How The 100 Year War Tore The English Crown Apart | War of the Roses | Battlefields Of History

the bitter civil wars that raged in 15th century England are known to history by the emblems of the two rival factions in the house of plantagenet the white rows of York and the red rows of Lancaster for more than 30 years these deadly Rivals were locked into a struggle for power a struggle that would witness Slaughter amongst the greatest families in England the death of princess and Kings the struggle that would eventually lead to the bloody field of Bosworth there the bloodstained crown of England would be claimed by Henry Tudor and a new strong Dynasty would emerge from the Maelstrom of the wars of the Roses [Music] [Applause] if you ask most people what medieval is they will often think of something to do with the wars of the Roses and I think it's bestowed upon the later Middle Ages a sense that this was a period of disorder of clashing magnetes crashing around in the mud trying to seize the throne from the poor old King the 15 Century has more violent changes of ruler than any other Century since the Norman Conquest our image today of the wars of the Roses is is likely to be one of incessant War Fair of nobles only ke too Keen to pick up a sword and and charge off to the next [Music] battle the origins of the wars of the Roses can be traced back to the previous century and the Hundred Years War between England and France the conflict Bur burst into life in 1337 during the reign of Edward iiiii but it was in fact little more than an escalation of a conflict that had preoccupied Kings of England for [Music] generations with the French monarchy's ever increasing strength and confidence it was predictable that the king of England's position as one of France's Chief landholders would come under threat the 100 Years War is a war between the English and French for control of France and it lasts really actually for several hundred years rather than a single hundred years but it leaves the English king with a series of claims to territory in France and also a claim to the French throne and what Henry V does in the 1410s is powerfully revive these English claims and lead a very successful conquest of the whole of Normandy in Alliance with the Duke of burgundy clearly leadership was a key to success in the 100 Years War and Henry V was a military genius facing Charles the 6 of France who was mentally unstable the fact that Charles believed he was made of glass really wasn't an advantage on the battlefield and over the next few years Henry launched a series of um sieges which effectively took control of France and he was able to force upon the French a treaty which disinherited the French air and it meant that Henry and his own own HS would become the kings of France after Charles the 6 death that was complete Victory the treaty which confirmed the English King's succession to the throne of France was signed at Troy in 1420 with the elderly Charles II of France the only barrier to Henry V's acquisition of the French title England's territorial gains in France seemed assured [Music] the premature death of Henri in 1422 probably from dentry fundamentally changed England's position the realm was unprepared for his sudden loss and the late King's infant son was promptly pronounced Henry V 6 inheriting the English crown at the age of only 9 months it was a distinctly uneasy inheritance for Just 2 months later Henry's maternal grandfather Charles I 6 of France also died leaving the Child's Sole Monarch of the two great kingdoms clearly the death of Henry the was potentially a very serious blow to the ability of the English really to make good the claim to the French throne the only King who was likely to make good the claim to the whole of France would have been Henry the F and I suppose Henry the 6's claim is just as good as he was able to make it militarily the claim really rested in the Treaty of tuah and the question of whether the English could make that stick but the reality was that Henry's claim depended solely on success on the battlefield if the English were defeated and pushed back across the channel then Henry claim simply wasn't worth the parchment it was written on fortunately for the new king the war in France continued successfully under the leadership of Henry VII's Uncle John Duke of Bedford meanwhile in England it would not have been a surprise given the uncertain times and Henry VI 6 tender age if someone had challenged his succession but this was not the case and during the king's minority a Council of men from the chief Noble houses ruled England and France among these were Henry's Uncle Humphrey the Duke of Gloucester and his great Uncle Henry bort the bishop of Winchester these men able advisers as they were to the king were hardly the best of friends the disputes between gler and bord seems to dominate the first 20 years of Henry V 6 Reign when there was one occasion when the supporters turned up at Parliament with clubs and staves hidden under their clothing just in case they needed them for self-defense the origins of their disputes really lie in a personal dispute for power and disputes over policy Gloucester thinks that he should be protector of England rather than there being this minority Council which has been set up in the teeth of his opposition so a lot of his attacks um in the 1420s on B for are really attacks uh against the council and assistance that he should um have a more powerful kind of protectorate Gloucester is an enthusiastic exponent of of aggressive military action in France he's watching Bedford and whenever he thinks Bedford isn't doing enough he comes forward with his own proposals for a more aggressive prosecution of the war whereas bord uh is thinking more in terms of a mixture of trues possibilities of Peace negotiation and support to the Duke of Bedford in France however things started to go badly wrong for the English although they scored victories at craon in 1423 and at faoi in 1424 they could not possibly have reckoned on the arrival of Jon of Arc at the siege of oong in 1429 it was a pivotal moment the extraordinary peasant Girl inspired the Revival in the fortunes of the French a Revival that resulted in the crowning of the Doan arim with the subsequent loss of their vital Burgundian allies Henry VI 6's early Reign was dominated by the increasingly disastrous course of the Hundred Years War not only had Henry to contend with events in France looming over him throughout his Reign was the issue of lancastrian legitimacy and the competing claim to the throne of the Duke of York as usual during these turbulent times little was clear or cut and dried and the responsibility for this can be laid squarely at the feet of John of gaun Earl of Lancaster the third surviving son of King Edward III from whom Henry V 6 was descended John of gaun a very powerful man married by the king first of all to the aess of the House of Lancaster so the huge Estates of the duy of Lancaster are brought with within the Royal orbit by gun's marriage and then later married off by the king to the aess of the Throne of Castile he's an early illustration actually of the difficulties of fitting into the English polity these great members of the royal family who own huge Estates who are too big men really to fit under not very competent Kings it seems harsh to blame John of gaun and Edward III for the fact that they had too many children but in the 1450s there were just five too many people at the Royal Court who had Royal Blood pumping around their veins discover the past with exclusive medieval documentaries and adree podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from history hit watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to explore everything from our series on medieval Pleasures to the notorious Knight Templar the princes in the tower and the Battle of Hastings immers yourself in the captivating stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description after the death of Edward III's eldest son and Heir the black prince Edward named his grandson Richard as his successor and upon Edward's Death he became king ruling as Richard II only 11 years of age when he came to the throne Richard's reign was marked by turmoil and and it ended when in 1399 he was deposed by his cousin Henry Bowling Brook John of gun's son Henry was crowned Henry IV in that year and in 1400 Richard was murdered at ponr Castle the death of the childless Richard was most convenient for Henry for now the direct line of descendency from the black prince Edward III's eldest son was ended making Henry's position I that much stronger it was through Henry IV and his son Henry V that King Henry VII drew his own claim to the [Music] throne but Henry was not the only descendant of Edward III with a claim through Edmund Langley one of Edward's other Sons came the candidate from the house of York Edmund was the grandfather of Richard Duke of York Henry VI 6's cousin and the great grandson of king Edward III he was therefore a generation closer to Edward iiii than the young king himself he also had a further claim through the female line descending from Edward II third's Second Son Clarence if you admit that the crown of England can go through women then Richard II's nearest Heir was not Henry of Lancaster but a descendant of LOL of clarence's daughter philipper Edmund Mortimer Earl of March in 1399 Mortimer was a child and easily therefore overlooked but the Mortimer claim was not to go away in practice it was unlikely that York was going to claim the throne after all the the nobility supported Henry V 6 now York was only ever likely to put forward his claim if something disastrous happened if he was pushed into challenging Henry Henry VI 6 minority came to an end in 1436 when the King was 15 unhappily Henry was to prove a weak Monarch and a man utterly unsuited for these troubled times he was sensitive Pious and scholarly John Blackman a monk with a personal knowledge of King Henry's Court recorded that the King was traveling through cripplegate and he saw over the gate there the quarter of a man on a tall stake and asked what it was when told it was the quarter of a traitor who had been false to the king's Majesty he said take it away I will not have any Christian man so cruy handled for my sake and the quarter was moved immediately [Music] Henry V 6 is a difficult man for us to know much about because he's been colored in all sorts of different ways some have presented him at the time and subsequently as more or less an idiot uh others have presented him as a very Pious and saintly figure and quite often actually we find in history fairly idiotic fairly weak and feeble Kings get written up as if they are saintly or monk like so whenever we see Henry called by those kinds of terms I think we might smell the rat of somebody pretty incompetent if you actually look at what happened to the realm under Henry rather than going over and over uh what his character might or might not have been what you actually see is a complete emptiness at the center where you should have the king and the King's will on which the realm depended that the king would act and would act positively to make make his government work there seems to be a complete void great historian of this period KB McFarland said that Henry VI 6 went from first to second childhood without the usual interval and that really sums it up quite nicely fearful that Henry's weakness would cause irreparable damage to the country the powerful figures from the ruling Council of his minority continued to govern the country King Henry was a ripe Target for a growing circle of a icious ministers and greedy Nobles now the unstable Henry began to bestow honors and lands upon his favorites quickly draining the healthy coffers left by his father and creating resentment against those Nobles who gained most from Henry's favor Chief amongst them was the Duke of suffk suffk is a very interesting figure in many ways often treated as something like the villain of the peace though in my own view suffk is something of a civil servant hero actually he has a respectable military career um in the 1410s and 20s respectable rather than spectacular but he's a useful right-hand man for the the Duke of Bedford finds a place on the minority Council and also gets put into the Royal household as Steward of the royal household and it's that joint position in the household and on the council that that gives suffk the capacity to move to the head of Affairs really in the course of the 1430s and become the very dominant figure in the 1440s that he is so suffk is an important manager of Royal Authority and an important cause of the relative calm of the 1430s and 1440s calm which is pretty remarkable given the fact that the king is not himself ruling effectively the king's Spen Thrift handling of the nation's fortune and his weak grasp of administration was already causing serious discontent amongst the members of the former Council but it was his arbitrary redistribution of wealth and power and his creation of so many newly empowered Lords with their own bands of retainers that led to an eruption of infighting over land property rights and inheritance it was a dangerous time time for the established Nobles whose previously stable position was placed in Jeopardy by the arrival of these ambitious [Music] newcomers in 1445 Henry VI 6 married the 15 years old Margaret of Anu a princess from Vala who would soon grow into a woman to be reckoned with Henry V 6's wife Maru from the outset in English eyes had two major disadvantages one is that she was foreign and specifically French who were regarded of course as the ancient enemy and the other was that her marriage to Henry brought the country no financial advantage on the contrary the marriage and the attendant festivities were extremely expensive and since h his Reign by this time was virtually bankrupt this was not a good start the marriage between Henry and Margaret the king of France's niece was part of a treaty agreed with the French at tour in 1444 by D La pole the Duke of suffk the Duke of Gloucester was mortified war was the only way in which the country would regain what was hers he argued gluster was swiftly silenced and his hawkish views saw him isolated from the rest of the royal household with the support of the queen Dill La pole had gluster arrested for treason in 1447 although he need have bothered gluster died in distinctly mysterious circumstances soon after his death therefore made him one of the few members of the royal household exempt from responsibility for the political disasters that followed and the Duke of Glo would later become something of an icon for the yorkist cause Gloucester is almost certainly murdered some chroniclers say that he's murdered with a redh hot spit in the fundament other chroniclers say that he's pressed to death between feather beds but what these are are attempts to um explain a murder that leaves no obvious Mark um on the publicly displayed parts of a body the story that glester had been murdered swiftly spread along with the myth of the good Duke of Gloucester the man who'd stood valiantly against the cleck of ambitious courtiers the man who defended the reputation the legacy of his brother Henry V unfortunately for that myth we now know that actually it was gler who was politically isolated the rest of the nobility were behind suffk even the Duke of York who was the one who made the most use of the Gloucester myth in later years years England's hold on France had loosened even further as the result of a massive error of judgment by Henry Richard Duke of York despite his impressive military record fighting the French was sent to Ireland as Lord liutenant Henry transferred the role of English commander in France to his inept favorite and York's great rival Edmund bort Duke of Somerset Somerset was yet another Noble with a distant claim to the throne owing to his relationship to John of gaun and somerset's case through ga's third wife Katherine swinford and the bord line the bords were the illegitimate offspring of gaunt who had been legitimized by Henry IV on condition that they would not lay claim to the crown this piece of legislation could easily be reversed and with Henry VI 6 still childless and Somerset in favor York's position as air apparent might not be guaranteed there is no evidence at all of serious hostility between York and either Somerset or his forbears uh before 1450 I don't think we should take terribly seriously any sense that York um felt hostile to the bords because they had a potential claim to throne which might be exercised if Henry the 6 was to die without HS because nobody seems to have been taking the B at claim to the throne seriously at that point although personal hostility is likely to have been a part of their relations we need to see these people as politicians representing alternative solutions to England's problems and indeed representing quite large bodies of opinion and quite large bodies of politicians themselves it's not just a personal conflict it's also a public conflict the Duke of Somerset was simply no Soldier or military leader and it was perhaps no great surprise that more English territory in France was lost under his command matters were swiftly coming to a head and Henry's mismanagement of Affairs in both countries now gave birth to a real domestic [Music] crisis in 1449 a parliament was summoned to investigate the powerless State of Affairs the English people demanded to know why the war with France which had cost them so dearly in taxes had been so disastrously mismanaged increasing instances of abuses of the law particularly by the newly established feudal Lords and their retainers was also causing enormous public outcry blame had to be a portioned somewhere and it was the Duke of suffk Who provided an attractively high-profile scapegoat for the ills of the country the parliament blamed suffk for the catastrophic loss of France and in 1450 he was forly impeached Sauk was accused of having made a treacherous peace with France under the influence of Henry's French Queen and of surrendering the territories of onju and May sent into Exile by the king for his own safety suffk was way laid on route to France and was murdered at Sea summarily executed with a rusty sword it seemed that Ordinary People throughout the land were looking to the Duke of York for salvation posted in Ireland York was at least blameless for the fresh French disasters of 1450 news of which mortified the kingdom Normandy had been lost few can have been unaware that it was the loss of this important duy that had spurred King John's Barons into Revolt over 200 years before the summer of 1450 saw the simmering discontent among the people of England at last boil over and the country burst into open Rebellion [Music] at the head of the Revolt was an Irishman named Jack Cade we don't know a great deal about who Jack Cade was the government first of all thought that he was called John Mortimer and Mortimer of course is this very charged name it's the name of the family from whom Richard of York gets his claim to the throne the claim to the throne which is better than the lancastrian claim to the to the throne when they put it about that he was an Irishman they may again have been alluding to this Mortimer connection because York was a great Irish landowner and one of the things the government tries to do in the early 1450s is to suggest that York was behind the Cade Rebellion one of Cade's pseudonyms was John amend all John put everything right and really that sums up the situation in England in early 1450 anything that could go wrong was going wrong the English were being pushed rapidly out of Normandy and English refugees were traing back through London clutching their few belongings this was a pitiful sight to onlookers and simply stirred up more anger of the politicians and then there were economic problems the cloth and wool trade across the south of England was struggling leading to unemployment and falling wages and then disorder was breaking out one of the king's leading counselors uh Bishop Main was murdered in Portsmouth by Sailors who hadn't been paid wages suffk himself had been murdered despite the fact that he had the king's safe conduct and yet another counselor the king's chaplain Bishop ASCO was shortly to be murdered in his own dasis the country appeared to be falling apart the demands of the rebels were issued by Cade in a proclamation of grievances a document that survives to this day these be the points cause and mischiefs of gathering and assembling of us the king's Le men of Kent we say our Sovereign Lord May understand that his false council is lost its law his merchandise is lost his Common People is destroyed the sea is lost France is lost the king himself is so set that he may not pay for his meat nor drink and he owes more than ever any King of England ought for daily his traitors about him where anything should come to him by his laws andon they take it from him his true Commons desire that he will remove from him all the false progeny and Affinity of the Duke of suffk and to take about his Noble person His True Blood of his Royal realm that is to say the high and mighty Prince the Duke of York exiled from our Sovereign Lord's person by the noising of the false traitor the Duke of suffk and his [Music] aity [Music] if kade's demands were couched in the language of reason the length to which he was prepared to go to achieve them were not the uprising became increasingly violent Cade's Rebels occupied The Guild hole in London and freed the prisoners in the Marshal seat and King's bench jails they looted private houses and shops to the terror of the London Merchants who had suffered enough from the recent de m in foreign trade finally Cade's men besieged the Tower of London itself and dragged Lord SE the king's Treasurer out from within its walls the unfortunate SE was murdered along with William crer the sheriff of Kent it was recorded that they took SE to cheapside and there smote off his head the same day chroma was beheaded in my end afterwards they brought their heads on poles and placed their heads together making them seem to kiss each other initially there was great support for for the demands of cage Rebels people sympathized with their objectives there were even those in the king's Army who sympathized and that forced the king to leave London and retreat but once the rebels were in London once they'd embarked upon their looting and executions then the tide turned against them the londoners brought together their own force and in a pitched midnight battle presumably fought by torch light along London Bridge they kicked out the rebels slamming the gates on them with great relief and it was the londoners who put an end to Cade's Rebellion not the king with the rebels AED from London the Revolt was finally ended by Royal Promises of reforms and free pardons which probably to no one's great surprise turned out to be false Jack Cade the architect of the outbreak of public Anarchy attempted to escape to the South Coast but he was hunted down and killed during a skirmish in a garden near heathfield in Sussex Cade's Rebellion turned out to be a major scare for the government of England and a damning indictment of the king's rule with suffk gone and the King as incompetent as ever a new counselor in Chief was needed the MPS of the commons echoed Cade's Rebels and called for the Duke of York to return to England and deal with the Troubles of the realm York delayed and remained in Ireland possibly trying to distance himself from the recent Revolt Somerset seized his [Music] chance Somerset having been in command when Normandy is lost came back found the court in disarray the attack on suff the country in disarray picked up the pieces and got some kind of semblance of government going meantime York came back from Ireland and decided that he was the person who would sort the country out so what you have here are two very prominent Nobles both closely related to the king both potentially if they wanted to push it with a claim to the throne each claiming that he was the one to rule the country and from that point onwards neither of them could back down yor clearly hoped to establish himself as Henry's principal counselor in the wake of Cage's Rebellion but he left it too late by the time he returned from Ireland in the Autumn of 1450 the role had been filled by Somerset yor may have had popular support in London at least but he had little amongst the nobility in the wake of Cage's Rebellion the nobility wished to put loyalty and unity first and it was York who appeared to be threatening that Unity the winter of 1450 witnessed the Duke of York's attempts to remove the king's advisors York clearly blamed Somerset for the disasters in France Normandy had been lost mainly because of flawed military planning and a feeble response to the French uprisings by calling for administrative and financial reform York started to gain popularity amongst MPS and he publicly vowed to avenge the losses in France York soon had to curb his accusations however as Somerset enjoyed the king's support and his claims seemed to be verging on treason Somerset was for the moment at least secure in his position position as Henry's counselor in Chief without the support of the Nobles York would have to bide his time what begins to emerge in some ways in the early 1450s is two radically different approaches to the problem of order in Henry V 6's England on the one hand there is York and the MPS and the commons who are calling for justice upon the traitors restoration of Royal finances restoration of noble Council around the King on the other hand there is the Duke of Somerset who basically says if we could just deal with all these Rebels and troublemakers everything would be okay the king is capable of ruling the king is well advised within his household so we have a situation in which York and Somerset are sworn to deal with one another in a sense the position that each man is striking requires him to get rid of the other in August 1451 Somerset returned to England from his disastrous stewardship of France only two months previously Bordeaux had fallen and after 300 years in English possession gascony had been lost to the Duke of York the situation looked Bleak over the last year he had failed in his attempts to remove sumerset and the public support for his position after Cade's rebellion was beginning to fade for York the loss of France was the final straw something must be done in February 1452 after deciding that Force might succeed where diplomacy had failed Richard Duke of York put himself at the head of an open Rebellion York took an army right across the country down into Kent to threaten the king and hopefully remove Somerset from Power but he simply didn't have enough support there were only two Nobles on his side the rest stood resolutely behind the king even the Nevels who in a short time were going to be York's allies York doesn't get the big burst of popular support that he may have been counting on and then he stops looking like a popular leader the man of the common wheel and begins to look rather more like a a Shabby magnate trying to Rouse the Rabel to support his own uh policy so York is really thoroughly defeated York had behaved rashly in 1452 and the result was that he was now politically isolated nobody wanted to Ally with him for fear of the taint of treason being attached to them after the failure of the Rebellion the Duke of York was released but only after having suffered the humiliation of being made to swear an oath of loyalty to the king at St Paul's in London despite his best efforts both diplomatic and Military the Duke was no nearer achieving his aims and the experience seems to have exhausted him for the next year and a half he laid low a brooding presence on the sidelines of English Politics the tensions between the Dukes of York and Somerset had now escalated to the point that the court and nobility were dividing into into two very hostile and rival factions the quarrelsome Nobles such as the perses who lived here at Walworth Castle in North umberland needed an over Mighty ruler to keep them in check as King Henry was failing to provide this Authority Waring Lords were siding with the two rival Dukes in the hope of gaining advantage in decisions on their disputes once Somerset or York had control of the king Somerset enjoyed the support of Queen Margaret and Henry's lancastrian supporters York's Camp was joined by the powerful Neville family from the north of England headed by the influential Earls of wari and Salsbury wari hated the Duke of Somerset while the entire family had a long-standing feud with the indomitable pery family the ears of North umberland as a result of these bitter rivalries the perses sided with Somerset and the lancastrians against York baronial power struggles had begun to dominate the nation's agenda and they were to have disastrous consequences the Nevels and the Percy are the two most powerful families of northern England really and of the two in the lancastrian period the Nevels are the more powerful family the Nevels have their Estates in North Yorkshire um and towards the western side of the very far north of England they're more powerful in this period than the Peres because they're married into the royal family and because the Peres H having assisted Henry IV's usurpation of the throne in 1399 then rose up against the king in 1403 and 1405 and consequently suffered confiscation of their Estates the Peres who are the elves of Northumberland and have major land Holdings on the Eastern side of the northern border with Scotland have won their way back to a degree of acceptance particularly under Henry V but they're slightly the second rank family there was no major sign of hostility between the families until the summer of 1453 and then it was a wedding as it so often is with families that caused the trouble thanks to this marriage the Nevels were about to gain control of lands which formerly had been Percy territory this seems to have set off Lord egremont a younger son of the Percy family and he attacked the wedding party on its return home this piece of private Warfare began the hostility between the Nevels and the Peres that came to dominate so much of the Civil War over the succeeding years while local feuds and lawlessness spread throughout England on the other side of the channel there was a sudden upswing in English fortunes Bordeaux was recaptured and the News came that the queen was expecting ing her first child but as so often in the SAG of the wars of the Roses good news was soon followed by bad Tidings in July 1453 the English were overwhelmed and defeated at the Battle of castillon in gascony Bordeaux fell a second time into French hands this time for good and the 100 Years War effectively Drew to a close [Music] for England it was a deeply ignominious end to a conflict that had seen the highs of Cressi and aenor and in August the king became insane Henry's Madness may have been brought about by uh learning of the massive defeat um at castillan in gasy but in fact um immediately beforehand we get the closest to active ruling that you find from the adult Henry VI 6 um this looks to me very much um like Somerset taking the King around the country to make it look like active ruling But whichever it was it seems completely to have worn him out and finished him off he falls into a kind of stuper he can't move he can't speak uh he has to be carried around Somerset decides to keep on business as usual to behave as if the king is absolutely fine but it doesn't work this time because the king is well and truly mad he's not just uninterested in government and with near Warfare breaking out in the north of England something really has to be done to restore the situation the government has to come clean about the king's illness it has to gather together the nobility to try and find some kind of platform for uh a new form of rule and that means calling York back in it's a middle of the road group of counselors who in the teeth of resistance from Somerset and probably from the Lord Chancellor Cardinal Kemp summon York to attend a council and York attends that council with every intention it seems of taking control in October 1453 Queen Margaret gave birth to a son Edward at last providing a direct heir to the throne the new baby became the f point of Margaret's life and she began to channel her considerable energy into ensuring that the child received what was his by Birthright the succession to the throne she became even more suspicious of the Duke of York who after all would still be air should any Misfortune befall the young [Music] Edward meanwhile in November 1453 somerset's politicking and ruthless accumulation of wealth caught up with him he was arrested and imprisoned in the tower one of the many men he had crossed was the Earl of wari later to become famous as wari the kingmaker for Somerset falling out with wari had been a particularly bad move one reason why York is able to get his way on getting rid of Somerset is not only the fact that the Lords I think have lost confidence idence in somerset's capacity to run the show but also the hostility of the Nevels towards Somerset part of which seems to relate to somerset's attempt to uh gain control of the lordship of Glamorgan in South Wales which uh is regarded by the Earl of wari as his own property and his own sphere of Interest the Neville support for York against Somerset was a classic case of my enemy's enemy is my friend York's new found power gave the Nevels the chance to win their own battles firstly against Somerset and also against the perses even from within the confines of the tower Somerset continued to plot adding to the atmosphere of tension and uncertainty at court in March 1454 the council reluctantly appointed York as protector and for the following nine months he ruled England as King in all but name as protector York is in many ways quite effective actually he delivers uh somewhat biased Justice in the north of England mainly in favor of the Nevels and against the interests of the Percy but in doing that he's fairly typical of the way the north has been ruled in the past and this means that when the king recovers at Christmas 1454 there is some uncertainty among the Lords about about whether to swing back to the rule of Somerset and the Royal household and the queen around the king there's quite a lot more sympathy I think for York and the Nevels although their bitter enemies the Peres are probably calling for action against them behind the scenes historians have often agreed that if Henry's Madness was a tragedy his recovery was a national disaster the king summarily dismissed York as protector and immediately released Somerset from the tower making Civil War almost inevitable York and the Nevels clearly felt on the defensive a great Council was summoned to Lester which is in the heart of the old duchy of Lancaster lands in May and one would guess that York and the Nevels had in mind what for example had happened to Gloucester at the berry parliament in 1447 so they decided that they would come armed to this Council and as they came from uh the north so they met Henry and his forces coming up towards the council from London and they met at St Orbin negotiations ensued rather as it occurred at Dartford but this time York was not going to be tricked so it did not end with York laying down his arms and ended in battle and so on May the 2nd 1455 the first real battle of the wars of the Roses [Music] began inside the town of St orans King Henry V 6 and his household waited as the lancastrian Army fought to hold off the attacks by the yorkist forces at first all went well as the yorkist troops struggled to break through the narrow streets tightly packed together they were easy prey for The lancastrian Archers it was the ear of wari who seeing the futility of further attacks through the lanes signaled a change of tactics and made an assault through the back of the houses very soon the orchest had broken into the marketplace and there was total panic in the Royal household Henry himself sustained a wound in in the neck as the yorkist arrows rained down and he was forced to shelter in a Tanner's Cottage the yorkists had won an important Victory but what if the Duke of Somerset hold up in the castle in how must he have felt as he heard the yorkists batter down its doors knowing the Fate that awaited him if he surrendered to his Archen enemy York Somerset decided to go down fighting flailing wildly with his sword as yorkist soldiers surrounded him he is supposed to have killed four men before he was attacked to death the Battle of St Orbin may have been little more than a skirmish when compared to the slaughter to come perhaps 100 men mostly lancastrians lost their lives but three important Nobles the Duke of Somerset the Earl of North humand and Lord had all been killed signifying without question that in the coming war no quarter would be asked or given Henry was made a prisoner of the Duke of York with his arch rival the Duke of Somerset dead the kingdom lay within York's grasp and everything depended upon how he played his next move and although many hoped the crisis in Royal government had finally been resolved 30 years of bitterness ranker and bloodshed lay ahead for [Music] England [Music] n