The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [1]
13 Jack Cade’s rebellion of 1450, from Les Chroniques de France, c. 1500 (by permission of the British Library: Royal 20 E 111 f.28)
14 Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Temple Gardens, 1910, by Henry A. Payne, House of Commons East Corridor (© RCHME Crown Copyright)
15 Ludlow Castle (© RCHME Crown Copyright)
16 Interior of Westminster Hall, looking south, c. 1925 (Farmer Collection, House of Lords Record Office)
17 Edward IV, portrait by an unknown artist c. 1530 (National Portrait Gallery, London)
18 Elizabeth Wydville, portrait by an unknown artist c. 1465 (by courtesy of the President and Fellows of Queens’ College, Cambridge)
19 Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, portrayed as a weeper on a tomb in St Mary’s Church (photograph by Marianne Majerus)
20 George, Duke of Clarence and his family, from the Rous Roll c. 1483–5 (by permission of the British Library: Add.48976 figs. 58–60)
21 Edward IV sets sail from Flushing, from a fifteenth-century manuscript (by permission of the British Library: Harley 7353 no. 10)
22 Edward IV watches the execution of the Duke of Somerset, from Historie of the Arrival of Edward IV, late fifteenth century (University Library of Ghent: MS 236)
23 The Oratory in the Wakefield Tower at the Tower of London (Historic Royal Palaces Photo Library)
MAPS
English possessions in France during the Hundred Years War
England during the Wars of the Roses
Introduction
When I was working on my last book, The Princes in the Tower, I was aware that in some respects I was telling only half a story. I was writing about the final phase of that conflict so picturesquely named the Wars of the Roses, a conflict that lasted for more than thirty years, from 1455 to 1487. There were, in fact, two Wars of the Roses; the first, lasting from 1455 to 1471, was between the royal houses of Lancaster and York, and the second, from 1483 to 1487, was between the royal houses of York and Tudor. Having touched only briefly on the former in The Princes in the Tower, which describes in some detail the second phase of the wars, I felt that a prequel might be an interesting book with which to follow it. This present book, then, is the story of Lancaster and York and the first of the Wars of the Roses.
During the course of my research, I have studied many sources, both ancient and modern, and of the modern ones nearly all focus primarily upon the practical and military aspects of my subject. This book will naturally touch upon those matters, and in some detail in parts, but my main intention has been to portray the human side of history – the people and personalities involved, the chief protagonists in one of the most fascinating and long-drawn-out feuds in English history.
At the centre of this bloody faction fight was the pathetic figure of the mentally unstable Henry VI, whose ineptitude in government and mental incapacity gave rise to political instability, public discontent, and dissensions between the great landed magnates that in turn led ultimately to war and a bitter battle over the throne itself. Henry’s chief rival was Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the man who should have been king, according to the law of primogeniture as it was then understood. After York’s death, his claim to the throne was inherited by his son, who became King Edward IV, a ruthless charmer who would in the end bring about the ruin of the House of Lancaster.
This book is also the story of a woman’s bitter and tenacious fight for her son’s rights. Henry’s queen, Margaret of Anjou – who was accused by her enemies of having planted a bastard in the royal nursery – took up arms in the cause of Lancaster and battled over many years and against seemingly insurmountable odds for the rights of her husband and child. This was remarkable in itself, for she was a woman in a violent man’s world, in which most members of her sex were regarded as movable goods, chattels and political nonentities.
There are many other human faces in the unfolding pageant