What were the Wars of the Roses?

The battles were between two strands of the same family, both descendents of Edward III. In 1399, when Richard II, son of Edward III’s first son and rightful king of England, was deposed and then executed by Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (Edward III’s fourth son), a disruption occurred in the succession which opened up the possibility of continuing disputes. 

Claimants to the throne laid low during the years that Henry IV, as Bolingbroke became, ruled and also stayed out of the way for his son, Henry V. However, Henry VI did not rule England with the same fist of iron that his father and grandfather had done, and it was at this point, in 1455, that the descendants of yet another son of Edward III (this time of his fifth, Edmund Duke of York) made their move. 

You’d have thought that the descendent of the fifth son of a king (York) would not beat the claims of the descendent of a fourth son (Lancaster), but the House of York was going for a triple whammy. Richard, Duke of York was descended from Edward III by both his father (as above) and his mother who was descended from Edward III’s third son - plus Richard’s wife was a descendent of John of Gaunt (he’ll keep coming up), by that gentleman’s third marriage. Theirs was a very strong claim and it is what kept the families fighting for the next 30 years, across two generations.

 
The throne swapped between the families twice during the wars: Edward IV (House of York) beating Henry VI (House of Lancaster) in 1461, then losing the throne to Henry VI and his allies once again in 1469. The House of York made a comeback in 1471 and Edward ruled uninterrupted until 1483 when he died prematurely and infighting within his family (between his wife and his brother) caused a brief period of uncertainty over who his legitimate successor would be. In the event, his brother Richard gained control of the throne and was crowned as Richard III. Edward’s sons disappeared from public view – they later became known as the Princes in the Tower, but that’s another story… Read about the Princes in the Tower (and other Tower ghosts) here.

The House of Lancaster’s claim resurfaced in the shape of Henry Tudor (a great great grandson of the very prolific John of Gaunt, see above). Henry invaded England from France in 1485 and defeated Richard’s forces at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry was crowned as Henry VII. In an astute political move, Henry married Elizabeth, daughter of the dead Yorkist king, Edward, thus uniting the two families and ending the wars.

What have roses got to do with any of this?

The family that deposed Richard II were descendents of the Duke of Lancaster, whose family crest was a red rose - probably the species known as Rosa gallica a.k.a. the Apothecaries’ Rose. It had been the heraldic device of the family since the time of the very first Duke of Lancaster in the mid-13th century.

The family that claimed to be the true heirs to the throne was the descendents of the Duke of York, one of whom’s family crest was a white rose, Rosa alba. This was adopted as an emblem by the first Duke of York in the 14th century and represents the purity of the Virgin Mary. Edward IV was a particular fan of the rose-en-soleil, which is a white rose surrounded by the golden rays of the sun, and earned himself the nickname “the Rose”. 

 

The dynastic struggle therefore became known as the Wars of the Roses, although it was certainly not called that at the time. The expression may have been coined by Sir Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe as late as 1820. The followers of each side may have worn red or white rose badges on their clothes to demonstrate their affiliation but more frequently they would have worn the coat of arms or livery of the nobleman they directly served.

 

The emblem of the Tudor rose is not a real rose at all but a symbolic fusion of the red rose of Lancaster with the white rose of York, used on official documents and in paintings to legitimise the Tudor dynasty. It can be pointed out that the red petals surround the white ones, reminding us of the Lancastrian victory over the Yorkists at Bosworth.

 

Shakespeare and the Wars of the Roses

Shakespeare used the dramatic changes of fortune in the Wars of the Roses to great effect in his trilogy of plays, Henry VI. He explains the connection of the red and the white roses with the dispute in an entirely fictitious episode in which the English noblemen are in the Temple Garden, London, discussing whose claim to the throne they will support. Each person plucks a red or white rose from a handy rosebush (Rosa damascena, or the Damask rose, which bears both red, white and red-and-white flowers) depending on their point of view.

“Plantagenet: Since you are tongue tied, and so loath to speak,
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:
Let him who is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he believe that I have pleaded truth,
From this briar 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.”

Henry VI Part One, II.iv.25-32

Read more about the rose in English poetry here.

 

Wars of the Roses today

Nowadays the expression “wars / battles of the roses” has come to be used in sport whenever the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire (who have since adopted the white and red roses as their emblems respectively) find themselves playing against each other – hopefully rather less bloody battles than in the Middle Ages.