The Wars of the Roses

508 Pages·1996·4.46 MB·English

by  Alison Weir

“POWERFUL AND ELEGANT …
A complicated story brilliantly told.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Elegantly written, revealingly detailed, and effortlessly
narrated … Splendid work … Among her gifts, Weir has the two
strengths essential to the historian: She writes with equal command
about people as individuals and about the nature of power.
Throughout, she is a canny and engaging guide to the unspeakably
tangled workings of late-medieval political power. Military might,
bloodlines, family alliances, regional loyalties, charisma, theatrics and
image, revenge, greed, ruthlessness, and expediency all operated in
tortuous formations and are here meticulously opened to scrutiny.”
—Boston Globe
“[A] perfectly focused and beautifully unfolded account.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Stimulating … A well-written, entertaining narrative.”
—Library Journal

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group Copyright © 1995 by Alison Weir All rights
reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United
States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published as Lancaster & York in Great Britain in 1995 by Jonathan Cape, Random
House, UK Ltd., London.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96058
eISBN: 978-0-30780685-7
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Illustrations
Introduction
1 The Riches of England
Part I: The Origins of the Conflict
2 A Race of Magnates
3 The Usurping Dynasty
4 The Flower of Christian Chivalry
5 The Child King
6 A Simple and Upright Man
7 ‘A Queen Not Worth Ten Marks’
8 The Daisy Flower
9 Murder at Sea
10 John Amend-All
11 ‘A Great Division between York and Lancaster’
12 ‘A Sudden and Thoughtless Fright’
Part II: The Wars of the Roses
13 The Wars of the Roses
14 An Uneasy Peace
15 ‘A Great and Strong Labour’d Woman’
16 The Paper Crown
17 The Sun in Splendour
18 The Bloody Meadow
19 ‘A Person Well Worthy To Be King’
20 Fugitives
21 ‘Now Take Heed What Love May Do’
22 Secret Negotiations
23 The Queen and M. de Warwick
24 The Readeption of Henry VI
25 ‘The Perfect Victory’
26 To Tewkesbury and the Tower
Simplified Genealogical Tables
Photo Inserts
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Illustrations
PLATES
1 Richard II, portrait by an unknown artist in Westminster Abbey
c. 1395 (by courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster)
2 John of Gaunt, late sixteenth-century portrait attributed to
Luca Cornelli (by kind permission of the Duke of Beaufort;
photograph by Peter A. Harding) 3 Henry IV, electrotype of
the tomb effigy in Canterbury Cathedral (National Portrait
Gallery, London)
4 Henry V, late fifteenth-century portrait by an unknown artist in
the Royal Collection (© 1995 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
5 Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (kneeling before the Man of
Sorrows), from a Book of Psalms made for him c. 1420–30 (by
permission of the British Library: Royal 2 B I f.8) 6 Cardinal
Henry Beaufort, tomb effigy in Winchester Cathedral (by
courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Winchester) 7 Henry VI,
portrait by an unknown artist c.1530 (National Portrait Gallery,
London)
8 Henry VI, late sixteenth/early seventeenth-century portrait by
an unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London) 9 René,
Duke of Anjou, portrait miniature by Nicholas Froment from
the Matheron Diptych, c. 1476, in the Louvre Museum, Paris (©
photograph R.M.N.) 10 Margaret of Anjou, portrait medallion
by Pietro de Milano, c. 1462–3 (by courtesy of the Trustees of
the Victoria and Albert Museum) 11 Richard, Duke of York,
from a stained-glass window in the Trinity Chapel at St John
the Baptist, Cirencester (by kind permission of the Vicar and
Churchwardens of Cirencester Parish Church; photograph by
Bryan Berkeley) 12 The Falcon and Fetterlock badge of the
mediaeval dukes of York, from the gates of Henry VII’s Chapel
in Westminster Abbey (by courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of
Westminster) 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
hen I was working on my last book, The Princes in the Tower, I was
W
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 of treason
and conflict. Margaret’s son, Edward of Lancaster, inured to violence at
an early age, shocked his contemporaries by his callous precocity.
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick – ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’ – was the
archetypal over-mighty subject of the late Middle Ages, who raised and
deposed kings, yet whose loyalty, in the final analysis, was only to
himself. The Wars of the Roses would not only bring about the fall of a
royal dynasty but also that of magnates such as Warwick.
I have tried to present the members of the royal houses of Lancaster
and York as real people, identifiable by their personal characteristics and
foibles, and not just names on a tangled family tree. The Beauforts,
bastard descendants of John of Gaunt, lorded it as princes at court and,
some said, in the Queen’s bed. The Tudors were also royal issue of
dubious lineage, and – like the Beauforts – were staunchly loyal to the
House of Lancaster, whose heirs they later claimed to be. There are the
kings – neurotic and extravagant Richard II, the usurper Henry IV,
whose reign was marred by rebellions and crippling ill-health, and that
cold warrior, Henry V, the people’s hero, whose misjudged foreign policy
led to disaster for his son, Henry VI. Then there are the queens: the chic,
amoral Katherine of Valois, who found love with a Welsh squire after the
death of her husband, Henry V; and Elizabeth Wydville, whose glacial
beauty masked greed and ruthlessness. Besides these, our story is
peopled with colourful, mysterious or tragic figures, from the notorious
Jack Cade, who led a revolt, to the sadistic John Tiptoft, Earl of
Worcester; and from a host of mighty lords to Warwick’s fragile and ill-
fated daughters, Isabel and Anne Neville. All were involved in one way
or another in the conflict. This is indeed a history of factions, yet it was
the people who made up those factions that make it a tale of absorbing
interest.
The history of the Wars of the Roses has been told many times and by
many historians, yet today it is unfashionable to follow the Tudor view
that the origins of these wars lay in the deposition of Richard II, which
took place more than fifty years before their outbreak. However, it is