EP 02 - What Wars? What Roses?

What Wars? What Roses?

- Episode 02-

‘A plague on both your houses’

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'A plague on both your houses'

20 March 2024

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NEW SERIES What Wars? What Roses?

[photo] Richard III from Shakespeare - the Animated Tales, Richard III directed by Natasha Orlova for Christmas Films, S4C, BBC, HBO

The 'Wars of the Roses' were caused by too many useless kings?

Between 1327 and 1485, five kings were ‘deposed’ - kicked off the throne. One other was temporarily driven into exile and had to fight his way back. Two more spent the first years of their reign fighting off serious attempts to unseat them. One was starved to death, two murdered in the Tower, one hacked to death of the battlefield.

Why?

In 1964 historian Kenneth McFarlane gave a lecture at the British Academy saying the kings had been too weak: ‘under-mighty’ was the word he used.

But there had been plenty of weak kings before the 15^th century. More strikingly, there were plenty of weak monarchs afterwards, who died in their beds. Only one, Charles I, was beheaded, and that was because he tried to take too much power.

Let's run through them: a boy king, England's first two queens, an irresponsible 'hunting' king, a king kicked out bloodlessly for being a Catholic, one who went 'mad', one who was absent for four decades, two buffoons and a playboy! We're not saying anything about the monarchy from George VI on!

[photo] The Citadel of Calais was all that was left from the middle of Henry VI's reign. It was a major trading hub for wool merchants in particular

The 'Wars of the Roses' were caused by the loss of England's French Empire?

The English defeat in France and loss of their lands meant that English landowners and nobility no longer had access to the steady stream of cash that had kept them in the style to which they had grown accustomed. Not only was there no longer any money in the royal coffers, but there were no longer profitable jobs in France, and above all, no more battlefield ransoms.

Taking your nobles to war had always been a tried and tested way for a monarch to keep troublemaking landowners quiet. You made them your brothers in arms. Enter Henry V. In the words that Shakespeare would later put into his mouth before the battle of Agincourt…
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

#93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?

the bubonic plague arrived in Britain in 1348 - within a year it had killed about two thirds of the population

[photo] For a while England and Wales had two kings: Edward IV replaced incompetent, mentally unwell Henry VI

The worst of the 'Wars of the Roses' were caused by Parliament electing a new king when the existing one was incompetent?

Henry VI was mentally unwell and incapable of ruling. At the end of 1459, serious violence broke out. As in armies in the field. Let’s skip the details. What matters here is that the most powerful noble, the man everyone agreed should succeed Henry VI if he failed to produce a son, Richard Duke of York was killed by Henry VI's French queen, Margaret of Anjou's army. It was a hollow victory for Anjou, because soon after she and her new born son (whose paternity has always been questioned) were driven into exile and York’s son, was made king.

The interesting thing however is that when parliament agreed to make York's son king, nobody mentioned York’s claim to the royal throne, which was significant. Instead, the parliamentarians agreed that Henry VI ‘had offended against the realm’ and that that was why Edward of York had been chosen by the people to replace him. In fact the word they used was ‘elected.’

One visiting diplomat from Milan reported ‘how the people of London, the leaders of the people of the island, together with some other lords, full of indignation had created a new king.... [H]e was chosen, so they say on all sides, as the new king by the princes and people at London.’

[photo] A map of the progress of the Bubonic Plague in Europe

The 'Wars of the Roses' were caused by the Plague?

Fifteenth century kings had no regular army, no police force and no civil service. When the people of Kent launched a significant rebellion in 1450 it was up to the local bigwigs to keep them in order.

This period saw a severe reduction in the number of nobles, who were also far more interrelated than before. Which meant many fewer available to run the country.The number of peers (basically landowners with aristocratic titles) fell by half between 1350 and 1450, from 147 to 73. That is, in itself, an extraordinary statistic. It was a result of the bubonic plague which arrived in Britain in 1348 and spread extremely quickly, within a year killing about two thirds of the population.

Plague pandemics then returned every 10 or 20 years or so until 1665, although it was never quite as bad as that first time. Fewer noble sons survived, land passed to daughters, they married other landowners and the pool of peers grew smaller and smaller.

To make matters worse in about 1375 the titles for the peerage for the first time became hereditary, automatically passing on from one generation to the next. This meant that monarchs, who were in need of more nobles to run the country, hesitated to create them. The tradition was that when a king created a new peer the monarch gifted them land. Now for the first time this gift became a lifetime gift. Which seriously focused the mind!

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