The Wars of the Roses represented a major turning point in English history. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that it has attracted many myths and misconceptions. Unravelling what exactly happened, and why, often throws up more questions than answers. This makes the truth sometimes hard, or even impossible, to discern.
In this article we’ll explore ten common myths associated with the Wars of the Roses and explain why they don’t really hold up to scrutiny.
Myth 1: Lancastrian Corruption Caused a Fiscal Crisis in the 1440s
By the late 1440s the ruling Lancastrian regime had amassed eye-watering levels of debt. The Crown owed the staggering sum of £372,000 by the end of the decade.
As Yorkist opposition to the regime grew, accusations of financial mismanagement and corruption were deployed to further the Yorkist cause. The reason for the crisis, the argument went, arose from Henry VI being duped into granting far too many favours to a corrupt court elite. Royal estates had been given away to favourites far too easily. These corrupt councillors now grew rich at the expense of Crown finances.
But this was an oversimplification. Late Lancastrian debts were primarily the result of accrued war debts from the Hundred Years’ War coupled with a growing structural fiscal weakness. The English crown was heavily reliant on indirect taxation primarily levied on wool duties. These revenues had been in decline ever since the early 15th century. This was further exacerbated by a silver shortage that affected much of Europe.
Whilst Henry’s over generosity in making grants of Royal Estates had undoubtedly made the crisis worse, they were not ultimately the main cause of it.
Myth 2: If Only Henry VI had not Surrendered Maine to the French, defeat in the Hundred Years’ War Could Have Been Avoided
The loss of England’s overseas possessions in France and her humiliating defeats between 1449 and 1453 were major factors in destabilizing the Lancastrian regime. The early 1450s saw England plunged into chaos, disorder and ultimately civil war in no small part because of the fallout from this debacle.
Yorkist (and later) critics blamed Henry’s court for pursuing a doomed policy of appeasement with the French. Worst of all, Henry and his councillors had surrendered the province of Maine without a fight and for little by way of any tangible benefit. This in turn had provided the French with a staging ground for their 1449 invasion of Normandy.
If only the English had held onto Maine, some argued, something of England’s French possessions might have been saved.
Unfortunately, such an argument was delusional wishful thinking on the part of the English. By 1449, the French had built up a large military force, well equipped and well financed. It was more than a match for anything the English could field. In the end Normandy and later Gascony were overrun with shocking rapidity. There is no reason to suppose that Maine, had the English held onto it, would have fared any better.
Myth 3: If Only Henry VI had Listened to Good Duke Humphrey Things Would Have Turned out Better
Duke Humphrey died in 1447, nearly a decade before the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses. He was Henry VI’s uncle and, in the latter years of his life, a significant political opponent of Henry’s principal minister, Suffolk.
Humphrey had long advocated a more vigorous prosecution of the war in France. Rather than seeking peace and appeasement, he felt England should raise new armies and seek to crush French opposition once and for all.
This naturally brought him into conflict with the peace policy of Henry’s ministers, especially Suffolk. Many of these same ministers would later come to be viewed as public enemy number one by the Yorkists. So, it is no surprise to find Yorkists in the 1450s and 60s praising the long dead duke.
But unfortunately, the ‘good’ duke (as he became known) was not living in the real world by the mid-1440s. The truth was that England was fighting an unwinnable war by this time. A war that had been unwinnable ever since the alliance with Burgundy had fallen apart in 1435.
Humphrey’s solution was more of the same failing policies – increasing an already out of control debt to finance yet another military campaign. Humphrey’s counsel was, to put it mildly, completely impractical.
Myth 4: Margaret of Anjou was to Blame for the War
There have been many attempts over the years to explain why the Wars of the Roses happened and who was to blame. One school of thought points the finger at Margaret of Anjou, Henry’s French queen. This vision of Margaret casts her in the role of the vindictive ‘she-wolf’, an ultimate femme fatale, and the true power behind the Lancastrian throne. But this view owes more to later Yorkist propaganda and Shakespearean dramatisation than reality.
Since Margaret and Richard of York became implacable foes in the late 1450s, it is tempting to assume that they had always been enemies. However, they remained on reasonably cordial terms well into the 1450s. The Yorks still regarded Margaret as a friendly face at court as late as 1453. Margaret only became York’s bitter enemy later, especially after the first battle of St Albans. It was York’s quarrel with Somerset, not Margaret, that incited the first battle of the wars.
Later, there is no doubt that Margaret fought tenaciously to hold on to power – but in that she was no different than any of her enemies. Some blame her for not accepting a compromise in 1460, but the proposed arrangement would have disinherited her son. The fact that she rejected such an unreasonable offer is entirely understandable.
Myth 5: The Correct Contemporary Name for the Wars was the ‘Cousins’ Wars’
It is a fact that the term ‘Wars of the Roses’ was not used at the time these wars were being fought. Instead, it has been suggested that the conflict should more properly be termed the ‘Cousins’ Wars’. The reasoning being that the wars were ultimately fought between cousins within the extended Plantagenet family. Indeed, it has been claimed that the term ‘Cousins’ Wars’ was used at the time.
However, this is apocryphal. There is no evidence to show that the wars were ever referred to as the ‘Cousins’ Wars’ in 15th century England. In fact, the earliest use of this term dates to the early 20th century. The term ‘Wars of the Roses’ is much older. References to ‘the quarrel of the two roses’ exist within mid-17th century material.
Contemporaries of these wars tended (perhaps unsurprisingly) to simply refer to them as ‘the war’ or ‘the civil war’.
The term ‘Cousins’ Wars’ is actually quite imprecise. The nobility of Europe and especially of France and England often intermarried. As a result, many European medieval wars involved cousins fighting on opposite sides.
Myth 6: The Wars of the Roses Plunged England into Three Decades of Civil War
It is generally accepted that the first battle of the civil war was fought in 1455 (the first battle of St Albans) and that the last was fought in 1487 (Stoke). Taken at face value this might lead us to conclude that the civil war lasted for 32 years! This would very easily make it the longest civil war in English history. The Anarchy only lasted 15 years (1138-1153) and the English Civil War itself, less than 10 (1642-1651). In terms of the overall timespan taken to resolve the conflict this simple way of looking at it holds up.
However, in truth the period between 1455 and 1487 only saw sporadic outbreaks of conflict rather than one long period of continuous warfare. Major battles only occurred in 10 years out of this 32-year period, often punctuated by significant interludes of peace. (1455, 1459-1461, 1464, 1469-1471, 1485 and 1487).
Myth 7: Edward IV Never Lost
On the battlefield, when commanding an army, Edward IV was never defeated. He personally won several crucial victories in the Wars of the Roses (Towton in 1461, and Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471).
However, although there is no doubting his successes, it is not entirely true to say he never lost. Things did not always go to plan for Edward. He was briefly forced to flee to France in 1459 after the Yorkist defeat at Ludford Bridge. In 1470 the alliance between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou caught him off guard and forced him into exile for five months. Whilst neither resulted from personal defeats on the field, both represented serious military setbacks.
Away from the confrontation with Lancastrians, Edward did not always meet with unqualified success. His campaign in France in 1475 ended in a treaty in which the French gained as much as Edward. And his attempt at invading Scotland in 1482 largely ended in failure, aside from the capture of Berwick castle.
Edward’s most significant military defeat came from a naval war with the Hanseatic League (1469-1474). When that war finally ended, Edward was forced to accept peace on Hansard terms.
Myth 8: The Yorkists Kings Ended England’s Financial Crisis
Edward IV and later Richard III certainly played a more active role in attempting to address England’s financial woes than Henry VI. However, turning around such a dire situation proved hugely challenging.
Edward IV’s attempts to raise revenues by resumption of the royal estates failed to raise as much as had been hoped. Indeed, Edward was forced to give away a lot of land to retain the support of nobles such as Warwick. Edward made spending cuts, improved the efficiency of how finances were managed and raised money from ransoming Margaret and agreeing a peace with France. However, he still had to resort to unpopular taxes in the form of the hated ‘benevolences’.
Even after all this, Edward struggled to balance the books. The Medici bank in London collapsed in 1478, due in no small part because Edward was unable to repay his debts.
Richard III inherited these long-term financial problems from his brother. Despite his efforts, they proved unsolvable. He was forced to run crown finances at a significant deficit throughout his short reign. Richard and Edward struggled with the same basic problem that had overwhelmed Henry VI – fundamentally inadequate income.
It was a long time before England’s finances finally returned to the black. And it would take the (in)famously high tax/low spend reign of Henry VII to achieve it.
Myth 9: Margaret of Anjou Died in Poverty
Alison Weir wrote the following concerning Margaret’s later life in her history of the wars:
“…she lived in very reduced circumstances, subsisting on a meagre pension provided by King Louis. She died in great poverty after a short unspecified illness on 25 August 1482”
This is, in fact, a very common view of Margaret’s later life. But French records of the period reveal a very different story.
For one thing Margaret was living in a castle when she died. For another, Louis XI had granted her a pension of £1,200. That was indeed far less than Margaret’s income when she was queen of England but a significant sum, nonetheless. In today’s money it equates to £1.2 million.
It also seems that Margaret was enjoying her retirement. She kept hunting dogs right up until her death. So, she was presumably enjoying an active outdoor lifestyle (as she had done in her leisure time in England).
After her death, Margaret was given an elaborate and expensive funeral. This was paid for out of Margaret’s personal fortune. This proved more than sufficient to cover the funeral costs and pay all her servants’ outstanding wages. The remaining surplus was donated to the church.
That does not sound like ‘great poverty’ to me!
Myth 10: Richard III was a Villain / Richard III was a Hero
Did Richard III murder his own nephews to secure the crown for himself? Or was he a wronged tragic hero? The jury is still very much out. There is certainly no ‘proof of life’ regarding the princes as some have rashly claimed. Indeed, there is nothing definitive to show what their fate was.
Richard was a man of his times. And these were violent times. Richard had many enemies: Woodvilles, Tudors and even other Yorkists. If he had the princes killed, it was likely done in an atmosphere of panic, fear and uncertainty rather than as a pre-planned, cold-blooded act.
The prospect of Richard murdering his own nephews is shocking. But was it really any worse than Henry V’s slaughter of 1800 people at Caen in 1417, including all boys aged 12 and over? Or Henry’s cruel forced starvation of the civilians of Rouen in a ditch the following year?
Richard III, in other respects, seems to have taken his responsibilities as king seriously and attempted to fulfil them to the best of his ability. He pursued various legal reforms and made a concerted effort to bring royal finances under control. He wasn’t always successful and as he was only in power for two years, his achievements were necessarily limited.
Perhaps not an evil villain, but neither a great hero. Richard III was something altogether more complex, like most people in history.
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The Reign of Henry VI and the Wars of the Roses
If you would like to read my other articles covering key events in the reign of Henry VI and the Wars of the Roses, explore the links below…
1 The Legacy of Henry V and the Infant King
4 Jackanapes – the Rise of the Duke of Suffolk
6 The Treaty of Tours – Peace in Our Time 1444
7 The Downfall of Good Duke Humphrey
8 The Late Lancastrian Debt Crisis
9 How England Lost the Hundred Years War
10 How France Won the Hundred Years War
11 The Bonville-Courtenay Feud
12 Who Killed the Duke of Suffolk? A C15th Mystery
13 The Hansards and the Wars of the Roses
14. Richard of York: The Early Years
15. The Birth of the Yorkist Faction
References and Further Reading
Bryson B, (2019), The fiscal policy of Richard III of England, Quidditas 40 (2019) 139
Dockray, K. (2016), Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou and the Wars of the Roses, Fonthill Media
Higginbotham, S. (2010) Margaret of Anjou’s Last Days, Susan Higginbotham’s Blog
Johnson, L. (2020) Shadow King, The Life and Death of Henry VI, Head of Zeus
Maurer, H. (2005) Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England, Boydell & Brewer
Weir, A. (1998) Lancaster & York: The Wars of the Roses, Pimlico
Images
All images are from wiki commons.
Battle Of Tewkesbury: Photo by Anthony Stanley 2009
Margaret of Anjou: illustration by Antoine Francois Seregent-Marceau 1787 (British Museum)
King Edward IV: Anon artist, 1540
Richard III: A forensic reconstruction of the King’s head on display at Sudley Castle, geograph.org.uk
Thanks for your informative blog post, here and in other posts! The best history should be broad ranging and widely read and too much mainstream comment on the ‘wars of the roses’ repeats dated and unfounded tropes – whether this is on Richard III’s character or the alleged fiscal corruption of Henry VI’s court.