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Lancaster and York
Outlines; Part 1

Outlines; Part 1

Yet, though these thirty years cover the most acute phase of the struggle, if we look into it more closely, they are, after all, only a part of the tragedy, the third act in which the plot ripens into catastrophe. The beginnings of the tragedy lie much farther back. The action develops slowly; foreshadows what is going to happen; is suspended for a time by other circumstances; and only finally reaches its climax in 1455. Yet the climax was no surprise: on the contrary, it was inevitable and obvious.

History accustoms us to think that the trouble was due to the ambition of the House of York which made an unjustifiable attack upon the Lancastrian Henry VI. We are apt to forget that the Yorkists were only following the example which the Lancastrians had set. Henry of Bolingbroke had rebelled against his cousin Richard II, had seized his throne, and had made away with him. He was astute enough to cloke his violence by a show of care for the constitution. Richard was deposed as a tyrant: Henry IV accepted the throne as being the choice of Parliament. All this bears a legal look, but we must remember that Parliament in those days had little strength of its own. It had been swayed one way by the Black Prince, another by John of Gaunt. It had been "Merciless" for Thomas of Woodstock and servile to Richard II. Being rather a weapon in the hands of the strong than a force in itself, Henry IV wielded it to hew down his cousin. He was too powerful and successful to be openly called a traitor. His treason had prospered - "For when it prospers folks don't call it treason" - yet none the less the plain fact was that the Lancastrian had usurped the throne from the Plantagenet. Even when Richard II was dead, the next heir was not Lancaster, but March, the descendant of the second son Clarence. In the view of constitutional historians the throne of England is not hereditary but elective. Doubtless Parliament, like Joseph, could set Ephraim before Manasseh, could prefer Lancaster to March. None the less the people were apt to murmur, and talk of birthright.

If we take this view, the Wars of the Roses are seen on a wider scale. We shall include the struggle which Henry IV fought with the allied forces of the houses of Percy, Mortimer, and Glendower. The battlefields of Shrewsbury, and Bramham Moor are of the same character as St. Albans and Blore-heath. We may go farther back, and find the beginning of the series at Radcot Bridge in Richard II's reign, where Gloucester, Henry of Lancaster, and the " Appellants" were too strong for the King; and following the same plan we shall find the last at Stoke, where the Crown proved too strong for Simnel and his Yorkist friends. The date of the former is 1387, of the latter 1487. Here then is another "Hundred Years' War" waged at home instead of France, resembling its more famous namesake in having long periods of quiescence mingled with its periods of eruption, yet throughout bearing a constant character; and its goal a throne. Only instead of national ambition aiming at the throne of France, we have family ambition aiming at the throne of England.

Outlines; Part 1

Chronology