Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Causes of the Wars

  • Chapter
The Wars of the Roses

Part of the book series: British History in Perspective ((BHP))

Abstract

There were several interlocking reasons for the outbreak of civil war in 1459. The precise weight to be given to each and the balance to be struck between them has, and will remain, a matter of controversy. Dynastic causes, the original idea that England fell into civil strife ‘by reason of titles’, has tended to receive short shrift at the hands of modern historians, but should not be dismissed out of hand. Arguments that the Wars were caused either by economic and financial crisis in the ranks of the nobility, or by defeat in the Hundred Years’ War have also tended to be unfashionable in recent years. Debate at the end of the twentieth century has largely focused on whether the Wars resulted from a long-term shift in the balance of political power between the Crown and greater subject, with a resultant increase in disorder and lawlessness, or whether they were largely the consequence of the shortcomings of Henry VI as King. These various factors can be perceived as long-term causes, rooted deeply in the development and structure of English society in the later middle ages; short-term causes arising from more recent experience; and immediate causes which led directly to civil war. The long-term developments may have made the Wars possible; the short-term, likely; and the immediate, unavoidable. In the long term the impact of ‘bastard feudalism’ and possible changes in the balance of power between Crown and subject might be significant; in the short term, economic and financial pressures on English landholders, the consequences of defeat in the Hundred Years’ War and the question of dynastic legitimacy are likely to be most relevant; and for the immediate, the clash of personalities and the characters of Henry VI, his Queen and his principal subjects in the 1450s are central.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Sir John Fortescue, The Governance of England, Charles Plummer (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1885), pp. 14–15; W. Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century (London: George Bell, 1888), pp. 273–4.

    Google Scholar 

  2. R. L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966), pp. 9

    Google Scholar 

  3. M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1377 (London: Methuen, 1980), pp. 165–244

    Google Scholar 

  4. M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 143–65

    Google Scholar 

  5. J. R. Lander, The Limitations of the English Monarchy in the Later Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989).

    Google Scholar 

  6. J. B. Gillingham, ‘Crisis or Continuity? The Sturcture of Royal Authority in England, 1369–1422’, in R. Schneider (ed.), Das Spatmittelalterliche Konigtum im Europsaischen Vergleeich (Sigmaren, 1987), pp. 59–80; G. L. Harriss, ‘Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late-Medieval England’, Past and Present, 138 (1993); A. Musson and W. M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1999), esp. pp. 42–74

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–1377 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990)

    Google Scholar 

  8. K. B. McFarlane, ‘The Wars of the Roses’, in England in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), p. 238.

    Google Scholar 

  9. R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Provinces and Dominion in the Age of the Wars of the Roses’, in D. Michalove and A. C. Reeves (eds), Estrangement, Enterprise and Education in Fifteenth-Century England (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  10. K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. x–xviii. See also P. R. Coss, ‘Bastard Feudalism Revisited’, Past and Present, 125(1989), pp. 27–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. M. A. Hicks, Bastard Feudalism (London: Longman, 1995)

    Google Scholar 

  12. N. Davis (ed.), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 530

    Google Scholar 

  13. T. Stapleton (ed.), The Plumpton Correspondence (London: Camden Society, 1839), pp. 45

    Google Scholar 

  14. For discussion of arbitration, see C. Carpenter, ‘Law, Justice and Landowners in Late Medieval England’, Law and History Review, 1(1983), pp. 205–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. M. A. Hicks, ‘Restraint, Mediation and Private Justice: George, Duke of Clarence as “Good Lord”’, Journal of Legal History, 4(1983), pp. 56–71

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. E. Powell, ‘Arbitration and the Law in England in the Later Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Royal History Society, 5th series, 33(1983), pp. 49–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. I. Rowney, ‘Arbitration in Gentry Disputes in the Later Middle Ages’, History, 67(1982), pp. 367–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Carpenter, ‘Law, Justice and Landowners’, pp. 205–37, and ‘The Duke of Clarence and the Midlands’, Midland History, 11 (1986), pp. 23–48; M. Cherry, ‘The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Foundation and Disintegration of a Late-Medieval Aristocratic Affinity’, Southern History, 1(1979), pp. 71–97

    Google Scholar 

  19. ‘The Struggle for Power in Mid-Fifteenth Century Devonshire’, in R. A. Griffiths (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later-Medieval England (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1981), pp. 123–44

    Google Scholar 

  20. M. A. Hicks, ‘Between Majorities: The Beauchamp Interregnum, 1439–49’, Historical Research, 72(1999), pp. 27–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. R. A. Griffiths, ‘Local Rivalries and National Politics: The Percies, the Nevilles and the Duke of Exeter, 1452–55’, Speculum, 43: 4(1968), pp. 589–632.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. M. M. Postan, ‘The Fifteenth Century’, in Essays in Medieval Agriculture and Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 48; T. B. Pugh and C. D. Ross, ‘The English Baronage and the Income Tax of 1436’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 20(1953), pp. 1–2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. McFarlane, Nobility, pp. 177–86; A. J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 132–3.

    Google Scholar 

  24. T. B. Pugh, The Marcher Lordships of South Wales, 1415–1536 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963), pp. 36–43

    Google Scholar 

  25. J. T. Rosenthal, ‘The Estates and Finances of Richard, Duke of York (1411–60)’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 2(1965), pp. 122–46

    Google Scholar 

  26. C. D. Ross, ‘The Estates and Finances of Richard, Duke of York’, Welsh History Review, III(1966–67), pp. 299–302.

    Google Scholar 

  27. R. H. Britnell, ‘The Economic Context’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), The Wars of the Roses (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 41–64

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  28. J. N. Hare, ‘Growth and Recession in the Fifteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 52(1999), pp. 1–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. A. J. Pollard, ‘The Northern Economy and the Agrarian Crisis of 1438–40’, Northern History, 25(1989), pp. 88–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (London: Ernest Benn, 1981), pp. 582–3

    Google Scholar 

  31. B. P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English History (London: George Allen, 1971), pp. 76–123

    Google Scholar 

  32. C. F. Richmond, ‘1485 and All That’, in P. W. Hammond (ed.), Richard III: Lordship, Loyalty and Law (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986), pp. 186–8.

    Google Scholar 

  33. M. H. Keen, Chivalry (Newhaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 143–78

    Google Scholar 

  34. A. B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1960), pp. 144–53.

    Google Scholar 

  35. J. R. Lander, Government and Community: England, 1450–1509 (London: Edward Arnold, 1950), p. 160

    Google Scholar 

  36. A. Goodman, ‘Responses to Requests in Yorkshire for Military Service under Henry V’, Northern History, 17(1981), pp. 240–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. D. A. L. Morgan, ‘The Individual Style of the English Gentleman’, in Michael Jones (ed.), Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Later Medieval Europe (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986), pp. 15–35.

    Google Scholar 

  38. A. R. Myers, England in the Later Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1952), p. 140.

    Google Scholar 

  39. McFarlane, ‘Wars of the Roses’, p. 240; B. P. Wolffe, Henry VI (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981), pp. 211–12.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Storey, House of Lancaster, p. 73; M. K. Jones, ‘Somerset, York and the Wars of the Roses’, English Historical Review, 104(1989), pp. 285–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Griffiths, ‘The Sense of Dynasty’, pp. 23–5; A. Gross, The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1996), pp. 35–8

    Google Scholar 

  42. P. Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 98–100.

    Google Scholar 

  43. T. B. Pugh, ‘The Southampton Plot of 1415’, in R. A. Griffiths and J. W. Sherborne (eds), Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986), pp. 69–76.

    Google Scholar 

  44. M. J. Bennett, ‘Edward III, Entail and the Succession to the Crown, 1367–1471’, English Historical Review, 113(1998), pp. 580–609.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Roger Lovatt, ‘A Collector of Apocryphal Anecdotes: John Blacman Revisited’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1984), pp. 172–97.

    Google Scholar 

  46. D. Dunn, ‘Margaret of Anjou: Queen Consort of Henry VI’, in R. E. Archer (ed.), Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton, 1995), pp. 107–44.

    Google Scholar 

  47. C. Ross, Edward IV (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974

    Google Scholar 

  48. J. R. Lander, ‘Edward IV: The Modern Legend and a Revision’, History, 41(1956), pp. 38–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. J. R. Green, History of the English People, vol. 2(1878), pp. 27–8

    Google Scholar 

  50. D. A. L. Morgan, ‘The King’s Affinity in the Polity of Yorkist England’, Transactions of the Royal History Society, 5th series, 23(1973), pp. 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Pollard, North-Eastern England, pp. 316–41; C. Ross, Richard III (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981

    Google Scholar 

  52. D. E. Lowe, ‘Patronage and Politics: Edward IV, the Wydevilles and the Council of the Prince of Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29(1981), pp. 270–3

    Google Scholar 

  53. This is the theme of Dominic Mancini’s, Occupatione, written before the end of 1483. See C. A. J. Armstrong (ed.), The Usurpation of Richard III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn, 1969).

    Google Scholar 

  54. M. A. Hicks, Richard III as Duke of Gloucester: A Study in Character (York: Borthwick Paper, no. 70, 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  55. Lorraine C. Attreed, ‘From Pearl Maiden to Tower princes’, Journal of Medieval History, 9(1983), pp. 52–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (eds), The Great Chronicle of London (London: privately pub. 1938), p. 238.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. A. J. Pollard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2001 A. J. Pollard

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Pollard, A.J. (2001). The Causes of the Wars. In: The Wars of the Roses. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10515-8_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10515-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-333-65822-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-10515-8

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation