The Seeds of War

The Wars of the Roses did not begin in 1455. They began in 1399, when Henry Bolingbroke deposed his cousin Richard II, seized the English crown, and took the name Henry IV. Bolingbroke had a strong claim — but not the strongest. The rightful heir by strict genealogical descent was the heir of the Mortimer family, descended from Edward III's third surviving son, while Lancaster descended from the fourth. The usurpation planted a seed of illegitimacy that would flower into civil war two generations later.

Henry V masked the wound with glory. His victory at Agincourt in 1415 and his conquest of France made Lancaster synonymous with English power. But Henry V died young, in 1422, leaving an infant son and a conquered France that could not be held.

Henry VI was the wrong man for the crisis he inherited. Gentle, pious, and prone to mental collapse, he allowed his court to become a cockpit of competing magnates. The loss of English France by 1453 — the culmination of a disastrous war — stripped the Lancastrian crown of its greatest glory and left a vacuum that powerful nobles rushed to fill.

Richard, Duke of York, had the strongest hereditary claim to the throne and the grievance to match it. His arch-enemy at court, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, he blamed for the loss of France, where York had served as lieutenant. When Henry VI suffered a complete mental breakdown in 1453 and could not recognize his newborn son, York became Lord Protector. When Henry recovered, Somerset's faction reasserted itself — and York began preparing for something more than politics.

The spark came in May 1455. York, Warwick, and Salisbury marched a small army to intercept the royal court at St Albans. The fighting in the town's streets lasted barely an hour. Somerset was killed. Henry VI was captured with an arrow wound to the neck. The Wars of the Roses had begun.