With the defeat and death of “the King Maker” Warwickshire’s active participation in the struggles of the rival Roses may be said to have come to an end.
A few years later the House of Warwick became allied to that of York by the marriage of Richard III. with Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and widow of the unhappy Edward V., who had been murdered by Richard, his uncle.
The final struggle between the rival Roses took place not in Warwickshire, but in its sister county Leicestershire at Market Bosworth, in the sanguinary battle of August 22, 1485, which by the defeat and death of Richard III. brought the Plantagenet line of English sovereigns to an end.
Upon the accession of Henry of Richmond after the battle of Bosworth, the Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence, was imprisoned in the Tower. And on the advent of Perkin Warbeck, who represented himself to be Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV., the fact of Warwick’s imprisonment was used by King Henry VII.’s enemies to his injury and disparagement.
The fate of Warbeck was destined ultimately to involve that of the unfortunate Earl of Warwick. Bacon puts the position in a brief phrase, which cannot be easily surpassed for vivid imagery. He says, “it was ordained that the winding ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true tree itself.”
By the execution of the Earl upon Tower Hill in 1499 the male line of the Plantagenets, which had flourished in great royalty, power, and renown from the time of Henry II., came to an end; and there was no other Earl of Warwick for a period of nearly half a century.