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The beginning of the Wars of the Roses
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The so-called Wars of the Roses was the struggle between the Yorkist and Lancastrian descendants of Edward III for control of the throne and of local government. The origins of the conflict have been the subject of much debate. It can be seen as brought about as a result of Henry VI’s inadequacy and the opposition of his dynastic rival Richard, Duke of York, but local feuds between magnates added a further dimension. Because of the crown’s failure to control these disputes, they acquired national significance. Attempts have been made to link these civil conflicts to what is known as “bastard feudalism,” the system that allowed magnates to retain men in their service by granting them fees and livery and made possible the recruiting of private armies. Yet this system can be seen as promoting stability in periods of strong rule as well as undermining weak rule such as that of Henry VI. Many nobles sought good government, rather than being factious, and were only forced into war by the king’s incompetence. The outbreak of civil war in England was indirectly linked to the failure in France, for Henry VI’s government had suffered a disastrous loss of prestige and, with it, authority.
The Duke of York had a claim to the throne in two lines of descent. One was through his mother, great-granddaughter of Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, second surviving son of Edward III, and the other was through his father, son of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, fourth surviving son of Edward III. According to feudal principles he had a better hereditary right than anyone of the Lancastrian line. He had been sent as royal lieutenant to Ireland in 1446, but he returned from there with 4,000 men in 1450 to reassert his right to participate in the king’s council and to counter Somerset’s machinations. In 1454 York was made protector of the king, who had become insane in 1453, even though the queen and court party had tried to disguise the king’s illness. Early in 1455 Henry recovered his wits. During his spell of insanity his queen had a son, Edward, which changed the balance of politics. York was no longer the heir apparent, and the country was faced with the prospect, should the king die, of another lengthy minority.
In 1455 York gathered forces in the north, alleging that he could not safely attend a council called to meet at Leicester without the support of his troops. He met the king at St. Albans. Negotiations were unsuccessful, and in the ensuing battle York’s forces, larger than the king’s, won a decisive victory. Somerset was slain and the king captured. A Yorkist regime was set up, with York as constable and the Earl of Warwick, emerging as the strong support of the Yorkist cause, as captain of Calais. The king fell ill again in the autumn of 1455, and York was again protector for a brief period; the king, however, recovered early in 1456.
Hostilities were renewed in 1459. The Yorkists fled without fighting before a royal force at Ludford Bridge, but the Lancastrians failed to make the most of the opportunity. Demands for money, purveyances, and commissions of array increased the burdens but not the benefits of Lancastrian rule. The earls of Warwick and Salisbury, with York’s son Edward, used Calais as a base from which to invade England, landing at Sandwich in 1460. A brief battle at Northampton in July went overwhelmingly for the Yorkists, and the king was captured. At Parliament the Duke of York claimed the throne as heir to Richard II. The Commons and judges refused to consider a matter so high, leaving it to the Lords’ decision. During the fortnight of debate the Lancastrians regrouped, and when Richard met them at Wakefield, he was defeated and killed. Warwick, somewhat later, was defeated at St. Albans.
The Yorkist cause would have been lost if it had not been for Richard’s son, Edward, Earl of March, who defeated the Lancastrians first at Mortimer’s Cross and then at Towton Moor early in 1461. He was crowned king on June 28, but dated his reign from March 4, the day the London citizens and soldiers recognized his right as king.
Edward IV (1461–70 and 1471–83)
During the early years of his reign, from 1461 to 1470, Edward was chiefly concerned with putting down opposition to his rule. Lancastrian resistance in the northeast and in Wales caused problems. France and Burgundy were also of concern because Margaret of Anjou’s chief hope of recovering Lancastrian fortunes lay in French support; but Louis XI was miserly in his aid. Edward’s main internal problem lay in his relations with Warwick, who had been his chief supporter in 1461. Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, called “the Kingmaker,” was cousin to the king and related to much of the English nobility. Edward, however, refused to be dominated by him, particularly with respect to his marriage. When the crucial moment came in Warwick’s negotiations for the king to marry the French king’s sister-in-law, Edward disclosed his secret marriage in 1464 to a commoner, Elizabeth Woodville. The marriage of the king’s sister to Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a success for the Woodvilles, for Warwick was not involved in the negotiations. Warwick allied himself to Edward’s younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, and ultimately, through the machinations of Louis XI, joined forces with Margaret of Anjou, deposed Edward in 1470, and brought back Henry VI. The old king, dressed in worn and unregal clothing, was from time to time exhibited to the London citizens, while Warwick conducted the government. Edward IV went into brief exile in the Netherlands. But with the help of his brother-in-law, Charles the Bold, he recovered his throne in the spring of 1471 after a rapid campaign with successes at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Henry VI was put to death in the Tower, and his son was killed in battle.
The second half of Edward’s reign, 1471–83, was a period of relative order, peace, and security. The one event reminiscent of the politics of the early reign was the trial of the Duke of Clarence, who was attainted in Parliament in 1478 and put to death, reputedly by drowning in a butt of Malmsey wine. But Edward was popular. Because his personal resources from the duchy of York were considerable and because he agreed early in his reign to acts of resumption whereby former royal estates were taken back into royal hands, Edward had a large personal income and was less in need of parliamentary grants than his predecessors had been. Thus he levied few subsidies and called Parliament only six times. Among the few subsidies Edward did levy were benevolences, supposedly voluntary gifts, from his subjects primarily to defray the expenses of war. In 1475 Edward took an army to France but accepted a pension from the French king for not fighting, thereby increasing his financial independence still further. Councils were set up to govern in the Marches of Wales and in the north, where Edward’s brother Richard presided efficiently. Edward’s rule was characterized by the use of his household, its servants, and its departments, such as the chamber. He was a pragmatic ruler, whose greatest achievement was to restore the prestige of the monarchy. Where he failed was to make proper provision for the succession after his death.
Edward died in 1483, at age 40, worn out, it was said, by sexual excesses and by debauchery. He left two sons, Edward and Richard, to the protection of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester. After skirmishes with the queen’s party Richard placed both of the boys in the Tower of London, then a royal residence as well as a prison. He proceeded to eliminate those who opposed his function as protector and defender of the realm and guardian to the young Edward V. Even Lord Hastings, who had sent word to Richard of Edward IV’s death and who had warned him against the queen’s party, was accused of treachery and was executed. On the day after the date originally set for Edward V’s coronation the Lords and Commons summoned to Parliament unanimously adopted a petition requesting Richard to take over the throne. He accepted and was duly crowned king on July 6, taking the oath in English.
Richard III (1483–85)
Richard was readily accepted no doubt because of his reputed ability and because people feared the insecurity of a long minority. The tide began to turn against him in October 1483, when it began to be rumoured that he had murdered or connived at the murder of his nephews. Whether this was true or not matters less than the fact that it was thought to be true and that it obscured the king’s able government during his brief reign. Legislation against benevolences and protection for English merchants and craftsmen did little to counteract his reputation as a treacherous friend and a wicked uncle. Rebellion failed in 1483. But in the summer of 1485, when Henry Tudor, sole male claimant to Lancastrian ancestry and the throne, landed at Milford Haven, Richard’s supporters widely deserted him, and he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
England in the 15th century
Central to all social change in the 15th century was change in the economy. Although plague remained endemic in England, there was little change in the level of population. Villein labour service largely disappeared, to be replaced by copyhold tenure (tenure by copy of the record of the manorial court). The period has been considered a golden age for the English labourer, but individual prosperity varied widely. There was a well-developed land market among peasants, some of whom managed to rise above their neighbours and began to constitute a class called yeomen. Large landlords entirely abandoned direct management of their estates in favour of a leasehold system. In many cases they faced growing arrears of rent and found it difficult to maintain their income levels. Because many landholders solved the problem of labour shortage by converting their holdings to sheep pasture, much land enclosure took place. As a result a great many villages were abandoned by their inhabitants.
Though England remained a predominantly agrarian society, significant development and change occurred in the towns. London continued to grow, dominating the southeast. Elsewhere the development of the woolen industry brought major changes. Halifax and Leeds grew at the expense of York, and the West Riding at the expense of the eastern part of Yorkshire. Suffolk and the Cotswold region became important in the national economy. As the cloth trade grew in importance, so did the association of the Merchant Adventurers. The merchants of the Staple, who had a monopoly on the export of raw wool, did less well. Italian merchants prospered in 15th-century England, and important privileges were accorded to the German Hanseatic merchants by Edward IV.
Culturally the 15th century was a period of sterility. Monastic chronicles came to an end, and the writing of history declined. Thomas Walsingham (died c. 1422) was the last of a distinguished line of St. Albans chroniclers. Although there were some chronicles written by citizens of London as well as two lives of Henry V, distinguished works of history did not come until later. Neither were there any superior works of philosophy or theology. Reginald Pecock, an arid Scholastic philosopher, wrote an English treatise against the Lollards and various other works emphasizing the rational element in the Christian faith; he was judged guilty of heresy for his pains. No noteworthy poets succeeded Chaucer, though a considerable quantity of English poetry was written in this period. John Lydgate produced much verse in the Lancastrian interest. The printer William Caxton set up his press in 1476 to publish English works for the growing reading public. The first great collections of family correspondence, those of the Pastons, Stonors, and Celys, survive from this period.
The 15th century, however, was an important age in the foundation of schools and colleges. Some schools were set up as adjuncts to chantries, some by guilds, and some by collegiate churches. Henry VI founded Eton College in 1440 and King’s College, Cambridge, in 1441. Other colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were also founded in this period. The Inns of Court expanded their membership and systematized their teaching of law. Many gentlemen’s sons became members of the Inns, though not necessarily lawyers: they needed the rudiments of law to be able to defend and extend their estates. The influence of the Italian Renaissance in learning and culture was very limited before 1485, although there were some notable patrons, such as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who collected books and supported scholars interested in the new learning.
Only in architecture did England show great originality. Large churches were built in English Perpendicular style, especially in regions made rich by the woolen industry. The tomb of Richard Beauchamp at Warwick and King’s College Chapel in Cambridge show the quality of English architecture and sculpture in the period.
England under the Tudors
Henry VII (1485–1509)
When Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, seized the throne on August 22, 1485, leaving the Yorkist Richard III dead upon the field of battle, few Englishmen would have predicted that 118 years of Tudor rule had begun. Six sovereigns had come and gone, and at least 15 major battles had been fought between rival contenders to the throne since that moment in 1399 when the divinity that “doth hedge a king” was violated and Richard II was forced to abdicate. Simple arithmetic forecast that Henry VII would last no more than a decade and that the Battle of Bosworth Field was nothing more than another of the erratic swings of the military pendulum in the struggle between the house of York and the house of Lancaster. What gave Henry Tudor victory in 1485 was not so much personal charisma as the fact that key noblemen deserted Richard III at the moment of his greatest need, that Thomas Stanley (2nd Baron Stanley) and his brother Sir William stood aside during most of the battle in order to be on the winning team, and that Louis XI of France supplied the Lancastrian forces with 1,000 mercenary troops.
The desperateness of the new monarch’s gamble was equalled only by the doubtfulness of his claim. Henry VII’s Lancastrian blood was tainted by illegitimacy twice over. He was descended on his mother’s side from the Beaufort family, the offspring of John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, and, though their children had been legitimized by act of Parliament, they had been specifically barred from the succession. His father’s genealogy was equally suspect: Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, was born to Catherine of Valois, widowed queen of Henry V, by her clerk of the wardrobe, Owen Tudor, and the precise marital status of their relationship has never been established. Had quality of Plantagenet blood, not military conquest, been the essential condition of monarchy, Edward, earl of Warwick, the 10-year-old nephew of Edward IV, would have sat upon the throne. Might, not soiled right, had won out on the high ground at Bosworth Field, and Henry VII claimed his title by conquest. The new king wisely sought to fortify his doubtful genealogical pretension, however, first by parliamentary acclamation and then by royal marriage. The Parliament of November 1485 did not confer regal power on the first Tudor monarch—victory in war had already done that—but it did acknowledge Henry as “our new sovereign lord.” Then, on January 18, 1486, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, thereby uniting “the white rose and the red” and launching England upon a century of “smooth-fac’d peace with smiling plenty.”
“God’s fair ordinance,” which Shakespeare and later generations so clearly observed in the events of 1485–86, was not limited to military victory, parliamentary sanction, and a fruitful marriage; the hidden hand of economic, social, and intellectual change was also on Henry’s side. The day was coming when the successful prince would be more praised than the heroic monarch and the solvent sovereign more admired than the pious one. Henry Tudor was probably no better or worse than the first Lancastrian, Henry IV; they both worked diligently at their royal craft and had to fight hard to keep their crowns, but the seventh Henry achieved what the fourth had not—a secure and permanent dynasty—because England in 1485 was moving into a period of unprecedented economic growth and social change.
Economy and society
By 1485 the kingdom had begun to recover from the demographic catastrophe of the Black Death and the agricultural depression of the late 14th century. As the 15th century came to a close, the rate of population growth began to increase and continued to rise throughout the following century. The population, which in 1400 may have dropped as low as 2.5 million, had by 1600 grown to about 4 million. More people meant more mouths to feed, more backs to cover, and more vanity to satisfy. In response, yeoman farmers, gentleman sheep growers, urban cloth manufacturers, and merchant adventurers produced a social and economic revolution. With extraordinary speed, the export of raw wool gave way to the export of woolen cloth manufactured at home, and the wool clothier or entrepreneur was soon buying fleece from sheep raisers, transporting the wool to cottagers for spinning and weaving, paying the farmer’s wife and children by the piece, and collecting the finished article for shipment to Bristol, London, and eventually Europe. By the time Henry VII seized the throne, the Merchant Adventurers, an association of London cloth exporters, were controlling the London-Antwerp market. By 1496 they were a chartered organization with a legal monopoly of the woolen cloth trade, and, largely as a consequence of their political and international importance, Henry successfully negotiated the Intercursus Magnus, a highly favourable commercial treaty between England and the Low Countries.
As landlords increased the size of their flocks to the point that ruminants outnumbered human beings 3 to 1 and as clothiers grew rich on the wool trade, inflation injected new life into the economy. England was caught up in a vast European spiral of rising prices, declining real wages, and cheap money. Between 1500 and 1540, prices in England doubled, and they doubled again in the next generation. In 1450 the cost of wheat was what it had been in 1300; by 1550 it had tripled. Contemporaries blamed inflation on human greed and only slowly began to perceive that rising prices were the result of inflationary pressures brought on by the increase in population, international war, and the flood of gold and silver arriving from the New World.
Inflation and the wool trade together created an economic and social upheaval. A surfeit of land, a labour shortage, low rents, and high wages, which had prevailed throughout the early 15th century as a consequence of economic depression and reduced population, were replaced by a land shortage, a labour surplus, high rents, and declining wages. The landlord, who a century before could find neither tenants nor labourers for his land and had left his fields fallow, could now convert his meadows into sheep runs. His rents and profits soared; his need for labour declined, for one shepherd and his dog could do the work of half a dozen men who had previously tilled the same field. Slowly the medieval system of land tenure and communal farming broke down. The common land of the manor was divided up and fenced in, and the peasant farmer who held his tenure either by copy (a document recorded in the manor court) or by unwritten custom was evicted.
The total extent of enclosure and eviction is difficult to assess, but, between 1455 and 1607, in 34 counties more than 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares), or about 2.75 percent of the total, were enclosed, and some 50,000 persons were forced off the land. Statistics, however, are deceptive regarding both the emotional impact and the extent of change. The most disturbing aspect of the land revolution was not the emergence of a vagrant and unemployable labour force for whom society felt no social responsibility but an unprecedented increase in what men feared most—change. Farming techniques were transformed, the gap between rich and poor increased, the timeless quality of village life was upset, and, on all levels of society, old families were being replaced by new.
The beneficiaries of change, as always, were the most grasping, the most ruthless, and the best educated segments of the population: the landed country gentlemen and their socially inferior cousins, the merchants and lawyers. By 1500 the essential economic basis for the landed country gentleman’s future political and social ascendancy was being formed: the 15th-century knight of the shire was changing from a desperate and irresponsible land proprietor, ready to support the baronial feuding of the Wars of the Roses, into a respectable landowner desiring strong, practical government and the rule of law. The gentry did not care whether Henry VII’s royal pedigree could bear close inspection; their own lineage was not above suspicion, and they were willing to serve the prince “in parliament, in council, in commission and other offices of the commonwealth.”
