Dan Snow's History Hit - 2. Wars of the Roses: Rise of the Tudors

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

In the second episode of our Wars of the Roses series, Edward IV secures the English throne after his victory at the bloody Battle of Towton. But his betrayal by Warwick the 'Kingmaker' throws the house of York into disarray once again. The civil war reignites, and only after immense bloodshed will a new dynasty will arise - that of the Tudors. England's political landscape would be changed forever.Once again we're joined by Matt Lewis, historian, author and host of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

It is 1461 and England has two kings. Two men springing from different branches of England's centuries-old ruling family, the Plantagenets. Two men backed by powerful coalitions now fighting with ever-increasing intensity. now fighting with ever-increasing intensity. One of them, King Henry VI, was Lancastrian, descended from the Dukes of Lancaster. He was the son of the mighty Henry V, but he proved a poor king. He was indecisive, weak.

He'd lost the English Empire in France. He'd effectively given up on his family's claim to be kings of France. He was a gentle soul in a world of ironclad maniacs, butchers. After the first few rounds of fighting, he reluctantly submitted to his powerful cousin, the Duke of York, and he'd agreed to disinherit his own son so that York and his sons will rule after him. But Henry VI had one key ally that refused to roll over, his wife, more than made up for his own lack of ambition. If he would not defend their son's birthright, she would.

She'd gathered an army to support her husband, but I think more importantly the claim of her son to rule after him. She'd marched the length of the country. She'd captured and slaughtered the Duke of York and one of his sons. She had routed the forces of England's mightiest noble, the Earl of Warwick, the man they called Kingmaker. And she looked to have restored the fortunes of the House of Lancaster. But, as you'll hear in this podcast, York had other sons.

And unfortunately for the Lancastrians, the biological lottery had delivered this time around. The new Duke of York was 18 years old, six foot four, in his physical prime. Handsome, charismatic, energetic, always dazzlingly dressed, warlike. He was at home on the battlefield that his Lancastrian cousin barely dared venture onto. him cousin barely dared venture onto. Now that his father and brother had been slaughtered, their heads hacked off and stuck above the gates of York, he went on the offensive. He was declared king by Warwick, maker of kings, and together they marched north to Yorkshire

hungry for revenge and an undisputed crown. In this podcast I tell the story of what came next, of the battle that remains probably the bloodiest ever on English soil, fought in a snowstorm, of the slaughter of hundreds of terrified men as they fled, panicking, stamping across a bridge of their fallen comrades' corpses. But even that battle, as you'll hear, was not the decisive end. The civil wars would rage on. Royal princes would die alongside those men whose names are forgotten, but whose fate they shared.

To talk me through the Battle of Towton and the second half of what we now call the Wars of the Roses, I've got Matt Lewis. He is the presenter of many shows on our History Hit TV channel. He is the host of the Gone Medieval podcast, the smash hit medieval podcast from History Hit. And he's now on here to take me back to his happy place and tell me about the houses of Lancaster and York and how they came effectively to destroy each other like two punch-trunk boxers.

Enjoy. Matt, welcome back to Ancestors History, buddy. Thank you very much for having me back. We left the audience on a shocking cliffhanger last time. We have got the greatest family dispute in English history. We've got the gentle, unwarlike, arguably pacifist, taken prisoner and released now on several occasions, poor Henry VI, and ranged against him is the revenge-seeking, 18-year-old, six-foot-four, giant of a man, Edward, Duke of York, or Edward IV, depending on your politics at the time, his cousin, and a man who through his

teens has been trampling the weak, hurdling the dead. A man who is furious because his father's head has been separated violently from its body and now sits on a spike rotting on a gate of York. The scene is set, buddy, one of the greatest battles in British history. Take me back to 1461, what's happening? It sounds really, really unfair when you put it like that, doesn't it? It's not going to go well for Henry, which is maybe the reason for one thing that Henry doesn't turn up to the fight in person. So Edward IV and Warwick will gather this huge army, march it north. They're going to face off in Yorkshire against the Lancastrian army that's been slowly moving backwards because it was unable to get into London. They would eventually meet at the Battle of Towton. So just before that, we have what's known as the Battle of Ferrybridge, which is sort of a skirmish in which outriders from both armies

face each other. We have this cavalry force led by Lord Clifford, known as the Flower of Craven, who are incredibly successful. They inflict huge damage on the Yorkist forces, but then are eventually killed. So Lord Clifford is one of those sons of St. Albans who was present at Wakefield. So this is Edward getting some early revenge already. And then on the 29th of March, 1461, which is Palm Sunday. So Sundays aren't usually a day for battle. It's a holy day. Palm Sunday is the day that Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem just before the crucifixion and all of that kind of thing. So hugely significant day on which to be having a battle. It's also really bad weather. So it's interesting how so many of the battles that Edward

fights in are accompanied by weather. We've had the Parhelion at Mortimer's Cross. At Towton, we've got heavy winds and sleety snow blowing around in the air. So hardly ideal conditions for a battle. Eastern Yorkshire sounds familiar. Yeah, yeah. Not much changes. So the two sides will square up against each other. We get the opening salvo of a longbow

duel. So this is about trying to get your enemy to move. So the longbow section of a medieval battle at this point is very often about trying to maneuver your enemy to go where you want them to be. Quite often in a medieval battle, the side that moves first will lose. So longbows are a great way to pepper your enemy and encourage them to move, to realise that they can't stand still. And what the Yorkists managed to do, led by Lord Fokenberg, who is a brother of the Earl of Salisbury, so he's one of the Neville family, what he does is realise that they have the wind at their back. And so he positions his army slightly further away from the Lancastrian force

than you usually would and uses that following wind to allow his arrows to travel a bit further. So they're inflicting casualties on the Lancastrians. The Lancastrians are firing back, but their arrows are falling short in the headwind and not reaching the Yorkists. When the Yorkists run out of arrows, the sources then tell us that the Yorkist army simply steps forward and begins plucking the Lancastrian arrows out of the ground and shooting them back at the Lancastrian forces. Just a nightmare. The Lancastrians are under terrible bombardment. These savage arrowheads smashing into horse flesh, any exposed human flesh, even when they're not penetrating, they're delivering

hammer blows down on their helmets, on the armour of the men beneath them. But just quickly, let me pick you up on Lord Falkenberg. Edward IV is 18 years old at this point. Do we think he is commanding this army? Because these are big armies, aren't they? They are big armies. So there's lots of discussion about the precise size of this army. So some sources have suggested that there were as many as 100,000 men in the field. That seems really, really unlikely, simply in terms of logistics, gathering those kinds of forces, arraying armies that size. You're talking about, what, two or three Premier League football stadiums full of fans. There probably weren't that many people there,

but I think what writers are getting at is that this felt like a huge apocalyptic moment in history that was going to define everything. So maybe they slightly exaggerate the numbers. Maybe no one's really clear in the snow precisely how many men are out there. But the idea is this is going to be the cataclysmic confrontation of this ongoing civil war that we will later call the Wars of the Roses. And is Edward in charge? I think Edward quite often shows signs of being very willing to take advice from those who know better than him. So while he's travelled up north, he's left his mum, Cecily Neville, effectively in charge of government. He's not tried to rule from the north while he's in charge of an army. He's not chosen anybody else from around him, one of his best mates, part of a faction maybe. He's relying on his mother, who is

vastly experienced, a very cool head, a very sensible person, and he's left her in charge of government. So I think Edward, probably on the battlefield, is also very willing to take advice. Falkenberg is an incredibly experienced soldier. He's been active in France when Edward hasn't. Warwick is there too, and Warwick has fought in a couple of battles. I don't think that Edward feels the need to make it all about him and for him to make all of the decisions because he knows he lacks the experience. I think he has enough about him at 18

to realise there are men better equipped to make some of those decisions. And one of those men is Fokenberg. And Edward, I don't think, has any qualms about relying on people who are more experienced and better at the job than he is. But as we'll hear, Edward does discharge one of the absolutely key responsibilities of medieval

leadership, which is ostentatious battlefield bravery, doesn't he? Tell me about how he puts himself right in the front rank. He does. I mean, and this couldn't be in starker contrast to Henry VI, who not only doesn't fight, but hasn't even shown up at Towton. He stayed outside the battle somewhere behind York, the city of York. He's just not there to fight. And on the other side, you've got Warwick will make this incredible display of dismounting his horse and killing his horse and then saying to all of his men, this is to prove to you that I'm not going to run away. I'm here to stand and fight with you. If you die, I will die beside you. Now, I don't have a horse to run away on anymore. And Edward, they generally fight dismounted, but at six foot four, he towers over

many of the men and he's wearing, you know, all of his bright livery underneath his banners. Everyone knows exactly where Edward is on the battlefield, in stark contrast to Henry, who is nowhere to be seen. And Edward fights right at the centre in the front lines of his own forces. And we're told, you know, he's utterly devastating on the battlefield. He is knocking down men left, right and centre. When the archery duel ends, Henry, both at the Duke of Somerset, whose father was killed at St Albans, realises when the archery duel is underway that he can't stand there and take this punishment, moves his men forward. The two lines come to blows and Edward is right in the middle of it, banging heads and taking names. He's doing

exactly what people would expect a medieval king to do. He's doing what his father's done, he's doing what his forebears have done, Edward III, Edward I. He's sitting squarely within that Plantagenet tradition. And on the other side, you're asking men to die in the mud for a king who can't even be bothered to show up to the battle. I can see the problem here. And tell me about that close quarters combat. How long would that have lasted? There are sources that talk about it lasting for several hours

in the sleet and the snow. We have to think about the way that medieval armies fight. So you're wearing armor, which isn't as cumbersome as you might think it is. It's designed to allow you to move because there's no good being encased in all this protective metal and then being unable to maneuver or move around the battlefield. The lines would move together. There would be an intense few moments, few minutes, five minutes or so of activity, and then they would move apart because you simply can't sustain that level of fighting for hours and hours and hours without

any kind of a break. You think about a boxing match today, you know, these are elite athletes who can do three minutes in a round and then they need a break. And then they're going to another three minutes and they need a break. Medieval battles were a lot like that. So although we have hours and hours of fighting, it's sporadic. They will come together and move apart and come together in a different place and move apart. And all of the sources tell us that for hours, the battle was incredibly even. Despite the fact that Edward is doing a sterling job, the Lancastrians are also fighting incredibly hard. There are also a lot of people in the field who are engaged in one of the most interesting aspects of the Wars of the Roses, which is the local feuds that go on beneath this

idea that it's York versus Lancaster. That hides a multitude of, we've talked a bit about the Neville's and the Percy's hating each other. That is going on across England at every level. There are feuds all over the place. And at Towton, you get neighbours who will take either side, not particularly because they believe in the politics, but because it's a chance to bash that neighbour that you've got a disagreement with and to do it in a legitimate way on the battlefield. So, so many different things are being played out here. There are so many reasons why people want to stay and fight beyond who might be the rightful king, which for most people makes very little difference to your everyday life, maybe.

But the fighting remains incredibly even until late in the day, we get the arrival of this Yorkist force under the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke of Norfolk has been ill. He seems to have got a little bit lost, maybe in the snow and the hills of Yorkshire. Maybe he's been to the beach for the day. I don't really know, but he turns up late and it's the fact of the arrival of Yorkist reinforcements that is the moment that turns the battle because the Lancastrians realise that the Yorkists have got fresh forces and they think, well, if we're barely hanging on against the army that's already here, we have no hope if they're getting reinforced and we're not getting reinforced. We know Henry isn't going to come riding out of the snow and come and save us. And so that is the point at which they give up, they turn around and they begin to flee. And the Yorkist force will

absolutely ruthlessly pursue the Lancastrian forces as they flee, which again plays into this idea of lots of local feuds going on here. The Lancastrian army are followed, hunted down, and they are cut down. We're told lots of them drown in a river that's called the Cockbeck, which is in flood at this point. So they're trying to get across this water in their armour and they're drowning. They're being stabbed and slashed and hit with maces and lumps of metal and sharp things. We're told the cockbeck runs red with blood for days after the Battle of Towton. And so there is this really ruthless end to the fighting. And then we get, adding to this idea of how apocalyptic it was, we get sources immediately after the battle. So one of Edward's heralds, the Archbishop of York, a foreign ambassador, will all write that the dead

numbered around 29,000. We have Warren, a foreign chronicler, who will put it at 36,000. Again, it seems really unlikely that the armies were that big and that the casualties were that large, but we know that mass grave pits were dug because at least one of those mass graves has been found and some of the skeletons from those people who died have been discovered with fairly horrific holes in their skulls, slashes across various parts of the bones on their bodies. We can see kind of the wounds that ultimately killed them. But the idea I think that Edward is trying to send out from the battlefield is this is absolutely apocalyptic. This is decisive. I have crushed the Lancastrians and they can never, ever come back from this because the real problem that he's got,

despite his victory, is that Henry wasn't there. And so Henry hasn't been captured. Henry VI is still at large. There are now two kings in England claiming the crown. Those numbers obviously sound enormous. That would make it comfortably the biggest recorded battle in on british soil if not in british history i mean yeah i think i've seen a stat that it's more people than were killed on the first day of the battle of the somme if not in one day of battle in british history i think it's 21 000 i think were killed on the first day of the somme many more wounded but yeah so this is astonishing astonishing casual casualty figures. And no medieval battle, I'm sure, is pleasant, but fought in the most unimaginably horrific

conditions. Yeah, and when that comparison to the Somme kind of plays into the idea that those numbers are unlikely, because if 21,000 people die in mechanised warfare at the beginning of the 20th century, it's hard to imagine 29,000 dying in a similar period of time during the medieval period. But the message is clear. This is huge, apocalyptic, seismic, and a significant turning point. And yet the very weird thing about Towton, Matt, is that in the very long term, the battle wouldn't have those generational consequences that we think perhaps its scale ought to give it. What did happen in the short term afterwards, though? In the short term, this solidifies Edward's kingship. So he leaves Warwick in the north to try and gain control of castles

and territory in the north of England. Edward goes back to London and undergoes a coronation as King Edward IV. So York's kingship has now begun. Henry has fled across the border to Scotland, so he still needs to be dealt with at some point. There is some Lancastrian resistance. But in the immediate term, the effect of Towton is to solidify Edward's kingship. It's the moment that allows him to undergo the coronation that he had avoided until he defeated Henry. And it begins the period of Yorkist kingship. And now Lancaster is the opposition as York had previously been. And presumably, whatever the overall numbers of casualties, it had torn a big hole in the Lancastrian elite, had it? It had definitely decimated Lancastrian resistance.

So the Duke of Somerset manages to escape the battle, but the other significant Lancastrian lords are killed at Towton and it does decimate their ability to raise an army and removes several of the leaders, though not Henry in the most significant of those leaders. And so we then get a period and the 1460s is almost peaceful. So we have the battles of Hedgley Moor and Hexham in 1464, which is when the Duke of Somerset will attack an English mission, which is going to Scotland, a diplomatic mission. He attacks them on the way up at Hedgley Moor and is roundly defeated. So he has another go on the way back at Hexham and is roundly defeated again. This time he's captured and is executed on the battlefield. And so that's the end of Henry Beaufort, Duke of

Somerset. But then the rest of the 1460s, there is very little Lancastrian resistance. Henry himself is eventually captured. He's found wandering around the north of England. He's been staying in the various homes of sympathetic lords, but is eventually captured and thrown into the Tower of London. His wife and his son, Edward, the Prince of Wales, though, are still at large and in France at this point. And then the late 1460s becomes a story of Yorkist kingship beginning to tear itself apart. So Edward will fall out with the Earl of Warwick, his first cousin. So first cousin problems again. Essentially, they will fall out over many things. So for a long time, it was believed that it was a problem around Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. So this Lancastrian lady who brings

with her a whole swarm of siblings who need to be married. And so they hoover up all of the good matches on the marriage market and Warwick can't find good matches for his two daughters. He doesn't have any sons to follow him, so he's looking for good matches for his two daughters. You listen to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about the Wars of the Roses. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr Eleanor Yonaga. To be continued... Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were.

By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. And the Woodville family is sort of throwing their weight around right so the king's new in-laws are not just in the marriage market but they're getting plum jobs and appointments stuff like that they are and and it's often seen as the Woodville's kind of inserting themselves but it's also Edward has made the decision to marry this woman and he now needs to promote her family to be worthy of being related to the king by marriage. And it's also allowing him to build this sort of buffer around him of people who are dependent on him for any power and authority that they have. So Warwick is increasingly

raising large private armies. He is displaying his wealth really overtly in the north of England. He's throwing feasts that are always a bit bigger than Edward's feasts in London. There are always one more course than Edward had at his last one. So you've got this kind of feast arms race going on between them. And so I think it's a way for Edward to dissect himself from the reliance that he's had on Warwick and Warwick's power by building this buffer around him of the Woodvilles. But what that really does is just make Warwick hate the Woodvilles. And everybody else ends up hating the Woodvilles to some extent too, I think as well. But Warwick is also sent to France to negotiate a marriage for Edward to a

French princess, only to find out that in secret he's married Elizabeth Woodville. So he's embarrassed on an international stage. Warwick is championing a treaty with France. Edward favours a treaty with Burgundy. Warwick, we're told, personally hates Charles, the heir to the dukedom of Burgundy. They utterly despise each other so that when Edward eventually concludes a treaty with Burgundy, Warwick is again embarrassed, upset, affronted. He's very clearly being pushed out of the centre of government. He's the man who feels like he's done more than anybody else to give Edward his crown, and now he's being pushed aside. And this is in real danger of recreating the situation that Henry VI had with York, that

you're excluding someone incredibly significant, except that Edward IV is no Henry VI. Yes, this is the issue. And so Warwick, the kingmaker, decides he's going to live up to his nickname. He does. He's like, you know, I made one king, I can unmake him and I can make myself another one. The late 1460s is a really complex story of Warwick falling in with Edward's brother George. There is an effort originally to make George king, to depose Edward and make George king, which sort of falls apart. We get a couple of confrontations, lots of little rebellions arising. It's a really interesting but complex period. But then essentially Warwick will end up in open rebellion, be driven from England.

They try to make to Calais, but they're barred from entry to Calais. And they end up washing ashore in the lands of the King of France, end up at the French court. And who should Warwick meet there at the French court but Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the man who he has deposed from the throne of England. And Louis XI, the King of France, who is remembered as the universal spider, he's great at playing these games of politics with everybody else. He sort of puts the two of them in a room together and says, look, you are now each other's best hope of ever getting back to power. Warwick could restore Henry VI, put Margaret back on the throne as queen, and then Warwick can be a significant presence in the government. And I think they both realise that Louis is right.

We're told that Margaret keeps Warwick on his knees for 15 minutes, sort of begging her to make this alliance. But eventually she agrees. Warwick's daughter is married to Margaret's son. So he now has this possibility of a grandchild sitting on the throne of England, if all of this works. They head back to England and manage to drive Edward out, actually without a fight. They catch Edward completely unawares, catch him by surprise. He's forced to take a ship and flee to Burgundy, to his new ally in Burgundy. Warwick wheels Henry VII out of the tower. And we're told that Henry at this point is an even less inspiring figure than he's always been. He's looking dishevelled. He's not been taking good care of what he's been in the tower. He's sort of propped up on the throne, but it's very clear that Warwick is now the power in England. Edward, meanwhile, is determined to

come back and get his throne. So we get what I often like to think of as Edward's rocky training montage. You know, he's running up and down the steps. Yeah, he stays off the booze. He leaves the rich food alone. He refinds his form, doesn't he? Yeah, running through the streets of Ghent up and down the cathedral steps punching sides of beef all of that kind of stuff getting himself back in shape ready to come back to England and face his Apollo Creed in Warwick they eventually land in the northeast of England at Ravenspur which is coincidentally because they landed there by a storm coincidentally exactly the same spot that Henry IV had landed when he'd returned to England to claim his throne too. Edward claims that he's only come back to take his dukedom of York back. He doesn't actually want to be king anymore. For some reason, people seem to believe him. I don't know why you would believe that. I actually think that this may be

one of the slightly longer term impacts of Touton, that Touton does leave this psychological scar that nobody wants that kind of battle again, that Edward isn does leave this psychological scar that nobody wants that kind of battle again, that Edward isn't a man to be trifled with, and that actually maybe it's easier to just believe what he says and let him march through our lands and they can go and fight it out somewhere further south. I think maybe that's one of the effects that Towton has that returns to sort of help Edward out during this period. But he will end up marching south, desperately trying to provoke a confrontation with Warwick, who is doing his best to avoid Edward because nobody wants to fight Edward. Edward gets to London. He manages to get his

wife and family out of sanctuary to find that he's had a son who's been born while he was in exile, who's been named Edward because everybody's called Edward. Someone needs to get a new baby book. He now has a son to fight for as well. He marches back out of London and eventually will meet Warwick at the Battle of Barnet, which is fought on the 14th of April on Easter Sunday in 1471. And this, again, Edward, there is weather involved. This is a battle that is fought in blinding fog. So the armies line up off centre. they overlap each other at the two wings, which means that Edward's left gets quickly

routed by Warwick's right flank. And equally, Edward's right flank manages to overlap with Warwick's left and have more success there. And in the centre, the fighting is quite intense. And this battle at Barnet is eventually decided by Edward's left wing that was routed, was chased away by the Earl of Oxford's men. The Earl of Oxford's men eventually returned to the battlefield and they go back to join with Warwick's forces. And there's a little bit of confusion, possibly in the fog, about livery badges. So Edward uses a sun in splendor, so a big sun with lots of streaming rays coming off it. The Earl of Oxford uses a star with lots of rays coming off it.

And there seems to be some sense that when this force begins to flank Warwick's men, they mistake them for Edward's and they begin to attack them. A cry of treason goes up because Oxford's men think Warwick's men have betrayed them and rejoined Edward. And suddenly everybody is completely confused. Warwick's forces end up fleeing. We're told that Edward gives an instruction that Warwick is to be taken alive, but that several of Edward's men hunt Warwick down in the forests and kill him. They drive a dagger through the visor of his helmet and kill him because what they don't want is for Edward to forgive Warwick and for all of this trouble to be perpetuated. And so ultimately, Edward is responsible for the death of his first cousin, the Earl of Warwick in 1471.

This is the Dan Snow's history hit. Got Matt Lewis on talking about the Wars of the Roses. Don't go anywhere. the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

tell you what these families so we got the battle of barnet edward is back on throne henry the sixth north i mean how many times that poor man captured he's taken back into custody though yes henry is taken back into custody again returned returned to the Tower of London. Edward is very much king again. But on the same day as the Battle of Barnet is fought, Queen Margaret and her son, the Prince of Wales, who is now 17, land on the south coast of England. So Edward still has another hostile army out in the field. And we get a bit of a cat and mouse game up the Welsh marches. Edward sort of moves west from London. The Lancastrian army is moving north. And eventually they meet at Tewksbury on the 4th of May.

So Edward catches the Lancastrian army trying to ford a river at Tewksbury. And here we're told that the weather that Edward is dealing with is blistering sunshine, heat, the ground is dry, everywhere is parched. The men are really struggling to march. They're marching miles and miles and miles in a day to try and catch up with the Lancastrian army. But again, Edward manages to lead a successful battle. The Prince of Wales, so Henry VI's only son, is killed. Some sources say he was killed in the fighting. A couple suggest that he was captured and put to death after the fighting, but either way, he is dealt with. Lots of the Lancastrian rebels

managed to hide in Tewkesbury Abbey, and they are dragged out of there. We're told that Edward sort of barges in in full armour with blood dripping off him to remove all of these Lancastrian lords, and a very brave monk sort of comes forward and says, no, no, no, none of this. You shouldn't be doing this in God's house. And so by way of apology, Edward has Tewkesbury Abbey redecorated, but he has it done in Yorkist colours and Yorkist badges. So if you go to Tewkesbury Abbey today and look up at the ceiling, it's Yorkist Murray and blue, and it's covered in suns in splendour and lots of Yorkist badges, even to this day. And Edward, the Prince of Wales, is buried underneath that ceiling. So he gets to look up at the people who vanquished his family for all of eternity.

On the way back to London, Margaret is also captured and taken into custody. So when Edward gets back to London on the very night that he arrives, we're told that Henry VI dies, according to the Yorkist sources, of pure melancholy at the news that his son is dead, his wife is captured and his cause has fallen apart. So he's just so upset by all of this that he dies. It's more than likely that Edward had him put to death because that would be an end to all of the trouble then. The problem with killing Henry VI before that point was that he had a young son who could revitalise the Lancastrian cause. If you leave Henry at the head of it, then you have a failure at the head. Now that his son is gone, Henry can

go too. Having said that, we know that Henry's physical health and mental health have been appalling for a couple of decades by this point. So it's not entirely possible that the shock of it or something like that caused it, but it seems more likely that he's put to death. Right, and now the winter of discontent is made glorious summer by this son of York. It's over, they've won. The Yorkists have won. Now, we're about to enter territory

that you and I have been over in about a thousand different podcasts. We're going to get to the death of Edward IV in 1483 after ruling for another 10 or so years. He's succeeded by his brother, Richard III. We're going to just rattle through this because this is about the sort of Wars of the Roses in the main. Obviously, if anyone wants to listen to the minute dissection of Richard III's reign, the way he came to the

throne and his treatment of the Prince of the Tower, you can listen to endless brilliant Matt Lewis Gombolival podcasts. You can watch them on History Hit TV, where Matt has made a brilliant series. But in brief, Matt, Edward IV dies, he leaves two sons behind, but he's succeeded by Richard. Why do you think Richard ends up on the throne? Yes, Edward IV dies completely unexpectedly in April 1483 at the age of 40, and he leaves behind him a 12-year-old and a nine-year-old heir. So the boy that is proclaimed Edward V is his 12-year-old son. Why Richard III then becomes king instead is hotly debated. So the legal premise for it is that Edward IV had married bigamously. So his marriage

to Elizabeth Woodville was not his first marriage. Therefore, all of the children of that bigamous marriage are illegitimate. Illegitimate children can't succeed to the throne of England. Therefore, his children are removed. Richard is the next available rightful heir, Edward's youngest brother, Richard. And so the questions that come out of this are, was the bigamy story true? We simply don't have the evidence to be certain or not. Lots of people will say it's far too convenient that Richard must have invented it. It's possible that other people invented this story and sold it to Richard because look at what we've learned in these last couple of episodes about

minority kingships. We've had a 10-year-old disaster in Richard II, a nine-month-old disaster in Henry VI. Part of the important context of 1483 is that France is on the verge of reigniting aggression against England. They are assaulting the south coast of England. Do we want a 12-year-old on the throne of England while we're heading into war? There are reasons to think that people would prefer a 30-year-old adult male, a proven governor. And so Richard, Duke of Gloucester, becomes Richard III, almost stepping into the mould of his father here. Someone who is just a preferable figure in a crisis, someone who is proven and can deliver what people need at that moment. So there's lots of debate

about how and why it happens. There are several possibilities. Ultimately, what we know is that Richard III will become King of England, but in doing so, he alienates part of the support of his brother, Edward IV. So lots of people will have invested lots of time and effort in the belief that Edward V will be King. They've put their sons in Edward V's household. They've built all of those connections and all of that is taken away. And that means there is a chunk of Yorkist loyalists who are disillusioned enough to head off into exile. I mean, they'll rebel in October 1483 and be defeated, head off into exile and seek out this unknown guy called Henry Tudor, who's been hanging around on the continent for donkey's years, and they begin to coalesce around him. He has this sort of really faint claim to the throne, but is one of the last available heirs that could challenge Richard.

Everyone clings to him, and essentially then he will be backed by France as part of their aggression against England. He'll invade England with Yorkist dissidents, a strong French contingent, and he will face Richard at the Battle of Bosworth and famously Richard will be killed, the last English king to die in battle. So the House of York go from completely dominant to being unexpectedly overturned.

The Lancastrians, albeit rebranded really as the Tudors, seize back and very unlikely finish really to the Wars of the Roses. You end up with Henry VII on the throne at the beginning of Tudor rule. He would have thought of himself as a Lancastrian, a Plantagenet, a Tudor. What should we call this new dynasty? He is obviously relying on his Plantagenet heritage as a descendant of Edward III, albeit in a female line through his mother, Margaret Beaufort. He marries Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's oldest daughter. So he's bringing in that Yorkist support. And this is

where we get that Tudor idea of the joining of the roses, the red rose of Lancaster, which was never a badge that the House of Lancaster used. The white rose of York, which was a badge that York used. But Henry invents this kind of overlapping white and red rose that is ubiquitous today. It's still all over the place at tourist locations to this very day. I think Henry would have considered himself a Tudor. He didn't want to rely too much on Yorkist support that he had. He wasn't a Lancastrian and Lancastrians have been deeply unpopular. What he was, was a way of finding a new path. He could be neither Lancastrian and Lancastrians had been deeply unpopular. What he was, was a way of finding a new path. He could be neither Lancastrian nor Yorkist, the best of both,

shun the worst of both. And we get this new era, a Tudor dawn, a whole new dynasty to replace those troublesome Plantagenets who'd torn each other apart. Was the Battle of Bosworth the end of the Wars of the Roses, Matt Lewis? Absolutely not. It's not even the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. So 1487, we get the Battle of Stoke Field, which is a Yorkist invasion of England and an attempt to unseat Henry VII. I could talk for another couple of hours about what I think was going on at Stoke, but ultimately what we can say is it's a Yorkist invasion. We then have Perkin Warbeck affair throughout the 1490s, which is an effort to say that the younger of Edward IV's sons was

still alive and was threatening Henry, even into the reign of Henry VIII. Henry VIII is being threatened by the de la Pole family, who are descendants of one of Edward IV's sisters, and he is almost at war with members of the de la Pole family. So the Yorkist threat does not end at Bosworth, it doesn't even really end at the Battle of Stokefield. The Wars of the Roses kind of persists but is never ever successful. The Tudors manage to see off any Yorkist threat that comes after them from 1485 onwards. So the Tudors are obviously a transformative dynasty, fascinating transformative dynasty in the history of England and Britain. And they owe their accession to the Wars of the Roses.

What else do the Wars of the Roses do? Do they change England? Do they erode noble power? Is this the last time we do see the raising of private armies of almost sub-kings ruling over bits of territory within the Kingdom of England? Is that world destroyed by the Wars the Kingdom of England. Is that world destroyed by the Wars of the Roses or is that world just passing anyway? I think it's a little bit of both. So the 15th century, the aftermath of the Hundred Years' War has created a situation where lots of rich people can engage almost private armies. They build their

affinities, they are surrounded by lots of men. And that makes men like Warwick incredibly threatening and powerful and able to direct politics in a way that few people have been able to do before. And I think we see a recognition of that as the Wars of the Roses go on. So Edward IV's second reign after that 1471, when he's booted off the throne and gets it back again, he doesn't create any more nobles, despite the decimation of the Wars of the Roses. And I think this is a recognition that these people are the problem. And Richard III isn't big on creating nobles during his short reign. And it's a policy that Henry VII will also continue. He does very, very little to replace the thinned ranks of the

nobility. You get a little bit of a return to it during Henry VIII's reign, because I think he harks back to this chivalric history and he wants to surround himself with the old nobility. Whereas I think Edward IV's later reign, Richard III's reign, and especially Henry VII's reign is about a meritocracy rather than relying on the old elite to be able to provide the support because they actually turn out to be a bigger threat than they ever are a boon well um you have been an enormous boon to me on this podcast thank you very much matt lewis uh if anyone wants to go into any more depth on any of these battles or events or people then matt has got it all covered on gone medieval and there are lots of documentaries about it too on the history Hit for subscribers. Thank you very much, Matt,

for coming on. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Well, that's it, folks. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit with the brilliant Matt Lewis.

Huge thank you to Matt, the oracle, when it comes to 15th century history. You can go over to his podcast, Gone Medieval, for a lot more deep dives in this period. And there's a few on my feed as well. Recently, I did one on the Battle of Bosworth

and the coming of the Tudors. So go and check that one out. Don't forget to email ds.hh at historyhit.com if you want to hear me cover episodes on subjects that you're fascinated by or particularly enjoy. See you next time. Thank you. you