The Causes of the Wars of the Roses

Accounting for the Wars of the Roses

	Between 1450 and 1485, English kings were deposed on five occasions, and three kings met violent deaths. Many of the English nobility died in battle or on the scaffold. All this in a country that previously boasted one of the best centralized and most stable governments in Europe. What were the causes of the Wars of the Roses?
	England was not in a general state of anarchy during the Wars of the Roses. Law and order were still maintained by local magnates and government officials. The Wars were essentially a dispute within the ruling classes about who should control government (not popular discontent like the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.)

Crosby Hall
built by a wealthy London grocer in the mid 15th Century

Bastard feudalism

One explanation of the Wars of the Roses stresses England's social structure. By the 1400s, land was no longer the reward for military or other service. Services were exchanged for money, not land, in this "bastard" feudal system.

Noblemen retained servants who - in exchange for money and support - not only fought for their lords, but also testified for them in court, acted as their agents in legal matters, and helped out in tax avoidance schemes as "feoffees to use."

The Great Hall of Middleham Castle
built by Richard when Duke of Gloucester

In return "good lordship" involved ensuring that these retainers were protected from the legal consequences of any dubious actions (bribery, intimidation, &c.) committed on the lord's behalf. This was particularly easy for the greatest magnates because they controlled the legal system in their locality.

Conflicts between lords in neighboring or overlapping areas of influence could sometimes lead to actual warfare. The Earl of Devon fought Lord Bonville and the Earl of Wiltshire in Devon; the Blounts and the Longfords feuded in Derbyshire; and the the Nevilles and the Percies in the North.

The crown was not a powerless bystander - to the contrary, it was because the king was drawn into these local conflicts that warfare at the national level resulted.

Dynastic struggle

One traditional explanation for the Wars of the Roses pointed to Henry of Bolingbroke's usurpation of the throne in 1399. When Henry IV took the throne, he ignored the title of Edmund, Earl of March, whose claim was revived by Richard, Duke of York, against Henry's grandson, Henry VI.
William Shakespeare offers one poetic endorsement of this view:

"My Lord of Hereford [Henry IV] here, whom you call king,
Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king[Richard II]:
And if you crown him, let me prophesy:
The blood of English shall manure the ground,
And future ages groan for this foul act;
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound;
Disorder, horror, fear and mutiny
Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd
The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls.
O, if you raise this house against this house,
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth."

(Shakespeare, Richard II, 4.1)

However, Richard Duke of York did not make his claim until over sixty years after 1399, and even then his supporters were only willing to grant him the right of succession.

Edward IV did claim the throne in 1461, but this was when the only alternative was Margaret of Anjou's remorseless vengeance: - witness the attainders of the Yorkists at the 1459 Coventry Parliament.

Nor did the nobility act as though dynastic considerations were decisive. Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, moved his support from the House of York (Edward IV) to the House of Lancaster (Henry VI) when it suited his own ambitions. When Lord Bonville shifted his support from Lancaster to York, his local rival the Earl of Devon switched his backing to the Lancastrians.

Any noblemen who backed an unsuccessful candidate for the throne would find himself excluded from royal patronage and local influence - these political calculations as much as loyalty to one dynasty decided noblemen's' choices.

The keep of Kirby Muxloe Castle in Leicestershire.
The castle was never completed because its builder, William Lord Hastings, was executed for treason in June 1483

Controlling the crown

It was precisely because England's government was so centralized and the crown so powerful that nobles were so concerned about who controlled it.

Edward IV with Elizabeth and their son.

The crown controlled large amounts of patronage - it handed out land, titles, offices, and profitable marriages to heiresses who were royal wards. Influence over royal government was necessary to obtain a share of these spoils, and to ensure that debts owed by the crown were paid promptly. One of the reasons that Richard, Duke of York resented his exclusion from government was that it meant debts incurred by his family on the crown's behalf during the Hundred Years War were unlikely to be paid.

No magnate wanted the throne controlled by his enemies. The power of the Neville family in the North of England was threatened first by Margaret of Anjou's faction and then by the Wooodville faction; Neville (Warwick) retaliated initially by supporting the Yorkist claimant, and then switched to support Henry VI. The Nevilles needed royal backing to ensure their dominance over the rival Percies; the favors Edward IV was showing to the Percy family provoked Neville to action in 1469-70.

The aftermath of the Hundred Years War

	The Wars of the Roses began soon after the Hundred Years War ended. The suggestion that nobles were trying to retrieve fortunes lost in the withdrawal from France does not agree with the evidence. Few major families lost much by the English defeat - most of the major magnates were growing wealthier.
	However, the end of the Hundred Years war did remove one reason for unity within England: foreign war tends to unite people at home. The end of the War also left many unemployed soldiers - a destabilizing group in society. Medieval knights and nobles were a military caste, and it was as easy for them to engage in domestic as foreign warfare.

Weak monarchs

Medieval monarchy was still a very personal affair. The fact that Henry VI was a gullible fool (even when sane) prevented him exercising firm control. Instead, Margaret of Anjou and various favorites struggled with Richard Duke of York over who should manipulate the feeble-minded king.

The Angel Inn in Grantham
where Richard III is know to have stayed

Richard III felt that he could not afford to see the young Edward V dominated by the Woodville clan, and so seized the throne himself.

When a strong character like Edward IV was on the throne, there were two periods of comparative peace (1461-70 and 1470-83.) Even then, the problems inherent in bastard feudalism, over-mighty subjects like Neville, and local rivalries, undermined stability; but had Edward IV lived to a ripe old age, these problems might have been surmounted.

In fact, it fell to Henry VII to break the vicious circle of struggles to control the crown.