Greatest Battles
TEWKESBURY, ENGLAND, 4 MAY 1471
In the popular imagination, the Wars of the Roses ended with the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The House of York had fallen and England belonged to the Tudors under Henry VII. However, it is arguable that the true fight between the houses of York and Lancaster ended 14 years previously. The Battle of Tewkesbury is one of the greatest clashes in English history and was the final direct encounter between the Yorkists and a purely Lancastrian force. It witnessed the death of a prince of Wales, destroyed the ambitions of a queen, entrenched the rule of a king and sealed the grisly fate of another monarch. Its story has all the hallmarks of a medieval epic and was the culmination of decades of civil strife.
England had been engaged in an intermittent but bloody civil war since 1455. Until that time the Plantagenets had ruled uninterrupted for 245 years, but the deposition of Richard II in 1399 by his Lancastrian cousin Henry IV transformed the status quo. Richard II’s declared heirs were the Earls of March, and some of their descendants later became the Dukes of York. The Yorkists never forgot their thwarted claims to England’s throne. Henry IV succeeded in establishing a Lancastrian dynasty, which reached its zenith under Henry V. However, it was the weak rule of his son Henry VI that would see Yorkist ambitions reasserted.
Medieval kingship depended on personal charisma and political skill. Henry VI possessed none of these. He ascended the throne in 1422 aged only nine months and, thanks to the military campaigns of his father and uncles, had been in the privileged position of being crowned both king of England and France, the only English king ever to do so. Despite this, his long minority was beset by infighting between ambitious nobles on his council, and by the time he came of age, it was obvious that Henry lacked the ability to control his aristocracy. Consequently, Henry VI’s vast lands in France were gradually lost and he made continuous mistakes in his foreign and domestic policy. When the English finally lost the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, Henry descended into madness.
Into this power vacuum stepped Richard, Duke of York, who was declared lord protector of England by the royal council, much to the chagrin of Henry’s feisty queen Margaret of Anjou. York, who was keenly aware of his own strong claim to the throne, attempted to eliminate Henry VI’s favourites to consolidate power. The Wars of the Roses began in 1455 when York killed the Lancastrian Duke of Somerset at the First Battle of St Albans. Queen Margaret became increasingly alarmed at York’s growing power and their mutual antipath
