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6. Wars of the Roses

fter the end of the Hundred Years War, the feudal lords and their hired armies came home from France, and life in England became more turbulent than ever. The baronial families at the king’s court, the House of York and the House of Lancaster started a series of wars fighting for possession of the throne. In the 19^th century the novelist Walter Scott named them the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) after their emblems – the white rose, which was the emblem of the House of York, and the red rose, which symbolized the House of Lancaster. During the wars, more than sixty aristocratic families controlling England divided into the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. Many of them were related by marriage. Most noblemen still kept their private armies after returning from the war in France and subdued the local population into obeying them. Thus the struggle for the throne turned into a civil war.

King Henry VI, who was the founder of Eaton college (1440) and King’s College at Cambridge, was a scholarly man but suffered from insanity. Thus true power was in the hands of rival ministers of the Houses of York and Lancaster, notably Richard, Duke of York, and Edmund Beaufort, the Second Duke of Somerset, both descendants of Edward III.

The war began when Richard, Duke of York, claimed the protectorship of the crown after the mental breakdown of King Henry in 1454. In 1455 Richard defeated the King’s army at St. Albans, the first battle in the Wars of the Roses, and in 1460 claimed the throne to himself. As for Henry VI, he was murdered in the Tower in 1471.

After Richard’s death in battle, the throne went to his son Edward IV. When Edward IV died, his two young sons were put in the Tower by their uncle Richard who took the crown as Richard III. The two princes were never heard of again. Richard III was unpopular both with the Yorkists and the Lancastrians that is why when in 1485 Henry Tudor, a challenger with a very distant claim to royal blood landed in England with Breton soldiers to claim the throne, he was joined by many Lancastrians and Yorkists. Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth and was crowned king in the battlefield.

The Wars of the Roses lasted thirty years and ended with the establishment of a stronger royal power under Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. In 1486 Henry VII married the daughter of Edward IV of the York house, thus uniting the rival houses. The wars demonstrated the danger of allowing powerful nobles to build up private armies. As a reminder of the war, today the floral symbol of England is the red Tudor rose.

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  7. Pre-renaissance in England

  hurch and religion

A popular discontent with the Catholic church went side by side with the Lollard movement which opposed the traditional doctrine of the English clergy. The word ‘lollard’ was probably derived from lollaer, ‘a mumbler of prayers’. It was a nickname given to the poorer priests who travelled from place to place propagating the ideas of John Wycliff, the only university intellectual in the history of medieval heresy and a forerunner of the English Reformation. Wycliff gained reputation and support among noblemen, courtiers and scholars for his criticism of the Church’s wealth and the unworthiness of too many of its clergy. His increasingly radical ideas led to his condemnation and withdrawal from Oxford. Wycliff was the first priest to deny the basic principle of the Roman Catholic Church – the miraculous change of things from one substance into another, particularly the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. After Wycliff’s death, the Pope ordered his works to be destroyed, his body to be dug out and burnt, and the ashes to be thrown into the river.

• Rebirth of English literature

One of the most famous Lollard priests was William Langland (1334-1400) who is remembered for his poem The Visions of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman (now known as Piers Plowman), a dream allegory popular in the Middle Ages. The poem deals with the vision of a peasant, Piers Ploughman, who describes the hard life of the common people. He explains that it is the peasant who works to keep the lord and the monks in comfort. The author stresses the idea that every person is obliged to work – be it a peasant, a lord or a priest. Every now and then the author suddenly darts from allegory to real history. The main characters of the poem are human qualities, such as Virtue, Truth and Greed. The written text of the poem is dated 1362. Before and during the revolt of 1381 the text of the poem was used in proclamations which easily spread among the peasants and townspeople.

Another follower of Wycliff was John Ball, one of the leaders of the peasants’ revolt. He is best remembered for his proclamations in which he used quotations from ‘Piers Ploughman’ and Wycliff’s works. He often ended his speeches with Wycliff’s famous words which then turned into a saying:

When Adam delved and Eve span

who was then the Gentleman?