leaving York no option but to
prosecute his own claim to the throne. The success of the 1460
rebellion allowed him to formally
advance that claim, but an aghast Parliament was only prepared to
confirm his descendants as heirs to the throne, dispossessing
those of Henry VI, leaving Henry to rule
during his lifetime.
This settlement was not
acceptable to the
Queen and her
supporters, who continued to oppose
York with force. He was killed in battle at Wakefield later in 1460.
But following decisive military victories the next year his son Edward,
Earl of March, was acclaimed in London by his supporters as Edward
IV. Although King Henry and Queen Margaret were driven into exile,
Lancastrian resistance in the north dragged on for another four
years. Thereafter the Lancastrians maintained a threadbare court over
the water. Parts of Wales still continued to hold out for king
Henry.
The
strenuous military
and financial demands which Edward IV made on his subjects to defeat
the Lancastrians in the early 1460s made him unpopular and prevented
him from fully consolidating his position. In the late 1460s
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, head of the magnate family that had
given most support to the Yorkist cause, fell out with Edward IV over
foreign policy, Edward's favouritism to the kinsmen of his queen
Elizabeth Woodville, and Edward's general disinclination to be ruled
by Warwick.
Warwick led rebellions against Edward IV in 1469 and 1470 with the aim
of establishing his primacy at court in alliance with Edward's
brother George, Duke of Clarence. This quickly became a plan to
replace Edward with Clarence but, receiving no support from the
nobility, Warwick instead was forced to ally himself with Queen
Margaret for the restoration of Henry VI. In October 1470, with the
backing of the King of France, Warwick invaded England and Edward was
isolated without military support, forcing him to flee to Holland.
There followed the short-lived “redeaption” of Henry VI, the king
being a mere puppet for the uneasy alliance between Warwick and Queen
Margaret.
The
following year, with
support from the duke of Burgundy, Edward himself led an invasion and
defeated the Lancastrians in detail at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Warwick
and Henry's son Prince Edward were killed on the battlefield and king
Henry VI was later murdered in the tower of London. Queen Margaret
fled back to France where she led an impoverished existence until her
death in 1482.
For
the next twelve years
Edward faced no serious challenges. But after his premature death in
1483, his only surviving brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, usurped
the throne from Edward's young son Edward V. Within months Richard
III faced and successfully crushed a major rebellion whose aim was to
replace him with the obscure Henry Tudor who, via an illegitimate
line, shared a common ancestor with Henry VI, namely John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III. Tudor put himself forward
as the last male survivor of the house of Lancaster.
In
1485 Tudor led a
second rebellion. This time, helped by the treachery of Lord Stanley
and the Earl of Northumberland, he was successful, defeating and
killing Richard III at Bosworth. He assumed the crown as Henry VII
and later married Edward IV's eldest child Elizabeth in an effort to
secure peace by uniting the two warring houses.
However,
Yorkist
resistance continued into the 1490s. In 1487 a rebellion led by the
Earl of Lincoln attempted to overthrow Henry and replace him with an
imposter, Lambert Simnel, who was advanced as the surviving son of the
Duke of Clarence and therefore the legitimate Yorkist heir. Henry
defeated this rising at the battle of Stoke and Simnel faded into
obscurity. Later another imposter, Perkin Warbeck, appeared claiming
to be the younger of the disappeared sons of Edward IV. His attempts
at invasion in 1495, 96 and 97 were defeated by Henry's spy network
and by the unwillingness of the English nobility and gentry to rise
yet again. Warbeck was finally apprehended and hanged in 1499. It was
the final act of the Wars of the Roses.
Mike Pritchard