This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ✥ THE ✥ 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 36 37 38x

This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 THE WARS OF 8 9 ✥ ✥ 10 THE ROSES 1 2 3 MICHAEL HICKS 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 36 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 37 NEW HAVEN AND LONDON 38x

This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Copyright © 2010 Michael Hicks 8 9 All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and 20 except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. 1 For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: 2 U.S. Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.com 3 Europe Office: sales @yaleup.co.uk www.yaleup.co.uk

4 Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd 5 Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 7 8 Hicks, M. A. The Wars of the Roses / Michael Hicks. 9 p. cm. 30 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-11423-2 (cl:alk. paper) 1 1. Great Britain—History—Wars of the Roses, 1455–1485. 2. Great 2 Britain—History—Lancaster and York, 1399–1485. I. Title. DA250.H548 2010 3 942.04—dc22 4 2010015475 5 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 36 37 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 38x

This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PART I 9 UNDERSTANDING THE WARS OF THE ROSES 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 36 37 38x

This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1 2 Chapter 1 3 ✤ ✤ ✤ 4 5 What were the 6 7 Wars of the Roses? 8 9 10 1 2 3 his book explains the civil wars that beset England roughly between 1450 4 Tand 1509, known as the Wars of the Roses. The Wars of the Roses are 5 actually the longest period of civil war in England’s post-conquest history. 6 They are much longer and also much more complex than either the Anarchy 7 of King Stephen’s reign (1135–54) or the (1642–51) that are 8 the principal parallels in English history. 9 There is a great deal to explain, for never before and never again after the 20 Wars of the Roses was the government of England to be so insecure. There were 1 three regional revolts, in 1450, 1489 and 1497; a host of private feuds, murders, 2 ambushes, skirmishes and sieges; thirteen full-scale battles, including four 3 in 1461, 1471, 1485 and 1487 that were decisive; at least ten coups d’état and 4 attempted coups; fifteen invasions, including the four in 1460, 1470, 1471 and 5 1485 that succeeded; five usurpations, in 1461, 1470, 1471, 1483 and 1485; five 6 kings – Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III and Henry VII – the first 7 two of whom actually reigned twice; seven reigns; and five changes of dynasty, 8 in 1461, 1470, 1471, 1483 and 1485. 9 Yet this was not a ‘frenetic and purposeless’ collection of events, as Professor 30 Carpenter dubbed it.1 The next section groups these events in order and makes 1 some sense of them. Further reference is available in the Chronological Table 2 of Events and the family trees, or List of Pedigrees. 3 4 5 THE COURSE OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES 36 The Wars commenced in the reign of King Henry VI (1422–61), the third 37 of three kings of the since 1399. His father Henry V 38x

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1 (1413–22) was designated as successor to Charles VI of France (1380–1422), 2 and so Henry VI was also the only king of England really to have reigned also 3 as king of France. In 1445 Henry VI married , a French 4 princess, daughter of René I of Naples, Duke of Anjou. It was during Henry 5 VI’s reign, in 1449–53, that the English lost the Hundred Years War and all 6 their French territories except . These defeats contributed to the series of 7 domestic disturbances, beginning with the Crisis of 1450 and culminating in 8 the First War in 1459. The Crisis began with the impeachment in January 1450 9 and murder of William, Duke of Suffolk, the king’s principal adviser, the 10 murder of Bishops Aiscough and Moleyns, and Jack Cade’s Rebellion in Kent 1 and Sussex in May. It ended with the emergence in the autumn of Richard, 2 Duke of York, as principal critic of the regime, rival of the king’s favourite 3 Edmund Beaufort, , and leader of a programme of reform 4 that he repeatedly sought to force on the king throughout the 1450s. Although 5 rebuffed in 1450, York tried unsuccessfully to seize power in 1452 (the 6 Dartford episode). After Henry VI lapsed into madness in August 1453, York 7 became and figurehead of the regime (York’s First Protectorate, 8 1454–5), but was superseded on Henry’s recovery early in 1455. With his 9 Neville allies the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, York attacked the royal court 20 at the First Battle of St Albans (22 May 1455), resumed control of the govern- 1 ment, and was briefly Protector again until relieved of office early in 1456. A 2 major attempt at reconciliation was made in March 1458, the Loveday at 3 St Paul’s, but failed. Instead York and the Nevilles tried to seize power again 4 in 1459, thus instigating the First War (1459–61). 5 The First War began when Salisbury fought the royalist Lord Audley at Blore 6 Heath in Staffordshire (23 September 1459). Forced on the defensive by Henry 7 VI at Ludford in Shropshire (13 October), York fled to Ireland, Salisbury and 8 Warwick to Calais. Although condemned as traitors by Parliament, Warwick 9 and Salisbury invaded Kent in June 1460, defeated and captured the king at the 30 Battle of Northampton (10 July) and York laid claim to the throne. Even his own 1 supporters objected to him succeeding at once. The Accord kept Henry VI as 2 king, but substituted York as his heir in place of Prince Edward of Lancaster and 3 also gave him control of the government. This settlement was unacceptable to 4 many, especially Henry VI’s queen Margaret of Anjou. York was obliged to go 5 northwards to enforce his rule, but was defeated and killed, along with 36 Salisbury, at the Battle of Wakefield (30 December 1460). Queen Margaret and 37 her troops marched southwards, defeated Warwick at the Second Battle of 38x St Albans (17 February 1461), but failed to take London. Meanwhile, York’s son

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Edward had defeated the Welsh Lancastrians at Mortimer’s Cross 1 (2–3 February), met up with Warwick, proclaimed himself King Edward IV 2 (4 March), and annihilated the Lancastrian army at the Battle of near 3 York (29 March). The Lancastrian King Henry VI had lost his throne and was 4 replaced by the Yorkist King Edward IV (1461–83). 5 King Edward in turn reigned for the rest of the decade (his First Reign, 6 1461–70) before conflict resumed. The second phase or Second War 7 (1469–71), resulted from a rift within the Yorkist regime that made his former 8 ally Warwick the Kingmaker into his principal foe. Edward’s ill-advised 9 marriage to the widow Elizabeth Grey (née Wydeville) was a root cause. Along 10 with his son-in-law George, Duke of Clarence (d. 1478), Warwick rebelled in 1 1469, defeated and eliminated Edward’s new favourites at Edgecote (24 July 2 1469), imprisoned the king and took control of the government. When this 3 broke down in the autumn of 1469, Edward came to terms with Warwick 4 and Clarence, who early in 1470 raised a rebellion in Lincolnshire, this time 5 to make Clarence king. Following the defeat of the Lincolnshiremen at 6 Empingham (Losecote Field, 12 March 1470), Warwick and Clarence fled to 7 France, where they agreed with Queen Margaret of Anjou to restore Henry VI 8 as king. Warwick’s other, younger daughter Anne was married to Henry VI’s 9 heir Prince Edward. Clarence now became the next heir. The combined inva- 20 sion was entirely successful: Edward IV fled in September 1470 to the Low 1 Countries and Henry VI reigned again for six months from 6 October (his 2 Readeption). Edward was backed by his brother-in-law Charles, Duke of 3 Burgundy, and invaded England on 14 March 1471. Landing first in 4 and proceeding southwards, Edward took London and defeated first Warwick 5 at the (14 April) and the Lancastrians at the Battle of 6 Tewkesbury (4 May). Henry VI, his son Edward and Warwick all perished; 7 only Henry’s half-brother , Earl of Pembroke, and nephew Henry 8 Tudor escaped abroad. 9 Edward IV’s Second Reign (1471–83) was much more successful. Following 30 the natural death twelve years later of Edward IV in 1483 and the automatic 1 accession of his young son Edward V (1483), the third phase of the conflict (The 2 Third War, from 1483) resulted from the self-conscious decision of the young 3 king’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to take the throne as King Richard III 4 (1483–5). First, Gloucester ousted the queen’s family (the Wydevilles) and then 5 Edward IV’s most trusted retainer William, Lord Hastings. Once king, however, 36 Richard found he had numerous enemies determined to rid themselves of 37 him. Although able to defeat a first rebellion in autumn 1483 (Buckingham’s 38x

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1 Rebellion), Buckingham himself being executed, Richard was confronted by a 2 large body of Yorkist exiles first in the duchy of and then in the 3 kingdom of France who backed Henry Tudor. A largely French and Scottish 4 army invaded England, defeated Richard at Bosworth (22 August), and made 5 Henry Tudor into Henry VII (1485–1509), the first Tudor king. He married 6 Edward IV’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of York in 1486 and fathered the Tudor 7 dynasty. 8 Yet this was not the end. A stream of Yorkist claimants continued to threaten 9 the new dynasty in the 1480s, 1490s and even perhaps until 1525, the date of 10 the death of the last serious contender, Richard de la Pole. As late as 1541, 1 Henry VIII imagined Clarence’s daughter Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, to 2 be a threat to his throne: like his wives, she too was executed. 3 Clearly 1485 was not the terminus of the conflict, as Tudor propagandists 4 claimed at once and repeatedly. It is arguable precisely when the Wars can be 5 said to have finally petered out. 6 7 THE CASE FOR THE WARS OF THE ROSES 8 9 This book, therefore, discusses at least three Wars that were fought over 20 different issues by an evolving cast list. Most of those who fought in the first 1 two Wars had died by 1485. They were thus unaware that they were part of 2 something called the Wars of the Roses. They had no idea how long into the 3 future the dissension was to last until it had actually ceased. It was not even 4 obvious when it had ceased. Not until 1485 was it realized that the Wars were 5 a distinct period in history that had commenced, continued and now – it was 6 hoped – had passed.2 It was much later, in 1829, that Sir Walter Scott invented 7 the collective title. In the process he lumped together all the civil strife 8 that characterized the second half of the fifteenth century and attributed it to 9 the dynastic rivalry of Lancaster and York.3 30 Looking back over half a millennium, it is convenient for us today to view 1 the age as a whole and to explain it through that single acquisitive motive – the 2 ambition to be king – of the principal participants. This perception dates back 3 to Polydore Vergil, the official historian of Henry VII.4 4 However, the Wars had begun very differently in 1450, as a call for reform 5 that only became dynastic in 1460 and that appeared to be over in 1461. 36 William Caxton, England’s first printer, typified a whole series of historians 37 who ended their chronicles with Edward’s accession in 1461 and looked 38x ahead to the permanent return of peace. They believed that 1461 signalled

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This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WHAT WERE THE WARS OF THE ROSES? not merely the end of the first phase or a pause in ongoing strife, but the 1 end of civil war altogether. The First War would be the only War. At the end of 2 his Chronicles Caxton was to pray to God ‘to save & keep him [Edward IV]’, 3 to enable him to reign in accordance with God’s will to the benefit of all his 4 subjects, and to campaign against the Turks and heathen men.5 Caxton was no 5 prophet. No crusade happened and Edward was to be supplanted by Henry VI. 6 Under the year 1470 the Second Anonymous Crowland Continuator (hence- 7 forth Crowland), a senior civil servant and the best historian of the time, 8 wrote that: 9 10 You might have come across innumerable folk to whom the restoration 1 of the pious King Henry was a miracle and the transformation the work of 2 the right hand of the All Highest; but [he goes on] how incomprehensible 3 are the judgements of God, how unfathomable his ways: for it is well-known 4 that less than six months later no-one dared admit to having been in his 5 counsels.6 6 7 They, too, were mistaken. Crowland was amongst those who rejoiced when 8 Edward IV returned victorious in 1471. Following the king’s death in 1483, he 9 looked forward hopefully to the reign of Edward V and had high expectations 20 of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Lord Protector. Once Richard had appar- 1 ently triumphed, in the spring of 1484, even his most bitter rival Elizabeth 2 Wydeville, queen-dowager of Edward IV and queen mother to Edward V, felt 3 obliged to make her peace with him. Again, in 1485, Crowland applauded 4 Henry VII’s decisive victory that had brought the Wars to an end.7 5 In 1461, therefore, and again in 1470, 1471, 1484 and 1485, most people 6 surely believed that the conflict was over. Two chroniclers of the who 7 looked back across thirty years saw the whole cycle in terms of reform, not of 8 dynastic rivalry.8 Nobody before 1483 could have predicted the eventual result 9 nor could they have viewed it as a whole in the way that the Tudors were to do 30 and their successors have done. 1 Yet it is not wholly anachronistic or unhistorical to talk of the Wars of the 2 Roses or to identify Bosworth as a decisive moment. When Crowland sat 3 down in November 1485 to continue an existing chronicle from 1470 to his 4 own day, he chose to start in 1459 ‘so that it might be clear from the beginning 5 how the was agitated by many warlike incursions before 36 the calamitous incursion of the northerners’ of Queen Margaret of Anjou in 37 1461. Already Crowland believed that the Battle of Bosworth had ended the 38x

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1 civil wars of the fifteenth century and had ushered in an era of hope and peace. 2 Bosworth was the decisive victory by Henry Tudor over Richard III. Bosworth 3 was the end of the Wars that Crowland had lived through: ‘and so ends the 4 history’, he wrote less than three months after the battle, in November 1485. 5 ‘Out of this warfare came peace for the whole kingdom.’ The new king, he 6 reports, ‘had shown clemency to all’ and thus ‘began to receive praise from 7 everyone [including himself] as though he was an angel sent from heaven 8 through whom God deigned to visit his people and to free them from the evils 9 which had hitherto afflicted them beyond measure’.9 He did not notice the 10 irony that he had written much the same of Henry VI in 1470! 1 Of course, it was not quite the end. There was to be another full-scale battle 2 in 1487, further insurrections throughout the 1490s, and the last hope of the 3 White Rose (Richard de la Pole) survived until 1525. Yet such was Crowland’s 4 perception and it was shared by Vergil and a host of other Tudor writers 5 culminating with Shakespeare, who devoted eight plays to the history of the 6 Wars of the Roses, which he too saw as a unity, an assessment which still 7 shapes our views today. 8 Tudor historians, moreover, had an explanation for the whole sequence of 9 Wars. They illustrate the workings of divine providence: Bosworth was God’s 20 solution to the deposition of Richard II (the Revolution of 1399). That expla- 1 nation no longer works today, in an age where even most Christians no longer 2 believe that God shapes events or intervenes in our world. Once stripped of 3 God’s underlying purpose, which gave them meaning, the plethora of events, 4 of characters who change their names and their allegiances, of victories and 5 overthrows, does appear both ‘frenetic and purposeless’.10 The Wars become 6 quite inexplicable or, alternatively, explicable only in terms of the basest of 7 human motives, the clash of blatant and ruthless ambitions. Hence our diffi- 8 culties in grasping the whole conflict, setting it all in order, or explaining it. 9 Yet once it is recognized that each War was actually different, that the causes 30 of each were distinct, and that most of the participants changed from War to 1 War, as outlined above, then every conflict becomes more manageable and its 2 causes, course of events and consequences are easier to understand. By sepa- 3 rating out the different causes and indeed the different principal characters, 4 each War makes sense on its own terms. Great strides have been made here by 5 modern historians in the last fifty years. Moreover, it becomes apparent that 36 there are causes which explain not just each War, but the whole sequence 37 of Wars. The Wars belong together. The ‘Wars of the Roses’ are therefore a 38x meaningful and useful term to us today.

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MILITARY ASPECTS OF THE WARS 1 2 There are other features that set these Wars apart. 3 The Wars of the Roses are renowned for their violence and ruthlessness. The 4 slayings of Edward IV’s teenage brother Rutland at the Battle of Wakefield in 5 1460, of that other teenager Prince Edward of Lancaster after the Battle of 6 Tewkesbury in 1471, and of the Princes in the Tower in the 1480s are well 7 known. Some of these scandals were exaggerated by Shakespeare, to wring out 8 the horror and the pathos in his plays, yet they also register an essential truth. 9 The Wars of the Roses were quite exceptional in the sheer frequency with 10 which it was the army commanders who were killed and in the sheer numbers 1 of aristocrats who were slain. This policy was quite deliberate. Warwick and 2 Edward IV ordered that defeated rank-and-file should be spared, yet they 3 presided over mass executions of captured leaders. Had Henry VI done like- 4 wise and executed Richard, Duke of York, after the Dartford episode in 1452, 5 there might have been no Wars. His ill-advised clemency to York and rigour 6 towards Jack Cade’s rebels in 1450 applied standards more normal at this time, 7 both in foreign and civil wars conducted in accordance with the ethos of 8 chivalry, namely, that aristocrats were spared for ransom and ordinary troops 9 slaughtered, since their lives had no particular value. To them the laws of war 20 did not apply. Participants in the Wars of the Roses appreciated that there was 1 no surer way of curbing political foes than by beheading them. That was why 2 so few of the leaderships carried over from one war to the next. Politics was 3 brutalized.11 4 Bloodiness was only one of the ways in which the Wars of the Roses differed 5 from continental wars. Each campaign was brief, merely a few weeks or a few 6 months, and culminated in battles that were short and decisive. There were 7 virtually no sieges – the staple of the fifteenth-century phases of the Hundred 8 Years War in France that came immediately before. Brevity made the Wars 9 much less destructive and economically disruptive than had been the English 30 raids on and occupations of France, although we are quite unable to measure 1 how the mobilization of the economically active and their deaths impacted 2 on the economy. There was many a wife or mistress who waited endlessly for 3 her husband or lover to return and never knew for certain why he did not. 4 Probably the armies were smaller than those of the Hundred Years War and 5 they certainly did not compare in size with those of the next spate of conti- 36 nental wars. The armies raised so rapidly in the Wars of the Roses were much 37 less well equipped than the expeditionary forces despatched to France after 38x

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1 long and expensive preparations by Edward IV in 1475, Henry VII in 1492, or 2 Henry VIII in 1513. Although there was some overlap of personnel in the first 3 phase of the Wars with soldiers from the French wars, this was limited. The last 4 English garrisons in France had consisted disproportionately of ageing 5 veterans. The Wars of the Roses were fought primarily by aristocrats and the 6 conscripted commoners who may perhaps have been adequately armed and 7 even trained, but who lacked much first-hand experience of war. They were 8 not career soldiers. Hence the exceptional importance of the Earl of Warwick’s 9 Calais garrison in 1459–71 – the only substantial professional force at the 10 time – and of those northerners who were experienced in desultory warfare 1 with the Scots. Kings and at least some noblemen, notably Warwick, did appre- 2 ciate the potential of field artillery, hand-guns and perhaps even sixteen-foot 3 pikes, especially when employed by foreign soldiers trained to use them, yet 4 they proved ineffective at the battles of Northampton (1460), Second St Albans 5 (1461) and Barnet (1471); although they may have played a significant role at 6 Bosworth in 1485 and Stoke in 1487, but we cannot be sure. Militarily, the way 7 the Wars were waged was primitive, outdated and insulated from the more 8 advanced warfare practised on the continent. 9 Unlike the Hundred Years War that immediately preceded them, the Wars 20 of the Roses were English conflicts that were fought for domestic reasons 1 very largely by Englishmen to military standards that had no international 2 currency. The Wars are of purely English significance. Yet, as we shall see in the 3 ensuing chapters, not only was the loss of the Hundred Years War an impor- 4 tant precondition, but the international rivalries of France and Burgundy 5 encouraged domestic strife and contributed to the results. Burgundy, a state 6 that no longer exists, included not only the province of Burgundy in France 7 but also modern Belgium, the Netherlands and north-western France. The 8 Wars can therefore also be viewed as conflicts between France and Burgundy 9 that happened to be fought on English soil. In that sense, they succeeded and 30 prolonged the Hundred Years War, and they ended when continental rivalries 1 turned elsewhere, to Italy after 1494. 2 3 WHY THE WARS MATTER 4 5 Of course, the Wars of the Roses have generally been regarded as marking an 36 important turning point in English history. In political terms they have been 37 said to mark the end of the middle ages – that era when foreign wars were 38x approved, when factious nobility warred amongst themselves and deposed

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This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:42:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WHAT WERE THE WARS OF THE ROSES? kings, and when feudal or bastard feudal hosts engaged in wars or perverted 1 the law. What followed the Wars of the Roses – and very largely resulted from 2 them – was the modern era, symbolized by the Tudor dynasty, who curbed the 3 nobility and bastard feudalism, ruled without fear or favour, and constructed 4 a state that genuinely served the public good. As time has passed, of course, 5 historians writing five hundred years on have conceived of themselves as living 6 in ‘Late Modern’ or even ‘Contemporary’ Britain, that is far more modern than 7 the Tudors. Instead, this book demonstrates the Wars to be a distinct historical 8 era deserving study in their own right. 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 36 37 38x

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