The Lancastrians.
It was the same with the party that stood by the king and Somerset. It comprised, first of all, the houses which were allied in blood to the Lancastrian line—the king's cousins the Beauforts, the legitimized descendants of John of Gaunt, and his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor, Earls of Richmond and Pembroke. [27] After them came the Percies of Northumberland, the Westmoreland Nevilles, and the Staffords of Buckingham—the three houses which had been prominent in aiding the usurpation of Henry IV. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland were certainly confirmed in their loyalty to the king by their bitter quarrel with their kinsmen, the younger Nevilles, the strongest supporters of York.
Character of the Wars of the Roses.
But the "Wars of the Roses,"—as historians have chosen to name them, from the white rose which was the badge of York, and the red rose which was assumed long after as the emblem of Lancaster—were much more than a faction fight between two rival coteries of peers. At the first they were the attempt of the majority of the English nation to oust an unpopular minister from power by force of arms. There is no doubt that the greater part of England sided with York in this endeavour. The citizens and freeholders of London, Kent, the South, and the Midlands, where lay all the wealth and political energy of the nation, were strongly Yorkist. Henry, on the other hand, got his support from a group of great nobles who controlled the wild West and North, and the still wilder Wales.
Unfortunately for the nation, the constitutional aspect of the struggle was gradually obscured by the increasing bitterness of family blood-feuds. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," was the cry of the Lancastrian noble to the enemy who asked for quarter, [28] and it expresses well enough the whole aspect of the later years of the struggle. The war commenced with an attempt to set right by force the government of the realm, but it ended as a mere series of bloody reprisals for slain kinsfolk. It left England in a far worse state, from the political and constitutional point of view, than it had known since the days of John. It began with the comparatively small affliction of a weak, well-intentioned king, who persisted in retaining an unpopular minister in power; it ended by leaving the realm in the hands of an arbitrary self-willed king, who ruled autocratically for himself, with no desire or intention of consulting the nation's wishes as to how it should be governed.
We might place the beginning of the Wars of the Roses at the moment of Cade's insurrection, but it was not till five years later that the struggle broke out in its bitterer form.
Madness of the king.—Birth of his son.
Strangely enough, the commencement of the strife was preceded by a time in which it seemed almost certain that the troubles of the realm would blow over. In 1453 the king went mad; the peers and commons unanimously called upon York, as the first prince of the blood, to take up the place of Protector of the realm. He did so to the general satisfaction of the nation, cast Somerset into the Tower, and replaced the old ministers by more capable men. But just as all seemed settled, and York's ultimate succession to the crown appeared inevitable, the whole aspect of affairs was altered by the queen giving birth to a son, after nine years of unfruitful wedlock. This completely cut away York's prospect of succession; but he accepted the situation with loyalty, and swore allegiance to the infant Prince of Wales. But after eighteen months, Henry VI. suddenly and unexpectedly recovered his sanity. At once, at Queen Margaret's behest, he dismissed York and his friends from office, and drew Somerset out of the Tower to make him minister once more.
This action drove Duke Richard to sudden violence. He hastily gathered his retainers from the Welsh Marches, called his kinsmen the two Neville earls to his aid, and marched
Outbreak of war.—First battle of St. Albans.