The House Lancaster and the House York

1399 to 1485

England during the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V and the Wars of the Roses

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1399

House of Lancaster, 1399-1461

Henry IV, 1399-1413

On 30 September 1399 Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, read a statement that Richard II had agreed to resign the crown on the grounds of his inadequacy. Whether he had resigned, Henry Bolingbroke took the throne, claiming the crown and giving his oath in English to be understood by all. The crown had been seized and a new king elected. A Rubicon had been crossed which set the scene for the Wars of the Roses.

The Crown would never fully recover from Richard’s deposition, since unlike Edward II, he was not replaced by his undisputed heir, but by a nobleman of sufficient royal blood to stake his claim to the throne.

It was a shocking and intensely dangerous moment. The authority of the crown, contemporaries believed, was instituted by God to rule the kingdom and its people, England’s sovereign was required to be both a warrior and a judge, to protect the realm from external attack and internal anarchy. To depose a king, therefore, was to risk everything – worldly security and immortal soul – by challenging the order of God’s creation. Such devastatingly radical action could never be justified unless kingship became tyranny: rule by arbitrary will rather than law, threatening the interests of the kingdom and people instead of defending them. Even then, could anyone but God rightfully remove a sovereign He had anointed? (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page xxv).

The history of Richard II and Henry IV’s usurpation of the Crown is a story about what happens when a ruler demands loyalty to himself as an individual rather than duty to the established constitution. When he seeks to create his own reality rather than concede the force of verifiable truths. When he demands that his own will should trump the rule of law. When he recognises no interests other than his own. It’s a story about the terrifying unpredictability of unfolding political crises; about the interplay of conflicts within states and between them; about the ways in which authority can be bent, shaped and broken. Its drama is rooted in family and dynasty, constitution and country, and its themes of power, legitimacy, and the limits of rule and resistance are now as urgent as they have ever been. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page xxx).

Henry Bolingbroke, Early of Derby and then Duke of Lancaster was crowned Henry IV. He was Richard II’s cousin, but his claim was dubious, justified by necessity and election.

Rebellions and competitive claims of various interest dogged the first years of his reign. In December 1399 a plot was uncovered to kidnap the king and his son Harry on 6 January 1400, but the plot was betrayed and disrupted. The failure of the Epiphany plot sealed Richard’s fate.

1400

The population of England in 1400 was about 2.5 million, though estimates vary, with some suggesting a slightly lower figure around 2.1 million. This estimate represents a significant recovery from the Black Death and other hardships of the preceding century, which had reduced the population from a high of nearly 5 million in 1300.

By 17 February 1400 Richard was dead and Henry had the corpse visible to all, transported from Pontefract to London.

In 1399 getting rid of Richard had been a desperate necessity and in practice Henry had been the only possible replacement. By spring 1400 though the complications of Henry’s position started to emerge. The Epiphany Plot had be dealt with before Henry needed to act himself. Yet for the people to believe they could take the law into their own hands was a grave danger to the kingdom. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 367).

The young Prince Henry became Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester and was awarded the duchies of Lancaster and Aquitaine almost immediately after the Cornation of Henry IV. Henry kept the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, necessarily primarily used as a source of annuities paid to his loyal retainers, separate from the affairs of the Crown. A king who had seized the throne necessarily had to retain a constant source of support. There was also expectation from those who believed they were responsible for Henry’s coronation.

For all that Henry IV had tried to govern as a mighty and authoritative king, he had found himself reliant on the men who had helped him acquire the throne in the first place: principally his retainers from the duchy of Lancaster, which had been his private landholding before he was crowned. This caused a long running split in English politics, which only his death could remedy. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 4).

The new king intended to exercise restraint. Yet he was obliged to reward his supporters including the large bloc of the House Lancaster. There were winners and losers. Richard II’s duketti were stripped of their titles, but generally left at large.

Henry Hotspur, whose talents Henry admired, was entrusted with enormous military and judicial power in northern England and north Wales and the marches.

There is an In Our Time podcast, Margery Kempe (1373 to 1438) and English Mysticism, and English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

France

Relations with France deteriorated during winter 1399. The French were appalled at the deposition and death of an anointed king and many believed he was killed because of his closeness with France.

Scotland

The English invasion of Scotland led by Henry IV in August 1400 was the first military campaign of Henry's reign. After Scottish raids into northern England, he aimed to reinforce his rule, secure the border, and defeat the Scots. He amasses thirteen thousand troops and sends a demand to the aged King Robert III along with his twenty year old son, David, duke of Rothesay, who is the power behind his throne to appear in Edinburgh to pay homage to him. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 84).

The English camped at Leith and Richard had found before him, the Scots would not engage. Again supplies ran low and the army could only withdraw back to England.

The campaign was militarily inconclusive. The English army advanced but after only 2 weeks then withdrew without a decisive battle, which was seen as a significant victory for the Scots.

Wales

In September 1400, sensing opportunity from the regime change in England, Owain Glyndwr proclaimed himself to be the real Prince of Wales. In October the young Prince Hal was sent to Chester, supported by Hugh Despenser and later by Thomas Percy, brother of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumbria. He was also supported by Henry Percy’s 36 years old experienced soldier son, Henry Percy known as Hotspur, a veteran of wars in Ireland and on crusade, and a member of the Order of the Garter.

Concerned at the revival of Welsh rebellion, parliament approved a raft of restrictions on the rights of Welshmen, intensifying the grievances of those who already lived as second class citizens with legal and tenurial disadvantage.

1401

At Easter 1401 the ap Tudur brothers, Gwilym and Rhys, mounted a daring raid to seize Conwy Castle. When the surrender of the castle was negotiated, conditional upon pardons for the ap Tudurs, Prince Hal had many of the other instigators executed. Nevertheless the success of the raid stirred up more widespread revolt. Owain Glyndwr’s guerilla tactics were difficult to contain.

The paternal ancestors of the Tudors were ruined after their rebellion was crushed. The younger brother of Gwilym and Rhys ap Tudur was Maredudd ap Tudor who had married Margaret ferch Dafydd, and they had a son, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur, later anglicised as Owen Tudor, born in about 1400.

Tension began to emerge between Hery and Hotspur. Hotspur was an experienced soldier and understood that the subjugation of the Welsh was stirring further trouble. Henry felt that negotiation with the rebels would only encourage further rebellion. Costs were spiralling.

Parliament pressed for the repression of Lollardy, an underground heresy around the teaching of John Wycliffe which criticised ecclesiastical wealth and power.

1402

In 1402, Thomas Warde of Trumpington was put forward by Serle and others to impersonate the deceased Richard II in a propaganda campaign designed to undermine Henry IV's legitimacy as king. Henry IV issued writs to sheriffs on 5 June 1402, instructing them to suppress all claims that Richard II was alive. William Serle was eventually captured and subjected to a brutal execution for treason.

On 22 June 1402 Owain ambushed an English force led by Sir Edmund Mortimer. There were significant English casualties at a battle at Bryn Glas and Mortimer was captured. To Hotspur’s frustration, the king forbade him to be ransomed and Mortimer turned rebel, joining the Welsh. He married Mortimer Owain Glyndwr’s daughter Catrin in November 1402 and two weeks later announced his renunciation of allegiance to Henry and his support for his father in law. Mortimer an opposing claim to the English crown through the line of Lionel of Antwerp. Edmund Mortimer was brother in law of Harry Hotspur (who was married to Elizabeth Mortimer) and his defection exacerbated tensions between the Crown and the Percys.

Henry took command of the army in Wales, with his son Henry and the Earl of Arundel. As he advanced the weather turned against them. On 7 September the beleaguered English camp was battered so violently by a storm of wind and a torrential downpour that Henry’s tent collapsed on top of him, knocking down his lance, point first, onto his bed. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 381). Once again the army had no option but to retreat, having not engaged with the enemy.

The Battle of Homildon Hill

Meantime the Scots were attacking English shipping, helping the Welsh rebels, and making incursions deep into northern England. In early September a Scots army of 10,000 men ranged across Northumberland, plundering the countryside at will right up the gates of Newcastle. For Hotspur, this was not just English soil ravaged by Scottish troops; it was Percy territory under assault by the forces of the earl of Doughlas, his family’s greatest rival across the contested frontier. And when Douglas turned his men back towards the river Tweed and home, he found Hotspur waiting for him. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 382).

On 14 September 1402 the Scots found their path blocked by the English forces near Wooler. Douglas positioned his army on the slopes of Humbleton Hill near the ancient Anglo-Saxon tribute centre of Ad Gefrin, Yeavering. The English commanders, specifically following the advice of the experienced George Dunbar, held their ground at the base of the hill and unleashed a massive hailstorm of arrows from their longbowmen, until their targets bristled like hedgehogs. The Scottish formations broke. The Scottish army was utterly routed with negligible English losses. Many Scottish nobles were captured, including Earl Douglas himself, who was wounded and lost an eye.

Here is a dear, a true industrious friend, Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse. Stain’d with the variation of each soil Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours; And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news. The Earl of Douglas is discomfited: Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights, Balk’d in their own blood did Sir Walter see On Holmedon’s plains. Of prisoners, Hotspur took Mordake the Earl of Fife, and eldest son To beaten Douglas; and the Earl of Athol, Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith: And is not this an honourable spoil? A gallant prize? ha, cousin, is it not? (Henry IV Part 1, Act 1, Scene 1, Shakespeare).

Hotspur looked forward to his rewards in ransom payment for the captured Scots, but Henry forbade their ransom, more interested in their value as bargaining chips. Hotspur was incensed. He did not send Douglas to London when the other Scots nobles were called for.

Peace with France was tentatively holding, but privateers rampaged in the Channel and the North Sea. Unrest was also stirring in Ireland.

The last of Edward III’s sons, Edmund of Langley, died in August 1402. A generation had passed. Besides the Percys and the Nevilles, most of England’s nobility were younger men.

1403

Henry officially married Joan of Navarre on 7 February 1403 at Winchester. He had developed an affection for Joan, the Dowager Duchess of Brittany, widow of John de Montfort, during his banishment in 1398 to 1399, when he had resided at the Breton court. They had been married by proxy in April 1402 at Eltham Palace.

On 1 April 1403 Prince Hery was appointed royal lieutenant of Wales, giving him full control of his own principality and a force of 3,000 soldiers. In Wales there was a new lieutenant to step into the breach, one whose loyalty was beyond question. At sixteen, Prince Henry was emerging from Hotspur’s shadow as a precociously able military commander, a leader shaped by an upbringing that was dramatically different to Henry’s own. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 393). He had the chance to be young, to travel and to compete in tournaments, but after his mother’s death and father’s exile he had been thrust into new responsibilities for the Lancastrian interest, before suddenly becoming heir to the throne and Prince of Wales.

Unfortunately, Prince Henry’s promotion to head up Welsh affairs, and his enthusiastic embrace of the job rankles with the Percys. The lieutenancy of Wales had been Hotspur’s at the start of Henry IV’s reign, along with a swathe of other Welsh offices, including the constableships of several important castles. Hotspur’s uncle, Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester, has also been heavily involved in Welsh affairs, acting as the king’s deputy in south Wales and as Prince Henry’s personal governor. Hotspur in particular has complained about the burdens of the office. Nevertheless neither he nor his relatives relish losing their pre-eminence to a teenager. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 99).

In the summer Prince Henry had some success in relieving pressure on Harlech and Aberystwyth and burning Owain Glyndwr’s estates. However by July, the rebels had seized Carmarthen Castle and besieged Kidwelly and Brecon. The young Henry was running short of funds.

Henry the King grew worried about Hotspur’s intentions in Scotland. Henry marched north in July and reached Nottingham, as he learnt that Hotspur had marched to Chester, the loyalist heartland of the old Ricardian regime, with the Earl of Douglas at his side. Thousands rallied to him, may wearing the old emblem of the white hart. Henry worried that he was acting in league with Glyndwr and Mortimer. As Hotspur marched to Shrewsbury to eliminate the heir to the throne, he was joined by Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester. However when the new rebel army reached the walls of Shrewsbury, they found that Henry the King was already there.

The Battle of Shrewsbury was a decisive royal victory, with the death of Hotspur and the routing of his army, which ended the Percy family's challenge to Henry's throne. English longbowmen fought against each other for the first time on English soil.

Prince Henry, raising his visor at an unlucky moment, caught the staggering impact of an arrow full in the face. It lodged under his eye, six inches deep, but adrenaline and the brute force of his will kept the boy on his feet: her snapped off the shaft and refused to leave his father or his men. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 393). The prince was taken to Kenilworth for treatment as the king’s surgeon, John Bradmore was summoned. A painful and protracted period of surgery followed.

Hotspur was killed and Henry the King wept for him. Three weeks later at York, where Hotspur’s rotting head now stared down from the city’s gate, his father Northumberland met the king to submit to Henry’s royal mercy. Henry trod carefully for the Percys held the north. The Percy lands were administered by the royal household. William Norham, once imprisoned by Richard II for his prophesies, declared that Henry was not the lawful king and should give up the throne, and he too was executed.

Meantime the government in Wales was collapsing and the rebels were supported by 200 French troops in the south. Henry withdrew to Hereford on 3 October 1403.

1404

Henry trod warily with the Percys and came to a rapprochement with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, accepting that he had not been treasonous himself, and restricting his penalty to a minor fine.

In France the king beset with mental torment, faced challenge from Louis of Orléans, eager to strike at English interests in Calais and Aquitaine, as English vessels were harried in the Channel, and the Bretons attacked Portsmouth, Guernsey and Jersey. Parliament was unwilling to provide funds, feeling that the king had ample resource through his Lancastrian estates. A deal on taxation was finally reached.

Caernarfon and Cardiff were besieged and held by a thread and Harlech and Aberystwyth had fallen. Kidwelly was burned and looted. Prince Henry pledged his own silver plate in order to pay his soldiers.

1405

Plotting and conspiracy continued and Henry had to tread carefully amidst the thin ranks of the nobility. In February 1405, Constance of York organized a plot to abduct the young Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, and his brother from Windsor Castle. They were quickly recaptured by the king's men near Cheltenham before they could reach Wales. Constance was arrested and imprisoned at Kenilworth Castle. During her interrogation, she implicated her elder brother, Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, in the conspiracy. Edward was subsequently imprisoned for seventeen weeks at Pevensey Castle, though he was eventually restored to the king's favour.

Prince Henry began to inflict significant losses on the Welsh and Henry’s second son, Thomas commanded a fleet to reassert English control in the Channel.

Rising in the North

In May 1405, the Earl of Northumberland, bruised and brooding over the death of his son Hotspur, began a fresh revolt in the north. His initial move was to seize his rival, Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland, but Neville and escaped and Percy fled to the safety of Berwick, leaving his allies and sympathisers in Yorkshire unsupported, led by the teenager Thomas Mowbray and Richard Scrope, the 55 years of Archbishop of York. Scrope had been apparently loyal to Henry since his coronation. His resistance began with a sermon at York Minster which denounced the bad governance in the kingdom with its harsh regulations and unmanageable taxes. Yorkshire was Percy country and York’s people were stirred by a manifesto so rousingly vague as to be all encompassing. The archbishop found the city in uproar around him.

On 27 May 1405 Mowbray and Scrope led a force of 8,000 men onto Shipton Moor just outside the city. They waited for support from Northumberland, but instead watched an approaching royalist army under Ralph Neville and Henry’s young son, John of Lancaster. Ralph Neville indicated his willingness to have the rebels’ complaints addressed, but when they cleared the field, he arrested Scrope and Mowbray.

Henry IV approached too, his patience worn. On 6 June 1405 the people of York streamed towards him through its gates in supplication, barefooted and bareheaded, wearing filthy rags. Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury begged the king to have mercy on his fellow archbishop.

The King and Thomas Beaufort arranged a summary trial. Archbishop Scrope and Thomas Mowbray were found guilty of treason and executed in a barley field outside the city. The parallel with the death of Thomas Becket now questioned the justice which had set Henry’s rule apart from his predecessors.

Henry then moved north to attack the Percy castles including Berwick, Alnwick and Warkworth, in the north east, taking siege engines and cannon. He called one of his guns the King’s Daughter and took technical interest in their design. Canon had been used on the Continent for about 60 years, but this was their first use on English soil. They were not yet powerful enough to breach defensive walls, but their threat was a useful psychological weapon.

The city of York lost its liberties. The King had also killed one archbishop and alienated another.

(The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 411 to 415).

Stories of miracles followed, of Scope smiling from his stake and of barley growing richly in the field of death. The archbishop’s grave became a place of pilgrimage.

Meantime the French landed 2,500 men to support the rebellion in Wales, as the treasury was on empty. When the English attacked, the Welsh melted into the hills. Flash floods swept away the king’s baggage train, including the wagons which carried the crown jewels.

1406

By the spring of 1406, after physical and psychological strain, the King grew ill with a sudden malady in his leg. Inevitably the illness was linked to the death of the archbishop. He struggled to reach parliament for more than a few days to negotiate the urgent requirements of state. Parliament sought a reduction in the size of the royal household and greater accountability for spending and help back from ratifying the King’s verdicts of treason following the rebellion.

In March 1406 the 11 year old heir to the Scottish throne, James, was captured at sea en route to his education in Paris, shortly before the King, Robert III died, it is said of grief. James I of Scotland was thus held in the Tower.

In Wales Prince Henry increasingly took command of the war, focusing on a war of attrition and on 23 April 1406 one of Owain Glyndwr’s son was killed, the other already having been captured. The French reinforcements had returned home.

The Earl of Northumberland arrived in Wales to ratify an alliance with Owain Glyndwr and Edmund Mortimer, aiming to unify a Greater Britain, divided three ways between them by the Tripartite Indenture, but Percy failed to persuade French support.

At Christmas the Long Parliament finally granted a tax of one fifteenth and tenth (tax on moveable property at 10% for inhabitants of cities, boroughs and royal demesne lands and a fifteenth for people in rural areas), under strict conditions of accountability. Henry was bound to govern on the advice of a new royal council, governed by the Thirty One Articles. The Council was to check in with the King twice a week. The Council included Archbishop Thomas Arundel, Bishop Henry Beaufort of Winchester, the Earl of Westmorland, Lords Berkeley, Lovell, and Burnell, and the Earl of Stafford.

A prominent role was taken by Prince Henry. The Prince had not lived with his father as a boy and since 1399 had been largely engaged in the Welsh wars. He was not close to his father, but had developed a close relationship with the new generation of noblemen. The prince took on a central role which began to shape his father’s rule. Whilst he distrusted the restrictions of the council on the royal prerogative, but there was also opportunities for the young Henry.

1407

As King Henry travelled to Yorkshire to visit the shrine of Saint John Twenge of Bridlington again, Prince Henry was clawing back territory in Wales. Close financial management was beginning to take control of funding.

In France the rivalry between the Dukes of Burgundy and Orléans came to a head when Louis of Orléans was murdered in the streets of Paris on 23 November 1407 and France was on the verge of civil war. John the Fearless of Burgundy had inherited the Duchy three years before from his late father, Philip the Bold. When Louis of Orléans with stabbed to death in the streets of Paris on 23 November 1407 by fifteen masked men loyal to Philp the Bold’s son and heir John the Fearless, murder and treachery became the defining characteristics of French politics. Louis’ eldest son, Charles, built an alliance with his father-in-0law, Bernard count of Armagnac, and France swiftly divided into two rival power blocs as the leading men of the realm split their allegiance between the warring parties. The stand-off between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs had begun. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 7).

1408

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, made a last attempt at rebellion in the north on 19 February 1408. He was killed at the Battle of Bramham Moor, near the Lancastrian castle of Knaresborough, on 19 February 1408. Percy’s severed head was taken to London and hung from London Bridge. Henry was fit enough to travel to Yorkshire where cases were heard against those who had joined the rebellion.

With France in chaos, the Scottish King in the Tower, the Percy rebellion subdued, and Wales in retreat, the Kingdom was safer than it had been in years.

However in June 1408 the King collapsed and lost consciousness for so long that he was thought to be dead.

In September 1408 Prince Henry finally took Aberystwyth Castle.

1409

By new year, the King’s health had deteriorated again and he made his will, written in English, an anguished plea for forgiveness. However, he did not die. Yet his future was one of ill health and chronic skin disease.

Harlech fell in February 1409. The rebels were pinned back in the north west as more members of Owain Glyndwr’s family were captured. Prince Henry was still only 22, but had an intense apprenticeship.

There were tensions in the royal council as Archbishop Arundel opposed any rights to royal inheritance to the Beauforts after their legitimisation following John of Gaunt’s marriage to Katherine Swynford. Prince Henry was not impressed, nor by the inadequate funding of the military pursuits. The Archbishop and the Treasurer, John Tiptoft resigned, or were pushed, by the end of the year. The young Henry increasingly took charge of governmental business.

Meantime Prince Henry’s brother Thomas was making lacklustre progress in Ireland but demanding more funding. Having been required to fight the Welsh Wars on limited funding, Prince Henry was not inclined to support Thomas’ please, but their father, King Henry, indulged his second son. Family tension was beginning to show.

1410

The Prince proposed an annual tax without the requirement to call a new parliament each time. Parliament made a counter proposal, to raise funds by confiscating the property of the church. The church pled heresy. The idea of disendowment of the church was eventually dropped.

In the midst of these wider debates about heresy, Archbishop Arundel made an example of John Badby, a Lollard tailor (or blacksmith), who was burned at the stake at Smithfield on 1 March 1410. It is said that Prince Henry witnessed the execution and offered the sufferer both life and a pension if he would recant; but in Walsingham's words, the abandoned villain declined the prince's advice, and chose rather to be burned than to give reverence to the life-giving sacrament. So it befell that this mischievous fellow was burnt to ashes, and died miserably in his sin (Walsingham).

1411

Henry struggled to move far and consoled himself in music and theological debate. Meantime Prince Henry struggled to balance the costs of running the kingdom against the income collected. He instigated detailed measures to improve financial efficiency. Payments of annuities were curbed, the prince no longer feeling it necessary to placate the loyal subjects of the crown with financial reward, insisting instead that they owed their allegiance. The prince started to move away from the Lancastrian partisanship of his father.

The position in France had been changed. Civil War had broken out in France between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs of Orléans.

The House of Orléans, led by Louis’ teenage son, Charles who had married the daughter of Bernard, the Count of Armagnac, formed an anti-Burgundian league in 1408, mustering in Picardy. The Burgundians controlled Paris, with a power base in Flanders and Artois. The Armagnac-Burgundian rivalry would dominate French politics for the next three decades.

The distracted King of France, Charles VI ‘The Mad’ suffered mental illness and left his government to be managed by others. Envoys from each side arrived in England to ask for support. There were new opportunities for England.

Henry the King felt decisions about the relationship with France were for him to take. He focused on an expedition to defend English interests on the Continent. Prince Henry felt the King was in no state to make such decisions and favoured a deal with the Duke of Burgundy. Prince Henry was sent on a diplomatic mission strictly ordered by the King to explore options. However Prince Henry took 200 men at arms, 800 archers and 1,000 longbowmen with Thomas FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel; Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, and joined the army of John of Burgundy. The English contingent helped the Burgundians relieve Paris, which was being besieged by the Armagnacs. The presence of English forces influenced the dynamics of the French civil war and was a precursor to England's later full-scale invasion of France under Henry V.

Despite the success of the mission, King Henry saw Prince Henry’s actions as insubordination. The King was appalled at John the Fearless cold blooded murder of his rival in 1407 and of carnage on the streets of Paris in 1411.

In October 1411, Prince Henry claimed that he and the council were guardians of good government in the kingdom and took steps to investigate riots and disorder in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The prince began to position himself as the ruler trusted with the maintenance of the law.

Henry’s decision to overrule his father and send troops to help John the Fearless against the Armagnacs is the culmination of several months of rising tension between father and son. There is one deep seated issue: Henry is beginning to look too much like a king for the real king’s liking. There had been several flashpoints. The King had supported Archbishop Arundel in his campaign against the Lollards and his dispute with Oxford University whilst the Prince had supported an old colleague from the Welsh campaigns who asked for help to rein in the Archbishop. Henry and his brother Thomas had become increasingly estranged. Henry and Bishop Beaufort had also called for the ill King to abdicate in favour of the young Henry (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 182).

Parliament opened on 3 November 1411. It became a stage for the power struggle between the King's faction and that of his son, Prince Henry, and the Beaufort family. The King dismissed Prince Henry from his position on the royal council shortly after the parliament ended. The King’s ally Archbishop Arundel replaced Thomas Beaufort as chancellor. Political divisions within the royal court were clear, setting the stage for subsequent policy shifts in 1412. On 22 December 1411, the King issued a general pardon, having reasserted his authority. He was not dead yet.

1412

With the Armagnacs in retreat in France, Burgundian envoys had a positive reception from the prince, but the Armagnacs tempted King Henry with a recognition of his right to wear the English crown and support to recover Aquitaine. They asked for 1,000 men at arms and 3,000 archers to serve in France, with their salaries paid for by the Armagnacs. An Anglo-Armagnac alliance was agreed on 18 May 1412 and the King announced his intention to personally lead an expedition to France.

Prince Henry was furious, humiliated at the requirement to withdraw from the alliance with the Burgundians, and dismayed by what he considered to be the wrong policy.

As it became clear that the King was unable to lead the expedition himself, distrusting his older son, Henry appointed his second son Thomas, appointed Duke of Clarence; with Edward of Rutland, Duke of York; and Thomas Beaufort, Admiral of England, to lead the expedition of 4,000 troops promised to the Armagnacs. As a further rebuff to Prince Henry, Thomas was made lieutenant of Aquitaine.

Prince Henry widely distributed a letter expressing his unhappiness. This is a moment of high humiliation for Henry: a time when his demotion is plain to the whole realm. He decides that he needs to act to halt what seems a total freefall. On 17 June he is in his estates in the Midlands, near Coventry, when he issues an open letter, addressed not to his father but to the whole kingdom. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 191). He then travelled to London for an audience with his father. He professed his loyalty and fell to his knees. Feeble as the king is, he can hardly resist such a performance, and he bursts into tears. The two men hug and the king tells Henry that he trusts him absolutely. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 195).

King Henry was not minded to mess with the Lancastrian succession, and understood the capabilities of his older son.

If there is any truth in Shakespeare’s depiction of Prince Hal enjoying lowly, drunken society, it may date to this time.

Meantime as the English force arrived in France, they found a peace treaty had been agreed and their services were no longer required. The new Duke of Clarence wreaked havoc as he advanced towards the Loire, demanding the payment that had been promised. A settlement was reached for payment of £40,000 for the English army withdrawal. Thomas then marched his army southwest to Bordeaux where he over wintered to make plans to reimpose English control of Aquitaine.

1413

Henry IV collapsed on 20 March 1413. A prophesy had foretold that he would die in Jerusalem, but as he was carried to the Jerusalem Chamber in the Deanery of Westminster Abbey, he realised it was a different Jerusalem where he would die.

King Henry V now claimed the throne by right of inheritance. He immediately replaced the chancellor and treasurer with Bishop Beaufort and the Earl of Arundel.

Henry V, 1413-1422

On 8 April 1413 Henry created 50 new knights and on 9 April, Passion Sunday, he was crowned at the age of 26. Something profound has happened to Henry on the day of his coronation. .. His transformation will become the dramatic hinge of the stories and legends that are told about him for hundreds of years afterwards (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 208). Shakespeare dramatically, but incorrectly, immortalised it as a sudden departure from a former irresponsible life as Prince Hal.

Henry’s task was to build on the foundations his father had laid. He wanted not just to resist rebellion as his father had done, but to bring order to his people, God’s peace to his realm; not just to defend the kingdom as his father had done, but to vindicate the rights of his crown, riding into battle as God’s own soldier. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 480).

Under the new King Henry, the House Lancaster would no longer enjoy the privileges of his father’s reign. Early on he made significant gestures of reconciliation, offering forgiveness to rebels of his father’s reign and exhuming Richard II from his burial place at King’s Langley, Hertfordshire, and transferring his remans to the tomb Richard had commissioned, alongside his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, in Westminster Abbey. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 5).

£10,000 from royal revenues were assigned to the King’s own expenses. The Commons granted a tax of a fifteenth and tenth for the defence of the realm.

Henry’s old companion, Sir John Oldcastle, who had adopted the beliefs of the Lollards, was accused of heresy in 1413. Henry V initially offered him a reprieve, but Oldcastle remained unyielding in his views and was convicted as a heretic. He escaped from the Tower of London and led an abortive rebellion. Like Hotspur before him, Oldcastle has transformed from a friend of Henry’s into a mortal enemy (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 222). The rebels intended to capture the King on Twelfth Night infiltrating the royal household dressed as mummers. The plot was discovered and many of the rebels were executed, though Oldcastle went into hiding. Oldcastle himself was later executed for heresy and treason in 1417. His story later served as an inspiration for Shakespeare's character Sir John Falstaff.

A French diplomatic mission arrived in England over the winter of 1413 to 1414 to witness the turmoil of the Lollard plotting. However Paris was itself the scene of rioting and murder stirred on by the Burgundian, John the Fearless who stirred the butchers into a populist uprising, the Revolt of the Cabochiens. Thugs wearing white caps stormed the bastille and royal residences. Charles VI continued to suffer mental illness as his son, the dauphin Louis, turned 17. Married to John the Fearless’ daughter, the dauphin was nevertheless wary of the Burgundians.

The English looked to exploit French weakness to turn the clock back to the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny, taking control of Guyenne, Poitiers and Ponthieu, perhaps in exchange for relinquishing the Plantagenet claim to the French crown. In time a full scale intervention on either side of the civil war promised significant concessions.

While to Burgundians and the Armagnacs fought amongst themselves, the new English King began to plan an intervention in France to reclaim the rightful inheritance of the crown.

1414

In February 1414 a fragile truce was brokered between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, hoping to dissuade Henry that France was a soft target. A one year truce was agreed between England and France, expiring in May 1415.

The French Dauphin launched a coup to seize personal rule, dismissing the Armagnac princes and declared himself regent of France, with powers to defend France from its enemies.

In Lent 1414, Henry received French ambassadors at his favourite residence Kenilworth. They brought gifts of tennis balls and some very jesting words, explaining that instead of threatening France, he could play with his young men as was his wont. Henry dismissed the gift, promising very soon to send London balls (or cannon balls) back to the Dauphin. There are various accounts of the event, but it seems that Henry perceived insult from the French court.

Your Highness, lately sending into France, Did claim some certain dukedoms in the right Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third; In answer of which claim, the Prince our master Says that you savour too much of your youth And bids you be advised there’s naught in France That can be with a nimble galliard won; You cannot revel into dukedoms there. (Henry V, Shakespeare, Act 1 Scene 2).

In April 1414 Henry took steps in domestic affairs, to allow the intervention of central government where local sheriffs failed to maintain the law. He passed new measures to suppress Lollardy and ordered royal judges to tour the country over the summer to deal with crimes including felony and trespass.

Diplomatic shuttling continued with Henry tending towards an alliance with the Burgundians who promised help in retrieving Guyenne for England in return. Henry’s ambitions were growing however and his ambassadors boldly proposed a reinstatement of the Plantagenet lands lost since the time of Henry II. The proposal was refused. By September, talks had broken down. A sea change is sweeping through English policy towards France, and it bears the marks of the bold instincts Henry has shown since he was a teenager cutting his teeth in Wales. A second parliament of the year is due to open in Westminster in November. And when it does, Bishop Henry Beaufort opens with an address that is far more aggressive than any he has delivered before. There was an enthusiastic response by parliament to the call to arms who agreed to a double subsidy of two tenths and fifteenths. It will be a year before another parliament is called. By that time, Henry will have transformed himself from a bold, unproven new king into a warrior in the first rank of European princes. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 236 to 239).

Organisation for war began in autumn 1414. Arms were stockpiled, a fleet assembled and taxation provided by parliament, during the honeymoon period of the new regime. The descendants of Edward III were rallying to the Lancastrian crown, and all were deeply involved, along with every other Englishman of fighting age, it seemed, in plans for the campaign to come. (The Eagle and the Hart, The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, Helen Castor, 2025, page 481). Henry begged and persuaded further loans to fund the expedition.

1415

In July 1415, 12,000 troops, with horses, engineers, cannon, medics, fodder, tents, and supplies assembled at Southampton.

As the invasion force assembled, Richard of Conisbrough, 3rd Earl of Cambridge launched the Southampton Plot, a conspiracy to assassinate Henry V and his brothers at Southampton before they departed for the invasion of France, and replace the King with Edmund Mortimer, the Earl of March. The plot failed when Edmund Mortimer, the intended beneficiary, revealed the details of the conspiracy to the King on 31 July 1415. The conspirators were arrested and tried at Southampton. Sir Thomas Grey was executed, and the Earl of Cambridge and Lord Scrope were beheaded outside the Bargate in Southampton on 5 August 1415. Their heads were publicly displayed as a warning against treason.

Harfleur

On 11 August 1415, Henry V set sail in his flagship, Trinity Royal, with his fleet bound for Harfleur.

On 14 August 1415 the English fleet was at anchor in the mouth of the Seine. A small reconnaissance party led by John Holland found the coast undefended, though Harfleur itself was heavily garrisoned. On 17 August the English force began to disembark. Henry first offered to treat the defenders of Harfleur well if they surrendered, but his offer was rejected. So, the siege of Harfleur began. From every side our king with his guns pounded the barbicans and the walls and the towers (Henry’s chaplain). The guns were basic, monstrous iron beasts on hardwood platforms and they often malfunctioned exploding and injuring their gunners.

Henry took personal leadership throughout the siege.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility, But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage, Then lend the eye a terrible aspect, Let it pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon, let the brow o’erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock O’erhang and jutty his confounded base Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof, Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought, And sheathed their swords for lack of argument. Dishonor not your mothers. Now attest That those whom you called fathers did beget you. Be copy now to men of grosser blood And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here The mettle of your pasture. Let us swear That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not, For there is none of you so mean and base That hath not noble luster in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot. Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!” (Henry V, Shakespeare, Act 3 Scene 1).

Despite using gunpowder artillery and making initial breaches, the five week siege was costly due to French resistance and a severe outbreak of dysentery that significantly reduced the English army. After a brief ceasefire, with the loss of hope that the Dauphin would come to their aid, Harfleur surrendered on 22 September 1415. Henry accepted the surrender on a hill overlooking Harfleur on a throne draped with gold where he was handed the keys of the town. Henry had ambitions to garrison the town with English soldiers, resettle it with English merchants and establish it as his forward military base. He appointed his uncle, Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Dorset as warden and assigned 1,200 men as its garrison.

Yet it was now late in the year, and his army was depleted by disease and dysentery. A follow on attack on another town, even Rouen was unrealistic. However he had not yet achieved enough for his campaign to be viewed a triumph.

On 8 October 1415, with perhaps half of his initial 12,000 force still alive or fit, and a garrison left at Harfleur, Henry led his reduced forces towards Calais, 150 miles away through enemy territory, instead of an easier withdrawal back to England from Harfleur. He forbade looting or burning of the land. He is taking a big risk, but a calculated one. The arguments will not change, however many times they are rehearsed. To go home directly from Harfleur will encourage disparagement of a costly campaign fought for poor reward. To overwinter at Harfleur will invite the dauphin to come and try his own hand at besieging the town, a task that will be much easier now that Henry’s cannon have levelled so much of it. Instead Henry intended to distract the Dauphin by showing his face to the people of Normandy who he claimed to be his own, whilst avoiding interception by the French. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 269).

The March to Agincourt

His army marched along the coast past Montvilliers and Fécamp. On 11 October they reached Arques, inland from Dieppe where they crossed the River Béthune. At Eu, they crossed the River Bresle after an engagement with the town. On 13 October they reached the River Somme near Abbeville, where they first encountered a significant French force on the far bank. The French had broken the bridges and inserted stakes into the river bed. A larger French force was assembling at Rouen, to the rear of the English position. Suddenly things appear bleak. Ahead of Henry’s army lies the wide and now impassable obstacle of the river Somme, guarded on its northern bank. To his rear is gathering a large, fresh enemy army, fired by its indignation at what the English have done in Harfleur. To his left lies the sea. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 271).

Henry V’s Campaigns 1415 to 1422

In response the English army began a slog upriver to search for a bridge across the Somme. By 15 October they reached Boves. On 17 October they faced attack from the town of Corbie. As dissent started to spread, Henry displayed his harsh discipline by having an archer accused of stealing hung from a tree. Next day they reached Nesle who resistance was met with its burning. Henry’s scouts then identified two causeways that provided a route across the Somme.

After crossing the Somme, the English faced a new French threat to the east, approaching Péronne. At a parley, Henry told the French that if they wished to do battle, he was heading for Calais, and they would have to find him. As the English marched on, the churned up ground suggested an enemy force numbered several thousands and many of Henry’s men were terrified.

Agincourt

On 24 October 1415 the English crossed the River Ternoise and arrived at high ground near the villages of Maisoncelle and Azincourt. There, they saw the French army, blocking their route to Calais. The English soldiers had been marching for 16 days, scavenging for food, and covering some 250 miles. When Sir Walter Hungerford wished for 10,000 more archers, Henry responded I would not, even if I could, have a single man more than I do. For these I have here with me are God’s people, whom he deigns to let me have at this time. Do you not believe that the Almighty, with these his humble few, is able to overcome the opposing arrogance of the French?

That night the French were so close that the English could hear their laughter and discussion of the fortunes they anticipated from English captives. Henry ordered silence amongst the English camp.

By dawn on Friday 25 October 1415, Henry had laid out his formations. He placed battalions of men at arms in the centre. On either wing in wedges, he placed his archers, who fixed a sharpened stake into the ground for protection. The English army was significantly outnumbered, with around 6,000 to 8,000 men compared to the French army of up to 25,000 troops, though with a top heavy command structure.

Westmoreland: O, that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work today.

King Henry: What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin. If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires. But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, ’faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God’s peace, I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me, For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart. His passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man’s company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is called the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day and comes safe home Will stand o’ tiptoe when this day is named And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall see this day, and live old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours And say “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.” Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember with advantages What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son, And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be rememberèd— We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

(Henry V, Shakespeare, Act 4 Scene 3).

The French suffered from a muddled chain of command, and their advance was hampered by the narrow, muddy battlefield, which caused their forces to become densely packed. Highly effective longbowmen who could fire up to 15 arrows per minute were positioned to take advantage of the terrain. Each volley of arrows shot by the English longbowmen, trained from childhood to operate that difficult, deadly weapon, kills or cripples hundreds of men and animals. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 281).

The two armies met on a ploughed field, the mud beneath their feet thickened by heavy rain. Despite the size of the French army, which was perhaps six times as large as Henry’s, superior tactics and outstanding generalship gave the English the advantage. Henry relied heavily on the use of longbows, which were capable of causing havoc on a crowded battlefield. The king protected his archers from cavalry attacks by driving sharpened stakes into the ground around them. And the bowmen repaid him: firing volley after volley through the air towards the French and their horses, and the men-at-arms who attempted to cross the battlefield on foot. Numerical advantage meant nothing when the sky rained arrows, and a terrific slaughter ensued. In the words of one eye witness, ‘the living fell on the dead, and others falling on the living were killed in turn.’ The deaths were disastrously one sided: more than 10,000 Frenchmen were killed for a loss of perhaps as few as 150 English. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 8).

The English defeated the French army at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415. The French mounted knights were shot by the English archers equipped with the six foot longbow, and they panicked and fell in the mud. It was carnage for the French knights and for the French aristocracy.

As the battle neared its end, the French had started to flee, but reports were received of fresh French troops riding towards the battlefield. A band of locals had also robbed the English baggage train. Danger still lurked and Henry ordered the French captives to be killed. This pitiless order to slit the throats and beat in the skulls of vulnerable men will in time be counted as a great stain on Henry’s character. It was harsh and cold blooded. Conventionally captives were to be treated properly and not summarily executed. In any event they were worth more alive than dead. Yet Henry made a cold choice when his army was still under threat and the captives remained a risk so long as there were prospects for the battle to take a fresh course. Contemporaneously, even the French did not criticise Henry for his order.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the defeat of the French at Agincourt in 1415, and explores the cultural legacy of this emblematic victory.

Henry had established his prestige as monarch.

Calais

At Guînes in Picardy Henry dined with his remaining French captives. On 29 October 1415 Henry entered Calais. Even before he returned parliament granted him a large subsidy and rights to duties on wines and other goods.

On 23 November 1415 the King was received worthily and royally in London. He was met at Blackheath by the Lord Mayor and city dignitaries, accompanied by an estimated 20,000 citizens on horseback, all wearing red and white, the King's colours. There was elaborate civic pageantry. Henry wore a simple purple gown and did not wear a crown for the event, wishing the focus to remain on God's grace for the victory, rather than his personal glory. The route took him through the city, including down Cheapside, which had been specially cleaned for the occasion. Henry made a stop at St. Paul's Cathedral to perform his devotions before continuing to Westminster Palace for the night.

These were only the first steps in Henry’s campaign.

In France, Louis the Dauphin died from dysentery, aged only 18. His 17 year old brother John of Touraine was the new Dauphin. John in turn died on 5 April 1417, and was succeeded by his brother Charles, Count of Ponthieu (later Charles VII of France).

1416

Harfleur

A French siege of Harfleur began in April 1416, but was broken by an English naval victory in the Battle of the Seine and Harfleur, which also helped lift the related land siege at Valmont. The battle that is fought in the Seine estuary on 15 August 1416, between the English armada of John, duke of Bedford and an enemy fleet composed of French ships and huge, hired Genoese carracks, is every bit as bloody as Agincourt. It lasted seven hours and culminated in hand to hand fighting. Losses on both sides were terrible. However the English fleet shattered the naval blockade on Harfleur. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 300).

Meantime Henry agreed a peace treaty and military alliance with Sigismund, King of the Germans, later to be accepted as Holy Roman Emperor.

In October 1416 Henry’s chancellor Beaufort quoted Aristotle, Let us make wars so that we might have peace, for the end of war is peace, echoed by the Latin Si vis pacem, para bellum, If you want peace, prepare for war.

1417

In 1417 Henry prepared for his second expedition to France. 10,000 fighting men and thousands of sailors were contracted, amidst another major logistical undertaking. Henry charmed and cajoled financial support for the new venture.

The new dauphin Charles and his Armagnac advisers were forced to defend Paris from the Burgundian threat of John the Fearless.

Normandy

In July 1417 he launched a systematic conquest of Normandy, landing at the mouth of the river Torques, before besieging and brutally sacking Caen, followed by the important military towns of Exmes, Sées, Argentan, Alenҫon, Falaise, Avranches and Cherbourg, along with every significant castle and town in between. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 9).

On 1 August 1417, the new English army landed in Normandy, south of Harfleur. The nearest town, Torques surrendered without resistance. By mid August several other towns had surrendered. Henry then advanced on Caen. Caen held out for two weeks until Henry’s army attacked the walls on 4 September. The city was sacked after fierce fighting, with the castle eventually surrendering on 20 September. As Henry then marched through the Normandy countryside, he met little resistance. By the end of October Lisieux and Bayeux had fallen.

Scotland

Henry’s brother John, Duke of Bedford, led the domestic government back home. A Scottish raid on Berwick and Roxburgh was broken by a force which included Hotspur’s son Henry Percy, restored as Earl of Northumberland and Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. Further taxes are granted to support the war effort.

On 1 December 1417, the English began its siege of Falaise, which in time also surrendered.

1418

During the first half of 1418, the English subdued Lower Normandy, including Cherbourg.

In May 1418 there was more violence in Paris after John the Fearless reneged a Burgundian deal with the Armagnacs, while the English ravaged the French countryside. On 29 May 1418 Burgundian troops began a fortnight of lawlessness in the streets of Paris. A Parisian uprising, supported by the Burgundians, overthrew the Armagnac government and led to a period of intense violence known as the Massacre of the Armagnacs. The event was triggered by a popular revolt against the ruling Armagnac faction, which had controlled Paris, with the support of a Burgundian force that infiltrated the city. This resulted in the capture of many Armagnac leaders and, in the following days, their brutal slaughter by a mob. Armagnac loyalists smuggled the young Dauphin Charles out of Paris.

Rouen

Meantime Henry arrived at Rouen on 29 July 1418 which he described as the most notable place in France, save Paris. A brutal siege followed from July 1418 to January 1419. English forces blockaded the city to starve it into submission, rather than a direct military assault. The siege led to the starvation of Rouen's 12,000 civilians who were expelled by the French but not allowed to pass through the English lines, before the city surrendered on 13 January 1419.

1419

As they entered Rouen the inhabitants they found were but bones and bare skin, with hollow eyes and visage sharp, unlike living men, but the dead. Other towns in the vicinity surrendered soon after the fall of Rouen.

The English completed the conquest of Normandy, with only Mont St Michel holding out. Henry began to arrange the administration of Normandy under Philip Morgan, with English settlers arriving.

By the late summer Henry had become the first English king effectively in command of Normandy since his ancestor king John had been chased out by Philip II of France in 1204. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 9).

On 30 May 1419, a diplomatic conference at Meulan between Henry V and Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy failed to produce an agreement. The two leaders were attempting to negotiate an end to the conflict and potentially form an alliance, but Henry's demands were too high.

Pontoise

On 31 July 1419, the English attacked Pontoise, located on the River Oise, a key stronghold that controlled access to Paris from the north and effectively served as the last barrier to the French capital. The town was taken with significant plunder. As word of Pointoise’s fall reaches Paris, carried by the pitiful columns of homeless who stagger there, shocked, bloodied and sunburned, the capital is gripped by terror. Law and order was breaking down and the king, queen and John the Fearless abandoned the city to the royal residence at Lagny-sur-Marne, twenty miles east. Yet the further Henry pushed east, the more vulnerable he became, with stretched supply lines. His army was growing weary from the relentless engagement. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 335).

The Armagnacs reached agreement with Castille and Scotland to provide support.

John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was assassinated on 10 September 1419, on a bridge at Montereau during a diplomatic meeting with the Dauphin. The killing was a calculated act of revenge. The assassination made John the Fearless a martyr, continuing the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War. The two factions on the brink of reconciliation reverted to a hatred deeper than ever. A century later the duke of Burgundy’s skull, half shattered by the sword and axe blows that dealt that grim night on the bridge at Montereau, is shown to the French King Francis I. The monk who presents it points out a large gap in the skull, and remarks to his monarch that it is through this hole the English entered the noble kingdom of France. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 338). With John the Fearless dead, Henry felt he could achieve all his ambitions. John the Fearless was succeeded by his 23 year old son, Philip the Good.

Gisors

English forces under Thomas of Lancaster took the castle and town at Gisors, a strategically important target. Henry met French ambassadors and explained that he would take the French crown, acting as Regent until Charles VI’s death and marry the King’s daughter, Catherine of Valois.

At the end of October, English forces seized bridges across the Seine, controlling access to the city. Conditions in Paris were abysmal.

Just before the expiry of the deadline on 11 November 1419, Philip the Good responded that he would recommend an alliance with England. The truce was extended and Henry spent Christmas in Rouen.

1420

Troyes

There followed four and a half months of negotiation and drawing up terms. On 20 May 1420 Henry arrived at Troyes where Charles VI and Queen Isabeau had been residing. On 21 May the parties sealed the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry was to marry Catherine, daughter of Charles VI. Charles’ eldest son, the dauphin, was disinherited for his part in the murder of the Duke of Burgundy in 1419. Henry was appointed as regent provided that he did not disturb, disquiet or impede the king for the rest of his life. The dauphin and the Armagnacs have been disinherited and abused in the terms of the Treaty of Troyes. But they have not been written out of existence. They still hold half of France, which as regent of the kingdom, Henry now has a responsibility to bring back into obedience. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 352).

Henry came to be styled as Henry, by the Grace of God, King of England, Heir and Regent of the Realm of France, and Lord of Ireland. He was closer to a more favourable outcome to the Hundred Years War than even his great grandfather Edward III had achieved.

On 2 June 1420 Henry married Catherine. She was married in a soldier’s wedding (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 3).

The Dauphinists were the French noblemen and forces who supported the claim of the Dauphin Charles as the rightful heir to the French throne. They were the opponents of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, which, by the Treaty of Troyes signed that year, would disinherit Charles. Henry’s army began to confront the Dauphinists. As Scottish soldiers began to join the Dauphinist cause, Henry began to exploit his captive, James I of Scotland, in English custody since 1406 when aged 11, to dissuade Scottish support.

Henry took Sens and then Montereau.

Melun

His next target was Melun, on a curve of the Seine. The Siege of Melun lasted from June to 18 November 1420. The lengthy and dramatic siege involved close combat in tunnels. The Siege of Milan is, in some ways, like so many of the other long sieges Henry has already conducted in his campaigns in France. There are trenches and pontoon bridges, roads and river blockades, trebuchets and ladders. Catapult operators hurl rotting animal corpses and camp filth over the walls to spread disease. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 355). The garrison, commanded by Arnaud Guillaume de Barbazan, put up a strong defence against the English army. The town eventually surrendered due to a lack of supplies, and Barbazan was imprisoned, while some of the defending Scots were executed.

On 1 December 1420, Henry entered Paris for the first time. Henry and Catherine hoisted a lavish feast at the Hotel de Louvre at Christmas.

1421

Henry arrived in England on 1 February 1421. He progressed through Canterbury and Eltham and then returned to London. The excitement of 1415 was now tainted by worries about what the new political landscape meant for the English, with war continuing against the Dauphinists. Catherine was crowned Queen of England.

In spring 1421 Henry toured England, first west to Bristol and the Welsh Marches and then to Kenilworth, before visiting Yorkshire, where he was concerned about a reluctance to provide troops for his campaign. He visited Pontefract where Charles of Orléans was still held captive, and then York, where Catherine stayed while Henry visited the shrine of John of Bridlington, the most northerly point of his tour before he returned to London.

He taxed his realm relentlessly, but his personal household expenses were markedly frugal, his exchequer competently run and his war debts relatively controlled. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 13).

In 1421 an Owen Meredith, who may have been Owen Tudor, joined the King’s household. He served Henry V.

Baugé

On 22 March 1421, an English army was defeated for the first time in Henry’s long campaigns at the Battle of Baugé, after a rash English attack led by Henry’s brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was crushed by a larger Franco-Scottish army. Having been left in charge of the Anglo-Burgundian part of France in Henry's absence, Thomas spied what he thought was an opportunity to enlarge it through fast, aggressive action. In the early spring he drew together an army of around 4,000 men, amounting to roughly half of the English force available, and led it south towards the dauphinist county of Anjou, on and old fashioned chevauchée. He rode his men as far as the city of Anjou, found its ancient walls well defended, so turned away and allowed his archers to fan out into the countryside to seek food and plunder. When he came across a force of Scottish and French troops at Baugé, he attacked, without waiting for the return of his archers. The outnumbered English force were soundly beaten. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 368). This was a significant blow, enhanced by the death of the king's brother and heir presumptive.

Henry landed back at Calais on 10 June 1421. Normandy was under control through the leadership of the Earl of Salisbury. However Brittany had defected to the Dauphinists and Chartres was surrounded. After a short visit to Charles VI in Paris, Henry joined his army at Mantes to find the dauphin had abandoned his siege and fled to the Loire.

Dreux

Henry besieged and captured the French town and castle at Dreux within a month. He then led his army to Orléans, where he allowed plunder of the suburbs and raids of wine cellars.

The army was suffering again from stretched supply lines, suffering hunger and illness with Englishmen dead on the roads and in the middle of the fields (Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denis, Bellaguet, Volume 6, page 464).

Meaux

In September Henry turned north to Meaux, closer to home, on the River Marne, 25 miles northeast of Paris. The Siege of Meaux was a prolonged battle from October 1421 to May 1422. Henry’s resources were limited and the defence was stubborn, the city well supplied and manned. Meaux sat in a river bend of the Marne where it was heavily fortified within the area known as the Marché. The siege was made more difficult by the onset of winter, and became even more challenging after a flood. When winter arrives the change in season brings sleet and snow in such torrents that the Marne floods and the whole siege camp has to be moved. Disease continues to spread. As contracts came to an end, soldiers deserted the siege. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 379).

Although the English ultimately won when the town surrendered in May 1422, the long duration and harsh conditions contributed to Henry V becoming ill and dying shortly after the victory.

On 6 December 1421, Henry and Catherine had a son, also named Henry, born in Windsor Castle.

1422

The walled part of Meaux on the north bank of the Marne held out until March. The town was taken but the garrison held and it took another two months, as numbers English casualties continued to rise, before the surrender of the city on 10 May 1422. So at long last, Meaux falls, yielding magnificent plunder, which makes up in some small part for the atrocious difficulties Henry and his army have suffered in breaking it (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 383).

However the stress and camp sickness of the Siege of Meaux had taken its toll on Henry. By summer he was unwell. At some point, probably in the squalor of the siege of Meaux, Henry V contracted dysentery (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 15). From a blisteringly hot summer in Paris, with smallpox taking hold, Henry moved his court to Senlis. 150 miles to the south the Dauphinists were ravaging the district of Nevers. Henry summoned an army to attempt to strike a final blow on the Dauphin at Cosnes. Henry led the army, but carried by litter. However he succumbed to his illness and was taken to Corbeil, south of Paris, as his brother John and the Earl of Warick continued for Cosnes. At Cosnes, the Dauphinist forces melted away and declined to give combat.

On 13 August 1422, Henry struggled his way back to Paris, but unable to mount his horse, he was carried by litter. At Bois-de-Vicennes, he made his will. On 31 August 1422, he died. When he takes his last breath, Henry is a few weeks away from his thirty sixth birthday. Many of those who knew him feel that he is irreplaceable. (Henry V, Dan Jones, 2024, page 390).

Henry V is remembered as the ablest of English kings, though his achievements were never consolidated because he died on 31 August 1422 at Bois-de-Vincennes, near Paris.

At home a baby not quite nine months old was set to inherit the crown, the youngest person ever to become king of England (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 16). The previous record of boy kings: Henry III; the early usurpation of the authority of Edward III by Mortimer after overthrowing Edward II; and Richard II, did not bode well.

Henry VI, 1422-1461 (and Henry II of France)

The Minority

On 21 October 1422, Charles VI of France died. The infant Henry of Windsor was now not merely the new king of England. He was also, under the terms of the Treaty of Troyes, their heir to the English kingdom of France, a political entity that was still the subject of a furious war. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 17). For the time being Henry V’s brother, John, Duke of Bedford, took effective control of French affairs.

The codicils to Henry V’s will had provided for various officers to administer the realm during Henry’s minority. There were by this time powerful institutional structures to hold the realm together. The king was obliged to consult his senior nobility and taxes were resolved by meetings with parliament. Yet these institutions still depended on the competence of the king, as evidenced by the contrasting reigns of Henry V with Richard II.

John, Duke of Burgundy was responsible for French affairs. Henry had also suggested that his younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, should be tutela during the young Henry’s minority, but this was ambiguous, possibly meaning no more than responsibility for Henry’s education, but perhaps embracing wider powers over the English realm. However there was resistance to Humphrey taking a wider role in government and whilst he was awarded grand titles, he was generally kept away from government, to his disappointment.

Catherine moved to Wallingford Castle early in her son’s new reign. She was rumoured to have had an affair with Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and subsequently married Owen Tudor, with whom she had at least two sons, Edmund and Jasper.

1423

King Henry VI presided over parliament for the first time at Westminster in the autumn of 1423, when he was not yet two years old. A medieval parliament had no power of its own to speak of, save that derived from the sovereign. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 24). He had a tantrum en route. A fiction was necessarily arrived at for his role in this charade. Day to day government was conducted by 17 councillors, operating to a code of conduct. Conciliar government continued through the 1420s. The king was brought into play whenever possible.

1424

Verneuil

The French were defeated at the Battle of Verneuil on 17 August 1424. The English army, led by John, Duke of Bedford, decisively defeated a larger Franco-Scottish force, which included ferocious Lombard cavalry, partly due again to the effectiveness of English longbowmen. The battle resulted in the deaths of the Scottish commanders, the Earl of Douglas and Earl of Buchan, and caused heavy casualties among the Franco-Scottish army. The English seemed close to complete victory in the wars with France. As regent of France Bedford’s reputation was enhanced by his victory against the odds, displaying courage and strategic skill. It was a fitting triumph for a man who would always strive above all other things to preserve the memory of his eldest brother, Henry V (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 36).

If Verneuil was the apex of England’s military fortunes and of Bedford’s personal command, the years that followed comprised a slow and painful descent from glory, victory and supremacy. The occupiers sought with increasing futility to convince first the enemy, and then themselves, that the English kingdom of France was something that could be realistically maintained. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 36). The Anglo-Burgundian alliance held about half of French territory from Flanders to Gascony. The English flag flew over Rouen, one of the holiest sites of the kingdom, Reims where French kings were consecrated, St Denis where they were buried and Paris from where they ruled. The opposition were referred to as the Armagnacs and the opposition leader was not referred to as Charles VII, but as he who calls himself the dauphin. However the dauphin continued to provide an alternative centre of political power. Without a full military victory, Bedford could not establish English authority over France, particularly as the Pope did not recognise the state of affairs derived from the Treaty of Troyes.

1425

In October 1425 a personal rift over government between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester threatened violence on the streets of London. The rivalry brought the nation to the brink of civil conflict and required the urgent intervention of John, Duke of Bedford.

1426

John, Duke of Bedford returned from France in January 1426 and spent a year restoring the peace. Bedford suspended Humphrey's authority and a formal reconciliation was eventually negotiated at a Parliament held in Leicester in March 1426.

1427

Gloucester attempted another comeback, but again was stamped down.

After the death of Henry V, Owen Tudor transferred into the service of his widowed queen, Catherine of Valois, in about 1427 as keeper of her household or wardrobe. He may have served in France in 1421.

As the council took more control Catherine’s role was diminished and she stopped living with her son from 1430. Increasingly her life was her own. She had grown close to Edmund Beaufort in the mid 1420s which drew alarm from the councillors and particularly Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, about the consequences for the power balance of the dowager queen’s marriage to a Beaufort. In 1427 a statute was passed, to protect the noble estate of England’s queens, forbidding queens to marry without the special licence of an adult king. The sanction was directed at those who sought to marry a queen: He who acts to the contrary and is duly convicted will forfeit for his whole life all his lands and tenements. That was enough to persuade Edmund Beaufort to back off. By 1430, the dowager queen therefore found solace in a man with less to lose.

Owen Tudor’s close relationship by about 1431 and eventual secret marriage to the dowager queen laid the foundation for the Tudor dynasty. There are many stories about how their romance started, including an out of control dance that ended in Owen Tudor falling into the queen’s lap. Even a foreign queen must have been aware of the pariah status of the Welsh. Penal laws of 1402 forbade the Welsh from owning property, the Welsh language was suppressed, and marriages between the Welsh and English were forbidden. It may be that, backed into a corner by the law of 1427, Catherine had resorted to take a husband who could pose no political threat.

Edmund Tudor was born in about 1430, then Jasper and perhaps another son and daughter.

1428

Orléans

By 1428 the Dauphinists had been pushed back south of the Loire as the English forces began the siege of Orléans. It ought to have been a straightforward matter, but it proved to be the point from which the whole English position started to deflate, thanks to the improbable intervention of a young woman called Jehanne d’Arc, usually anglicised to Joan of Arc, nicknamed the Pucelle, or the Maid. The political confidence and propaganda value she offered the dauphin and his allies would prove to be worth more to the French cause than any number of domestic handbills. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 42).

The English military commander at Orléans was Thomas Mantagu, 4^th Earl of Salisbury until he was fatally wounded on 3 November 1428. He had an authority largely independent of Bedford. Salisbury had been encouraged by Gloucester into a more aggressive strategy to attack the more difficult and strategic target of Orléans.

Salisbury’s death was a disaster when the English army was committed to the long, difficult siege, but had lost its leadership. Salisbury was replaced by William de la Pole, as the army found it was too small to storm the city and was forced to a long winter campaign.

Whilst many in France had accepted the legitimacy of Henry VI’s claim to the French Crown following the Treaty of Troyes, many, particularly south of the Loire, resented it. There was also an issue in the legitimacy of succession. Edward III’s claim to the French Crown was through the daughter of the last Capetian king. However under the old French Salic law, no right to the throne could pass through a woman, and on that basis the House of Valois had the stronger claim.

1429

Joan of Arc travelled in disguise in male clothes and a pudding bowl haircut to the dauphin’s court at Chinon, where she confronted Charles and claimed to have orders from the saints to chuck the English out of France.

With little to lose, Joan was sent as mascot with a relieving army to Orléans. She rode in male armour on a white horse.

The French army attacked the thinly spread line of the English through which they punched a hole through which Joan rode triumphantly into the city, waving a white flag and resembling a vision sent from heaven. She was given a townhouse and began to direct operations from within the city. The French army outside the walls was led by Jean, Count of Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans.

On 4 May 1429 the French burned siege fortifications. On 5 May, Joan sent a message to the English, You men of England, who have no right in this kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Pucelle, to abandon your strongholds and go back to your own country.

A fresh French assault began on 6 May, spurred by Joan riding amongst them. The army reinforced by the folk of Orléans overwhelmed the English lines and that night the bells of the city rang. Over the next few days the French fully relieved the city.

On 8 May 1429, the English retreated from Orléans.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Siege of Orléans in 1428, when Joan of Arc came to the rescue of France and routed the English army in a religious fervour. Joan of Arc stood beside him at the altar.

The loss at Orléans marked to beginning of the collapse of the English hold on France.

On 18 June 1429 the English were annihilated at the Battle of Patay and their fortunes were reversed over the following months.

On 16 June 1429 the dauphin entered Reims and on the following day Charles was crowned Charles VII at Rheims, ignoring the Treaty of Troyes.

In reply Henry VI was crowned at Westminster in November 1429. He was a solemn young man who gazed sadly and wisely at the congregation at his coronation.

1430

In April 1430 an expedition left for Calais, with a vast royal court. The royal court waited in Rouen until it was safe to go on to Paris for Henry’s coronation as Henry II of France in Paris.

Edmund Tudor was born to Owen Tudor and Catherine de Valois in about 1430, a half brother to the King. When Humphrey Duke of Gloucester died in 1447, he was considered as a possible heir, and by 1452 he was a personal adviser to the King.

On 23 May 1430 Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundian forces during a skirmish at Compiègne. Despite several escapes, she was recaptured each time. She was sold to the English.

The Forty Shilling Freeholders Act 1430 limited the right to vote for county representatives (knights of the shire) in England to only those men who owned freehold property or land with an annual net value of at least 40 shillings (£2).

1431

Joan of Arc's trial, held in Rouen in 1431, was an ecclesiastical and political process conducted by a pro-English court. Joan was tried for heresy, witchcraft, and wearing men's clothing. Despite being denied a legal advisor and facing numerous interrogations and harsh conditions, Joan initially maintained her belief in her divine mission. After recanting her claims under pressure, she later retracted her abjuration, and was condemned as a relapsed heretic. The verdict was posthumously nullified in a 1456 rehabilitation trial, and she was later canonized as a saint.

Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, was appointed to lead the trial and served as the primary judge. Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, who had been given responsibility for the education of the infant Henry VI, acted as superintendent of the trial of Joan of Arc. He played a significant role in Joan of Arc's trial and execution as the superintendent and gaoler during her imprisonment. He was tasked with overseeing her captivity in Rouen and ensuring her presence at the trial, which ultimately led to her conviction for heresy and subsequent burning at the stake. (See also an entry in the Household Book of Richard Beauchamp for the years 1431 to 1432 dated 13 May 1431, Warwickshire County Record Office CR1618/W19/5). There is a podcast about Richard Beauchamp’s role in the trial of Joan of Arc. Davy Farondon was a man at arms at the gates of the Garrison of Rouen under Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, appearing on muster rolls on 10 November and 18 December 1429 and 3 February 1430 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS. Fr. 25768, no. 433, Fr. 25769, no. 447, Clairambault 166, no. 30). Davy Farndale may have been a guard under the orders of Richard Beauchamp during Joan of Arc’s trial.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431.

In December Henry VI entered Paris to be crowned Henry II of France at Notre-Dame. On Sunday 16 December 1431 he was crowned, using an imitation crown. The Parisians were not impressed. The hall prepared for the banquet was too small, and the food, wrote an eye witness, was shocking. It had been cooked too far in advance and was not even considered suitable to be sent as leftovers to the city’s paupers. It was noted that he left Paris without carrying out any of the usual requests of a new king, releasing prisoners, cutting taxes and offering a few legal reforms. Henry was the first king ever to be anointed as the ruler of the two realms. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 50). However so long as the dauphin lived, England’s claim remained as hollow as the imitation crown.

1432

Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick sought greater powers to keep ungodly or unvirtuous men away from the impressionable young King.

The young boy was pious, unwarlike, with a taste though for fine clothes, but with a vacant personality. He grew uninterested in his royal duties. He did not have the character to take control of government and still less to lead expeditions to defend overseas interests.

1435

The alliance developed by Henry V with the Burgundians in their feud with the Armagnacs was the bedrock of English strategy in France. However the 1435 Congress of Arras ended the long-standing feud between France and Burgundy. Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy recognised Charles VII as King of France. Burgundy abandoned its alliance with England. In return, Charles agreed to punish the murderers of Philip's father, John the Fearless in 1419.

On 1 September 1435 John Duke of Bedford, the living link with the spirit of his brother Henry V, died in Rouen. This meant that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was the heir presumptive.

Over the following year, England’s interests in France began to unravel.

On 1 October 1435 orders began to be issued under the direct authority of Henry VI, representing his taking control of his realm to its renewed enemies. The Earl of Warick was dismissed as his tutor in May 1436. Yet minutes reveal that Henry was making unwise decisions which required to be dealt with by his advisers.

The vacuum of government began to be filled by the soldier William de la Pole, 4^th Earl of Suffolk who had been a keen adviser on the royal council. He began to wield particular influence in directing royal policy. He probably sat beside a decision in 1437 decision to send the Tudor brothers to live with his sister, Katherine de la Pole at Barking Abbey.

1436

In spring 1436 Paris was liberated by Charles VII’s allies. The French then began to attack Normandy.

1437

After the death of Catherine de Valois at Bermondsey Abbey, Owen Tudor was imprisoned at Newgate, escaped but was recaptured and held at Windsor. He was pardoned by Henry VI in 1439. Owen and Catherine’s children were taken into royal protection and were educated at Barking Abbey. Wealthy daughters and widows came to Barking to retire from the world. It became the home of Henry and Jasper Tudor for the next five years. Rich, refined and intellectually advanced, Barking Abbey was a wonderful; place to grow and learn (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 64).e was

A famine was caused by crop failures in England and in Normandy.

1440

Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press used movable type to revolutionize book production, making it faster and cheaper. Key innovations included a system of individual metal letters that could be rearranged, an oil-based ink that adhered to the metal, and a screw press that applied uniform pressure. This technology enabled the mass production of texts like the Gutenberg Bible, leading to a significant increase in literacy and the rapid spread of knowledge throughout Europe.

Henry’s focus was in educational matters. Eton College was founded by Henry VI in 1440 as a charity school to provide free education to seventy poor boys, and as a sister institution to his other new foundation, King's College, Cambridge.

1441

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester’s wife, the lowly Eleanor Cobham, had consulted with astronomers about the king’s early death paving her route to be queen, and spread their prophesies that it would occur in the summer. She was imprisoned, divorced from Gloucester, whose standing and credibility never recovered.

1443

Cardinal Henry Beaufort’s influence grew. He adopted a more aggressive strategy in France and persuaded the dispatch of a military expedition led by his nephew, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. It was a disaster. John Beaufort died in May 1444 after the humiliation and his uncle fell from favour.

Richard, Duke of York, frustrated at this strategy, succeeded Bedford as lieutenant of France.

1444

Suffolk left for France in 1444 to end hostilities with France, and returned with Margaret of Anjou’s hand as the seal for a two year truce. He had stood in for Henry in a proxy marriage to seal the deal at Tour on 24 May 1444.

1445

Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou, the 15 year old daughter of Duke René of Anjou and niece of Charles VII of France, at Titchfield Abbey on 23 April 1445. Margaret's marriage to Henry was Suffolk's brainchild. The girl's father was so poor that she came with a pitiful diary, a measly 20,000 francs, and the hollow promise that one day the English king would inherit René's claim to the crown of Majorca. But marrying Henry to the French King's niece seemed to serve two greater purposes: it would bring England a diplomatic and military truce in the French Wars, and it when enable Henry and Margaret to rebuild the dwindling stock of the English royal family. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 82).

There is an In Our Time podcast on Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s Queen from 1445 to 1461.

The plan for succession was on a knife edge:

· Henry VI was the only surviving grandson of Henry IV. As yet, he had no heir.

· Only the disgraced Humphrey Duke of Gloucester survived of Henry V’s brothers.

· An alternative line flowed to Richard Duke of York through his father Richard of Conisbrough and Edward III’s son Edmund of Langley, but also through his mother Anne Mortimer, great granddaughter of Lionel of Antwerp. In 1429 he had married Cecily Neville with whom he had four surviving sons. As yet though, he had no ambitions on the crown.

· The Beauforts were legitimised sons of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford and were closely connected to the crown. John Beaufort’s Duchy of of Somerset passed to his brother Edmund in 1448.

· The Holland family traced their ancestry through Henry IV’s sister Elizabeth with the most senior of that family, John Holland becoming Duke of Exeter, succeeded by his son Henry Holland on his death in 1447.

· The Staffords were descended from Thomas of Woodstock, Humphrey Stafford becoming Duke of Buckingham in 1444.

There was therefore a hierarchy of tentative succession involving the Dukes of York, Somerset, Exeter and Buckingham.

Henry VI and Margaret grew close and spent much of their time together in the royal palaces. Yet eight years would pass before their only child was born.

In July 1445 a French delegation arrived in England amidst hope that a lasting peace might be agreed, leaving England with those lands it had conquered. The French would agree only to the retention of lands around Gascony, with Calais and Guînes.

In October the French proposed instead a 20 year peace for the surrender of Maine. On 22 December Henry VI agreed to those terms. Many of England’s nobility, amongst them the Duke of York, were horrified at the humiliation of surrendering hard won territory for no more than a truce. Maine provided France with a means to directly threaten Normandy and Gascony.

The agreement was met with hostility and almost by mutiny by the English soldiers in Maine. Humphrey Duke of Gloucester had been mocked for his ineffectiveness, but his instinctive hostility to the French seemed by many to have been justified. In 1447, he was accused, probably falsely, of treason and died a few days later while under arrest, the Earl of Suffolk, as author of the concessions to France, perhaps realising the threat he posed.

There was a building hostility to Suffolk and even to the king himself. During the 1440s, England was full of muttering and grumbling about the mounting problems faced by the realm both at home and abroad. An insecure regime could sense itself tottering. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 100). There was open criticism of the queen for not bearing an heir; of the king as a simpleton; and in songs of the incompetence (So poor a king was never seen) of royal government. Disorder was growing markedly across England, not least in the north, where rival magnates held and judiciously guarded near autonomous regional power (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 101). The power vacuum was exploited by feuding noble families, particularly the Percys and the Nevilles.

1447

Richard Duke of York’s lieutenancy in France had ended in 1445 and in 1447 he was sent to Ireland, with Edmund Beaufort, then Duke of Somerset, assuming command in France.

1449

On 24 March 1449 English forces attacked the Breton town of Fougères and the Duke of Brittany appealed to Charles VII, who declared that he was no longer bound by the peace of 1445. He declared war on 31 July 1449 and launched a full scale invasion of Normandy.

The Norman capital of Rouen fell on 29 October 1449. Somerset shameless fled from the scene. There followed the losses of Harfleur, Honfleur, Fresnoy and Caen.

The early expressions of anger were in taverns, but an explosive parliament met in November 1449 and in the new year, needing someone to blame, attacked the government of the Duke of Suffolk.

1450

On 14 April 1450 a joint French-Breton force attacked the English at Formigny near Bayeaux. The English army was slaughtered and many military leaders were captured. The English had lost control of Normandy.

The costs of the war along with extravagant costs of the royal household created a royal debt of £372,000 against an annual income of £5k. Debt had been tolerated at times of military success, but at times of such distress, it was a serious political problem.

A scapegoat was needed. On 7 February 1450 Suffolk was impeached for high, great, heinous and horrible treasons. Suffolk protested his innocence and when the King was asked to determine the matter, he found him innocent of treason, but banished him for 5 years. A riot broke out in anger at the outcome.

As Suffolk sailed for his exile in France on 2 May 1450, his vessel was intercepted and greeted Welcome Traitor, with rumours that he would be retried by the crew who welcomed him onto their ship. He was removed to a small boat with a chaplain, an axe and a block. His body was later found on a Dover beach.

The Jack Cade rebellion of June and July 1450 was a popular uprising in Kent, driven by widespread anger over corruption, high taxes, and military losses. Led by Jack Cade, the rebels marched on London, defeated a royal force at Sevenoaks. On 25 June Henry and his council abandoned London. Henry, hiding terrified at Kenilworth, played directly into Cade’s hands. When the rebel leader arrived at Southwark, he received word from the King’s household that he was to be allowed to set up a ‘royal’ court to try traitors. The crown had sunk so far into torpor and fear that its authority could now be exercised by anyone who rose up to take it. On 3 July, Cade and his men advanced from Southwick to London. They were resisted by the London militia, but managed to fight their way across London Bridge. Cade announced that order was to be kept, robbers executed and set up a court to try traitors at the Guildhall. By 10 July the rebellion was over and Cade was captured at Heathfield and died of his wounds. Cade’s revolt was over but tension smouldered throughout the summer. (The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, Dan Jones, 2015, page 116).

A map of Goole Moor (Inclesmoor) and Thorne Moor in south Yorkshire relating to a land dispute, from the records of the Duchy of Lancaster mapped lands bounded by rivers Aire, Ouse, Humber, Trent, and Don with Hatfield and Crowle marking its southern edge.

1451

The French invaded Aquitaine. Bordeaux fell on 14 June 1451.

Edmund Tudor was made Earl of Richmond and Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke.

1453

The Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453, was the final battle of the Hundred Years' War. It was a decisive French victory. The English, led by John Talbot, launched a premature attack on a heavily fortified French camp, which was protected by artillery. The French cannons caused heavy casualties, and a counter-attack and sortie routed the English army. The battle led to the death of John Talbot, the English loss of their possessions in Gascony.

The English had lost of all its French lands except Calais. The humiliation of final defeat by France in 1453 was followed by thirty years of civil war.

On 29 May 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire, under Sultan Mehmed II, who captured the capital of the Byzantine Empire after a 53 day siege. This event marked the definitive end of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. It is sometimes considered to be the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern period and the Renaissance.

In summer 1453, Henry suffered from an unknown illness which lasted over 17 months. He was spoon fed, his wit and reason withdrawn. He may have inherited the afflictions of Charles VI of France, through his mother. Several parties sought to take power during this period. Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, demanded to be declared regent. Richard of York become Protector of the Realm, a position he became reluctant to lose. Richard of York had despised the government of the councillors.

Henry VI as yet had no children while his cousin and heir, the wiry, dark haired Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, was already the father of several sons. The House of York thus represented the future and that posed a possible threat to the king. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 2).

It was at this time that Lady Margaret Beaufort, the only child of the late John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset had her betrothal to John de la Pole annulled. Edmund Tudor was given wardship of Margaret who was still only 9 years old, clearing the way for their marriage when she reached 12. For the heirless king, this was an insurance policy against the rise of the House York.

The War of the Roses, 1455 to 1485

The designation of the Wars of the Roses did not emerge until the nineteenth century. There was however an association of roses with the rival claimants to the throne in the fifteenth century. When Yorkist Edward IV was crowned in 1461, he used the white rose amongst other symbols for his kingship. As a young man he had been known as the Rose of Rouen. The white rose was later used by those aligning themselves with his memory. Whilst Henry Bolingbroke had his pavilions decorated with red roses during the tournament with Thomas Mowbray in 1398, the red rose was not adopted until the symbol was used by Henry VII after the Battle of Bosworth, so it was more a symbol adopted by the Tudors to link that House with the old House of Lancaster and to represent the House Tudor as the dynasty that ended the toil of the internecine wars. After 1485 the Tudors started to adopt a combined red and white rose as the Tudor Rose to symbolise a fresh unification of the kingdom after Henry VII married Eizabeth of York in 1486. By the early sixteenth century there was some concept of wars of the roses. The tag, the Wars of the Roses, was immortalised centuries later, by Walter Scott, inspired by a scene in Shakespeare’s play.

Richard Plantagenet: Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak, In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts: Let him that is a trueborn gentleman And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

Somerset: Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

Warwick: I love no colours; and, without all colour Of base insinuating flattery, I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

Suffolk: I pluck this red rose with young Somerset, And say withal I think he held the right.

Vernon: Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more Till you conclude that he upon whose side The fewest roses are croppèd from the tree Shall yield the other in the right opinion.

(Henry VI Part 1, Act 2, Scene 4, Shakespeare)

The Wars of the Roses were not a war between the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, but rather between the House of York (supported by the Nevilles) and the House of Lancaster (supported by the Percys). Pickering Castle was for instance in Lancastrian hands.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Wars of the Roses, the 15th century wars between the royal Houses of Lancaster and York, whether they represent the breakdown of the feudal system or whether the political instability been overstated.

Noticing suddenly that the Middle Ages were coming to an end, the Barons now made a stupendous effort to revive the old feudal amenities of Sackage, Carnage, and Wreckage and so stave off the Tudors for a time. They achieved this by a clever plan, known as the Wars of the Roses (because the Barons all picked different coloured roses in order to see which side they were on)

One of the rules in the Wars of the Roses was that nobody was ever really King … any Baron who wished to be considered King was allowed to apply at Warwick the Kingmaker’s, where he was made to fill out a form, answering the following questions:

1. Are you a good plain crook?

2. Are you Edmund Mortimer? If not, have you got him?

3. Have you ever been King before? If so, state how many times; also whether deposed, beheaded, or died of surfeit.

4. Are you insane? If so, state whether permanently or only temporarily.

5. Are you prepared to marry Margaret of Angoulme? If Isabella of Hainault preferred, give reasons (Candidates are advised not to attempt both ladies).

6. Have you had the Black Death?

7. What have you done with your mother? (If nun, write none).

8. Do you intend to be I (a) a Good King; (b) a Bad King; (c) a Weak King and II (a) a Good Man; (b) a Bad Man (Candidates should not attempt more than one in each section).

9. How do you propose to die? (write your answer in BLOCK CAPITALS).

(1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

Richard was the wealthiest magnate in England, appointed Lord Protector in 1453 when Henry VI's fragile mental state gave way. When the king recovered, Richard feared for his position and went to war, but after the First Battle of St Albans reaffirmed his loyalty; an uneasy truce followed. (Richard Duke of York, Father of Kings, The Origins of Tudor England, Paul L. Dawson, 2025).

1455

Within the context of the King’s weakness, conflict broke out between close relatives of the King, the Dukes of York and Somerset.

On 22 May 1455 the Duke of York attacked the royal army at the First Battle of St Albans, killed the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland and took the King. Having the King in their hands gave power to the Yorkist cause.

Three decades of political instability followed, albeit there were only a few weeks of direct combat.

Edmund Tudor married Margaret Beaufort, his ward, on 1 November 1455, at Bletsoe Castle. The marriage was in haste against the increased threat from the House of York. Soon afterwards Edmund was dispatched, Margaret with him, to military service in Wales. Edmund was captured a year later by the Yorkists and although released, he died in November 1456 from plague. He left a pregnant 13 year old widow, who gave birth to Henry Tudor on 28 January 1457 in an icy Pembroke Castle.

1458

The widowed Margaret Beaufort married Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham, one of the few men able to stand up to the Duke of York.

1459

Following an uneasy peace after the First Battle of St Albans in 1455, tensions between the Houses of Lancaster (King Henry VI) and York escalated. On 23 September 1459 the Battle of Blore Heath resulted in a decisive Yorkist victory over a larger Lancastrian force, the first major battle of the main phase of the Wars of the Roses.

However, after the Yorkist defeat at the skirmish of Ludford Bridge on 12 October 1459, Richard of York and his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, fled hastily to the Welsh coast and sailed to Ireland. His eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, and the Neville earls (Salisbury and Warwick) escaped to Calais, which Warwick controlled. Their estates were confiscated. The location of Cecily and her younger sons is not known.

1460

Until September 1460, the fighting had been about whom Henry VI should have as his councillors, but then the Duke of York had claimed the throne, arguing he had the senior descent in the female line from Edward III, making his ancestor, Roger Mortimer, Richard II's rightful heir, and the House of Lancaster usurpers. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 24).

The Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460. It was a decisive Yorkist victory. Henry VI was captured. Lord Grey of Ruthin treacherously surrendered his Lancastrian forces, allowing the Yorkist army under the Earl of Warwick to easily penetrate the Lancastrian camp. The battle was short and bloody. Many Lancastrian leaders were killed, including the Duke of Buckingham.

From his paternal Nevill forebears Richard Neville, 16^th Earl of Warwick, later known as the Kingmaker, had inherited great estates in the north of England, particularly in Yorkshire, with their administrative centres in the two great strongholds of Middleham the North Riding and Sheriff Hutton a few miles north of York. He was also powerful in the north western counties, where he was warden of the west march towards Scotland, with his base at Carlisle. Through his mother he inherited the Montagu earldom of Salisbury. Through marriage he had assumed the earldom of Warwick. All this made Warwick immeasurably the greatest power in the north of England, especially since the great rivals of his family, the Percy earls of Northumberland, had been eclipsed by the fortunes of war. His castles of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton, and it is reasonable assumption that much of the young Richard's time was spent there, were thus the centres of patronage, influence and aristocratic social life for the counties north of Trent.(Richard III, Charles Ross, 2011, page 7).

On 30 December 1460 the Battle of Wakefield was a decisive Lancastrian victory. Richard, Duke of York, and his second son, Edmund, were killed. The battle was a result of a Lancastrian ambush as Richard of York marched out of Sandal Castle, lured by a smaller Lancastrian force but then attacked by a larger army. The Lancastrians, led by Queen Margaret, secured the victory, with Richard's head later displayed on a paper crown in the city of York.

Recent evidence suggests there was no battle, but rather an ambush outside Wakefield. Richard and Edmund were killed in the ambush, rather than died in battle. Their heads were taken to York and spiked on Micklegate bar in York. There is a possibility that this was at Pontefract. This was a huge setback for house of York and the 8 year old Richard.

1461

The Battle of Mortimer's Cross was a decisive Yorkist victory on 2 February 1461. Edward, Earl of March (later Edward IV), defeated a Lancastrian army led by Owen and Jasper Tudor. Prior to the battle a meteorological phenomenon called parhelion, or sun dogs, where three suns appeared caused by light shining through ice crystals, inspired Edward’s troops before their victory. Following the battle, the Lancastrian leader Owen Tudor was captured and executed. Before his execution Owen Tudor quipped that the head that shall lie on the stock was wont to lie on Queen Katherine’s lap. At the fall of the axe the extraordinary life that began with a stumble at a dance was ended (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 25).

On 17 February 1461 the Second Battle of St Albans was a decisive Lancastrian victory, where Queen Margaret's forces outflanked the Yorkist army led by the Earl of Warwick. The Lancastrians won the battle, rescued King Henry VI from Warwick's captivity, and looted the town, but their failure to press their advantage by capturing London ultimately led to the Yorkist triumph a month later.

Edward IV was proclaimed king in London on 4 March 1461 and for twenty five days there were two kings of England, until a decisive blow at Towton in Yorkshire. Edward, Earl of March and the new Duke of York, 18 years old, having claimed the throne, marched north.

Edward IV was victorious at the Battle of Towton, near York, on 29 March 1461. The Yorkist victory secured the throne for Edward IV and was one of the largest and bloodiest battles ever fought on English soil, with a ten-hour duration and thousands of casualties, possibly as many as 28,000, when the national population was perhaps only 3 million. The battle was fierce with heavy casualties. A blinding blizzard blew into the face of the Lancastrian force. Lancastrian arrows in those conditions missed their target, but the Yorkists arrows poured into the Lancastrian ranks. The Battle of Towton was possibly the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, although there is some debate about the size of the encounter (for instance Chris Berendt’s talk to the YAHS Medieval Group on 14 March 2026). It was fought between York and Leeds and north of Pontefract, not far from where the Doncaster Farndales must have been at that time.

The Towton battle site and indicative finds at the battle site (metal detecting is not allowed today)

The Towton gold ring held by British Museum, was found at Towton in 1789, sometimes thought to have been worn by Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, who killed Richard's father, Richard, Duke of York. The Itinery of John Leland, in the mid sixteenth century, referred to pits on the battlefields which held the remains of the fallen and Richard II’s chapel where many were buried. In the chyrch yard were many of the bones of men that were killed at Palmsunday feld buried. They lay afore 5. pittes, yet appearing half a mile of by north in Saxton feldes. Towton village is a mile from Saxton, where is a great chapell begon by Richard 3 but not finished. Syr John Multon’s father layid the first stone of it. In this chapelle were buried also many of the men slayn at Palmsunday feeld. This feeld was as much fought in Saxton paroch as in Towton, yet it berith the name of Towton.

In 1996 the owners of Towton Hall found bones during building work, the remains from some of those killed in the battle in a mass grave. Bradford University archaeologists pioneered techniques for the excavations of mass graves (Blood Red Roses. The Archaeology of a Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton). There were further 2002 Excavations which did not uncover significant evidence of the battle and further excavations at the Hall between 2002 to 2005 at the Hall, where further human remains were found including under the Hall dining room, where bodies were interred in a more careful way with material between, east to west orientated. They may have been nobility, differing from the communal grave found in 1996. In 2003, there was an excavation in the centre of the battlefield in the Towton dale, with a concentration of arrowheads, perhaps associated with a mass burial of at least 60 remains.

The Towton Battlefield Society and its summary of The Battle of Towton is the principal portal to the battle. The Medieval Dead programmes series 1 episode 1 in 2013 looked for the Richard III lost chapel.

Towton may have been the last stand of the Lancastrians and led to a change of dynasty to Edward IV and the Yorkist family taking the throne.

Henry VI fled to exile in Scotland with his queen, Margaret of Anjou and their son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales.

Richard, younger brother of Edward of York, was made Duke of Gloucester on 1 November 1461.

House of York, 1461-1485

Edward IV, 1461-1470

1462

The 5 year old Henry Tudor was given to the wardship of William, Lord Herbert. Edward IV hoped to win him to the Yorkist side in due course and had anticipated returning the earldom of Richmond to Henry. He was kept at Raglan Castle in southeast Wales where he was educated and taught by graduates from Oxford University. He lived with another of Hebert’s wards, Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland who had been killed at Towton.

Edward IV promoted chivalry in sharp contrast to Henry’s austere piety. He was a very young and handsome prince, amongst the handsomest people in the world and never had a man taken as much pleasure from women, feats, banquets and hunting.

1464

In 1464, Edward IV made the unexpected decision to marry Elizabeth Woodville, a commoner who was also the widow of a Lancastrian knight, Sir John Grey of Groby who had been killed in the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461, fighting for the Lancastrian cause.

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, four years older than Edward, had been planning Edward’s marriage to the daughter of Louis XI of France, as a strategic balance to the influences of Burgundy and Brittany. Richard’s marriage to a commoner scuppered his plans. Edward was in favour of an alliance with the Burgundians, his sister Margaret of York marrying Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy in 1468. Warwick grew increasingly resentful of Edward’s growing independence. Edward also prevented the marriage of Warwick’s daughter Isabel Neville to his brother George, Duke of Clarence, through which Neville had planned a Neville interest in the royal succession.

1465

Henry VI left Scotland and in 1465 he was captured in Lancashire by Yorkist forces and imprisoned in the Tower of London. A German merchant wrote that Henry VI was led through Cheapside to the Tower on a small horse, a straw hat on his head, and a rope tied around his body, and each side so that he might be held. He was perhaps saved from the early death suffered by Edward II or Richard II because his son, Edward of Lancaster, was safe with his mother, Margaret of Anjou in eastern France.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, by then 13, was placed into the custody of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick at Middleham and Sheriff Hutton. He would probably have met his future wife, Anne Neville and a large circle of northern noblemen and gentry including the Scropes, Fitzhughs, Greystokes and Dacres.

1469

The Battle of Edgecote Moor on 26 July 1469 was fought between forces loyal to the Earl of Warwick and those loyal to Edward IV. Although the King's army, led by William Herbert, Earls of Pembroke and Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, initially had the upper hand, a rebel victory was secured after an attack by rebel archers, the arrival of reinforcements, and the royal army's panic after seeing Warwick's livery. The battle led to the capture and execution of Pembroke and his brother, temporarily putting Warwick in control of the kingdom. Deserted by his men, Edward IV was sent as a prisoner first to Warwick Castle and then to Middleham. The Earl of Warwick, himself at Middleham, attempted to rule the kingdom in the name of the captive king, but was unable to establish his authority. He was forced to release the king who appeared at York on about 10 September and arrived in state in London in mid October. (Richard III, Charles Ross, 1999, page 15).

George, Duke of Clarence married Isabel Neville in Calais against the wishes of his brother, Edward IV. The controversial marriage was arranged by Isabel's father, the Earl of Warwick, and required both papal and royal dispensation, which George secretly secured after the king had refused permission. This union fuelled political turmoil, with George and Warwick joining forces with the Lancastrians to challenge the King's authority.

As tensions grew between Edward and Richard Neville, Richard Duke of York kept aloof and emerged as one of Edward IV’s closest and most loyal supporters (Richard III, Charles Ross, 1999, page 15). On 17 October 1469 Richard of Gloucester was made Constable of England. He became heavily involved in Wales, and so played little part in the events which followed.

1470

The Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, formally defected to the Lancastrians in a deal with Queen Margaret brokered by the king of France, after a falling out with Edward IV, after political and personal disagreements, particularly regarding Edward's marriage and growing power. Warwick and Edward's brother, Clarence, allied with the Lancastrians and briefly restored Henry VI to the throne.

In March 1470, Edward personally led his forces to defeat the Lincolnshire Rebellion at the Battle of Lose-Cote Field. The captured rebel leader, Sir Robert Welles, confessed that the uprising was instigated by the Earl of Warwick, and Edward's own brother, George, Duke of Clarence. They were declared as traitors and fled to France.

In exile, Warwick allied with his former enemy, Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the deposed Lancastrian Henry VI, with military backing from Louis XI of France. Sensing the imminent invasion, Edward issued commissions of array to muster troops across England in late October, in an attempt to fortify his position.

Warwick landed in England in September 1470 with an army. Edward, taken by surprise and facing widespread defection, including that of John Neville, Marquess of Montagu, who had been tasked with defending the north, was unable to gather sufficient support. He fled England in October with a small group of loyal followers, seeking refuge and aid from his brother-in-law, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in the Low Countries.

House of Lancaster restored

Henry VI 1470 to 1471

With Edward in exile, Henry VI, passive and uncomprehending, was restored to the throne in the Readeption on 3 October 1470. However his years in the Tower had exacerbated his mental condition further.

Henry’s son Edward of Lancaster was promised in marriage to Anne Neville, the heir.

Henry Tudor was at liberty again. There is an apocryphal story that Henry VI saw Henry Tudor and, in his state of misunderstanding, nevertheless predicted This truly is he unto whom both we and our adversaries must yield, and give over the domain.

In November 1470, Edward returned to England with an army subsidised by Philip the Bold. In the next six weeks, Edward IV undertook the swift and vigorous campaign which finally secured his position on the throne (Richard III, Charles Ross, 1999, page 15).

House of York restored

1471

Clarence reconciled with his brother Edward before the Battle of Barnet.

Defeating the treacherous Kingmaker

The Battle of Barnet was a decisive Yorkist victory fought on Easter Sunday, 14 April 1471. Edward IV's army defeated the Lancastrian forces led by the Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker. Warwick and his brother were killed, and Edward IV secured a significant victory. Thick fog which led to a friendly fire incident on the Lancastrian side as Lancastrian archers fired into their own sides, met with shouts of Treason!

Defeating the French queen

The Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, was another decisive victory for the Yorkist forces led by Edward IV over Queen Margaret’s Lancastrian army. The battle resulted in the complete defeat of the Lancastrian army, the death of their heir, Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, and the eventual death of the Lancastrian King Henry VI. The Yorkist victory ended the second phase of the war and brought a period of peace to England.

Richard of Gloucester may have been Edward’s principal lieutenant in these engagements.

Edward IV 1471 to 1483

Edward IV returned to London and Henry VI was returned to the Tower, a man amazed and utterly dulled with the troubles and adversity. He was murdered there on 21 May 1471. Margaret of Anjou was ransomed and returned to France, where she died a pauper in 1482.

The House Lancaster was extinct, save for a more distant line through the Beaufort line. A Yorkist commented that no one from that stock remained who could claim the crown. The only remaining threat to the Yorkist line of succession was Henry and Jasper Tudor, sons of Margaret Beaufort, who fled to France via Tenby. Their mother, the 28 year old widow Margaret Beaufort married the new steward of the King’s household, Thomas, Lord Stanley, hoping to rebuild the King’s favour for her sons.

Whilst some felt the House Lancaster’s fate was destined by their usurpation from Richard II, others venerated the martyred Henry as a saint.

Richard was the principal beneficiary from the political resettlement which followed Edward’s restoration to the throne (Richard III, Charles Ross, 1999, page 24). He was granted earldoms across Yorkshire and Cumberland, including Middleham Castle. Richard effectively stepped into Warwick’s shoes, becoming the pre-eminent nobleman in the north of England (Richard’s Relationship with the North, Dr David Johnson, Richard III Society Website).

Richard of Gloucester’s Northern Interests

The future Richard III’s interests in Yorkshire and northern Britain

Edward’s court became more decadent than before.

1478

The false, fleeting, perjur’d (Shakespeare) George, Duke of Clarence had previously defected to the Lancastrian side with the Earl of Warwick, an act of open rebellion. After his wife Isabel Neville's death in 1476, George, convinced she was poisoned, summarily arrested and executed one of her ladies-in-waiting, Ankarette Twynho, without the king's authority or a proper trial. He was accused of spreading rumours that the King used sorcery and intended to poison his subjects. He was executed for high treason on 18 February 1478, in the Tower. It was said that he was drowned in a vat of Malmsey wine.

1483

Edward IV died on 9 April 1483, aged 40. The day after the King's death, Stanley and Edward IV's other councillors acknowledged his 12 year old elder son as Edward V. The new king was at Ludlow with his maternal uncle, Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, when he received the news and learned he would be crowned on 4 May. Since Edward V was a minor, some had expected a Protector would rule England in the King's name until he reached his majority. However he would rule in his own name and the Woodville family would be influential in selecting his councillors. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 43).

Edward V May and June 1483 (two months)

Edward’s surviving brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was a pious man who had always been loyal to the late king and he swore an oath of loyalty to his nephew promptly at York. He also agreed to meet Edward V on his journey to London and accompany him on his formal entrance into the city. Richard was already expected therefore, when he arrived at the meeting point at Stony Stratford on 30 April, his horse still sweating from the gallop. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 44). Richard, with the Duke of Buckingham, greeted the king and advised him of corrupt advisers who had ignored Edward’s will which had named Richard as Protector. The young Edward brushed aside their fears, but Richard seized control of Edward and Lord Rivers was arrested for treason. Edward V was escorted to the bishop’s palace at St Paul’s. Elizabeth Woodville took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey.

Richard rescheduled Edward’s coronation to 22 June. He now faced the vengeance of the Woodvilles and the threat of Edward V coming of age. On 10 June 1483, he wrote a secret letter to the city of York, summoning his supporters. A meeting was called in the Tower on Friday 13 June 1483, which descended into violence. Lord Hastings was taken outside and beheaded. Lord Stanley returned home to Margaret Beaufort.

Richard demanded that the new King’s brother, Richard the Duke of York, be brought to Richard of Gloucester, so that he could take part in his brother’s coronation. The two brothers were lodged in royal apartments in the Tower, a royal palace as well as a prison and fortress.

There was no coronation on 22 June and on 25 June Lord Rivers and his half brother Richard Grey were executed.

On 26 June 1483 a petition of lords urged Richard to accept the throne. The Bishop of Bath gave evidence that Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous and his children were dismissed as Illegitimate. Richard’s older late brother George’s son, Edward Plantagenet was excluded by his brother’s treason. The young Edward was like a victim prepared for sacrifice, wrote his doctor.

A new coronation was arranged to take place on 6 July 1483. Margaret Beaufort carried the train of Richard’s queen, Anne Neville, widow of Edward of Lancaster, still hoping for a route back from exile for her sons. Richard however could have no reason to raise the fortunes of the remaining remnant of the House Lancaster.

Richard III, 1483 to 1485

Richard III seized the throne in July 1483 amidst violence and factionalism. There was an underlying anger over Richard’s usurpation. He lasted two years.

The Princes in the Tower

The famous mystery of the disappearance of the princes in the tower in 1483, which turned Henry Tudor from a helpless exile into Richard III’s rival overnight, becomes less mysterious when it is considered in the light of the culture and beliefs of the fifteenth century (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 2).

An account in the early sixteenth century suggested that Richard decided the princes had to die at Gloucester on 2 August 1483. Over the summer they vanished.

The story of the princes in the tower emerged under the pen of Sir Thomas More in the reign of Henry VIII and the story was picked up by Shakespeare, probably embellished by retelling in the period in between. Shakespeare might have written his play as a veiled parody of the hunchback Robert Cecil. Richard III had scoliosis but this would not have given him the hunched back with which he has been maligned.

Richard himself is the traditional prime suspect, reinforced by Shakespeare’s dramatisation. Any suggestion of foul play would have made Richard’s position more vulnerable and the disappearance of the princes avoided the evolution of the cult around the dead heirs although Richard would need Elizabeth Woodville and the wider community, to know that the princes were dead, to avoid plots raised in their name.

If Richard’s intention was to have usurped the throne he would more likely have displayed the bodies of the young children to prove they had died and secure the throne, claiming natural causes or blaming someone else. There were other suspects, including Margaret Beaufort, who sought the coronation of her son Henry Tudor. Richard was 30 by this stage, and his past history, including his governance of northern England, do not suggest a villainous man. There is no reason to suppose he would have so quickly decided to betray his brother Edward IV to whom he had shown every loyalty. The death of the princes made the House York vulnerable, with Richard III the last adult male.

There are suggestions that the princes were put to death at the hand of Henry Stafford, 2^nd Duke of Buckingham, either on the orders of Richard at Gloucester, or perhaps more likely in a plot to revive the Lancastrian cause as kingmaker for Henry Tudor, or even for Buckingham himself, a descendant of Thomas of Woodstock, to take the throne. The death of the princes made possible a Lancastrian uprising.

Buckingham was married to Katherine Woodville, sister of Elizabeth Woodville the dowager queen. He was in London from 28 August 1483 as commissioner takes to investigate treason in London.

If the princes were indeed dead, Margaret Beaufort had an opportunity for the revival of the fortunes of her exiled son Henry Tudor, and perhaps a new opportunity for her son to negotiate with Elizabeth Woodville for Henry Tudor’s marriage to her remaining child, Elizabeth of York, though only if Elizabeth were convinced her sons were dead.

Elizabeth Woodville wept at the news of her sons’ deaths with lamentable shrieks that made the house ring, she struck her breast, tore and cut her hair. She called for vengeance and expressed her willingness to Margaret for the marriage of Elizabth of York and Henry Tudor. Margaret advised her son to raise an army to sail to Wales and that he would be supported by Buckingham.

Buckingham's rebellion in October 1483 comprised a series of uprisings in England and parts of Wales against Richard III. However, Buckingham’s plot was uncovered by Richard. Buckingham struggled to raise support and when Henry’s ship arrived at Plymouth, his reconnaissance team learnt that the men ashore waiting for them were part of Richard’s force. He returned to Brittany to await another day. Buckingham was captured and executed.

Hopes now focused on Henry Tudor, the surviving Lancastrian heir.

Richard, having taken the crown, needed to consolidate the support of the public and he toured his kingdom from Oxford to Warick and then to York and was worshipfully received with pageants. Badges of his white boar badge were distributed. Behind the façade, opposition was dealt with quietly but brutally.

In winter 1483 about 500 English exiles, mostly Lancastrians or Edwardian Yorkists, and members of the Woodville family, arrived in Britany to join Henry Tudor. Henry began to see a divine purpose in his destiny. At Christmas in Rennes, the exiles swore loyalty to Henry and Henry promised to unite the Houses of York and Lancaster, by marrying Elizabeth of York.

1484

The College of Arms was founded by a royal charter by Richard III on 2 March 1484, to regulate heraldry and genealogy in the realm.

Richard was proving in many respects to be an excellent king. His actions and proclamations stressed that his laws were to be administered impartially, without delay or favour; bail was introduced so the innocent would not suffer while they waited trial; forced loans to the Crown were being abolished; the fledgling printing industry and book trade were encouraged; and Richard was also showing himself to be a good friend and protector to the Church. Nevertheless, despite all the good he did, there was a deep sense of malaise. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 61).

After the executions of Buckingham and Hastings, Richard was forced to lean more heavily on his northern support base.

Richard’s son, Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales, died at Middleham on 9 April 1484.

Brittany became a dangerous place for Henry Tudor and in September 1484, he fled with Jasper to the French court of the 14 year old Charles VIII under the regency of Anne of Beaujeu, which allowed him to solidify French support and begin to build a larger army.

1485

Anne Neville, the Queen, died on 14 March 1485. There were rumours that Richard had poisoned her, to marry Elizabeth of York.

In England, on the last day of July, the printer William Caxton published his version of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a new reworking of the old myths. It described how King Arthur had once had a dream of a fight in the sky between a dragon and a boar. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 65).

On 22 June 1485 Richard III summoned military and civilian forces to defend his kingdom. Henry Tudor, son of Edmund Tudor, son of Owen Tudor, who of his ambitions and insatiable covertise encroaches and usurps upon him the name and title of royal estate of this Realm of England whereunto he has no manner, interest, right, title or colour, as every man well knows (Proclamation by Richard III, 23 June 1485).

On 1 August 1485 Henry’s fleet departed from Honfleur at the mouth of the Seine, with about 400 English soldiers and 800 Scots, with 1,500 French and Breton soldiers. One of his commanders was the Lancastrian, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Six days later the army landed at Mill Bay on the Dale peninsula in Pembrokeshire, under his Red Dragon banner.

Four days later, Richard was at Nottingham when he heard of the invasion. He sent summons to the sheriffs and commissioners of array to muster soldiers locally.

Henry hoped for the support of his step father, Thomas Stanley, 1^st Earl if Derby, but so did Richard, in whose service Stanley had helped crush the risings in 1483. Richard ordered Stanley to prepare to defend north Wales. Ominously Stanley claimed to be ill.

Stanley met Henry on 19 August 1485 at Stone near Stafford to discuss battle plans.

However Richard had taken Stanley’s son George Stanley, Baron Strange and forced Stanley to choose between his stepson, Henry Tudor and his own son.

Bosworth

Richard III left Leicester and proceeded until he came unto a village called Bosworth, where he camped.

The ordinary soldier in Richard III’s army was used to physical work and most were well fed. They varied in age from around 17 to their mid 50s. And Italian visitor to England described them as huge men, with hands and arms of iron, their bows thicker and longer than those used by other nations, just as their bodies are stronger. They did not have the fitted plate armour of the knights, but wore quilted tunics, which they claimed to prefer, being lighter and more comfortable. Most had helmets, however, and all had bows and arrows, as well as a sword and shield. But for all their strength and training, the English at Bosworth were not professional soldiers of the kind found on the Continent. Henry was fortunate to have brought some of these from France. Nevertheless, he remained badly outnumbered, and as Henry looked towards Stanley's force for reassurance, he was horrified to see his stepfather placing his men equidistant from the two armies. He sent a message asking Stanley to redeploy his men in the form they had agreed. The reply came that the Earl of Richmond should put his own folks in order. (Tudor, the Family Story, Leanda de Lisle, 2014, page 68).

Another story suggested that Richard’s commander John, Duke of Norfolk, found a note before the battle, Jack of Norfolk be not too bold, For Dickon thy master is bought and sold. There remained uncertainty about the intentions of Stanley and also of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.

On 22 August 1485 the forces thus clashed at the Battle of Bosworth. With an advantage of numbers and seeing Henry isolated, Richard sought to end the matter by having Tudor killed. In a desperate gamble he committed his force to the purpose. This day I will die as king or win. It was at the crucial point of this engagement that Stanley committed to Henry Tudor’s side. Soon, the only hope for Richard III, was to escape to fight another day. It was a Burgundian account that suggested Richard’s horse foundered and fell, picked up by Shakespeare’s A horse! A horse! My Kingdom for a horse! However he died he was butchered in the field. He was stripped with his body despoiled to the skin, and nought being left about him, so much as would cover his privy member. He was dragged behind a horse like an hog or another vile beast by a junior officer called Norrey, to Leicester. The body of Richard was found under a Leicester car park revealed an injury to his skull which would have exposed his brain.

Northumberland’s men never engaged in the battle.

Nevertheless In York they mourned King Richard, piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city (York Memorandum 23 August 1485).

The victory established the Tudor dynasty, with Henry crowned King Henry VII.

Go forward to The Tudors.

Bibliography

Richard Duke of York, Father of Kings, The Origins of Tudor England, Paul L. Dawson, 2025, Pen and Sword Books.