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- The Battle of Wakefield and the Wars of the Roses KEITH DOCKRAY THE BA'ITLE 0F WAKEFIELD,fought on 30 December 1460 (almost certainly, and unusually, during the afternoon), was the fifth of about fifteen set-piece military confrontations that punctuated the so-called War's of the Roses between 1455 and 1487. The most serious and protracted civil wars England had experienced since the Norman Conquest, their origins can be fou‘nd mainly in the political turmoil occasioned by the disastrous rule of the third Lancastrian King Henry VI (1422-1461). In particular, the King’s simplicity of mind and pathetically trusting nature left him fatally vulnerable to grasping favourites and unscrupulous ministers: even in the 1440s and early 1450s, when he remained more or less compos menu's, it was bad enough; once he had suffered a complete mental breakdown in 1453, from which he probably never completely recovered, his shortcomings became ever more evident and he was certainly incapable of containing the mounting baronial rivalries that eventually culminated in out- and-out civil war.1 Ever since he had attained his majority in 1437, Henry VI’s failure to control royal patronage judiciously had encouraged baronial jealousy and resentment. In particular, since the late 1440s, there had developed an increasingly bitter personal rivalry between Richard Plantagenet Duke of York, the most powerful magnate in the land (who also happened to have a strong claim to the 'throne), and Edmund Beaufort Duke of Somerset who, despite bearing a good deal of responsibility for the loss of virtually all England’s possessions in France by the autumn of 1453, enjoyed more than his fair share of the fruits of royal favour in the early 14505.
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