This is part II of my totally escapist diary about politics and war in England in the 1400s, as well as the depiction in art and drama of these events, and other cultural aspects.
In Part I, we saw how as a result of final defeat in the the Hundred Years' War England had lost an empire in France, and was ruled by a childless king who had a severe mental illness. The country was overrun with unemployed soldiers from the failed war in France; their former commanders included nobles descended from the royal family, who were quite aware of their close relationship to the crown.
This is a simplified presentation so folks can follow along without any prior knowledge of the topic. (BTW Wikipedia has a simplified family tree showing combined families of York, Lancaster and Beaufort.)
The Duke of York
The most powerful noble was the heir apparent, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, who arguably had a claim to the throne superior to that of the King, who by mid-1453 was in a state of catatonic stupor. In this situation, York arranged to have himself declared Protector of the Realm, while his ally Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, spread rumors that the newborn prince was in fact a bastard, the product of a supposed adulterous affair of the queen, Margaret Anjou.
The First Protectorate
As Protector, York exercised de facto the powers of a monarch. Although certainly York well knew that he held the supposedly superior Mortimer claim during what came to be known as the First Protectorate (1453-1454), he seems to have been willing to bide his time, figuring that the King's illness would be long-lasting, so his principal goal was to get reimbursed for the huge amount of moneys he claimed were owned him as a result of having had to advance funds to support the war in France when he had been a commander there. And of course, should the Lancaster line fail, as appeared likely given the King's illness and the high rate of infant mortality, York, as heir apparent, would one day, and perhaps soon, succeed to the throne
York's claim to the throne
As explained in Part 1, York's claim to the throne ran through two lines, one, known as the Mortimer claim, ran back through the female line 5 generations to Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence (b.1338 d.1368), the second son of Edward III (reigned 1327-1377). York was was also descended in the male line from Edmund Langley, 1st Duke of York, the fourth son of Edward III. It was from Langley's title that the House of York took its name.
The Mortimer claim had been set aside when Henry Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, the third son of Edward III, usurped the throne from Richard II, who was the son of Edward, the Black Prince, the first son of Edward III.
Guant's descendants and their allies came to be known as the House of Lancaster, sometimes seen simply as "Lancaster."
The justification advanced by Lancaster for disregarding the Mortimer claim was that it had run through the female line. Although this was highly dubious as a legal proposition, the defeat of rebels by Henry Bolingbroke (reigned 1399-1413 as Henry IV), and the conquest of most of France by his son, Henry Monmouth (reigned 1413-1422 as Henry V), effectively foreclosed consideration of the Mortimer claim.
Birth of the Prince of Wales
When the Prince of Wales, Edward of Westminster, was born on October 13, 1453, his mother Queen Margaret took him to the King, and laid them in his lap, but the King did not respond. Margaret must have been desperate at this point, with her husband apparently beyond reach and her powerful enemies spreading rumors of the illegitimacy of the Prince. However, fortune changed when, on Christmas Day, 1454, the King recovered his senses and was able again to communicate and express himself. York was dismissed as Protector, with the king's thanks.
Queen Margaret however was not satisfied. According to Paston letters (an important collection of letters and documents from the Pastons, a moderately high-ranking gentry family):
The Queen is a great and strong labour'd woman, for she spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power.
Margaret, whose enemies were rather less complimentary towards her ("the French b***h" was one appellation), set about, in early 1455, to rid the royal government of the various allies of York whom the Duke had installed in various offices. York, disgusted with how events had turned out, withdrew to his stronghold of Sandal Castle in northern England.
The Beaufort claim to the throne
Here, we have to introduce a new family into the narrative, the Beauforts. The chiefs of the House of Beaufort generally bearing the titles of Marquess or Duke of Somerset.
Earlier we saw how the House of Lancaster was descended from John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III. A detail which I omitted for the sake of clarity was that the Lancastrian kings were all descended from Gaunt's first marriage, to Blanche of Lancaster (b1345-d1369). This was indeed quite a good match from a fiscal point of view, for Blanche had huge tracts of land, and indeed it was through his wife that Gaunt derived the title Duke of Lancaster.
After Blanche died, Gaunt was married two more times. Of interest here is his third marriage, to Katherine Swynford. Little is known about her, and her name, which means "place where the pigs cross the river" doesn't ring with a touch of particularly high nobility. But it appears that her father was a knight, and she herself was literate, having been hired as a governness for two of Blanche's daughters.
Guant apparently fell in love with her, and they had four children, all born before they were married, which occurred only after the death of Gaunt's second wife. These children became known as the Beauforts, after the name of the castle where they were born. Later, an act of Parliament declared these children to be legitimate, although apparently later legislation purported to bar them from the kingship. This was reckoned to be of dubious legality, as it would appear unlawful to bar legitimate issue from the throne.
As legitimate issue, the first generation of Beauforts were half-siblings of the first Lancastrian king, Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV). The Beauforts, being of royal blood, therefore had a claim to the throne, which came to be called the Beaufort claim. Should the line of Lancaster fail, the Beauforts would become king, provided one distregarded the bar in the statute of legitimation, and provided that one ignored the Mortimer claim, which to be fair, had already been done on a number of occasions, notably the coronations of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI.
The Beauforts and the Nevilles
Another curiosity about the Beauforts was that their great enemy, Warwick the Kingmaker, was a Beaufort himself. His grandfather, the remarkably prolific Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmoreland (1364-1425) had nine children by his first wife, Margaret Strafford, and 14 children by his second wife, Joan Beaufort, the only daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. Among these 14 children were two of particular interest, one, Richard Nivelle, 5th Earl of Salisbury, was the father of Warwick.
Proud Cis.
Another child of Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort was Cecily Neville (b1415-d1495), called "Proud Cis"; and the "Rose of Raby" (the castle where she was born); she was the mother of two kings, and her life spanned the rise, triumph, and downfall of the House of York. All English monarchs since Henry VIII are descended from this remarkable woman.
Cecily Neville's father Ralph Neville had the wardship of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York(d1460), who had been orphaned when his father, Richard Conisbergh (b1375-d1415) had been executed for plotting against King Henry Monmouth (reigning as Henry V). Neville matched up his daughter Cicely when she was a young child, and she was formally married to York in 1429. They had seven children who grew up to adulthood, four sons and three daughters; all were important in the Wars of the Roses, but in this simplied account we need introduce only the four sons: Edward March (b1442-d1483; reigned as Edward IV (1461-1470; 1471-1483), Edmund Rutland (b1443-d1460), George Clarence (b1449-d1478), and Richard Gloucester (b1452-d1485; reigned as Richard III, 1483-1485).
During her lifetime, her husband, her brother and her second eldest son would be killed or murdered and their heads stuck on pikes. Her third son was also secretly murdered, and her fourth son, Richard III, was himself killed in battle, but not until after he had killed two of her grandchildren, the children of her oldest son, who have become known to history as the Princes in the Tower. In the 1995 film Richard III, she was played by Maggie Smith.
The Duke of Somerset
By 1455, the chief of the Beaufort family was a grandson of Gaunt and Katherine named Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. Somerset, like York, had been a commander in France during the closing days of the English empire there in the 1440s and early 1450s. He and York did not get along (apparently nobody liked York very much), and when York obtained the Protectorate in mid-1453, he had Somerset thrown in prison on vague charges. When the king recovered his senses in December 1454, he ordered, at Margarets suggestion it appears, that Somerset be released. Once out of custody, Somerset and the rest of the powerful Beaufort family began gathering their forces to oppose York should he attempt to return to power.
The War of the Roses
While traditionally the White Rose was associated with the House of York, and the Red Rose with Lancaster, these emblems were not so widespread in use as one might imagine from the name of the conflict. The use of the roses as symbols was depicted in Shakespeare, in 1 Henry VI, where he imagined a scene in the Temple Garden in London, with Somerset and York each selecting a rose as a symbol of their factions.
SOMERSET.
Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
This of course never happened, but the imaginary scene has been portrayed a number of times in art, which the best is perhaps Harry Paynes 1910 painting Choosing the Red and White Roses in the Temple Garden.
The wars also were also not fought between the cities of York and Lancaster. These were simply the names of the rival families, who had lands and estates throughout England.
The first battle, at St. Albans
In early 1455, York and Warwick, apparently knowing that the court party (as the Lancasters were sometimes known) was preparing to have them arrested, decided the way to deal with the court party, was by gathering forces from their northern estates, and then marching south.
York's plan was not to seize the throne, but to kill or cower the strongest supporters of the king. Lancaster reached the town first and began to barricade the approaches, while erecting the King's standard (an almost holy symbol in battle) in the town square.
During or shortly after an attempt to parley, a contingent of Warwick's troops attached first, burst into the town, and after a short but bloody fight, won the battle. While casualties were light (about 50 men killed), these included some the highest ranking nobles. The Duke of Somerset was killed, and King Henry himself was wounded in the neck with an arrow. This was not the idealistic medieval battle that you might see conducted on horseback in the brilliant sunshine as in the 1944 film of Henry V directed by and starring, in the title role, Laurence Olivier
Much of the killings were more like murder or mob violence. For example, Somerset, whom York most wanted to kill, died when he was trapped alone in a house, and then decided to go down fighting. He rushed out,killed four Yorkist soldiers, and then himself was cut down. Warwick took the credit for leading the victorious attack, but there is some reason to believe that it was actually one of his captains who was actually responsible for its success.
Also killed on the side of Lancaster was Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland. The Percys had been feuding with the Nevilles for a long time over estates in the North of England, and when the Nevilles (or at least a good part of them -- some Nevilles-- this was a huge family --fought for Lancaster) took up with York, the Percys allied themselves with Lancaster.
Curiously, the Henry Percy who was killed at St. Albans fighting for Lancaster, was also the son of Henry "Hotspur" Percy, who was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, in rebellion against Henry Bolingbroke, then reigning as Henry IV, and his son, Henry Monmouth, known in Shakespeare as Prince Hal, and later to reign as Henry V. Henry IV and Henry V were of course the grandfather and father of Henry VI (Windsor).
Another important noble killed on Lancaster's side, Thomas, 8th Baron Clifford another prominent northern landowner. The deaths of Percy and Clifford would in particular would be avenged upon the families of York and Neville in bitter fashion.
The Second Protectorate
Once his chief enemy Somerset was eliminated, the path was clear again for York to become the de facto monarch, under the title again of Protector. For the time being, open war was ended, and for the next few year, all parties maneuvered around each other trying to keep each other from getting an edge. Queen Margaret, whose sole goal in life had become to insure the succession of her son, and only child, Edward Westminster, succeed in February 1456 in having York discharged from the office of Protector.
Uneasy peace
Warwick somehow convinced King Henry to have Henry appoint him, Warwick as captain general of Calais, the most prestigious military office in the Kingdom. Calais and the region around it, were the last vestige of the English empire in France. The garrison of Calais was the only standing English military force. The governor of Calais also stood to profit from tariffs on the large amount of trade between England and Flanders that passed through the city.
Queen Margaret tried to curtail Warwick's power by cutting off the funds to pay the garrison, but Warwick then turned to piracy, robbing ships passing up and down the English Channel. Meanwhile, Warwick built up his popularity in London, where he kept one of the biggest mansions, and every day he would have whole animals roasting on a turning spit, and anyone who knew any of Warwick's men was welcome to come in and carve off as much he meet as could carry on the point of a knife. By mechanisms such as these, Warwick was able to increase his popularity, and he spent much of his time coming and going between London and Calais.
Meanwhile, Queen Margaret was gradually gaining the upper hand over York, and eventually she succeeded in having him banished, either de jure or de facto, to Ireland, which wasn't so bad on a personal level for York, as he had extensive estates in that country. It did however remove him from the center of the scheming around the throne. It also kept him separated, like misbehaving school boys, from his chief ally Warwick.
Combat resumes in 1459
By 1459, York was beginning to believe, with some good reason, that Margaret, using the King's authority, was about to summon him to court, where he would likely be arrested. Warwick himself had actually been arrested in London, ostensibly to answer for his piratical acivities, but Warwick conveniently"escaped" and made it to Calais. York and Warwick decided to get control of the court through armed action, just as they had done successfully in 1455. The objective however was not to overthrow the king, but rather to keep their enemies, chief of which were Margaret and the Beauforts) from controlling him.
York wins at Blore Heath
York returned to England in the summer of 1459 and began raising an army in the northern part of the country. Warwick returned to England from Calais, bringing with him England's only standing military force, the Calais garrison. (Who was guarding the Calais fortress in their absence isn't clear.) York's army was able to defeat the King's forces at the battle of Blore Heath in Staffordshire on September 23, 1459. The victorious army of York, with the Calais contingent as its elite cadre, first advanced east towards Worcester, but encountered a much superior royal force under the personal (but nominal) command of the King himself.
Lancaster destroys York's army at Ludford Bridge.
Falling back towards the Yorkist town of Ludlow, the King's army caught up to the Yorkists, under York himself, Warwick, and Warwick's father, Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury (b1400 d1460) just outside the town at Ludford Bridge.
The ensuing "battle" (there appear to be few if any casualties) was a disaster for York. Details of the encounter are sadly lacking. The King himself was present, along with Queen Margaret, who was of course the real leader of Lancaster. It is said that when the King's standard was unfurled, the Yorkist soldiers were in awe and refused to fight or deserted. Of course the fact that York's army was outnumbered three to one may also have played a role here. King Henry offered a royal pardon for any soldiers who would switch sides, and this was more than enough to bring the Calais garrison over to the King's side.
York foolishly started a rumor that the King was dead, but this was easily refuted by Margaret's keeping the King well in view along the Lancaster battle line. And it appears Henry was somewhat more warlike this day, rallying his army, which may numbered up to 60,000 men, very large for the time, with a speech
so witty, so knightly, so manly, with so princely apport and assured manner, of which the lords and people took such joy and comfort that all their desire was to hasten to fulfill his courageous knightly desire.
Alison Weir describes what happened next:
The situation was now hopeless for the Yorkists. At midnight on 12 October, York, Salisbury, and Warwick announced to their captains that they were going into Ludlow to refresh themselves, and left their army drawn up in battle order with their standards and banners displayed. As soon as they were out of sight, they fled, taking a few followers with them.
York fled to Ireland, and Salisbury and Warwick to Calais. The army of Lancaster then looted the city of Ludlow. In the market square, they found Proud Cis, who at age 44, had been deserted by her husband York, her two oldest sons March and Rutland, her brother Salisbury, and her nephew, Warwick. One can just imagine the scene as the town was being looted while the Rose of Raby, a countess and one of the highest ranking noblewomen, stood awaiting capture with her sons George, age 11, Richard age 7, and her daughter, Margaret, age 13. King Henry Windsor treated her honorably of course, as she was also his kinswoman. He provided funds to support her at the rate of 1,000 pounds per year, a considerable sum for the time.
Her other male kinsmen, the Yorkist leaders, were widely thought to be cowards as a result their having abandoned their army on a miserable excuse when it was deployed in line of battle. The House of York was also accounted to be basically finished as a contender for the throne.
Preview of Part 3.
In our next installment, we will see how York and Warwick return and win what would appear to be a decisive victory. York obtains favorable terms in a peace settlement but this does not last long, But York overreaches himself, and loses support among the nobility when he literally physically attempts to grasp the thtrone in full view of Parliament.
Forced away from court by the reaction, York, Salisbury and Rutland meet a terrible fate, but they will soon be avenged by the House of York, which holds the throne for an uneasy ten years. Then Lancaster again regains power, helped by a feud within the York family related to the KIng's marriage to a commoner. After a sharp bitter struggle, the House of York returns to power, and the cause of Lancaster was permanently lost ...
... or was it? (ominous chord here)