In the light of this military success, York now moved to press his own claim to the throne based on the illegitimacy of the Lancastrian line. Landing in north Wales, he and his wife Cecily entered London with all the ceremony usually reserved for a monarch. Parliament was assembled, and when York entered he made straight for the throne, which he may have been expecting the lords to encourage him to take for himself as they had Henry IV in 1399. Instead there was stunned silence. He announced his claim to the throne, but the Lords, even Warwick and Salisbury, were shocked by his presumption; there was no appetite among them at this stage to overthrow King Henry. Their ambition was still limited to the removal of his bad councillors.
The next day, York produced detailed genealogies to support his claim based on his descent from Lionel of Antwerp and was met with more understanding. Parliament agreed to consider the matter and finally accepted that York's claim was better; but, by a majority of five, they voted that Henry should remain as king. A compromise was struck in October 1460 with the Act of Accord, which recognised York as Henry's successor to the throne, disinheriting Henry's six year old son Prince Edward. York had to accept this compromise as the best on offer; it gave him much of what he desired, particularly since he was also made Protector of the Realm and was able to govern in Henry's name. Margaret was ordered out of London with Prince Edward. The Act of Accord proved unacceptable to the Lancastrians, who rallied to Margaret, forming a large army in the north.
The Act of Accord and the events of Wakefield left the 18 year old Edward, Earl of March, York's eldest son, as Duke of York and heir to the throne. Salisbury's death meanwhile left Warwick, his heir, as the biggest landowner in England. Margaret travelled north to Scotland to continue negotiations for Scottish assistance. Mary of Guelders, Queen of Scotland agreed to provide Margaret with an army on condition that England cede the town of Berwick to Scotland and her daughter be betrothed to Prince Edward. Margaret agreed, although she had no funds to pay her army with and could only promise unlimited booty from the riches of southern England, as long as no looting took place north of the river Trent. She took her army to Hull, recruiting more men as she went.
Edward of York, meanwhile, met Pembroke's army, which was arriving from Wales, and defeated them soundly at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire. He inspired his men with a "vision" of three suns at dawn (a phenomenon known as "parhelion"), telling them that it was a portent of victory and represented the three surviving York sons—himself, George and Richard. This led to Edward's later adoption of the sign of the sunne in splendour as his personal emblem.
Margaret was by now moving south, wreaking havoc as she progressed, her army supporting itself by looting the properties it overran as it passed through the prosperous south of England. In London, Warwick used this as propaganda to reinforce Yorkist support throughout the south—the town of Coventry switching allegiance to the Yorkists. Warwick failed to start raising an army soon enough and, without Edward's army to reinforce him, was caught off-guard by the Lancastrians' early arrival at St Albans. At the Second Battle of St Albans the queen won the Lancastrians' most decisive victory yet, and as the Yorkist forces fled they left behind King Henry, who was found unharmed under a tree. Henry knighted thirty of the Lancastrian soldiers immediately after the battle. As the Lancastrian army advanced southwards, a wave of dread swept London, where rumours were rife about the savage Northerners intent on plundering the city. The people of London shut the city gates and refused to supply food to the queen's army, which was looting the surrounding counties of Hertfordshire and Middlesex.
Edward was meanwhile advancing towards London from the west where he had joined forces with Warwick. Coinciding with the northward retreat by the queen to Dunstable, this allowed Edward and Warwick to enter London with their army. They were welcomed with enthusiasm, money and supplies by the largely Yorkist-supporting city. Edward could no longer claim simply to be trying to wrest the king from his bad councillors. With his father and brother having been killed at Wakefield, this had become a battle for the crown itself. Edward now needed authority, and this seemed forthcoming when the Bishop of London asked the people of London their opinion and they replied with shouts of "King Edward". This was quickly confirmed by Parliament and Edward was unofficially crowned in a hastily arranged ceremony at Westminster Abbey amidst much jubilation. Edward and Warwick had thus captured London, although Edward vowed he would not have a formal coronation until Henry and Margaret were executed or exiled. He also announced that Henry had forfeited his right to the crown by allowing his queen to take up arms against his rightful heirs under the Act of Accord; though it was by now becoming widely argued that Edward's victory was simply a restoration of the rightful heir to the throne, which neither Henry nor his Lancastrian predecessors had been. It was this argument which Parliament had accepted the year before.
Edward and Warwick next marched north, gathering a large army as they went, and met an equally impressive Lancastrian army at Towton. The Battle of Towton, near York, was the biggest battle of the Wars of the Roses thus far. Both sides had agreed beforehand that the issue was to be settled that day, with no quarter asked or given. An estimated 40-80,000 men took part with over 20,000 men being killed during (and after) the battle, an enormous number for the time and the greatest recorded single day's loss of life on English soil. The new king and his army won a decisive victory, and the Lancastrians were decimated, with most of their leaders slain. Henry and Margaret, who were waiting in York with their son Edward, fled north when they heard of the outcome. Many of the surviving Lancastrian nobles now switched allegiances to King Edward, and those who did not were driven back to the northern border areas and a few castles in Wales. Edward advanced to take York where he was confronted with the rotting heads of his father, brother and Salisbury, which were soon replaced with those of defeated Lancastrian lords like the notorious Lord Clifford of Skipton-Craven, who had ordered the execution of Edward's brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, after the Battle of Wakefield.
Henry and Margaret fled to Scotland where they stayed with the royal court of James III, implementing their earlier promise to cede Berwick to Scotland and leading an invasion of Carlise later in the year. But lacking money, they were easily repulsed by Edward's men who were rooting out the remaining Lancastrian forces in the northern counties.
Edward IV's official coronation took place in June 1461 in London where he received a rapturous welcome from his supporters as the new king of England. Edward was able to rule in relative peace for ten years.
In the North, Edward could never really claim to have complete control until 1464, as apart from rebellions, several castles with their Lancastrian commanders held out for years. Dunstanburgh, Alnwick (the Percy family seat) and Bamburgh were some of the last to fall. Last to surrender was the mighty fortress of Harlech (Wales) in 1468 after a seven-year-long siege. The deposed King Henry was captured in 1465 and held prisoner at the Tower of London where, for the time being, he was reasonably well treated.
There were two further Lancastrian revolts in 1464. The first clash was at the Battle of Hedgeley Moor on April 25 and the second at the Battle of Haxham on May 15. Both revolts were put down by Warwick's brother, John Neville, 1st Maquess of Montagu.
The period 1467–70 saw a marked and rapid deterioration in the relationship between King Edward and his former mentor, the powerful Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick—"the Kingmaker". This had several causes, but stemmed originally from Edward's decision to marry Elizabeth Woodville in secret in 1464. Edward later announced the news of his marriage as fait accompli, to the considerable embarrassment of Warwick, who had been negotiating a match between Edward and a French bride, convinced as he was of the need for an alliance with France. This embarrassment turned to bitterness when the Woodvilles came to be favoured over the Nevilles at court. Other factors compounded Warwick’s disillusionment: Edward's preference for an alliance with Burgundy (over France), and Edward's reluctance to allow his brothers George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to marry Warwick's daughters, Isabel Neville and Anne Neville, respectively. Furthermore, Edward's general popularity was also on the wane in this period with higher taxes and persistent disruptions of law and order.
By 1469 Warwick had formed an alliance with Edward's jealous and treacherous brother George. They raised an army which defeated the King at the Battle of Edgecote Moor, and held Edward at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire. Warwick had the queen's father, Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, executed. He forced Edward to summon a parliament at York at which it was planned that Edward would be declared illegitimate and the crown would thus pass to Clarence as Edward's heir apparent. However, the country was in turmoil, and Edward was able to call on the loyalty of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and the majority of the nobles. Gloucester arrived at the head of a large force and liberated the king.
Warwick and Clarence were declared traitors and forced to flee to France, where in 1470 Louis XI of France was coming under pressure from the exiled Margaret of Anjou to help her invade England and regain her captive husband's throne. It was King Louis who suggested the idea of an alliance between Warwick and Margaret, a notion which neither of the old enemies would at first entertain but eventually came round to, realising the potential benefits. However, both were undoubtedly hoping for different outcomes: Warwick for a puppet king in the form of Henry or his young son; Margaret to be able to reclaim her family's realm. In any case, a marriage was arranged between Warwick's daughter Anne Neville and Margaret's son, the former Prince of Wales, Edward of Westminster, and Warwick invaded England in the autumn of 1470.
This time it was Edward IV who was forced to flee the country when John Neville changed loyalties to support his brother Warwick. Edward was unprepared for the arrival of Neville's large force from the north and had to order his army to scatter. Edward and Gloucester fled from Doncaster to the coast and thence to Holland and exile in Burgundy. Warwick had already invaded from France, and his plans to liberate and restore Henry VI to the throne came quickly to fruition. Henry VI was paraded through the streets of London as the restored king in October and Edward and Richard were proclaimed traitors. Warwick's success was short-lived, however. He overreached himself with his plan to invade Burgundy with the king of France, tempted by King Louis' promise of territory in the Netherlands as a reward. This led Charles the Bold of Burgundy to assist Edward. He provided funds and an army to launch an invasion of England in 1471. Edward defeated Warwick at the Battle of Barnet in 1471. The remaining Lancastrian forces were destroyed at the Battle of Tewkesbury, and Prince Edward of Westminster, the Lancastrian heir to the throne, was killed. Henry VI was murdered shortly afterwards (May 14, 1471), to strengthen the Yorkist hold on the throne.
The restoration of Edward IV in 1471 is sometimes seen as marking the end of the Wars of the Roses. Peace was restored for the remainder of Edward's reign, but when he died suddenly in 1483, political and dynastic turmoil erupted again. Under Edward IV, factions had developed between the Queen's Woodville relatives (Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers and Thomas Grey, 1st Marguess of Dorset) and others who resented the Woodvilles' new-found status at court and saw them as power-hungry upstarts and parvenus. At the time of Edward's premature death, his heir, Edward V, was only 12 years old. The Woodvilles were in a position to influence the young king's future government, since Edward V had been brought up under the stewardship of Earl Rivers in Ludlow. This was too much for many of the anti-Woodville faction to stomach, and in the struggle for the protectorship of the young king and control of the council, Edward's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had been named by Edward IV on his deathbed as Protector of England, came to be de facto leader of the anti-Woodville faction.
With the help of William Hastings and Henry Stafford, Gloucester captured the young king from the Woodvilles at Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire. Thereafter Edward V was kept under Gloucester's custody in the Tower of London, where he was later joined by his younger brother, the 9-year-old Richard, Duke of York. Having secured the boys, Richard then alleged that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal, and that the two boys were therefore illegitimate. Parliament agreed and enacted the Titulus Regius, which officially named Gloucester as King Richard III. The two imprisoned boys, known as the "Princes in the Tower", disappeared and were possibly murdered; by whom and under whose orders remains one of the most controversial subjects in English history.
Since Richard was the finest general on the Yorkist side, many accepted him as a ruler better able to keep the Yorkists in power than a boy who would have had to rule through a committee of regents. Lancastrian hopes, on the other hand, now centred on Henry Tudor, whose father, Edmund tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, had been an illegitimate half-brother of Henry VI. However, Henry's claim to the throne was through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of Edward III, derived from John Beaufort, a grandson of Edward's III who was also the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt.
Henry Tudor's forces defeated Richard's at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and Henry Tudor became King Henry VII of England. Henry then strengthened his position by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and the best surviving Yorkist claimant. He thus reunited the two royal houses, merging the rival symbols of the red and white roses into the new emblem of the red and white Tudor Rose. Henry shored up his position by executing all other possible claimants whenever he could lay hands on them, a policy his son, Henry VIII, continued.
Many historians consider the accession of Henry VII to mark the end of the Wars of the Roses. Others argue that the Wars of the Roses concluded only with the Battle of Stoke in 1487, which arose from the appearance of a pretender to the throne, a boy named Lambert Simnel who bore a close physical resemblance to the young Earl of Warwick, the best surviving male claimant of the House of York. The pretender's plan was doomed from the start, because the young earl was still alive and in King Henry's custody, so no one could seriously doubt Simnel was anything but an imposter. At Stoke, Henry defeated forces led by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln—who had been named by Richard III as his heir, but had been reconciled with Henry after Bosworth—thus effectively removing the remaining Yorkist opposition. Simnel was pardoned for his part in the rebellion and sent to work in the royal kitchens.
2. Shakespeare’s histories Richard III
“The Life and Death of King Richard III” is William Shakespeare’s version of the short career of Richard III of England, who receives a singularly unflattering depiction. The play is sometimes interpreted as a tragedy; however, it more correctly belongs among the histories. It picks up the story from “Henry VI”, Part III and is the conclusion of the series that stretches back to Richard II. It is the second longest of Shakespeare's 38 plays, after Hamlet. The length is generally seen as a drawback and the play is rarely performed unabridged often cutting out various characters peripheral to the main plot.
The play begins with Richard eulogizing his brother, King Edward IV of England, the eldest son of the late Richard, Duke of York.