THE WORLD ATLAS

War · 22 May 1455 – 16 June 1487

Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were a series of English civil wars for the throne between two branches of the royal Plantagenet family: the House of Lancaster and the House of York, both descended from Edward III. Defeat in the Hundred Years' War, powerful private retinues and the weak rule of the mentally unstable Lancastrian king Henry VI fed rivalries at court, and Richard, Duke of York, pressed his own claim.

Fighting began at St Albans in 1455. York was killed at Wakefield in 1460, but his son seized the crown as Edward IV and crushed the Lancastrians at Towton in 1461. After the Earl of Warwick changed sides, Henry VI was briefly restored in 1470, but Edward won back the throne at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. When Edward's brother took the throne as Richard III in 1483, the Lancastrian heir Henry Tudor defeated and killed him at Bosworth in 1485, married Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York, and beat a last Yorkist challenge at Stoke Field in 1487.

Watch the war on the map

Dates
22 May 1455 – 16 June 1487
Casualties
Estimates vary widely: one modern compilation suggests about 105,000 killed in battle over the whole period, while many historians think the fighting was more limited, and the 28,000 dead reported after Towton is generally considered an exaggeration.

The sides

House of Lancaster, then Tudor

House of York

Timeline of the Wars of the Roses

  1. First Battle of St Albans: York captures Henry VI

    Henry VI's mental instability and the dominance at court of his Beaufort relatives, above all Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, drove Richard, Duke of York, and his allies the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick to take up arms. They defeated a royal army in the streets of St Albans, north of London. Somerset was killed and the king captured, and a parliament then appointed York Lord Protector. The battle is traditionally taken as the start of the wars.

  2. Yorkists defeat a larger Lancastrian army at Blore Heath

    Queen Margaret of Anjou, determined to protect the rights of her young son Edward, had been raising support for the Lancastrian cause. When the Earl of Salisbury marched to join York with about 5,000 men, a Lancastrian force twice that size under Lord Audley ambushed him at Blore Heath in Staffordshire. The Lancastrians were defeated and Audley was killed, and open war resumed after four years of uneasy peace.

  3. Yorkist army scatters at Ludford Bridge; leaders flee abroad

    The Yorkist leaders gathered near Ludlow, but at Ludford Bridge their army fell apart when Warwick's professional troops from Calais, under Andrew Trollope, defected to the king. York fled to Ireland with his second son, Edmund, while Warwick and Salisbury sailed to Calais with York's heir, Edward, Earl of March. The Lancastrians appeared to have won, but the exiles soon prepared to return.

  4. Yorkists win at Northampton and capture the king again

    Warwick and Edward of March landed from Calais and marched north against the royal army. At Northampton, by the River Nene, they defeated the forces loyal to Henry VI; the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Shrewsbury and other Lancastrian lords were killed defending the king, who was taken prisoner. It was the first battle in England in which artillery was used. Queen Margaret fled north and then to Scotland.

  5. Act of Accord makes York heir to the throne

    Returning from Ireland, York laid his hand on the empty throne in Parliament to signal his claim, shocking even his allies. Unable to decide the claim on legal grounds, the lords reached a compromise in the Act of Accord: Henry VI would remain king for life, but the throne would then pass to York and his heirs, disinheriting Henry's son, Prince Edward. Queen Margaret and many Lancastrian nobles refused to accept it.

  6. Richard of York killed at Wakefield

    Margaret and the Lancastrian lords massed their armies in the north, and York marched to confront them, and was near Sandal Magna, by Wakefield, at the end of December. In what recent research suggests was a small-scale skirmish rather than a full battle, York, his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, and the Earl of Salisbury were captured and killed. York's claim passed to his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March.

  7. Edward of March wins at Mortimer's Cross

    In the Welsh Marches, York's son Edward defeated a Lancastrian army at Mortimer's Cross. At dawn a parhelion made three suns appear in the sky; Edward reassured his frightened troops that it stood for the Holy Trinity and showed God's blessing, and he later took the 'sun in splendour' as his personal badge. The captured Owen Tudor, husband of Henry V's widow Catherine of Valois, was executed by his troops.

  8. Lancastrians win the Second Battle of St Albans and free Henry

    Margaret's army, moving south after Wakefield, met Warwick, who had the captive Henry VI with him, astride Watling Street at St Albans. Warwick's entrenched army was defeated and the king was freed. Yet the Lancastrian cause was unpopular in London, where the queen's army had been promised the freedom to plunder on its march south, and the citizens refused to let it in. Warwick joined Edward, and the two hurried to London, where Edward was proclaimed king as Edward IV.

  9. Edward IV crushes the Lancastrians at Towton

    Edward marched north to settle the war. On Palm Sunday, near Towton in Yorkshire, perhaps 50,000 men fought for about ten hours in a snowstorm; the wind blew snow into the faces of the Lancastrian archers, whose arrows fell short. It was probably the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Many Lancastrians were killed in the rout, Henry fled the country, and Edward was formally crowned in June.

  10. Last Lancastrian army in the north destroyed at Hexham

    Lancastrian resistance continued in the far north, where a rising for Henry broke out in spring 1463. After truces with Scotland and France cut off foreign help, a Yorkist force under John Neville destroyed the main Lancastrian army at Hexham; its commanders, including the Duke of Somerset, were captured and executed. Henry VI was later caught hiding near the River Ribble and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

  11. Warwick turns on Edward IV; royal army beaten at Edgcote

    Warwick, once Edward's chief supporter, was alienated when the king married Elizabeth Woodville against his advice in 1464, promoted her family and turned away from Warwick's policy of friendship with France. In 1469 Warwick rebelled, hoping to replace Edward with his brother George, Duke of Clarence. Rebels led by 'Robin of Redesdale' defeated a royal army at Edgcote, its commanders were executed, and Edward was held prisoner until Warwick, lacking support, had to let him resume his rule.

  12. Readeption: Warwick restores Henry VI to the throne

    After a failed rising in 1470, Warwick and Clarence fled to France, where Louis XI reconciled Warwick with his old enemy Queen Margaret. They invaded through Dartmouth and Plymouth in September, Edward was forced to flee abroad, and Warwick freed Henry VI from the Tower. Henry, now too frail to rule unaided, was restored as king on 3 October 1470, with Warwick in effective control. The map keeps the Yorkist colour for this brief restoration.

  13. Edward IV returns, landing at Ravenspurn

    With some money, ships and men from his brother-in-law Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and backing from Flemish merchants, Edward landed at Ravenspurn in Yorkshire, his ships scattered by bad weather. Hull refused to let him in, but with the Earl of Northumberland's support he gathered troops as he marched south. The restored Lancastrian regime was divided, and Clarence deserted Warwick to rejoin his brother. Bad weather kept Queen Margaret and her son, with French troops, from crossing the Channel to reinforce Warwick.

  14. Warwick 'the Kingmaker' killed at Barnet

    On Easter Day the armies met near Barnet, north of London, in thick mist. In the confusion, the star badge of the Lancastrian Earl of Oxford was mistaken for Edward's sun, and Lancastrians attacked their own men. Edward's determined assault broke Warwick's army; Warwick and his brother John Neville were killed in the rout. Victory at Barnet began fourteen years of Yorkist rule.

  15. Lancastrian heir killed at Tewkesbury; Henry VI dies

    Margaret and Prince Edward landed at Weymouth on the day of Barnet and, with an army raised in the West Country, marched north to join Jasper Tudor's Lancastrians in Wales. Edward IV caught them at Tewkesbury and completely defeated them. Prince Edward, the Lancastrian heir, was killed, and many Lancastrian nobles died in the battle or were executed after it. Henry VI died in the Tower soon afterwards, probably murdered. Edward ruled securely until his death in 1483.

  16. Richard III takes the throne; the princes disappear

    Edward IV died in April 1483, leaving his twelve-year-old son Edward V, with the boy's uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as Lord Protector. Before the coronation, Edward IV's marriage was declared invalid and his children illegitimate, and an assembly proclaimed Richard king. Edward V and his younger brother, the 'Princes in the Tower', were not seen in public after that summer; their fate remains a mystery.

  17. Buckingham's rebellion fails; the duke is executed

    Former supporters of Edward IV, joined by Richard's one-time ally the Duke of Buckingham, rose against the new king in October 1483, backed by Edward's widow Elizabeth Woodville and Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of the exiled Lancastrian claimant Henry Tudor. Storms wrecked Henry's attempt to invade from Brittany, Richard easily put down the revolt, and Buckingham was executed at Salisbury on 2 November.

  18. Henry Tudor lands in Wales with French support

    Henry Tudor, descended from Edward III through his mother Margaret Beaufort, had promised to marry Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's eldest daughter, which won over many Yorkists. With French troops he sailed from Harfleur and landed at Mill Bay, near Dale on Milford Haven, in his native Wales. He marched inland gathering support, while Richard III mustered his army to intercept him.

  19. Richard III killed at Bosworth; Henry Tudor becomes king

    Near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, Richard's larger army attacked, but the Earl of Northumberland did not join in and the Stanleys held back. Richard gambled on a charge to kill Henry himself; Sir William Stanley's men then intervened and Richard was killed, the last English king to die in battle. Henry was crowned Henry VII, and Bosworth is often seen as the end of the Plantagenet dynasty. The exact battlefield site is disputed.

  20. Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York, uniting the two claims

    Crowned at Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485, Henry VII kept his promise and married Elizabeth of York. Their children would inherit both the Lancastrian and Yorkist claims, a union later symbolised by the Tudor rose, which combined the white rose of York with the red rose that Henry adopted for Lancaster. Their first son, Arthur, was born that September. Yet plots by Yorkist sympathisers continued.

  21. Yorkist rebels gather in Ireland around the pretender Lambert Simnel

    Yorkist plotters presented a boy, Lambert Simnel, as the imprisoned Earl of Warwick, Clarence's son and the male heir of York. John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, Richard III's nephew, went to Burgundy, where his aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, gave him money and soldiers. The rebel fleet reached Dublin on 4 May 1487, where the Earl of Kildare helped recruit Irish troops before the invasion of England.

  22. Henry VII defeats the last Yorkist rising at Stoke Field

    Lincoln's army of German and Swiss mercenaries, Irish troops and English Yorkists met Henry at East Stoke in Nottinghamshire. The battle may have been slightly larger than Bosworth, with heavier casualties, and Henry won a crushing victory; Lincoln and most of the other Yorkist commanders fell fighting. Simnel was captured and pardoned, and given work in the royal kitchen. It was the last battle between rival claimants descended from Lancaster and York.

Related

Other wars of the time

Sources