Battle of Barnet - Background

Background

Further information: Wars of the Roses Blore Heath Barnet Stoke Tewkesbury Berwick London York Plymouth Poole Wem Northumberland Shrewsbury Milford Haven Locations:

– Battle of Bosworth Field; – other battles;
– other places

The Wars of the Roses were a series of conflicts between various English lords and nobles in support of two different royal families. In 1461, the conflict reached a milestone when the House of York supplanted its rival, the House of Lancaster, as the ruling royal house in England. Edward IV, leader of the Yorkists, seized the throne from the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, who was captured in 1465 and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Lancastrian Queen Margaret of Anjou and her son, Edward of Lancaster, fled to Scotland and organised resistance. Edward IV crushed the uprisings, and pressured the Scottish government to force Margaret out; the House of Lancaster went into exile in France. As the Yorkists tightened their hold over England, Edward rewarded his supporters, including his chief adviser Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, elevating them to higher titles and awarding them land confiscated from their defeated foes. The earl disapproved of the king's rule, however, and their relationship grew strained.

Warwick planned for Edward to marry a French princess—Bona of Savoy—to create an alliance between the two countries. The young king, however, favoured ties with Burgundy, and in 1464 further angered the earl by secretly marrying Elizabeth Woodville; as an impoverished Lancastrian widow, she was regarded by the Yorkists as an unsuitable queen. At her request, Edward bestowed gifts of land and titles on her relations and arranged marriages to rich and powerful families. Eligible bachelors were paired with the Woodville females, narrowing the marriage prospects for Warwick's daughters. Furthermore, the earl was offended by two matches involving his kin. The first was the marriage of his aunt, Lady Katherine Neville, over 60 years old, to Elizabeth's 20-year-old brother, John Woodville, a pairing considered extreme by society. The other was his nephew's fiancée, the daughter of Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, who was taken as a bride by the queen's son, Thomas Grey, with Edward's approval. Exasperated by these acts, Warwick decided the Woodvilles were a malignant influence on his liege. He felt marginalised: his influence over the young king was failing, and he decided to take drastic action to force Edward's compliance. Warwick's alternative plan was to replace the king with his fellow conspirator, the Duke of Clarence, Edward's younger brother.

Instigating several rebellions in the north, Warwick lured the king away from his main bastion of support in the south. Edward found himself outnumbered; while retreating, he learned that Warwick and Clarence had called for open support of the rebellion. After winning the Battle of Edgecote Moor on 26 July 1469, the earl found the Yorkist king deserted by his followers, and brought him to Warwick Castle for "protection". Lancastrian supporters took advantage of Edward's imprisonment to stage uprisings. Because most Yorkist-aligned warlords refused to rally to Warwick's call, the earl was pressured to release the king. Back in power, Edward did not openly pursue Warwick's transgressions against him, but the earl suspected that the king held a grudge. Warwick engineered another rebellion, this time to replace Edward with Clarence. The two conspirators, however, had to flee to France when Edward crushed the uprising—the Battle of Losecoat Field—on 12 March 1470. Through letters in the rebels' possession and confessions from the leaders, the king uncovered the earl's betrayal. In a deal brokered by the French king Louis XI, the earl agreed to serve Margaret and the Lancastrian cause. Warwick invaded England at the head of a Lancastrian army, and in October 1470 forced Edward to seek refuge in Burgundy, then ruled by the king's brother-in-law Charles the Bold. The throne of England was temporarily restored to Henry VI; on 14 March 1471, Edward brought an army back across the English Channel, precipitating the Battle of Barnet a month later.