The Complete History Of The Wars Of The Roses | Wars Of The Roses Full Series | Chronicle

[Music] the bitter civil wars that raged in 15th century England are known to history by the emblems of the two rival factions in the house of plantagenet the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster for more than 30 years these deadly Rivals were locked into a struggle for power a struggle that would witness Slaughter amongst the greatest families in England the death of princes and kings the struggle that would eventually lead to the bloody field of Bosworth there the bloodstained crown of England would be claimed by Henry tuder and a new strong Dynasty would emerge from the Maelstrom of the wars of the Roses [Music] if you ask most people what medieval is they will often think of some something to do with the wars of the roses and I think it's bestowed upon the later Middle Ages a sense that this was a period of disorder of clashing magnates crashing around in the mud trying to seize the throne from the poor old King the 15th century has more violent changes of ruler than any other Century since the Norman Conquest our image day of the wars of the Roses is is likely to be one of incessant Warfare of nobles only ke too Keen to pick up a sword and and charge off to the next [Music] battle the origins of the wars of the Roses can be traced back to the previous century and the 100 Years War between England and France the conflict burst into life in 1337 during the reign of Edward III but it was in fact little more than an escalation of a conflict that had preoccupied Kings of England for [Music] generations with the French monarchies ever increasing strength and confidence it was predictable that the king of England's position as one of France's Chief landholders would come under threat the 100 Years War is a war between the English and French for control of France and it lasts really actually for several hundred years rather than a single hundred years but it leaves the English king with a series of claims to territory in France and also a claim to the French throne and what Henry V does in the 1410s is powerfully revived these English claims and lead a very successful conquest of the whole of Normandy in Alliance with the Duke of burgundy clearly leadership was a key to success in the 100 Years War and Henry V was a military genius facing Charles I 6 of France who was mentally unstable the fact that Charles believed he was made of glass really wasn't an advantage on the battlefield and over the next few years Henry launched a series of um sieges which effectively took control of France and he was able to force upon the French a treaty which disinherited the French Heir and it meant that Henry and his own heirs would become the kings of France after Charles the 6 death that was complete Victory the treaty which confirmed the English King's succession to the throne of France was signed at Troy in 1420 with the elderly Charles I 6 of France the only barrier to Henry V's acquisition of the French title England's territorial gains in France seemed assured history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanega and Kat jman not only that but we've a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50% off their first 3 months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at [Music] checkout the premature death of Henry in 1422 probably from dentry fundamentally changed England's position the realm was unprepared for his sudden loss and the late King's infant son was promptly pronounced Henry V 6 inheriting the English crown at the age of only 9 months it was a distinctly uneasy inheritance for Just 2 months later Henry's maternal grandfather Charles I 6 of France also died leaving the Child's Sole Monarch of the two great kingdoms clearly the death of Henry V was potentially a very serious blow to the ability of the English really to make good the claim to the French throne the only King who was likely to make good the claim to the whole of France would have been Henry the F and I suppose Henry V 6's claim is just as good as he was able to make it militarily the claim really rested in the Treaty of tuah and the question of whether the English could make that stick but the reality was that Henry's claim depended solely on success on the battlefield if the English were defeated and pushed back across the channel then Henry's claim simply wasn't worth the parchment it was written on fortunately for the new king the war in France continued successfully under the leadership of Henry VI 6's Uncle John Duke of Bedford meanwhile in England it would not have been a surprise given the uncertain times and Henry VI 6 tender age if someone had challenged his succession but this was not the case and during the king's minority a council of men from the chief Noble houses ruled England and France among these were Henry's Uncle Humphrey the Duke of Gloucester and his great Uncle Henry bort the bishop of Winchester these men able advisers as they were to the king were hardly the best of friends the disputes between Gloucester and bord seemed dominate the first 20 years of Henry V 6 Reign there was one occasion when the supporters turned up at Parliament with clubs and staves hidden under their clothing just in case they needed them for self-defense the origins of their disputes really lie in a personal dispute for power and disputes over policy Gloucester thinks that he should be protector of England rather than there being this minority Council which has been set up in the teeth of his opposition so a lot of his attacks um in the 1420s on B for are really attacks uh against the council and an insistance that he should um have a more powerful kind of protectorate Gloucester is an enthusiastic exponent of of aggressive military action in France he's watching Bedford and whenever he thinks Bedford isn't doing enough he comes forward with his own proposals for a more aggressive prosecution of the war whereas bord uh is thinking more in terms of a mixture of trues possibilities of Peace negotiation and support to the Duke of Bedford in France however things started to go badly wrong for the English although they scored victories at craon in 1423 and at faoi in 1424 they could not possibly have reckoned on the arrival of Jon of Arc at the siege of oron in 1429 it was a pivotal moment the extraordinary peasant Girl inspired the Revival in the fortunes of the French a Revival that resulted in the crowning of the DOA arim with the subsequent loss of their vital Burgundian allies Henry VI 6's early Reign was dominated by the increasingly disastrous course of the Hundred Years War not only had Henry to contend with events in France looming over him throughout his Reign was the issue of lancastrian legitimacy and the competing claim to the throne of the Duke of York as usual during these turbulent times little was clear or cut and dried and the responsibility for this can be laid squarely at the feet of John of gaunt Earl of Lancaster the third surviving son of King Edward III from whom Henry V 6 was descended John of gaun a very powerful man married by the king first of all to the aess of the House of Lancaster so the huge Estates of the duchy of Lancaster are brought within the Royal orbit by ga's marriage and then later married off by the king to the ARs of the Throne of Castile he's an early illustration actually of the difficulties of fitting into the English polity these great members of the royal family who own huge Estates who are too big men really to fit under not very competent Kings it seems harsh to blame John of gaun and Edward III for the fact that they had too many children but in the 1450s there were just far too many people at the Royal Court who had Royal Blood pumping around their [Music] veins after the death of Edward III's eldest son and Heir the black prince Edward named his grandson Richard as his successor and upon Edward's Death he became king ruling as Richard II only 11 years of age when he came to the throne Richard's reign was marked by turmoil and it ended when in 1399 he was deposed by his cousin Henry Bowling Brook John of gun's son Henry was crowned Henry IV in that year and in 1400 Richard was murdered at ponr Castle the death of the childless Richard was most convenient for Henry for now the direct line of descendancy from the black prince Edward III's eldest son was ended making Henry's position that much stronger it was through Henry IV and his son Henry V that King Henry V 6 drew his own claim to the [Music] throne but Henry was not the only descendant of Edward III with a claim through Edmund Langley one of Edward's other Sons came the candidate from the House of York Edmund was the grandfather of Richard Duke of York Henry VI 6's cousin and the great grandson of king Edward III he was therefore a generation closer to Edward III than the young king himself he also had a further claim through the female line descending from Edward III's Second Son Clarence if you admit that the crown of England can go through women then Richard II's nearest Heir was not Henry of Lancaster but a descendant of lonol of clarence's daughter philipper Edmund Mortimer Earl of March in 1399 Mortimer was a child and easily therefore overlooked but the Mortimer claim was not to go away in practice it was unlikely that York was going to claim the throne after all the the nobility supported Henry V 6 now York was only ever likely to put forward his claim if something disastrous happened if he was pushed into challenging Henry Henry VI 6 minority came to an end in 1436 when the King was 15 unhappily Henry was to prove a weak Monarch and a man utterly unsuited for these troubled times he was sensitive Pious and scholarly John Blackman a monk with a personal knowledge of King Henry's Court recorded that the King was traveling through cripplegate and he saw over the gate there the quarter of a man on a tall stake and asked what it was when told it was the quarter of a traitor who had been false to the king's Majesty he said take it away I will not have any Christian man so cruy handled for my sake and the quarter was moved [Music] immediately Henry V 6th isn't difficult man for us to know much about because he's been colored in all sorts of different ways some have presented him at the time and subsequently as more or less an idiot uh others have presented him as a very Pious and saintly figure and quite often actually we find in history fairly idiotic fairly weak and feeble Kings get written up as if they are saintly or monk-like so whenever we see Henry uh called by those kinds of terms I think we might smell the rat of somebody pretty incompetent if you actually look at what happened to the realm under Henry rather than going over and over uh what his character might or might not have been what you actually see is a complete emptiness at the center where you should have the king and the King's will on which the realm depended that the king would act and would act positively to make his government work there seems to be a complete void great historian of this period KB McFarland said that Henry VII went from first to second childhood without the usual interval and that really sums it up quite nicely fearful that Henry's weakness would cause irreparable damage to the country the powerful figures from the ruling Council of his minority continued to govern the country King Henry was a ripe Target for a growing circle of avaricious ministers and greedy Nobles now the unstable Henry began to bestow honors and lands upon his favorites quickly draining the healthy coffers left by his father and creating resentment against those Nobles who gained most from Henry's favor Chief amongst them was the Duke of suffk suffk is a very interesting figure in many ways often treated as something like the villain of the peace though in my own view suffk is something of a civil servant hero actually he has a respectable military career um in the 1410s and 20s respectable rather than spectacular but he's a useful right-hand man for the the Duke of Bedford finds a place on the minority Council and also gets put into to the Royal household as Steward of the royal household and it's that joint position in the household and on the council that that gives suffk the capacity to move to the head of Affairs really in the course of the 1430s and become the very dominant figure in the 1440s that he is so suffk is an important manager of Royal Authority and an important cause of the relative calm of the 1430s and 1440s calm which pretty remarkable given the fact that the king is not himself ruling effectively the king's spendthrift handling of the nation's fortune and his weak grasp of administration was already causing serious discontent amongst the members of the former Council but it was his arbitrary redistribution of wealth and power and his creation of so many newly empowered Lords with their own bands of retainers that led to an eruption of in fighting over land property rights and inheritance it was a dangerous time for the established Nobles whose previously stable position was placed in Jeopardy by the arrival of these ambitious [Music] newcomers in 1445 Henry V 6 married the 15 years old Margaret ofu a princess from Vala who would soon grow into a woman to be reckoned with Henry V 6's wife Margaret Vu from the outset in English eyes had two major disadvantages one is that she was foreign and specifically French who were regarded of course as the ancient enemy and the other was that her marriage to Henry brought the country no financial advantage on the contrary the marriage and the attendant festivities were extremely expensive and since Henry's Reign by this time was virtually bankrupt this was not a good start the marriage between Henry and Margaret the king of France's niece was part of a treaty agreed with the French at tour in 1444 by D La pole the Duke of suffk the Duke of glester was mortified war was the only way in which the country would regain what was hers he argued gluster was swiftly silenced and his hawkish views saw him isolated from the rest of the royal household with the support of the queen Dill La pole had glester arrested for treason in 1447 although he needn't have bothered gluster died in distinctly mysterious circumstances soon after his death therefore made him one of the few members of the royal household exempt from responsibility for the political disasters that followed and the Duke of Gloucester would later become something of an icon for the yorkist cause glester is almost certainly murdered some chroniclers say that he's murdered with a red hot spit in the fundament other chroniclers say that he's pressed to death between feather beds but what these are are attempts to um explain a murder that leaves no obvious mind Mar um on the publicly displayed parts of a body the story that Gloucester had been murdered swiftly spread along with the myth of the good Duke of Gloucester the man who' stood valiantly against the cleck of ambitious courtious the man who defended the reputation the legacy of his brother Henry V unfortunately for that myth we now know that actually it was glester who was politically isolated the rest of the nobility were behind suffering even the Duke of York who was the one who made the most use of the Gloucester myth in later years England's hold on France had loosened even further as the result of a massive error of judgment by Henry Richard Duke of York despite his impressive military record fighting the French was sent to irand as Lord Lieutenant Henry transferred the role of English commander in France to his nept favorite and York's great rival Edmund bort Duke of Somerset Somerset was yet another Noble with a distant claim to the throne owing to his relationship to John of gaun in somerset's case through gun's third wife Katherine swinford and the bord line the bords were the illegitimate offspring of gaun who had been legitimized by Henry IV on condition that they would not lay claim to the crown this piece of legislation could easily be reversed and with Henry VII still childless and Somerset in favor York's position as air apparent might not be guaranteed there is no evidence at all of serious hostility between York and either Somerset or his forbears uh before 1450 I don't think we should take terribly seriously any sense that York um felt hostile to the bords because they had a potential claim to the throne which might be exercised if Henry V six was to die without HS because nobody seems to have been taking the bord claim to the throne seriously at that point although personal hostility is likely to have been a part of their relations we need to see these people as politicians representing alternative solutions to England's problems and indeed representing quite large bodies of opinion and quite large bodies of politicians themselves it's not just a personal conflict it's also a public conflict the Duke of Somerset was simply no Soldier or military leader and it was perhaps no great surprise that more English territory in France was lost under his command matters were swiftly coming to a head and Henry's mismanagement of Affairs in both countries now gave birth to a real domestic crisis [Music] in 1449 a parliament was summoned to investigate the powerless State of Affairs the English people demanded to know why the war with France which had cost them so dearly in taxes had been so disastrously mismanaged increasing instances of abuses of the law particularly by the newly established feudal Lords and their retainers was also causing enormous public outcry blame had to be a portioned somewhere and it was the Duke of suffk Who provided an attractively high-profile scapegoat for the ills of the country the parliament blamed suffk for the catastrophic loss of France and in 1450 he was formally impeached suffk was accused of having made a treacherous peace with France under the influence of Henry's French Queen and of surrendering the territories of onju and Main sent into Exile by the king for his own safety suffk was way laid on route to France and was murdered at Sea summarily executed with a rusty sword it seemed that Ordinary People throughout the land were looking to the Duke of York for salvation posted in Ireland York was at least blameless for the fresh French disasters of 1450 news of which mortified the kingdom Normandy had been lost few can have been unaware that it was the loss of this important duche that had spurred King John's Barons into Revolt over 200 years before the summer of 1450 saw the simmering discontent among the people of England at last boil over and the country burst into open [Music] Rebellion at the head of the Revolt was an Irishman named Jack Cade we don't know a great deal about who Jack Cade was the government first of all thought that he was called John Mortimer and Mortimer of course is this very charged name it's the name of the family from whom Richard of York gets his claim to the throne the claim to the throne which is better than the lancastrian claim to the throne when they put it about that he was an Irishman they may again have been alluding to this Mortimer connection because York was a great Irish landowner and one of the things the government tries to do in the early 1450s is to suggest that York was behind the Cade Rebellion one of Cade's pseudonyms was John amend all John put everything right and really that sums up the situation in England in early 1450 anything that could go wrong was going wrong the English were being push rapidly out of Normandy and English refugees were traing back through London clutching their few belongings this was a pitiful sight to onlookers and simply stirred up more anger of the politicians and then there were economic problems the cloth and wool trade across the south of England was struggling leading to unemployment and falling wages and then disorder was breaking out one of the king's leading counselors uh Bishop Maines was murdered in Portsmouth by Sailors who hadn't been paid wages suffk himself had been murdered despite the fact that he had the king's safe conduct and yet another counselor the king's chaplain Bishop ASCO was shortly to be murdered in his own dasis the country appeared to be falling apart the demands of the rebels were issued by Cade in a proclamation of grievances a document that survives to this day these be the points cause and mischiefs of gathering and assembling of us the king's Le men of Kent we say our Sovereign Lord May understand that his false Council has lost its law his merchandise is lost his Common People is destroyed the sea is lost France is lost the king himself is so set that he may not pay for his meat nor drink and he owes more than ever any King of England ought for daily his traitors about him where anything should come to him by his laws andon they take it from him his true Commons desire that he will remove from him all the false progeny and Affinity of the Duke of suffk and to take about his Noble person His True Blood of his Royal realm that is to say the high and mighty Prince the dukee of York Exile from our Sovereign Lord's person by the noising of the false traitor the Duke of suffk and his [Music] [Music] Affinity if Cade's demands were couched in the language of reason the length to which he was prepared to go to achieve them were not the uprising became increasingly violent Cade's Rebels occupied the Guild Hall in London and freed the prisoners in the Marshall seat and King's bench jails they looted private houses and shops to the terror of the London Merchants who had suffered enough from the recent demise in foreign trade finally Cade's men besieged the Tower of London itself and dragged Lord SE the king's Treasurer out from within its walls the unfortunate say was murdered along with William crer the sheriff of Kent it was recorded that they took SE to cheapside and there smote off his head the same day croma was beheaded in my end afterwards they brought their heads on poles and placed their heads together making them seem to kiss each other initially there was great support for for the demands of Cage's Rebels people sympathized with their objectives there were even those in the king's Army who sympathized and that forced the king to leave London and retreat but once the rebels were in London once they'd embarked upon their looting and executions then the tide turned against them the londoners brought together their own force and in a pitched midnight battle presumably fought by torch light along lond Bridge they kicked out the rebels slamming the gates on them with great relief and it was the londoners who put an end to Cage's Rebellion not the king with the rebels Ed from London the Revolt was finally ended by Royal Promises of reforms and free pardons which probably to no one's great surprise turned out to be false Jack Cade the architect of the outbreak of public Anarchy attempted to escape to the South Coast but he was hunted down and killed during a skirmish in a garden near heathfield in Sussex Cade's Rebellion turned out to be a major scare for the government of England and a damning indictment of the king's rule with suffk gone and the King as incompetent as ever a new counselor in Chief was needed the MPS of the commons echoed Cade's Rebels and called for the Duke of York to return to England and deal with the Troubles of the realm York delayed and remained in Ireland possibly trying to distance himself from the recent Revolt Somerset seized his chance Somerset having been in command where Normandy is lost came back found the court in disarray the attack on suffer the country in disarray picked up the pieces and got some kind of semblance of government going meantime York came back from Ireland and decided that he was the person who would sort the country out so what you have here are two very prominent Nobles both closely related to the king both potentially if they wanted to push it with a claim to the throne each claiming that he was the one to rule the country and from that point onwards neither of them could back down yor clearly hoped to establish himself as Henry's principal counselor in the wake of Cage's Rebellion but he left it too late by the time he returned from Ireland in the Autumn of 4 1950 the role had been filled by Somerset York M had popular support in London at least but he had little amongst the nobility in the wake of Cage's Rebellion the nobility wished to put loyalty and unity first and it was York who appeared to be threatening that Unity the winter of 1450 witnessed the Duke of York's attempts to remove the king's advisors York clearly blamed Somerset for the disasters in France Normandy had been lost mainly because of flawed military planning and a feeble response to the French uprisings by calling for administrative and financial reform York started to gain popularity amongst MPS and he publicly vowed to avenge the losses in France York soon had to curb his accusations however as Somerset enjoyed the king's support and his claims seemed to be ver on treason Somerset was for the moment at least secure in his position as Henry's counselor in Chief without the support of the Nobles York would have to bide his time what begins to emerge in some ways in the early 1450s is two radically different approaches to the problem of order in Henry the 6s England on the one hand there is York and the MPS and the commons who are calling for Justice upon the traitors restoration of Royal finances restoration of noble Council around the King on the other hand there is the Duke of Somerset who basically says if we could just deal with all these Rebels and troublemakers everything would be okay the king is capable of ruling the king is well advised within his household so we have a situation in which York and Somerset are sworn to deal with one another in a sense the position that each man is striking requires him to get rid of the other in August 1451 Somerset returned to England from his disastrous stewardship of France only two months previously Bordeaux had fallen and after 300 years in English possession gascony had been lost to the Duke of York the situation looked Bleak over the last year he had failed in his attempts to remove Somerset and the public support for his position after Cade's rebellion was beginning to fade for York the loss of France was the final straw something must be done in February 1452 after deciding that Force might succeed where diplomacy had failed Richard Duke of York put himself at the head of an open Rebellion yor took an army right across the country down into Kent to threaten the king and hopefully remove Somerset from power but he simply didn't have enough support there were only two Nobles on his side the rest stood resolutely behind the king even the Nevels who in a short time were going to be York's allies York doesn't get the big burst of popular support that he may have been counting on and then he stops looking like a popular leader the man of the common wheel and begins to look rather more like a Shabby magnate trying to Rouse the Rabel to support his own uh policy so York is really thoroughly defeated yor could behave rashly in 1452 and the result was that he was now politically isolated nobody wanted to Ally with him for fear of the taint of treason being attached to them after the failure of the Rebellion the Duke of York was released but only after having suffered the humiliation of being made to swear and oath of loyalty to the king at St Paul's in London despite his best efforts both diplomatic and Military the Duke was no nearer achieving his aims and the experience seems to have exhausted him for the next year and a half he laid low a brooding presence on the sidelines of English Politics the tension between the Dukes of York and Somerset had now escalated to the point that the court and nobility were dividing into two very hostile and rival factions the quarrelsome Nobles such as the perses who lived here at Walworth Castle in North umland needed an over Mighty ruler to keep them in check as King Henry was failing to provide this Authority Waring Lords were siding with the two rival Dukes in the hope of gaining advantage in decisions on their disputes once Somerset or York had control of the king Somerset enjoyed the support of Queen Margaret and Henry's lancastrian supporters York's Camp was joined by the powerful Neville family from the north of England headed by the influential ears of wari and Salsbury wari hated the Duke of Somerset while the entire family had a long-standing feud with the indomitable Percy family the ears of North umberland as a result of these bitter rivalries the perses sided with Somerset and the lancastrians against York baronial power struggles had begun to dominate the nation's agenda and they were to have disastrous consequences the Nevels and the Peres are the two most powerful families of northern England really and of the two who in the lancastrian period the Nevels are the more powerful family the Nevels have their Estates in North Yorkshire um and towards the western side of the very far north of England they're more powerful in this period than the Peres because they're married into the royal family and because the Peres H having assisted Henry IV's usurpation of the throne in 1399 then rose up against the king in 1403 and 1405 and consequently suffered confiscation of their estate States the Peres who are the elves of Northumberland and have major land Holdings on the Eastern side of the northern border with Scotland have won their way back to a degree of acceptance particularly under Henry V but they're slightly the second rank family there was no major sign of hostility between the families until the summer of 1453 and then it was a wedding as it so often is with families that caused the trouble thanks to this marriage the Nevels were about to gain control of lands which formerly been Percy territory this seems to have set off Lord egremont a younger son of the Percy family and he attacked the wedding party on its return home this piece of private Warfare began the hostility between the Nevels and the Peres that came to dominate so much of the Civil War over the succeeding years while local feuds and lawlessness spread throughout England on the other side of the channel there was a sudden upswing in in English fortunes Bordeaux was recaptured and the News came that the queen was expecting her first child but as so often in The Saga of the wars of the Roses good news was soon followed by bad Tidings in July 1453 the English were overwhelmed and defeated at the Battle of castillon in gascony bordo fell a second time into French hands this time for good and the 100 Years War effectively Drew to a close for England it was a deeply ignominious end to a conflict that had seen the highs of cresy and aenor and in August the king became insane Henry's Madness may have been brought about by uh learning of the massive defeat um um at castillan in gasan but in fact um immediately beforehand we get the closest to active ruling that you find from the adult Henry VI 6 um this looks to me very much um like Somerset taking the King around the country to make it look like active ruling But whichever it was it seems completely to have worn him out and finished him off he falls into a kind of stuper he can't move he can't speak uh he has to be carried around Somerset decides to keep on business as usual to behave as if the king is absolutely fine but it doesn't work this time because the king is well and truly mad he's not just uninterested in government and with near Warfare breaking out in the north of England something really has to be done to restore the situation the government has to come clean about the king's illness it has to gather together the nobility to try and find some kind of platform for for uh a new form of rule and that means calling York back in it's a middleof the road group of counselors who in the teeth of resistance from Somerset and probably from the Lord Chancellor Cardinal Kemp summon York to attend a council and York attends that council with every intention it seems of taking control in October 1453 Queen Margaret gave birth to a son Edward at last providing a direct heir to the throne the new baby became the focal point of Margaret's life and she began to channel her considerable energy into ensuring that the child received what was his by Birthright the succession to the throne she became even more suspicious of the Duke of York who after all would still be air should any Misfortune befall the young Edward meanwhile in November 1453 somerset's politicking and ruthless accumulation of wealth caught up with him he was arrested and imprisoned in the tower one of the many man he had crossed was the Earl of wari later to become famous as wari the kingmaker for Somerset falling out with wari had been a particularly bad move one reason why York is able to get his way on getting rid of Somerset is not only the fact that the Lords I think have lost confidence in somerset's capacity to run the show but also the hostility of the Nevels towards Somerset part of which seems to relate to somerset's attempt to uh gain control of the lordship of Glamorgan in South Wales which uh is regarded by the Earl of wari as his own property and his own sphere of Interest the Neville support for York against Somerset was a classic case of my enemy's enemy is my friend York's Newfound power gave the Nevels the chance to win their own battles firstly against Somerset and also against the Peres even from within the confines of the tower Somerset continued to plot adding to the atmosphere of tension and uncertainty at court in March 1454 the Council reluctantly appointed York as protector and for the following nine months he ruled England as King in all but name as protector York is in many ways quite effective actually he delivers uh somewhat biased Justice in the north of England mainly in favor of the Nevels and against the interests of the Peres but in doing that he's fairly typical of the way the north has been ruled in the past and this means that when the king recovers at Christmas 1454 there is some uncertainty among the Lords about whether to swing back to the rule of Somerset and the Royal household and the queen around the king there's quite a lot more sympathy I think for York and the Nevels although their bitter enemies the Peres are probably calling for action against them behind the scenes historians have often agreed that if Henry's Madness was a tragedy his recovery was a national disaster the king summarily dismissed York's protector and immediately released Somerset from the tower making Civil War almost inevitable York and the Nevels clearly fell it on the defensive a great Council was summoned to Lester which is in the heart of the old duchy of Lancaster lands in May and one would guess that York and the Nevels had in mind what for example had happened to Gloucester at the berry parliament in 1447 so they decided that they would come armed to this Council and as they came from uh the north so they met Henry and his forces coming up towards the council from London and they met at St Orbin negotiations ensued rather as it occurred at Dartford but this time York was not going to be tricked so it did not end with York lay down his arms and ended in [Music] battle and so on May the 2nd 1455 the first real battle of the wars of the Roses [Music] began inside the town of St Orbin King Henry VI 6 and his household waited as the lancastrian Army fought to hold off the attacks by the yorkist forces at first all went well as the yorkist troops struggled to break through the narrow streets i' to pack together they were easy prey for The lancastrian Archers it was the Earl of wari who seeing the futility of further attacks through the lanes signaled a change of tactics and made an assault through the back of the houses very soon the orchest had broken into the marketplace and there was total panic in the Royal household Henry himself sustained a wound in the neck as the yorkist arrows rained down and he was forced to shelter in a Tanner's Cottage the yorkists had won an important Victory but what if the Duke of Somerset hold up in the castle in how must he have felt as he heard the yorkists batter down its doors knowing the Fate that awaited him if he surrendered to his Archen enemy York Somerset decided to go down fighting flailing wildly with his sword as yorkist soldiers surrounded him he is supposed to have killed four men before he was hacked to death the Battle of St Orbin may have been little more than a skirmish when compared to the slaughter to come perhaps 100 men mostly lancastrians lost their lives but three important Nobles the Duke of Somerset the Earl of North humand and Lord Clifford had all been killed signifying without question that in the coming war no quarter would be asked or given Henry was made a prisoner of the Duke of York with his arch rival the Duke of Somerset dead the kingdom lay within York's grasp and everything depended upon how he played his next move and although many hoped the crisis in Royal government had finally been resolved 30 years of bitterness ranker and bloodshed lay ahead for [Music] England in May 1455 in the town of s orens the armies of the houses of York and Lancaster met in Battle For the First [Applause] Time The plotting and intriguing which had been Rife among the English nobility were replaced by the new currency of the sword the axe and the arrow the orchest won won the battle decisively and the Duke of Somerset the champion of the lancastrian cause who had supposedly dreamed that he would die with inside of a castle had been hacked to death beneath the sign of the castle in the weak and ineffective King Henry V 6 was now a prisoner of Richard Duke of York the man who he had dismissed as protector and defender of the realm in December 1454 the wars of the roses had [Music] begun [Music] [Music] after the battle of St orans in some ways things were remarkably stable the really important thing as far as the yorkis was concerned was to reiterate their position as standing for the good of the political community at large there were two very different reactions amongst the nobility after St albin's for the majority what they simply wanted was peace they wanted to create an atmosphere of unity and loyalty around the king and they would work with York to achieve that but for a minority for the sons of those who'd been killed at St Albans for them a vendetta was underway they wanted revenge and although at the moment they didn't have the power to achieve that they in the future would be determined to achieve their Revenge as the T and uncertain year of 1455 wore on the Duke of York and his supporters the Neville family maintained a precarious hold on power they had gone to in ordinate length to secure a parliamentary pardon for the Bloodshed at St Orbin and York knew that the only route to at least some security was to once again win recognition as protector of the realm the Lords were hardly falling over themselves to Grant his wish but worrying news of a private war in the southwest of the country seems to have persuaded them to agree William Burley representing the commons championed the Duke of York's cause warning that unless the Duke of York is made protector and Defender and unless these disorders and riots are firmly dealt with the land will be lost and that if the land be lost it might be the cause of the subversion of the whole [Applause] realm the war in the southwest was actually quite a serious business in fact exitor was occupied for seven weeks by the Earl of Devon and his family for example and there was also notorious murder of an elderly lawyer called Nicholas Radford who was dragged out of his house and stabbed to death uh and news of the these terrible events was brought actually to Parliament and announced to the commons and this provided um a strong motivation for MPS to petition for Action to be taken and in the light of the king's inadequacies really and in the absence of any other strong figure uh somebody like the Duke of York who had been protector before who had ruled with the Lords of the council was the obvious person to approach to take over again as protector to carry out the king's duties of maintaining Justice and Order throughout the realm on the 19th of November 1455 the Duke of York was once again appointed as protector and the troubles in the southwest a long running dispute between the Courtney and Bonville families were ended in reality it had been a minor distraction the importance of which had been overstated to suit the Duke of York's ambitions the Duke's other big problem was that of Cal and this was more pressing and certainly more difficult to [Music] resolve the financial state of the English crown was in a total mess really in the 1450s it was finding it very difficult to produce money to pay for any of the standing charges of defense and that meant that the Cal Garrison was unpaid for long periods of time and therefore inclined to steal wool for example as it pass through Cal and hang on to it in order to obtain payment the Duke of Somerset York's great enemy had also been leftenant of Cal for most of the first half of the 1450s and he had built up lots of contacts and networks within the Cal Garrison so it was very difficult for the yorkists to take over Cal in the second protectorate wari the rising star in the yist faction if you like was the key candidate for leftenant of c and they opened opened negotiations immediately uh with the merchants of the staple who controlled the wool trade passing through Cal who were quite Keen to lend money if that meant that the Garrison would be paid off and the wool trade would be protected and that was the solution that emerged in 1456 enabling Warick to obtain the captaincy and actually enter Cal in the summer of that [Music] year [Music] for York the tide had turned and there was now to be a decline in his fortunes his second spell as protector lasted only three months as King Henry returned to something approaching full health and again relieved him of the position the greatest threat to the Duke's overall aspirations however came not through the king but in the shape of the formidable Queen Margaret who had developed a hatred for York and the Nevels that would fuel her burning desire to secure the succession to the throne of her son Prince [Music] Edward to achieve this ambition she was determined that no man would stand in her way least of all the Duke of York who had already managed to diminish considerably the power of the Court during his two [Music] protectorship it's difficult to give an impartial assessment of Margaret AVU she was a woman she was a foreigner she took power at a time when it was not appropriate for a woman much less a foreigner to take it she has had a very bad write up by her contemporaries Margaret is presented by contemporaries as a Virago that is a woman who behaves like a man and in medieval thinking that was profoundly unnatural it makes it very hard now to get a clear impression of Margaret herself because contemporary accounts instinctively conform to that stereotype of a woman who is is improperly behaving as a man and whether Margaret was genuinely as abrasive and a character as that suggests we may never [Music] know the queen was determined to get the king away from London and remove him from the Duke of York's sphere of influence after visiting a number of lancastrian castles in the Midlands of England during the summer of 1456 she persuaded Henry to join her at kennworth it was from here that she was able to oversee appointments that were very much of her choosing these were the first steps in her campaign to destroy the Duke of York and put an end to his claim to the [Music] throne the reason that Queen Margaret was so opposed to York is I think quite complex you have to remember her background in France where there had been extremely disruptive Nobles indeed so disruptive that it had made possible Henry VI F's conquest of France so I think she had a a gut feeling that any Noble like York was a serious danger to the throne and then on top of it of course once her son was born there was this tigerish sense that she was going to defend his inheritance at all costs and it's quite probable that she had DEC decided that York was claiming the throne long before York decided that perhaps the best way was to claim the throne to Margaret he seemed a real threat in every sense despite the Queen's machinations there was a genuine desire among all concerned not to see a repeat of the Dreadful violence of St orans the Duke of York and the Nevels even eventually agreed to pay compensation to the lancastrian pery and Clifford [Music] families on the 24th of March 1458 in a further display of public reconciliation King Henry staged a special mass of atonement along with a celebratory pageant which was called The Love [Music] d this Grand Occasion brought together the feuding factions of the two rival houses with a procession to St Paul's in London that saw the Hostile parties walking arm in arm despite this very public exhibition of unity and friendship with its Pomp and ceremony and the grand tournaments that followed tensions remained high in and around the city thousands of men at Arms from both sides watched ominously from the sidelines the situation of the later 1450s is a very difficult one the king's incapacity has been more oress demonstrated now although the Lords are quite Keen to gather around him and although by and large they are quite Keen to try and find Unity among themselves and build a solution to the problem of governing England that works there are also lots of forces working for division one is the queen and her concerns she is quite Keen to push for the interests of her son and indeed even to work in the interests of division against these yorkists if need be another interest is the yorkists themselves who have risen up against the government of course in the Battle of St Alin who are therefore made rather vulnerable who may well be quite Keen to work with everybody else but know that to some extent they're marked men and then a third important group are The Heirs of the men who were murdered at St Albans who seem to be out for vengeance and the main body of the Lords as it were are trying to pull these desperate groups together but the situation is very volatile and the country's government is gradually unraveling so there's a kind of [Music] Anarchy the uneasy peace lasted only six more months it was then that the Queen goed the Duke of York's great supporter the Earl of wari into a show of open [Music] Rebellion Warick is set upon in London in 1458 by the men of the court in what seems to be an attempt to assassinate him and he he fights his way through to his barge and manages to escape Back to the Sea and I think that's the last straw as far as he and his allies are concerned Queen Margaret sensing that her moment had arrived seized her opportunity with both hands she summoned the Nobles to a great council at Lester she was also Gathering military forces and the Yorkers not unreasonably decided that to go to this council at Leicester would be very unwise and nasty things might happen to them there they were it was said um indicted for not turning up at the council so at this point both sides began to get their forces together and I think this is what you can say really is the beginning of the wars of the razes [Music] the bitter Prospect of Civil War loomed over England as once again the yorkists turned to military action to enforce their claims after a summer spent assembling their armies the two sides finally met in battle at blor Heath which lay between maret Drayton and Newcastle on the 23rd of September 1459 what seems to have happened in September is that the yorkists planned to converge on Ludo where the Duke of York has a huge castle and where they could um set up a base of operations I suppose and uh wari arrived in Ludo safely Salsbury War's father coming down from the North had to pass through the lancastrian lines in order to get to Ludo and was unlucky enough to run into uh a Detachment of lancastrian soldiers headed by Lords odley and Dudley at blor Heath and in a skirmish about which we know very little he was [Music] [Applause] Victorious the battle was won the lancastrian commander Lord odley amongst those cut down by salsbury's troops however the Strategic position after the battle was to say the least precarious furthermore The crucial support he had been promised by the powerful Stanley family did not materialize before during or after the battle after considering his options Salsbury eventually decided to make his way to lllo to join forces with the Duke of York on the 12th of October there came news to make yorkist hearts sink a lancastrian army was approaching Ludo from the [Music] [Music] south taking up position at ludford Bridge to meet his enemy enemy the Duke of York surveyed his outnumbered troops and watched in despair as Andrew trolip and the Cal veterans his only experienced troops swapped sides concluding no doubt that discretion was the better part of valor York slipped away from ludford bridge in the night abandoning not only his troops but also his wife and two youngest sons York and his son Edmund found their way to the safety of Ireland while the Earl of March York's eldest son escaped to Cal with wari and Salsbury the orist Army crumbled away and the Victorious lancastrian troops pillaged looted and raped in Ludo which in truth did little for the popularity of Henry's cause throughout the [Music] country [Music] that tiess champion of that cause was Margaret aanu who was now ruler of England in all but name and she moved quickly to consolidate the lancastrian position with her main enemies in enforced Exile the queen called a parliament at centry in November 1459 this parliament of devils as it came to be known passed a bill of attainer that not only declared your his main supporters guilty of treason but also confiscated their titles and [Music] Estates fortunately we don't have acts of attaina very often these days but in the 15th century it was the worst possible punishment for a nobleman it meant not only that he was convicted of treason and that he would be executed but that he lost his lands his title and his whole family was disinherited it meant Oblivion for that family and so the yorkists were convicted of treason and Margaret probably thought that she'd won but all she' really succeeded in doing was turning a conflict which so far had been about who had control of the king into a conflict for the crown itself all Henry's incompetence had never put his hold on the throne in Peril but now Margaret's vindictive pursuit of the yorkists was the fastest route to the deepest of her husband if the queen believed that the yorkists had been beaten she was to be sorely mistaken it was not long before they began to strike back in early 1460 the Nevels began to organize highly successful raids on the Kent Coast from Cal capturing eminent lancastrians and precious lancastrian [Applause] ships in June of that year a major push under the command of the loyal John Denham saw yoris troops landed sandwich but this time they had come to stay joined by the Earls of wari Salsbury and March they Advanced on London via Canterbury Gathering support as they went until they eventually entered the capital unopposed with the support of several thousand men on the 4th of July 1460 leaving Salsbury behind to hold London War and the Earl of March began to move north advancing on the king's troops they finally met in Battle 6 days later at Northampton it was a battle that the lancastrians should have won they were after all in a superb defensive position and with Superior artillery that they did not was down to two main reasons the weather and that recurring Factor during the wars of the Roses treachery the very heavy rain that occurred in that July uh meant that the guns wouldn't actually fire on the day so the lancasterian artillery was really no use to them and their defenses Behind These ramparts were also breached because Lord gray of Rin who was in the lancastrian Army had for some reason decided to betray them um and allow the yests directly into the center of the lancastrian camp creating Mayhem [Music] chaos the yorkists wiped out a number of their major uh opponents and enemies and they captured the king now in many ways capturing the king topped off the incredible series of successes that they had enjoyed in June and July 1460 they now had established themselves as the the king's true subjects and servants they had driven out his evil advisers or many of them the queen had lost quite a lot of legitimacy by being separated from the King on the other hand capturing the king May ironically have thwarted the yorkist plans they may have expected the king to be killed in the battle which would have smoothed the way to a yorkist succession to the throne now that they had the king it would obviously be an act of treason indeed treachery to depose him uh and replace him with the yests with King Henry held prisoner in London the Earl of wari took control of the government of the country and he wasted no time appointing his family and friends to the great offices of State however the burning question remained what would the next move of the Duke of York B the yorkists on this occasion have have done exactly what they did in 1455 at St Orbin they captur the king so now they have to make good their claims of working together under him as his true Lords and we've already seen actually how you couldn't rule effectively through the king really the only solution to England's problems is actually to get rid of Henry but they made no immediate move to depose Henry they dismissed his household staff and they took control because if they were going to rule through Henry then they had to control access to him it didn't look as if Henry was to be deposed but then York returned from Ireland and claimed the [Music] K in the early days of September 1460 the Duke landed near Chester and made his way on a triumphal March towards London to claim the [Music] throne he arrived at Westminster on the 10th of October but his reception was not quite as he had hoped York arrived in London in full Royal Splender his sword borne upright before him the Royal Banner displayed and when he arrived at the palace of Westminster he stalked up to the Royal throne and put his hand on the cushion he waited for acclamation for cries of Long Live King Richard and there was silence then the voice broke the silence belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury who asked quietly did you want to see King Henry my Lord York stormed off and there was the sound of crashing doors but he didn't back down York could create a dilemma for the nobility who should they choose Henry or York if they chose Henry then York would fight but if they chose York then Margaret of vonu would be certain to fight in defense of not only her husband but her son Prince Edward it was an impossible situation despite the uncertainty a solution to the problem had to be reached for there was no doubting the validity and law of York's claim to the throne eventually a compromise was reached which was the very model of political expediency on the 24th of October an act of Accord was passed proclaiming York as the heir to the throne and establishing him as protector but which saw Henry remain King this of course meant that the king's own son the Prince of Wales was disinherited reactions to the act of Accord are quite hard to judge in some ways it seems like a sensible compromise for the people in the Southeast um on the other hand it's clear that the queen and the prince and their supporters are not going to accept it because the Queen's whole power base rests on the interests of The Prince and the act of Accord writes him out of the story in exactly the same way as the Treaty of TWA of 1420 had written the French claimant to the throne out of the story it's a very parallel document in fact so the act of Accord is a basis for Unity in the South and it means that the yorkists haven't betrayed their promises in 1460 but it isn't going to Sol the problems in England there is going to have to be a showdown between the yorkists in the South and the Queen and her supporters in the north despite her seemingly impossible position Queen Margaret's reaction to the Accord was typical in forthright tapping into a ground swell of support she rallied the lancastrian Army assembling troops in Wales under Jasper t Judah in the southwest under the Dukes of Somerset and Devon and in the north under the Earl of [Music] Northumberland in response the Duke of York's own 18-year-old son Edward Earl of March known as the rose of Ruan went at the head of an army into Wales meanwhile York and Salsbury marched North to tackle the lancastrian forces there wari remained in London to keep command of the [Music] city on the 21st of December 1460 York and Salsbury arrived at sandal Castle near Wakefield they remained there during the Christmas festival but by the end of the month the castle was under siege by lancastrian troops from the north under the Dukes of Somerset and exitor the yorkists were clearly outnumbered by the lancastrian force which made the Duke of York's fateful decision to leave the relative security of sandal castle and give battle in the Open at Wakefield all the more baffling it's likely that York and souls be made their fatal mistake in suing out of sandal Castle because they were short of supplies with their enemy controlling the countryside around they were desperately short of food and drink and that was no way to spend New Year but around the story of Wakefield there are all kinds of rumors of trickery and the most notable is that York was tricked to come out because sir Andrew trollop had dressed his men up in Neville Livery and York came out thinking that his own men had arrived only to find himself at the wrong end of trollop Spears [Applause] fought on the 30th of December the Battle of Wakefield was a disaster for the yorkist cause more than 2,000 yorkist troops met their death 10 times the number of lancastrian [Music] dead amongst the Fallen was the Duke of York himself along with his second son the Earl of Rutland Richard Neville the Earl of Salsbury was captured his bitter Rivals the Percy family took the opportunity to settle old scores and the 60-year-old Earl was dragged off and [Music] [Applause] [Music] beheaded the heads of the two dead yorkist leaders were placed on stakes and displayed over the gates of the city of York itself in a final obscene gesture of mockery a paper crown was placed on the Duke's decapitated head after Wakefield the lancastrian troops who had not been paid by the crown went on the Rampage sacking and looting the towns of Grantham Stanford and Northampton [Music] lurid rumors of lancastrian atrocities were Rife the kland chronicle gives a chilling account of [Music] events the dukee being thus removed from this world the northmen swept onwards like a whirlwind from the north and in the impulse of their Fury attempted to overrun the whole of England at this period too popers and beggars flocked forth from those quarters in infinite numbers just like so many mice rushing forth from their holes and universally devoted themselves to spoil and rapine without regard for place or person for besides the vast quantities of property which they collected outside they also irreverently rushed in their unbridled and frantic rage into churches and other sanctuaries of God and most nefariously plundered them of their chales books and vestments an unutterable crime broke open the pixes in which were kept the body of Christ and shook out the sacred elements there from when the priests and other faithful of Christ in any way offered to make resistance like so many abandoned wretches as they were they cruy slaughtered them in the very churches or churchyards thus did they proceed with impunity spreading in vast multitudes over a space of 30 m in breadth and covering the whole surface of the Earth just like so many locusts made their way almost to the very walls of London it's quite difficult to assess who really was in command of the lancasterian forces as they came South because most of the accounts of this were of course Written In the period of the yorkist Kings and therefore are extremely hostile to Margaret it was assumed that she was in command that it was on her initiative that these troops did come South looting as they came and it was of course the worst possible thing that could happen in uh the Civil War but it was the first time that that kind of behavior really had been seen on a large scale from the point of view of winning the hearts and minds of the country at large back to Henry V 6 it was obviously a very stupid thing to do you didn't actually do that sort of thing inside England that you could do it to the Scots to the Welsh the Irish and the French but it was not supposed to happen in England it wasn't anything particularly outside the Border regions that people in England were in any way used to and therefore seemed exceptionally shocking although the defeat at Wakefield was a terrible blow to the Orcs all was not lost the Earl of war was still in control of London and Edward Earl of March now the principal yorkist claimant was still with his army at Gloucester once again Queen Margaret rallied her troops riding South with them in order to attack wari within the lancastrian Army were the Duke of Somerset the Earl of Northumberland and the Lords Clifford and Wells all all men who having lost their fathers in the fighting at St Albans in 1455 had the additional motive of Revenge the following months brought several more bitter skirmishes in the west the Earl of March received the news of death of his father followed by ominous reports of the lancastrian Earls of Pembrook and Wilshire had landed in Wales with a supporting Army of friend Breton and Irish troops faced with this new threat Edward joined up with the Armed Forces of William Hastings who had narrowly escaped from the disaster at Ludo together Edward and Hastings marched to meet the Welsh lancastrians and their men it was Jasper tuder who was Henry VI 6's half brother his father Owen Tudor had married Katherine of valir the Widow of Henry V the that would face Edward on the field of battle while Tuda was a brave enough Soldier he was no match for Edward the two armies met at mortimer's cross between lemonster and Herford on the 2nd of February in [Music] 1461 it was candl mass day a holy festival and it is said that while the yorkist C was holding Mass before the battle three blazing Suns appeared in the sky believing this to be a Divine Omen Edward drove his army in hard against the lancastrians winning a decisive [Applause] [Music] Victory to Mark the Triumph Edward later Incorporated a golden Sunburst into to his coat of arms there was another Act of celebration in Herford where the captured Owen Tudor father of Jasper was executed the orcus success at mortimer's Cross was welcome of course but it paled into insignificance when compared to the disaster that befell them at the second Battle of St orans in February 1461 it was to that unfortunate town the scene of the first yorkist Victory some six years previously that the Earl of wark had marched an enormous army with his prisoner the unhappy King Henry in tow to meet the threat posed by the advancing lancastrians the Second Battle of St albin's all went horribly wrong for the archists it seems that a small part of the orist Vanguard was attacked by a much larger lancastrian Army and the rest of the orist army headed by wari failed then to engage the lancastrians successfully and indeed the Army melted away in the face of the lancastrian victory over the Vanguard and in the course of the route of the yorkist army the King was recaptured by the lancastrians so it really did look for a moment as if the game was now completely up for the yorkists so Andrew trollop was knighted he' killed 15 men but in a remarkable display of mock modesty trollop said I only killed 15 men I was wounded early in the battle and I couldn't move I had to wait for them to come to me and here you can imagine him gesturing to the piles of bodies surrounding him as he finished off they had to come to me but here they lie still Queen Margaret was now very much in control rumors circulated that during the Second Battle of St Orbin where he was rescued by the lancastrians King Henry had stood in the midst of the fighting raving laughing and singing madly certainly the king's State of Mind was very frail giving Margaret free reign to oversee the events which followed the great lancastrian victory giving the power of legal judgment to her seven-year-old son the Prince of Wales Margaret staged the trial of several captured yorkists the infant Prince sentenced them all to death after the Flight of wari the road to London was clear for the king and queen but news of the Carnage that had occurred after lford bridge and Wakefield had traveled fast even though the queen sent her troops to dunable far away from London the royal couple of their retinue were refused entry through the gates of the city the lancastrian troops retreated to York while Edward Earl of March and the Earl of Warick rode into London to an enthusiastic [Music] welcome for Edward the time had come yorkist fortunes had fluctuated wildly but fate had conspired to place him in the perfect position to seize the throne of England so it was that on the 1st of March 1461 the bishop of Salsbury War's brother announced that Edward would replace Henry as Monarch and 3 days later he was proclaimed King Edward IV in St Paul's Cathedral Edward was Creed as a savior in London desperate to avoid looting by Margaret's troops the city government had grown increasingly disenchanted with the lancastrian regime during the 1450s so really they had few quals in in accepting Edward as king unlike the nobility who still on the whole favored Henry V 6 the claim to the throne turned what was uh a civil disturbance in the reign of Henry V 6 into the dynastic conflict that we know as the wars of the Roses it was the only way for the yorkists out of their predicament and whether they whether Edward IV went for the throne uh with a heavy heart or with a glad heart and a sense of right we we can't know but I think he must have known what battles would lie ahead Boy by financial support from the city Alderman Edward set out to seal his accession by crushing his lancastrian enemies in a final climactic battle the lancastrian troops were still in the north of the country desperate for food after a hard winter of foraging the supplies taken after St orans were now all but gone the yorkists by contrast were in a far better position after receiving supplies from the capital and they now prepared to pursue the lancastrians and to bring them to battle Edward raised troops from East Anglia through his supporter there the Duke of Norfolk and from the Midlands through the Earl of wari War's Uncle Lord folkenberg placed himself at the head of troops gathered from Kent and Wales marching from London on the 11th of March Edward himself followed on the 13th arriving at pontif frct on the 28th of March he was now the commander of a huge yorkist Army the scene was now set for one of England's bloodiest battles the Battle of ton field this was the first deposition in postconquest English History where there actually had to be a battle in which one side had to defeat the other I mean this by this time it really was yorkists those on Edward's side against lancastrians sort of the rump of the realm that was still prepared to fight for Henry VI 6 and Margaret but the sheer size of the battle and the fact that the battle had to be fought indicates that Edward had got quite a long way to go before he could make himself effective King of England the Battle of ton was one of the most major if not the most major battle of the whole Wars of the Roses huge lancastrian Army huge yorkist Army and a strong sense on the part of both armies that this was really the final showdown on Saturday the 28th of March a bitterly cold Winter's day the fight fting began a lancastrian force had been sent to hold the crossing over the river air which lay on the road between York and ponre it was only after the most Savage combat which claimed the lives of many men on both sides the lancastrians were forced to retire across the river both armies spent an uncomfortable night sleeping in the open at the mercy of the elements on the 29th of March Palm Sunday the yorkist forces came face to face with the main lancastrian Army some 80,000 men were about to meet in Mortal Combat the weather was atrocious with snow and hail and a biting howling wind that blew straight towards the lancastrian Lions this unrelenting Gale was to have a huge bearing on the outcome of the battle what we think happened at the ble of ton was that the wind blew the lancastrian arrows back onto their own side and so although there were some significant lancastrian successes in the course of the battle a tremendous cavalry charge um a major part of their uh tactics I suppose were turned against them the field of Talon typified the savagery of medieval battle men hacked desperately at one another with no core to ask or give [Music] the decisive moment came when yorkist reinforcements under the command of the Duke of Norfolk arrived which turned the tide of battle in the yorkists favor the fighting raged well into the night until the lancastrians finally broke and ran fleeing across the freezing Waters of the nearby Beck the yorkists gave Chase cutting men off and slaughtering them as they ran for safety it is said that the became choked with bodies and that the water ran red with blood for more than 3 miles [Music] Downstream perhaps 20,000 men died during the Battle of taon no one knows the full extent of the Carnage a Calamity had befallen the lancastrians among the dead were the Earl of northand Lord egrant and Lord Clifford the great Soldier sir Andrew trollop also perished along with more than 40 other Knights while the losses among the yorkist nobility were light after the battle of ton there is in a sense no lancastrian Army there is a king there is the queen there is a prince there are a handful of lancastrian magnates and the few men who are willing still to follow these men the yorkist victory at ton was fundamental really this was the last battle of Henry VI 6's reign in many ways this is the end of Henry VI 6's Reign Henry V 6 is nothing more really than a pretender to the throne the lancastrian danger is for the time being wiped out but most of all lancastrian legitimacy is wiped out it's now the lancastrians who are the Renegades and the house of York which is the legitimate and convincing claimant to the throne of England so it's really the end of Henry VI 6's Reign the beginning of Edward IV's but it's just a milestone in the ongoing conflict uh that is the wars of the Roses when news of the disastrous defeat at ton came through Henry V 6 Queen Margaret and the prince of Wales all fled to the safety of Scotland soon to be joined by The Dukes of exitor and Somerset Edward's victory was complete England was his and the rose of Ruan was officially crowned Edward IV in Westminster Abbey on the 29th of June 1461 the house of York had the throne at last but it owed everything to the support of the Earl of wari a man Edward could not afford to alienate and a man the people were now calling the king maker [Music] in 1461 the intermittent but brutal fighting that characterized the wars of the Roses was 5 years old during that time the upper hand in the struggle had been gained and lost by both sides but now the future of the House of York at last seemed assured King Edward IV was on the throne of England while the deposed King Henry V 6th cowed with his family and the remains of his court in [Applause] Scotland the bloody Battle of ton had been a complete disaster for the lancastrians many of the Nobles who had taken to the field in support of the House of Lancaster were now [Music] dead it seemed as if King Edward and the yorkists had won the war now it appeared that they must busy themselves winning the peace it was time for one of the most important and charismatic figures of the 15th century to emerge from the complex merrygoround of Richards Edwards and Henry's he was the king's cousin Richard Neville the Earl of wari a man who would be remembered by history as wari the king [Music] maker [Music] [Music] wari seemed to Tower over the polity of the 1460s he is the most powerful ful magnate in the realm with the largest lands a prominent role in defeating the lancastrians in the North in the early 1460s and a sort of role as Edward's informal Chief counselor people early in the decade in particular expect this mature magnate to be guiding a king who's only 19 when he comes to the throne surviving contemporary portraits depict Edward IV in his middle years and his likeness is perhaps not a flattering one the king however was considered very attractive in his Youth and he cut a very different figure to the weak lancastrian King Henry V 6 Edward was very much made from the same mold as his father Richard Duke of York while Henry V 6 had been a pale imitation of his own father the soldierly Henry V the difference between the two men was striking if the English had been asked to create a king from scratch in 1461 it's likely that their creation would have looked very like the young Edward IV he was tall about 6'3 impossibly handsome well educated intelligent and best of all he was a magnificent Soldier his record was simply battles fought three battles w three so he was greeted with delight and a claim in London but amongst the nobility the mood was more subdued on the one hand there are many reasons to cooperate with the new king who is effective and promising on the other hand there are some constituencies who are simply not going to want to get on with Edward there are a number of old lancastrians who have in a sense lost everything and whose only chance of regaining It Is by siding with the lancastrian heir although the lancastrians had received a severe setback pockets of support remained throughout the country after all despite his obvious failings Henry VII had reigned as king for nearly 40 years and he still commanded some degree of loyalty lancastrian support was concentrated mainly in the north of England it also enjoyed the backing of the Scottish Court which still provided refuge for Henry and his family the Lancaster had the support of the Northumberland Gentry and in the wake of the defeat at ton two surviving lancastrian leaders the Duke of exitor and Jasper Tuda set out for Wales to raise an Army against Edward there sadly for them their attempted Uprising in October 1461 was quickly put down and their troops were scattered no doubt chastened exitor and Jasper were forced to flee back to the protection of the [Music] Scots plans for another lancastrian Rebellion this time headed by the Earl of Oxford were hatched during the following spring but it never got off the ground Edward discovered the plot and he had Oxford its Chief Architect and his sons of Aubry executed for treason [Music] support for the lancastrians I think is waning steadily as it becomes obvious that they are not really making much impact on Edward's security I think pragmatism comes into play here there are individuals who will support Lancaster very strongly but most I think are increasingly conscious that Edward is probably there to stay and that's something inevitably that becomes more marked the longer he does stay in April 1462 Margaret aanu that Dy champion of the lancastrian cause set off for France there she made the most of her connections with the French Court negotiating with King Louis VI 11th in return for the French support that she hoped would restore Henry to the English Throne Margaret W support of France by offering them Cal Louis the 11th was very attracted by that but the problem with the calal promise was that for the king to take C he would need to move through the domains of the Duke of burgundy and the Duke of burgundy was hostile to that so in fact Margaret didn't get the strong French backing that she had hoped for but she did get some support and this enabled her and a Norman Knight called s Pierre de bre who was a close uh Ally and contact of hers to send a small Force for to land in the northeast of England in 1462 and Edward's response and War's response was fast they quickly assembled an army and moved North in strength to confront Margaret at first things went well for Margaret and her small army they managed to secure the garrisons of bambra dunbur and Walworth and her troops also besieged and captured alwick Castle but more men were clearly required to make a fullscale rebellion possible and Margaret decided to take her French soldiers to Scotland in order to raise more support it was to prove a disastrous move William Gregory reported that Margaret returned to Scotland by water and there arose such a tempest upon her that she forsook her ship and escaped with a small boat and the boat was sunk with much of her stuff and three great ships as well so four 46 Frenchmen were taken in the church of Holy Island Margaret's fleet was marooned those not already lost to the Shipwreck were captured and killed by local [Music] theorists while disaster was striking the lancastrian fleet the yorkist Earl of wari was steadily advancing on land towards their captured garrisons Walworth was recaptured but with winter approaching wari decided that the better plan was to lay Siege to the [Music] rest the provisions of the remaining garrisons ran out over the course of a bitter winter until the men within their walls were so hungry they had to kill and eat their own horses over Christmas dunbur and Bamber surrendered Ed although the lancastrians inside were given free Pardons and safe conduct by the King sir Harry bort the Duke of Somerset had been among the lancastrian supporters taken at the captured castle of dunbur after receiving his pardon with the rest the Duke traveled to Durham for an audience with Edward the Fourth there in a remarkable turnaround the diard lancastrian swore his allegiance to the yorkist king given somerset's history and that their fathers had been the bitterest of Rivals Edward treated The Defector with great leniency even reversing the attainer that had previously been placed upon his titles and Estates to the utter astonishment of Edward's supporters the turncoat Duke somehow rapidly gained Edward's trust and it was not long before he had become one of the king's closest advisers Somerset was even made captain of the royal bodyguard a position that meant he was constantly at the king's side somerset's appointment might have been a clear demonstration of faith on Edward's part but for many yorkists it also showed a dangerous lack of judgment Edward's decision to trust Somerset seems to me absolutely typical of Edward's political wisdom really in the 1460s this is a king who knows that if he is to reunite the poity he must be open-handed and generous he must give people Second Chances all the successful usurpers had taken that posture as far as they could and Edward follows skillfully in their footsteps if Edward could win Somerset over then it would be a huge propaganda coup what he wanted the other lancastrians to be thinking was well if Somerset has moved over to Edward then why we still fighting we might as well give in too but at the same time Edward's ego was probably at work he probably thought that a dazzling smile and an arm around the shoulder from the wonderful King Edward was all it would take to bring Somerset over to his side he was going to be grievously disappointed despite gaining the trust of the king hostility towards the Duke of Somerset remained strong among yorkists at Northampton for example the people of the Town seized Somerset during a visit with the King and attempted to Lynch him as the astonished Monarch looked on they failed but the incident confirmed to Edward that he could no longer continue to keep Sumer set so close to him for the Duke's own protection he was dispatched to Wales where away from the king's influence it was not long before he showed his true colors William Gregory reported that the same year about Christmas that false Duke of Somerset without leave of the king stole out of Wales with a private following towards Newcastle in the way thither he was noticed and was nearly taken in his bed but he escaped away in his shirt and Barefoot and when his men knew that he had escaped and his false treason was discovered his men stole from New Castle as very false traitors and some of them were taken and lost their heads for their labor and then the king had knowledge of the false disposition of this false Duke Harry of Somerset while Edward was busy with the odious Somerset Margaret and her troops continued their Northern [Applause] [Music] invasions despite War's successes against them during the previous winter the lancastrians were still strong enough to lay Siege to the northern garrisons during [Applause] 1463 in July Henry Margaret and their Scots troops also besieged norham Castle but they were repelled and pursued by wari and his brother Lord montigue disturbed by the exiled Queen's persistence Edward sought to deprive her of her most dangerous supporter and so in October 1463 the English king made peace with France it was a huge personal blow for Margaret and she returned to Scotland only to discover that here too Edward had outmaneuvered her during the Queen's absence he had also made a truce with the king of Scots over the winter of 1463 Henry isolated and with his cause seemingly hopeless established himself in the small stronghold of bambera Castle but on the 15th of May 1464 Edward's forces finally met and defeated Henry's Army at the Battle of Hexum it was there that Edward also caught up with the Renegade Duke of Somerset this time there was no forgiveness or leniency from the young king the king had Somerset and his followers beheaded the very same day I think he hexom is damaging to lancastrian cause it's not literally the last straw but a number of lancastrian leaders die as a result of the battle and given that the longer Edward can stay in power the more he will be accepted any Victory is going to contribute to that after the battle of hexen bambra Castle also fell and Henry V 6 cut a sorry figure as he wandered helplessly around the countryside trying to avoid capture by his enemies Edward the fourth's attention now turned to perhaps more pleasant but certainly no less important matters he was without doubt the most eligible bachelor in Europe and the people of England were Keen that he should produce hirs to the throne that will put an end to the prospect of any future fighting over the succession the main talk after hexen was therefore about marriage who was to be the future Queen of England Edward's marriage plans were to cause a furious disagreement with the Earl of wari who sought to arrange a match with a French princess King Edward who already had illegitimate children was determined to make his own choice to War's utter fury on the first of May 1464 he secretly married the Widow of Sir John Gray the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville Sir John Gray had died fighting at s doans in 1461 on the side of the lancastrians we can explain Edward's marriage in one short word lust he'd had numerous Mistresses but Elizabeth Woodville appears to have avoided adding herself to that list and so The Story Goes even after Edward had exhausted his apparently endless list of s seduction techniques she still turned him down even when he put a dagger to her throat Edward knew this was a political mistake why else would he have kept the story of his marriage secret and really only revealed it when he was absolutely forced to do so it's easy to quip that Edward didn't marry dynastically because he let his heart or his desires rule R his head but the truth was probably that he was beginning to resent wari that the continued Tage by his mentor was irritating him he wanted to be his own man he wanted to make his own decisions and his marriage was one of those decisions Edward's Joy of bride was deeply unpopular his own mother The Duchess of York was so outraged that she claimed the Earl of schow's daughter Elizabeth Lucy who was pregnant by the King was already married to Edward a claim that was easily disproved accusations of Witchcraft were even leveled at Elizabeth Woodville and her mother most ominously though the Earl of wari was beside himself with anger at the king's snub to his own plans and this would have drastic long-term consequences by favoring his new in-laws the Woodville King Edward had succeeded in alienating possibly the most powerful man in the country wari was Soul searingly angry he really had been made to look a fool in front of the French there he was negotiating for Edward's marriage when behind his back Edward was already married to Elizabeth Woodville however not everyone was outraged within a very short time Elizabeth woodville's numerous brothers and sisters were being married off into noble families the the marriage which really upset the noble sensibilities was that of John Woodville he was about 20 years old at the time when he married Katherine Neville a dower Duchess of Norfolk and it's estimated she was about 65 at the time of the marriage it was known as the Diabolical marriage Edward's new father-in-law Lord Rivers was not slow to use his recently acquired influence soon the Woodville family was perhaps perhaps the most powerful and influential in the country in a further snub to the Earl of wari two woodfields were married after to his Fierce Rivals from the Herbert Family the UN wark had no sons and he was the father of two as yet unmarried daughters who would be his arresters one of the Grievances at least that wari had against the woodfields is that the Queen's sisters absorbed most of the eligible aristocratic bachelors in England in the 1460s now this wouldn't have mattered if Edward had agreed to War's alternative plans perhaps a marriage to foreign princes abroad perhaps even marriages to Edward's own younger brothers but Edward forbad these Alternatives and so Warick had no one to marry his daughters too and worse at court there were the Woodville girls flaunting their new husbands for war the Woodville marriage was a disaster politically the new Queen and her relatives created an alternative power base around the king whereas previously he had dominated influence in the summer of 1465 The Fugitive Henry VI 6 was finally captured in Lancashire and brought to the Tower of London meanwhile Margaret her son the lancastrian Prince of Wales the Duke of exitor and the new Duke of Somerset were now living in Exile in France waiting for an opportunity to rekindle lancastrian support Edward's appointment of Lord Rivers as Lord treasurer of England and his creation as an Earl further increased the domination of the the Woodville and soon the people began to be as scornful of Edward's Court party as they once had of the avaricious ministers that had surrounded Henry V 6 as the tensions between wari and the Woodville worsened an uneasy atmosphere of mistrust began to dominate the court although the lancastrian threat seemed far off a few speculative individuals began to take an interest in the old cause by sending Queen Margaret messages of support by May 1467 Edward had become distinctly tired of the Neville family and he decided to act War's brother was dismissed from his position as Lord Chancellor the rift widened further the following year when at the height of War's careful negotiations for peace with France Edward married off his Sister Margaret of York to the Duke of burgundy the marriage was disastrous for War's ambassadorial plans as it Allied England to France's closest enemy for war it was the final straw his patience with the King was at an [Music] end and so the bitter and disillusioned Earl began to establish a rival faction to the Woodville at court in collusion with Edward's younger brother the Duke of Clarence it's not altogether clear whether Warick talks Clarence into supporting him or whether Clarence seeks out wari Clarence comes of age in 1466 somewhat early because he's only 17 and he seems to be a man full of ambition and hope and if Warick is going to stand as a reformer of Edward's regime which seems to be the position that he's striking in 1469 then an ally very close to the king is a useful asset it makes wari look like a reformer and Clarence may also have thought maybe he might succeed his brother if Edward is now thought to be uh an unsuccessful king a king who could be done away with to seal their new alliance wari planned a marriage between Clarence and his own daughter lady Isabel and they all sailed to C from where they planned to hatch a plot against the king if this were not enough domestic troubles were already brewing for Edward in the spring of 1469 an outcry over tax sparked an uprising in Yorkshire led by Robin of reedsdale forces under Lord montigue crushed the Rebellion but the rebels quickly reformed and they reappeared in Lancashire in June by now reddale and his supporters numbered several thousand men and stirring memories of Jack Cade's anti- lancastrian rebellion of 1450 a Manifesto was issued that condemned Edward's court and demanded an end to the influence of the Woodville this was all very convenient for wari of course could his hand be seen behind the Rebellion the reedsdale rebellion was led by members of the con family who were strong supporters of wari wari was very much behind this attempt to unseat Edward they blamed the king's evil counselors yet again but the target was Edward Edward at this stage was far from the dynamic active figure that had taken the throne he was lazy slow to react and he paid for it in July the Duke of Clarence went ahead and married War's daughter Isabelle Neville the marriage expressly forbidden by Edward was an open Act of defiance and the Rival Court party now firmly established in C set about raising men to invade England and overthrow the king it came on the 16th of July 1469 when the Earl of wari landed with his army on the Kent Coast King Edward received the news of War's Rebellion while he was at Nottingham but though he must have been aware that the Earl was marching on London he chose to await reinforcements before making his move the king soon found himself in a very awkward position Robin of reedsdale and his men were pressing down from the north trapping the king between the two advancing forces meanwhile lancastrian rebels in Oxford intercepted Edward's Welsh Army headed by William Herbert at edut they had been marching to fight at the king's side but now Herbert's men were brought to battle and [Applause] routed on War's expressed orders Herbert himself the Queen's father Earl rivers and the Queen's brother Sir John Woodville were all captured and beheaded War had taken his first Revenge the executions after edut happen for two reasons first of all war has argued that these men around the king are traitors therefore they deserve to die and really these Battlefield or post Battlefield executions though slightly more Savage than usual do fall into a kind of pattern familiar from earlier battles in the wars of the Roses the second reason is that these are men who are never going to forgive wari and never going to work with him in the future that one thing that opponents of the crown must have learned from the conflicts under Henry V 6 was that you had to have your men around the king in the household and wari is not going to have a group of men who are inimical to him surviving this conflict because they will get him on hearing the news of the defeat at edat Edward's men began to desert in droves and for the first time in his life military defeat was staring the King full in the face completely unsure of what to do next he chose event to ride South towards London but was captured and confined at middleham Castle it was becoming clear that wari who had once paved the way to Edward's coronation was now hatching plans to eventually replace the king with his young son-in-law Clarence wari may have reflected that Edward was not a man to put up with the kind of shenanigans that he had engaged in in 1469 and that therefore he would have to seek an opportunity to replace the king and the natural successor given that Edward has no children no Sons anyway at this time would be his brother George of Clarence the chances of Clarence being accepted are very remote indeed the problem is that clarence's title is obviously weaker than Edwards because he is the younger brother and the hasn't really been enough criticism of Edward to justify his cynical removal and replacement by another member of the royal family war must have known that even now putting Clarence on the throne would be no easy task a fact that was confirmed by the Looting and rioting that broke out when the news of Edward's confinement became public as a consequence by September 1469 Edward was once again free after having been released from middleham Castle the king headed straight for London and just a few chaotic weeks after edut Edward was back at court again even after Warick and Clarence have given Edward this trouble in 1469 the king seems typically pragmatic and flexible willing to forgive and forget seeing I think at this stage the importance of patching up these incipient difficulties within the orist establishment because presumably he can read his political Tea Leaves quite as well as wari can for Edward he wanted to deal strongly with wari but he didn't have the power to do so wari must have wanted to Rebel again against Edward but he didn't have the support to do so the two had to live with each other they must have smiled grimly but their minds are working furiously what can I do next what will he do next next peace was unlikely to last long Edward crushed another lancastrian rebellion in March 1470 at the Battle of loose coat field for the Earl of war the game was up he was forced to flee once more to Cal there to regroup and lick his wounds in April 1470 King Edward officially proclaimed that both his own brother and his one-time closest advisor were traitors to the crown later that same month wari arrived at on Flur and asked for the protection of the French King Louis VI 11th a fugitive in a foreign land he may have been but War had certainly not taken his eyes off the prize of the Throne of England it was however more and more obvious that a stronger claimant than Clarence was needed and so the ever resourceful Earl came to an agreement with King Louie War struck a double bargain at on in 1470 with Queen Margaret he made a handsome apology for his behavior in the 1450s and made a wedding agreement that his daughter his younger daughter Anne would marry Edward of Lancaster the Prince of Wales and hopefully the Future lancastrian King with Louis the 11th he promised that this New lancastrian England would Ally with the French King against the Duke of burgundy and that promise then hung over War's fortunes during the redeption war and Margaret had to overcome 15 years of hatred hostility Bloodshed it was an enormously difficult task it needed all the Wilds of Louis the 11th of France to bring them together he succeeded but only just and even after they'd agreed to work together even then Margaret insisted that her her son shouldn't go to England until wari had secured the country for Henry V [Music] 6 in September 1470 war and Clarence landed with troops in Devon where they joined the army of Lord Oxford and Jasper tuder meanwhile in the north War's brother Lord montigue who had also switched sides marched at the head of an army towards Doncaster where King Edward was busy gathering support monu's defection to the lancastrian side took Edward completely by surprise and fearful of once more becoming trapped between two hostile armies he decided that discretion was the better part of valor there was nothing else to do but to flee the country riding hard into East Anglia the king boarded a ship Bound for the low countries arriving in the ha in early October 1471 but leaving behind a kingdom at the mercy of his enemies at virtually the same time War arrived with his supporters in London and released Henry the 6 from the tower it was now that wari really earned the epithet by which he is remembered the king maker immediately restored the lancastrian Henry to the throne of England it's hard to imagine the country welcoming Henry VII back as king he's in a very dilapidated state by this stage and we have a famous Chronicle account of him tied onto a horse being paraded around London with what's described unflatteringly as an old blue gown on and actually the burundian chronicler shastan talks of the king as looking like a stuffed wool sack lifted by its ears at this stage if we can imagine the scene there was Henry in an old blue gown he had to be taken by the hand by the Archbishop of York effectively pulled around London a small group of supporters the Aged even more aged Lord zuch just about able to hold up the sword of State in front of him and some kind of Royal Standard apparently made out of Fox's tails being carried on a spear the whole site was pathetic and as the chronicler said this simp we didn't win support Henry must have been bewildered to learn the identity of the men who had secured his freedom and restored him to the throne the old King's return did not provide an end to the story of course quite the opposite the court was riddled with suspicion and mistrust and filled with those who could not forget that wari had once been the staun of yorkists these were the fathers brothers and uncles of many that had been killed during bloody battles with War's armies and no amount of expedient political alliances would erase their hatred and bitterness the Dukes of Somerset and exitor were particularly hostile to the man who had styled himself the king's left tenant so or's position was far from secure and his future uncertain but did he realize that perhaps his greatest threat now came from within now there was a rather uneasy balance between the dynastic interests of George Duke of Clarence and the interests of the House of Lancaster which were of course against the yorkist claim so Clarence was rather a square peg in a round hole as far as the redeption is concerned his future would look pretty precarious even to an idiot like Clarence actually so he's not a very reliable Ally for wari at the same time the emergence of Edward of Lancaster is also likely to mean that War's period of influence over the management of the redeption regime is going to come to an end and the Earl of wari looks forward to a rather uncertain future and possibly trumped up charges of treason treason which of course he had committed against the House of Lancaster so the future for Warick the future for Clarence and as things turn out the future for Lancaster is actually very uncertain King Edward IV was of course determined to win back his throne support throughout the country for the exiled King was strong and it became stronger as Henry's old weaknesses as king gradually resurfaced and from England came news that his Queen Elizabeth had given birth to a son now there was an heir for the house of York Edward had every reason to fight for his crown Edward gathered together an army at flushing in March 1471 it was perhaps only 2,000 strong not exactly a mighty force with which to fight the battles that would restore Edward to the throne after a severe battering by the elements Edward eventually landed at Ravens spur on the river Humber in the north of England on the 14th of March from sens spur he marched to York before turning South towards the Midlands where the king picked up 3,000 much needed recruits for the Army the Earl of wari had not been idle however he too was in the Midlands at Coventry and it was here that Edward planned to bring the Earl to battle but War despite having a larger Army than Edward would not be lured from behind the walls of the town it may have been that wari was waiting for more reinforcements forces under the command of exitor Oxford and Clarence were supposed to be on their way whatever the reason even wari was probably unprepared for the next twist in the tail the disaffected and embittered Clarence had decided to take his own revenge and switch sides the king and his brother were dramatically reconciled and perhaps even more importantly clarence's sudden conversion to the orchest cause also brought with it 4,000 more men for Edward's Army deciding to run the risk of leaving War's Army intact at Coventry Edward marched to London arriving triumphantly in the city in early April 1471 he immediately seized the hais Henry V 6 although there was no violence involved and lodged him in the tower supposedly for his own safety Edward was reunited with Queen Elizabeth and his new son the Prince of Wales and once again the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown upon his head however urgent news came to spoil this domestic Bliss and concentrate the king's mind wari and his army had at last left covantry and had marched South as far as St orban's the time for a final Reckoning between the king and the King maker was now at hand and Edward marched his army now some 10,000 strong out to meet the Earl's forces the two armies met at the Battle of Barnet then a small town to the north of [Music] London chroniclers recorded that perhaps 20,000 men did battle and although it is believed that War's men outnumbered Edwards it was the yorkist side that attacked in a thick Morning Mist at about 500 a.m. on Easter Sunday April 14th 1471 flanked by troops under the command of Lord Hastings and Richard of glester Edward who is said to have been mounted on a white horse fought his way into the lancastrian army under the command of War montigue Oxford and exitor the battle was a confused melee of savage hand toand fighting the thick blanket of mist played a crucial part in the outcome the weather conditions meant two things one that soldiers in one part of the battlefield didn't really know what was going on elsewhere and secondly that the two armies had not lined up opposite each other so there was an area where War's Army was dominant and an area where Edward's Army was dominant the area where War's Army was dominant put the the yorkists the supporters of Edward IV quickly to flight and indeed pursued those men off the battlefield losing therefore War's Army a significant proportion of its troops at the other end of War's Army is wari himself and this end of War's Army is outnumbered by the main body of the orist strength where the King Edward IV is and it's in that context that wari is overcome and he and his brother montigue are murdered [Music] the triumphant King returned to London where he had the banners of the defeated lancastrian leaders displayed on the walls of St Paul's the mutilated bodies of the brothers Neville were also put on display in the cathedral as Grizzly proof that they had at last been killed and there was little point in any lancastrian sympathizer trying to start a rumor that they had escaped Edward had little time to glory in his victory for news came that on the very same day that War's Army had been crushed at Barnet Margaret ofu and her son the Prince of Wales had landed at Waymouth Margaret and Edward of Lancaster immediately begin to try and build support in the west country an area with quite a lot of lancastrian leanings actually and aided by the B Duke of Somerset and the Courtney Earl of Devon or pretended the Earl of Devon they are able to build up quite a lot of support in that area Edward meanwhile flush from victory at Barnet needs himself to gather a fresh Army and wheels round through the Midlands Gathering it up eventually forces Margaret to a battlefield at tuxbury she's trying to head up towards Wales but Edward is able to get Gloucester to close its gat against her and forc them therefore up the seven to the Ford at tuxbury and that's where the confrontation takes place between two pretty substantial and well supported [Music] armies on the 4th of May with the support of the commanders that had triumphed at Barnet only weeks before Edward attacked the lancastrian Army and despite the undoubted military skills of the Duke of Somerset his troops were no match Edward and his [Applause] commanders yest infantri and Spearman were soon overwhelming somerset's men on the lancastrian right flank the inexperienced Prince of Wales was unable to hold the remaining lancastrian troops together they crumbled broke and ran for their lives abandoning their commanders to their fate towards the town of tuxbury they fled but hundreds were caught and hacked to death in an echo of the battle of ton 10 years earlier the field where many met their end was later named bloody Meadow although no one could be certain it is thought that 2,000 lancastrian troops died at dukesbury the lancastrian nobility was decimated and perhaps worst of all the Prince of Wales himself was among among those butchered on the battlefield we don't know exactly how young prince Edward died the story of him being captured hauled before King Edward and slapped around the face with the Royal Gauntlet then murdered in Cold Blood well that it doesn't appear in the Contemporary sources it's more likely that the Young Prince was killed in the battle or in flight but even then there's a fair chance that it was a Cold Blood blooded Murder King Edward didn't want the Young Prince to leave the battlefield with him dead the lancastrian cause was his named following the Battle of dukesbury the Duke of Somerset was dragged from the sanctuary of a local Abbey and beheaded it was a grim end to the house of bord the Duke's father had fallen at the war's first battle at St Albans and his brother executed after the battle of hexen other surviving Lang castan Nobles met similar rough Justice the defeated Queen Margaret doubtless brokenhearted by the death of her son was captured at little mulvin and brought before the king at covantry for the queen it was all over with her son dead only her weak and unstable husband remained as a symbol of the lancastrian cause Margaret was taken to London to begin an imprisonment that would last 4 years the Battle of dukesbury was a watershed it marked the end of the House of Lancaster shortly afterwards in May 1471 came the news that confirmed the struggle for the crown was finally over Henry V 6th was dead as soon as Edward of Lancaster dies at chury in effect that signs his father's death warrant there's no longer any poit iCal or diplomatic reason to keep Henry V 6 alive Edward spread the rumor that Henry had died of pure displeasure and Melancholy in the tower the truth is that he was murdered in practice what this tells us that even now Edward couldn't admit that he had had Henry murdered he had to find another story when Henry's coffin was open centuries later the skull had matted blood around the remaining hair Henry the 6 was murdered and that was the end of the House of Lancaster whatever the truth behind Henry's death it was convenient to say the least for King Edward now both the Old King and his son were dead and the almost Unthinkable Prospect of a period of domestic peace was very real indeed but one of the most controversial figures of British history was hovering in the wings a man who would play the central part in the final cataclysm of the wars of the [Music] [Applause] Roses by May 1471 the wars of the Roses had blighted the country for 16 years but now the lancastrian Cs lay in tatters on the bloody field of duesbury the lancastrian nobility had been butchered during the battle or executed in its aftermath Edward Prince of Wales was among the dead Queen Margaret of onju was a prisoner of king Edward IV the convenient death of the Old King Henry V 6 in the Tower of London Less Than 3 weeks later at last secured the crown for Edward and a yorkist golden age was about to be ushered in lurking in the wings however was the king's youngest brother Richard Duke of Gloucester a man whose Hardness of Heart was remarkable even by the standards of this ruthless age he was not only to emerge as one of English history's most controversial characters he was also to take Center Stage for the bloody climax to the wars of the [Music] Roses [Music] a [Music] after the redeption Edward IV and the orist can really breathe a sigh of relief and Edward is now free to show himself the effective political leader that we've all along suggested that he was Edward's polies in the second Reign were in fact almost exactly the same as in his first Reign but the absence of lancastrian position meant that he was simply more secure and to put it crudely could perhaps get away with more so now Edward could look forward to a long and challenged Reign and after all he was still not quite 30 and also he now had a male Heir born while he was in exile for the White Rose the future looked very Rosy indeed a smooth succession to the throne therefore appeared to have been secured the only small Cloud on the horizon for Edward came in the shape of Henry tuder the Earl of Richmond who had escaped to Britany in September 1471 Henry Tuda fled to Britany with his uncle Jasper Tuda as a result of their participation in the fighting in Wales that followed on from Edward's victory at tuxbury in other words they were Renegade lancastrian magnates fleeing the collapse of the lancastrian redeption of Henry V 6 Henry tudas claimed the throne came through his mother Margaret bfor through her he inherited the bowett claim that is to say the claim of the illegitimate children of John of gaun father of Henry IV and therefore the source of the lancastrian claim to the throne so it's a sort of subclaim attached to the lancastrian claim Edward ruled England autocratically but in this unusual and welcome period of Peace the country and the crown [Music] prospered there was something of a commercial boom a significant increase in imports and exports and mutually profitable business relationships with Bankers in London Edward proved himself to be a generous and cultivated King although he was by all accounts an notorious Glutton and womanizer one Anonymous contemporary chronicler was obviously less than impressed in food and drink he was immoderate he sometimes took a emetic to Gorge his stomach he was lenti in the extreme insolent to numerous women after he had seduced them and pursued with no discrimination the married and the unmarried the noble and the lowly however he took none by force Edward took many mistresses the best known of whom was Elizabeth Shaw sometimes called Jane Shaw the wife of a London Goldsmith in all Edward fathered at least 10 known illegitimate [Music] children the King was quick to reward loyal supporters such as William Hastings who was made a gter knight and appointed Master of the mint showing a remarkable capacity for forgiveness Edward even forgave his Wayward brother the Duke of Clarence bestowing upon him the earldoms of wari and Salsbury and the post of great Chamberlain Edward may have tried to restore family Harmony but the Duke of Clarence and Duke of Gloucester were in no mood to follow suit they had their own personal quarrel now ostensibly this quarrel was about the division of the Earl of War's inheritance Clarence was married to the elder daughter of the Earl of wari and Gloucester in 1472 married the younger daughter and this meant that Clarence would have to share the enormous War stroke Salsbury inheritance the Neville inheritance however I think there's actually a deeper cause to this quarrel which arises from clarence's own questionable behavior in causing the redeption in the first place and the resulting insecurity that he felt when Edward was brought back to Power in the 1470s I think this made him rather jealous of Gloucester and rather nervous about gloucester's influence because Gloucester of course had supported his brother during the redeption was now rewarded with lands in the north and had a very secure place in Edward's regime Clarence was that little bit less secure however friendly the King was to him on the surface there were enough reminders of past troubles to ensure that Edward did not drop his guard and in 1472 came proof positive that the country's military troubles were not over this time it was Lord Oxford who with the help of Louis X 11th of France harried Edward and forced him to act what Edward really had to do to deal with threats like that posed by the ear of Oxford was to convince everybody that there was nothing to be gained from returning to uncertainty and division what he does on this occasion is round up those people he thinks may be involved in plotting and strut about the place making himself powerful and strong as it were specifically in the in the west country he offers pardons to all of those who are with Oxford if they return to Allegiance and Oxford's small anyway Army disintegrates pretty quickly the fact that the West country doesn't rise means that he has no hope really of continuing with this exploit and so he himself is forced to surrender fairly quickly Lord Oxford's Estates were confiscated and passed on to Richard Duke of Gloucester the enthusiastic Tor propagandist William Shakespeare significantly shaped the popular modern image of Richard as a deformed despot although there is little contemporary evidence to back him up Richard May perhaps have been born with one shoulder slightly higher than the other but he was certainly not the crookback so gleefully depicted in The Bard's play I am that ciled of this Fair proportion cheated a feature by dissembling nature deformed unfinished sent before my time into this breathing World scarce half made up and that so lamely and unfashionable the dogs bark at me as I Hal them he was however utterly ruthless and consumed by greed character trays that were clearly illustrated by the shameful way in which Lord Oxford's frail a aging mother was physically bullied into signing her Estates over to Richard such calculating Behavior was remarkable for a man who had barely turned 20 although there was domestic stability during Edward's Reign the complex wranglings of Continental politics continued in 1477 Duke Charles of burgundy was killed in battle leaving as his only Heir Mary of burgundy His Daughter by a previous marriage the Duke's death signified the collapse of one of Europe's Most fashionable and Powerful courts and it also left England stronghold of Cal open to attack marriage plans have been proposed between Mary of burgundy and the recently Widow Duke of Clarence but with the delicate political position very much in mind King Edward advised against it once again the aspirations of the bitter and unstable clarant were thwarted and he soon once more became an irksome and irritating problem for Edward when Edward refuses to marry Clarence to Mary of burgundy in 1477 following Charles the bold's death I think this sets the seal on clarence's sense of exclusion really from the opportunities of the regime and Clarence either participates in a series of rather extravagant misbehaviors at this time there are allegations of plots involving sorcery emanating from one of his Esquires there's an incredible case of judicial murder uh which Clarence is very clearly implicated in in warshire or if he's not actually doing these rather Wayward and Wild Things um it is easy enough for the king to pin this kind of behavior on him in July 1477 Edward finally lost patience with his quarrelsome brother and Clarence was arrested and sent to the tower in January of the following year a bill of attainer was issued against the Duke accusing him of treason and plotting to user the throne Clarence was sentenced to death Edward I four was held bent on destroying his brother this was a personal Vendetta and the croland Chronicle records that in the trial that nobody spoke against the Duke except the king and nobody answered the king except the Duke the arrest the arraignment the trial and the execution of the Duke of Clarence was a responsibility of one man and one man only Edward IV there's no evidence at all that Gloucester was directly implicated in the sense of pulling strings to bring about cl's condemnation he hardly needed to but I think it is true to say that Edward could not have proceeded to the death of one brother without at least tacit approval of the other with Clarence out of the way and with two legitimate Sons amongst his heirs Edward's position was settled at last there were the usual feuds within the court not least of which was the Hostile relationship between Edward's favorite minister William Hastings and the Queen's brother Anthony Woodville the second Earl Rivers Hastings found his position increasingly threatened as he became more and more at odds with the notorious Woodville as for the king he was now very different to the athletic and vigorous man who had fought so hard to gain the throne advancing towards middle age Edward's well-known gluttony had caught up with him him he had grown very corpulent indeed and he was no longer able to exercise however his verious sexual appetite was by all accounts [Music] unaffected in March 1483 everything suddenly changed when King Edward was taken Gravely ill after a fishing trip certain that he was on his death death bed Edward laid careful plans for the kingdom he named his eldest son Edward the Prince of Wales only 12 years old as the heir to the throne nominating his brother Richard of Gloucester as Lord protector during the boy's minority on the 9th of April 1483 Edward IV died aged 41 and an unknown chronicler recorded the king's dying words wherefore for in these last words that I ever speak to you I exalt you and require you all for the love that you have ever borne me for the love that I have ever borne you for the love that our Lord beareth to us all from this time forward all griefs forgotten each of you love each other the chances of the king's Last Wishes ever coming true were of course Very remote indeed Edward's Death must have led to extreme anxiety amongst Wars and counselors and there was so much bad blood existing between the people at the heart of government between the members of the Woodville family and men like Hastings who was the head of Edward's household and there were other figures too Richard of Gloucester who was based in the north his role had still to be decided despite his brother Edward declaring him protector on his death's bed the Woodville and in particular Earl Rivers the Uncle to whom Edward was devoted were far from happy with the idea of the Duke of Gloucester as sole protector and so they ignored the king's Last Wishes establishing instead a council of Regency of which the Duke was merely a figurehead Richard was in the north when Edward died but he rapidly headed south presumably intent upon ensuring that he did play a central role in the government of the young king Richard was undoubted ly horrified by the actions of the Woodville family following his brother's death the queen failed to appraise her brother-in-law of what had happened and she sought to sideline him by having her son crowned as quickly as possible once crowned the status of her protector will be very reduced because of his hatred of the woodfill and through a continued loyalty to the dead King William Hastings became a close supporter of the Duke of Gloucester meanwhile the Woodville found themselves in a position of unrivaled power and Earl Rivers his younger brother Edward and his nephew The Marquis of Dorset a son of the widowed Queen through a previous marriage became the dominant political characters at court all the powerful figures in England depend more closely than they have before on the king for the preservation of their power the wood vills are a holy kingmade family but so also of course is Richard of Gloucester he has some of his own Estates and some in right of his wife but a lot of his power in the north depend on continued backing from the center so Gloucester needs control of the prince but the prince is in the hands of the Woodville and the Woodville need control of the prince uh possibly to protect them against Gloucester as the jostling for position gathered Pace support f for Richard sent it upon the Duke of Buckingham who had also developed a powerful dislike of rivers and his unpopular cek Buckingham took troops to rendevu with the Duke of Gloucester at Northampton where in April 1483 the Armed Force intercepted and seized the Young Prince of Wales all route to London for his coronation as Edward V El Rivers dorset's younger brother Richard Gray and the King's Chamberlain Thomas forn were all arrested and sent under guard to pontif where on gloster's orders they would later be beheaded without even the prent of [Music] TR Edward I for's Widow Queen Elizabeth received the news of her son's abduction with horror and fled with the 10-year-old Duke of York taking sanctu at Westminster Richard of glester arrived in London with the young king on the 4th of May 1483 and somehow managed to convince Parliament to confirm him as Lord protector it suited glester to argue that to be protector was his right and that was what was appropriate and that was what would be good for the prince and with the prince in his possession I don't think anyone could really gain say him he moved quickly to identify the Woodville as a problem group and to remove them from power and also to remove key allies of theirs and he also moved quickly to build up the Duke of Buckingham in strength so all those figures from the Edwardian establishment in London must have been thinking this is the new dispensation glosser wants to be protector we have to go with that and I think that really explains why they were willing to accept him in that role there is little doubt that by now glester had fully formulated his plan to seize the Thro for himself a major problem had already identified itself there were several members of the Regency Council who simply would not countenance a plan to remove the king Chief among these was Lord Hastings the faithful friend and supporter of the late Edward IV on the 12th of June 1483 Lord Stanley another member of the Regency council is supposed to have had an ominous dream that was so disturbing that in the middle of the night he sent word to Hastings urging him to escape to safety if this story is true Hastings should have heeded the advice the very next morning Hastings Stanley Sir Thomas Howard the Duke of Buckingham Archbishop RAM and Bishop Morton of elely all met at the tower to discuss the final details of Edward I's coronation gler joined them at about 9:00 and seemed in good enough humor however he soon left the meeting and when he returned an hour later the Duke's demeanor was very different indeed Hastings was then suddenly accused of treason a group of armed Men who' been waiting in the joining room Rush in dragged him out off to the Tower of London where he was sarily executed it's one of the most shocking murders really of the entire Wars of the Roses period the news of the brutal and Swift execution of Lord Hastings soon leaked out to the general public who heard the news with amazement nothing could have surely merited such treatment of a respected and Senior figure nothing that is except a plot against the Lord protector for which the architect had been punished and this was the version of events that gluster put around no evidence to support cluster's explanation for Hasting death has ever been uncovered Richard during the six or seven weeks before he seized the crown realized that he'd already gone too far that by putting rivers and the other wood vills into captivity he was storing up trouble for himself in the future because what would happen in a few years time when young Edward V became king in his own right how would he then react to his uncle Richard who had captured his relatives forced his mother to run into Sanctuary it's possible that during those weeks Richard realized that actually he'd already dug himself a hole and he had to get out of this and the only way he could get out was by taking the crown itself on the 16th of June just 3 days after Hasting death the Duke of Buckingham and a party of nobles arrived at Westminster to remove Edward's younger brother the Duke of York from the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey the two young princes were installed in apartments in the tower and their fate was sealed on the 22nd of June 1483 a propaganda sermon by Dr Ralph Shaw at some Paul's cross preached that owing to a broken betral to Ellena Butler Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid and therefore his heirs including the current boy King were illegitimate it was of course an outrageous suggestion following the sermon the Duke of Buckingham mounted his own carefully calculated smear campaign condemning the dead King's sexual infidelities 3 Days Later a delegation headed by Buckingham forly petitioned the Duke of glester to take the throne and Rule as Richard III gluster played the game to Perfection and at first modestly refused to accept the crown but of course he soon allowed the facade to crumble cluster finally agreed to take the crown and he was proclaimed King only a day later he was crowned King Richard III on the 6th of July 1483 the two child princes in the tower would never be seen again there is no positive evidence for the murder of Ed the fourth's two sons the princes in the town to but they disappear from view very thoroughly in the late summer of 1483 and by far the most likely scenario is that Richard has had them murdered there's no written evidence no single document that allows us to pin the responsibility for the murders of the princes in the tower upon Richard and those that defend him will point that out out but there's other kinds of historical evidence besides documents and I think the clinching argument for Richard's responsibility are the actions of those who were at the court in 1483 these were the members of Edward the for's household the men who'd been loyal yorkists for years they now turned against Richard now why should they do that after all some of them had fought alongside him at Barnett and chury this was a man they had trusted and they turn against him and they support Henry chuda somebody they didn't know at all now the actions of those men seems to be the best evidence that at the time people believed Richard was responsible for his nephew's murders his four main supporters the Duke of Buckingham Henry Percy the fourth ear of North Cumberland Lord Howard now created Duke of Norfolk and Lord Stanley now surrounded Richard Stanley's decision to make peace with Richard was influenced by his marriage to Margaret bort the mother of Henry Tuda to defend himself from accusations of treason and protect the lives of his wife and lancastrian stepson Stanley agreed to back Richard's coronation as king despite events in London Richard was still popular particularly in the north clearly he was greeted with delight in York in the summer of 1483 when he visited the city on progress and there's other evidence from that summer of him being welcomed in other cities but overall we're really trying to build a big picture on small Snippets of evidence the really big important picture is that Richard had already failed in the prime requirement of a medieval King what a king was expected to do was to give peace and stability to his people but by usurping the throne in June 1483 all Richard had done was condemn England to another 2 years of rebellion and uncertainty it was impossible for King Richard to shake off the rumors that not only were the two young princes no longer alive but that he had been responsible for their deaths there were several opportunities for him to parade them in public in order to put an end to the speculation but of course he did not do so there was no escaping the fact that Richard had usurped the throne in brutal bloody circumstances now old lancastrian sympathies among the English nobility were rekindled the Red Rose had one surviving champion a man whose own claim to the throne was tenuous but strong enough to challenge Richard he was Henry Tudor the choice of Henry Tudor as the rebels alternative claimant to the throne is inconceivable if it weren't believed that the princes were dead Henry chuda became the leader of the the yorkist LAN cter Alliance simply because there was nobody else the members of Edward IV's yorkist household would much preferred to have rebelled in the cause of Edward V but they must have known that he was dead and so desperately they gave their loyalty H to Henry chudah this was a case of better the devil that you don't know than the devil Richard that you do support for the reborn lancastrian cause came from the unlikeliest of quarters the Duke of Buckingham Dy supporter and one-time henchman of Richard added his name to the long list of English Nobles who had swapped sides during the time of the wars of the Roses why he did so remains unclear to this very day but there is some evidence that he was influenced by the lancastrian supporter Bishop Morton Bishop Morton had been intriguing for some time with Margaret bord the mother of Henry Tudor and almost incredibly it was not too long before Buckingham had switched his Allegiance and was backing Tudor's planned Uprising Elizabeth Woodville the former queen of Edward IV secured more support by offering her daughter Elizabeth of York as a potential Bride for Henry Tudor strengthening not only the unlikely yorkist lancastrian Alliance but also Henry's claim to the crown the great Uprising against King Richard was planned to begin on the 18th of October 1483 there were to be a wave of small scale rebellions in the southeast of England which included an army from Kent making a feigned attack on London that was intended to distract King Richard meanwhile Buckingham's troops would join with Welsh forces in the west country it was planned that Henry Tuda himself would then land in Dorset with an army of Breton troops the 1483 Rebellion against Richard III never in fact came to battle it dissolved and one consequence of that is that many of the rebels survive to fight another day the 1483 rebellion was was such a disaster it's to see that it ever really had much chance of success it was blighted by poor Communications right across the south then Buckingham who was a late entrant into the rebellion was caught the wrong side of the seven by appalling weather conditions and had no chance to take part and Richard's reaction was Swift and effective so the rebels scattered before any effective opposition had developed to Richard the whole process was over before Henry chudder appeared off the South Coast the Duke of bim's treachery took him to the Block in the city of Salsbury while Bishop Morton the man who reputedly had done more than anyone to convince Buckingham to switch sides managed to escape abroad the kland chronicle recorded the Duke's end the Duke was seized and taken to the city of Salsbury where the king had arrived with a great Army he suffered capital punishment in the public Marketplace of that City on All Souls day not withstanding the fact that it fell on a Sunday that year despite the failure of the Rebellion pruda feeling in the country continued to grow although Richard proved to be a fine administrator he was simply an unpopular Monarch Richard apparently had won but even his success then led to real problems the Gentry who' rebelled fled to join Henry chudder in Britany leaving great gaps in the local government of the south of England and Richard had a problem how did he fill these gaps his solution in many cases was to transplant his Northern supporters to the South men like Edward Redmond whose Effigy can still be seen in Harwood house in Yorkshire Redmond whose lands were in the Lake District in West Yorkshire finds himself in government deep down in the southwest what was it like for that man to undertake such a role we know what the southerners felt they were extremely hostile to these Northern Intruders and all that did was just add to the hostility to Richard in April 1484 personal tragedy came to blight Richard's life when Edward his only legitimate son died suddenly at mham Castle he was just 10 years old and the king and queen were overcome with grief at the boy's death the kland chronicle noted that the king learned how vain are the attempts to regulate his Affairs without God in April his only son on whom all hope of a royal succession rested died after a short illness you might have seen his mother and father after hearing the news at Nottingham almost out of their minds when faced with the sudden [Music] grief within months the queen too had succumbed to illness although there is little evidence that this time Richard was bereft in fact rumors circulated that he had poisoned the queen in order to marry his niece Elizabeth of York Edward IV's eldest daughter an Neville dies of course Very Suddenly at a young age and that inspires 's rumors that she may have been done away with but it's hard to see how it could possibly have been in Richard's interest to remove this young wife of his who are still very much of childbearing age when it would have mattered to him so much to try and obtain an heir and he can solve the problem that Elizabeth of York uh is being betrothed to Henry Tudor in Henry Tudor's own mind at least by marrying her off to almost anybody else um he also would have been unlikely I think to want to marry somebody he had declared as IL legitimate as part of his own claim to the throne so it's a story that doesn't really add up it's a slur against Richard I [Music] think if Richard had planned to make the throne more secure by marrying he was to be sorely disappointed there was outrage among the nobility and common people alike when the marriage was suggested forcing Richard into the humiliating position of not only having to deny that he intended to take his niece for a wife but also that he had poisoned the queen it seemed that Henry Tudor's challenge for the crown could not be ended by political Intrigue it would have to be ended on the battlefield Richard did not have long to wait by 1485 Henry Tudor had re-equipped himself for another in invasion of England when Henry chuda returns to England in August 1485 he is clearly claiming to be king and he returns with a small army from the continent of mercenaries that he's been able to pick up uh in Normandy plus those refugees from the yorkist regime who fled Richard uh and who may when they return to England be able to activate connections of theirs from the regions of their Estates he's also hoping to get the aid of the Stanley when he reaches the Welsh borders his mother of has of course married into that family and they're the major magnate family of the northwest of England Henry's small army first marched into Shropshire where they began to gather more supporters Henry had expected the help of his stepfather Thomas Stanley who was also King Richard's advisor but he pointedly refused to join the rebels however Stanley also made an excuse when Richard summoned him to a council of War at Nottingham claiming that he had a stomach complaint by now the King was highly suspicious of Stanley and his dubious loyalty and so he decided to arrest his son Lord strange and to hold him hostage perhaps it was no surprise that strange cracked Under The Strain and he soon confessed to being a tutor supporter what was more he also confirmed that his uncle William Stanley was involved in the Rebellion Thomas Stanley though could not be implicated and so the king had no choice but to march to face Henry Tudor's Rebel Army without him the positioning of the armies at Bosworth and indeed the positioning of the whole battle is matter continually in dispute among historians and there's been some very recent changes of of view but I think the basic picture of Richard at the top of a hill and Henry down below but somewhat protected by an area of Marshland is nonetheless um accepted we also have to recognize that there are a whole series of magnates stationed quite near by the action but hedging their bets about whether or not they'll participate and of course the key group of magnetes here are the Stanley's who are just to one side with really quite a large army Richard's Army is about twice the size of Henry's but if the Stanley choose to commit to Henry's then the balance between the two forces is much more equal also of course the Stanley's force is big enough to intervene decisively for one side or the other in the middle of the battle once the melee has started on August 22nd 1485 King Richard positioned his army on the ridge of ambian Hill near Bosworth in leerer they were at top a steep incline with Marshland at the [Music] foot and to Henry's troops the Royal Army must have looked very formidable indeed there was a body of archers commanded by the Duke of Norfolk with heavy artillery behind them Beyond these were King Richard and his men at Arms backed by the Earl of Northumberland and his 3,000 northern troops surely Henry's men with no real artillery and few archers stood very little chance of Victory but the presence of 4,000 men at arms under the command of the Stanley Brothers Thomas and William threw a rather different aspect on the coming battle to which side would they offer their support Richard was concerned enough to threaten the immediate execution of Lord strange unless Thomas Stanley joined his ranks but Stanley is reputed to have replied that as he had two other sons who would not be joining the king should do his worst strange escaped the wroth of the king one of the most crucial battles in English History was now just a few short minutes away it was to be a day when the turncoat and the traitor played a role every bit as vital as the common soldier with Bill and blade soon the ranks of the men under Richard's Ally Duke of norfor and the lancastrian Earl of Oxford were joined in a desperate life or death struggle [Music] it was to be the battle hard mori's last fight as a stray Arrow struck him down this was a grave loss to Richard's cause with the Stanley Brothers still an ominous presence on the sidelines the outcome of the battle remained in the balance after an hour of bloody fighting tide turned against Richard when he charged thunderously down ambian hill which has been called the swans of English medieval chivalry he'd seen Juda and was determined to eliminate him until that point it looked as if Richard might well be successful even though North umland had not committed his men to the conflict Richard's last cavalry charge had taken him right into the heart of Henry judah's house so he' bowled over Henry's supporters and briefly Richard and Henry came face to face and sword to sword it looked as if Richard was going to win and even polor Virgil Henry chuda's own historian was forced to admit that Henry lasted longer than his own men expected but he didn't have to last too long at The crucial moment Stanley's men tore into the side of Richard's Force Richard was bowled over over as soon he was dead the story has it that that when Richard died the crown rolled from his head into the base of a thorn bush and from there it was picked up and used to Crown Henry chudah King Henry iith well if you go to Westminster ABY you can see the crow in the thorn bush amongst the many chew the badges on display so there does seem to be a good chance that that this Legend at any rate is based on truth there is no contemporary or later Tuda story that confirms that the crown was plucked from a thorn bush in fact it was found on the field of battle if it had have been plucked from the thorn bush I'm sure William Shakespeare would have made much of it and created some lovely lines around it however the Hawthorne was a a heraldic device of Henry iith and it was carved on his tomb so this was perhaps the inspiration for a later perhaps a 17th or 18th century writer Henry Tudor was acclaimed King of England on Bosworth field the mutilated body of the Dead King Richard was stripped naked and unceremoniously carried on Horseback through the cheering crowds of the nearby city of leester not everyone was pleased to hear of the king's demise however at York where Richard had enjoyed so much support during his life the city council recorded that King Richard who reigned until recently Upon Us was through the treason of others mercilessly slain and murdered to this City's great sadness Henry Judah would have been unknown to most of the population of England so far from being a popular hero it would have been a case of Henry who and many people found it difficult to accept this Welsh Adventure in the early years as their King people felt that once he had won at Bosworth he had to be in a sense allowed to be successful because to oppose Henry would bring another generation of Civil War which nobody apart perhaps from a few diard ricardian really wanted so Henry's position at the outset was possibly stronger than has often been [Music] assumed Henry Tudor was crowned Henry iith at Westminster on the 30th of October 1485 the following year in fulfillment of his promise to his yorkist allies he married Elizabeth of York the daughter of the yorkist is to King Edward IV Henry CH is married to Elizabeth of York daughter of Edward IV and sister of the princes in the tower seems to have been extremely popular essentially because it promised peace it promised a bringing together of the families who had been in Conflict for the last Decades of course it didn't ensure security that would only come once a family had been born once Henry had Sur survived long enough to pass on the throne to an adult Heir and that obviously would take 20 years and those 20 years took a long time in passing the marriage was probably viewed as being extremely overdue and that Henry was very slow to make good his promise it took place almost five months after Bosworth and consternation grew when the queen was not crowned until November 1487 evidently Henry wanted to be known as a king in his own right by conquest and by hereditary claim and not merely as the husband of a predecessor's [Music] daughter and so after almost 30 years of sporadic but bloody Civil Wars of treachery and Intrigue and of weak and transient government the houses of York and Lancaster were finally United in a new and vigorous Dynasty a final Rebellion contrived by diard yorkists was successfully put down by the new Tuda regime at the Battle of stoke in 1487 the wars of the Roses were finally [Music] over although no one could have known it at the time England had seen the first faltering steps of what would eventually become one of its greatest dynasties the long Century of Tudor rule would see the authority of the English crown restored a religious reformation and an era of bold adventurism that would be the stepping stone to Empire the Newfound domestic stability had been one with the blood of thousands of common men who had done battle at places such as St Orbin Barnet ton and Bosworth battles and executions had decimated the old nobility of England and it had taken the death of a king the second and last English king to die on the battlefield to bring the wars of the Roses to an [Music] end

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

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Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, the dark ages

Id: 5oDz6u_47jc

Length: 193min 41sec (11621 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023