Wars of The Roses - Disputed Succession

Disputed Succession

The "race of powerful magnates" was created by King Edward III in the fourteenth century. Edward and his wife Philippa of Hainault had thirteen children, including five sons who grew to maturity. Edward arranged strong marriages for them with English heiresses and created the first ever English dukedoms: Cornwall, Clarence, Lancaster, York and Gloucester. The descendants of these dukes would "ultimately challenge each other for the throne itself".

Edward III was succeeded in 1377 by his nine-year-old grandson Richard II, whose father Edward, the Black Prince had died in 1376. Edward's second son, Lionel of Antwerp, the first Duke of Clarence, had also predeceased him and left one daughter, Philippa, who became heiress presumptive to Richard II. Philippa married Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March. Philippa and Edmund died within a month of each other in 1381. The childless Richard II named their son Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March as his heir presumptive, but Roger Mortimer died in 1398, leaving a young son Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March. When the Black Prince's line failed, the crown should have passed by law of primogeniture to Edmund Mortimer, as the descendant of Lionel of Antwerp. But it did not; and this was the crucial issue in what became known as the Wars of the Roses.

Richard II's government had been highly unpopular. Earlier in his reign, he had exiled Henry Bolingbroke, the son of Edward III's third son John of Gaunt. Bolingbroke returned from exile in 1399, initially to reclaim his rights as Duke of Lancaster. With the support of most of the nobles, Bolingbroke then deposed Richard and was crowned as Henry IV. No nobles immediately supported the young Edmund Mortimer's alternate claim to the throne. However, within a few years of taking the throne, Henry faced several rebellions in Wales, Cheshire and Northumberland, which used the Mortimer claim to the throne both as pretext and rallying point. All these revolts were suppressed, although with difficulty.

Henry IV died in 1413. His son and successor, Henry V, inherited a temporarily pacified nation. Henry was a great soldier, and his military success against France in the Hundred Years' War bolstered his enormous popularity, enabling him to strengthen the Lancastrian hold on the throne.

There was one conspiracy against Henry during his nine-year reign: the Southampton Plot led by Richard, Earl of Cambridge, a son of Edmund of Langley, the fourth son of Edward III. Cambridge was executed in 1415, for treason at the start of the campaign that led to the Battle of Agincourt. Cambridge's wife, Anne Mortimer, who had died in 1411, also had a claim to the throne, being the daughter of Roger Mortimer and thus a descendant of Lionel of Antwerp. Her brother Edmund, Earl of March, who had loyally supported Henry, died childless in 1425 and his claim and titles therefore passed to Anne's descendants.

Richard, the son of Cambridge and Anne Mortimer, was four years old at the time of his father's execution. Although Cambridge was attainted, Henry later allowed Richard to inherit the title and lands of Cambridge's elder brother Edward, Duke of York, who died fighting alongside Henry at Agincourt and had no issue. Henry, who had three younger brothers and was himself in his prime and recently married, had no doubt that the Lancastrian right to the crown was secure. After Henry's death, when his only son proved incapable of rule and his brothers produced no surviving legitimate issue, leaving only distant cousins (the Beauforts) as alternate Lancaster heirs, Richard of York's claim to the throne became important. The supporters of the House of York eventually declared it to be stronger than that of the Lancastrian kings.