War Of The Roses Research Paper

The War of the Roses was truly an interesting event in British history. The War of the Roses was a 28 year conflict between two British royal families who claimed that they each had a right to the English throne. One family was the House of York which included the monarchs’ Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III and the House of Lancaster or Tudor which included Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. It was called the “War of the Roses” because the Yorkist’s emblem was a white rose and the Lancastrian’s rose was red.

The spat first began in 1455 when the Welsh Baron of Winchester Edmund Tudor exploited his family secret that he was the illegitimate descendent of John of Gaunt, who was the son of King Edward III of England.

Since John never told anyone about his illegitimate child (John of Windsor), Edward III’s other nephew Richard II was made King of England. Edmund argued that since he was closer in relation to Edward III, that his family should have been the successors to the throne of England. This upset the current King of England Henry VI, who said that since they were both technically Lancastrian’s that it was too close to call. Riots began to flood the streets and there were an equal amount of favor for the Tudors and Henry VI. A year later however, Edmund died mysteriously and Henry proclaimed that his claim to the throne had subsided. However, there was still some hope for the Tudors for in 1457, Edmund’s wife gave birth to a child whom she named Henry. People continued to riot, some demanding that Henry Tudor should be heir to the throne of England.
Some say that the reason some people were in favor for the Tudors were because they did not believe that they had a closer relation to the throne but that they also had claims to land in Wales and France, which would expand the kingdom. In 1461, Henry VI died with no legitimate heirs, but instead of the throne going to Henry Tudor, it was usurped by his cousin Edward IV who was a member of the House of York. He immediately exiled Henry VI’s family and tried to execute Henry Tudor, but his mother and he went into hiding.
Though he made some rash decisions in his rule, Edward IV actually was a rather exceptional monarch, but his profound laws and actions were overshadowed by two egregious scandals, his conflicts with the House of Lancaster and that he married an English peasant named Elizabeth Woodville. This only increased the violence and some historians claim that the fighting in the War of the Roses began with the unpopular rule of Edward IV. In 1471, all of the Barons (including fourteen year-old Henry Tudor) marched into the Grand Palace and forced Edward to sign a document called the “Deposition Act of 1471” in which he was relieved of his power and the crown was to be given to his son, Edward V. However, Edward V was a young child at the time and could not maintain his stability and security, and within a few months, he was overthrown by his father again.
Edward IV remained as king for another twelve years until he finally died in 1483.

In his will, he stated that his son (who was still only a teenager at the time) that he was legitimate heir to the English throne again. He was then coronated but not crowned at Westminster Abbey on April 9, 1483. This caused lots of strife though, for they believed he was still too young to rule and he had already proven his incapability in keeping power. Protests and riots began to arise and some revived the suggestion that Henry Tudor should be king. On June 26, English parliament had Edward V deposed and locked up in the Tower of London. Though most historical records claim he died there shortly after, but new evidence shows he might have been alive longer than

that.
He was then replaced by his uncle Richard III who was very misunderstood.

He was said to be the most dastardly and sinister of all the English monarchs who poisoned his wife, burned animals, brutally mutilated Edward V and his brother, murdered anyone who stood in his way, and fought a grueling war against the heroic Henry Tudor who finally ended Richard’s perilous reign. This was actually entirely false, for Richard III was on the other hand one of the nicest monarchs in history who wanted to make England a pacifist nation that only fought in self-defense. One time, a Lancastrian supporter attempted to assassinate him by stabbing him in his throne room, but instead of executing him, Richard forgave him and gave him a large country estate in Northern Ireland! Another conspiracy was that Richard was a hunchback with a limp in his arm. However, anthropologists have evaluated his recently discovered skeleton and concluded that he instead had scoliosis towards the end of his

life.
So why were there so many lies told about Richard III? Well, William Shakespeare was a friend of the Tudors who despised Richard. So when he wrote his play The Hunchback King, he incorporated many fables into his life to make him look evil and cunning.
After Richard’s coronation is when Henry Tudor officially became involved in the situation, for he believed that he should have been crowned king after Edward V’s deposition and declared war on him. Battle raged on for another two years afterward each side being right behind the other. In 1485, the final battle in the War of the Roses took place and was known as the Battle of Shrewsbury. It ended after an interlocking duel between Richard and Henry (and some of Henry’s guards assisting him which was slightly cheap) and Henry successfully slayed Richard in the Elizabethan Tower. This meant that finally, after nearly 30 years of quarrel, the War of the Roses was at an end and the House of Lancaster was the victor. Henry Tudor was coronated the very next day as Henry VII, which began an interesting and demeaning British royal dynasty known only as “the Tudors”.