#lancastrians

[beyondmistland]

Only death can pay for life...

Caius Tyrrell, Lord of Sorrow’s End by Isaac Villacres

Feel free to like or reblog but please do not repost! All rights reserved.

[tudorblogger]

Book Review - ‘Wars of the Roses: The People, Places and Battlefields of the Yorkists and Lancastrians’ by Paul Kendall

Thank you to Pen and Sword for gifting me a copy of this to review. What I do like about Paul Kendall’s books is that his books seem to each have 100 sections, whether it’s people, places, or objects. There isn’t just an image plate section in the middle, but the images are dispersed throughout the book. It gives a lovely text/image balance that you don’t always get with history books. I love…

[ancestorsalive]

In the heart of medieval England, during a time of war and political upheaval, Elizabeth Woodville rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most intriguing and powerful queens in English history. Born around 1437 to a noble family, Elizabeth was the daughter of Sir Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, a woman of high birth with royal connections. Elizabeth grew up in the tumultuous years of the Wars of the Roses, a civil war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, which would later change her life forever.

Elizabeth first married Sir John Grey, a knight who fought for the Lancastrian cause. However, her life took a tragic turn when John was killed in battle, leaving her a widow with two young sons. With her husband’s lands confiscated, Elizabeth found herself in a difficult position, relying on her family for support. It was during this time that she had a fateful encounter with Edward IV, the Yorkist king who had recently claimed the throne.

Legend has it that Elizabeth, known for her beauty and charm, waited by the roadside to petition Edward IV to restore her late husband’s lands. The young king was immediately captivated by her, and despite their stark differences in rank and her Lancastrian ties, Edward fell in love with her. In 1464, they secretly married—a shocking and unprecedented move for a king who was expected to marry a foreign princess for political advantage. Elizabeth became Queen of England, the first commoner to marry an English king.

Her rise to power caused a great deal of resentment among the nobility, especially the Earl of Warwick, one of Edward’s most powerful supporters. Elizabeth’s large family, the Woodvilles, began to gain influence at court, further intensifying tensions. Many viewed them as upstarts, and the marriage alienated Edward from some of his key allies, including Warwick, who eventually rebelled against the king.

Despite these challenges, Elizabeth proved to be a strong and determined queen. She bore Edward ten children, including two sons—Edward V and Richard, Duke of York—who would play pivotal roles in the future of the kingdom. Her daughters were also strategically married into noble families, strengthening the Yorkist hold on power.

However, tragedy struck in 1483 when Edward IV suddenly died. Elizabeth’s eldest son, Edward V, was only 12 years old, and her brother-in-law, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was named as protector. Richard quickly moved to take control, imprisoning Edward V and his brother in the Tower of London. Elizabeth fought desperately to secure her sons' future, but her efforts were in vain. The two princes mysteriously disappeared, believed to have been murdered, and Richard declared himself King Richard III.

Elizabeth’s fortunes seemed to have crumbled, but she was not one to give up easily. Aligning herself with the Lancastrian cause once again, she played a critical role in arranging the marriage of her daughter, Elizabeth of York, to Henry Tudor, a descendant of the Lancastrian line. When Henry defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he became Henry VII, and Elizabeth Woodville’s daughter became queen, uniting the warring houses of York and Lancaster and ending the Wars of the Roses.

Elizabeth spent her final years in relative quiet at Bermondsey Abbey, withdrawing from political life. She died in 1492, having lived through some of the most dramatic events in English history. Elizabeth Woodville’s legacy endures as a woman who defied convention, a commoner who became queen, and a mother whose children shaped the future of the Tudor dynasty.

[stonelord1]

THE GREAT SIEGE OF KENILWORTH CASTLE

Recently English Heritage have been doing some work around the perimeter of Kenilworth Castle, proving accessibility for visitors. While doing so, they stumbled upon eight medieval stone shot, fired from catapults or trebuchets, at the famous Siege of Kenilworth, which took place on June 25, 1266. The stones were of varying sizes and weights, one being a whopping 105 kg (231 pounds!) and could…

[natequarter]

not yorkist, not lancastrian, but a secret third thing (the earl of warwick)

[une-sanz-pluis]

What do we know about the relationship between Edward III and Henry IV? I find it quite intriguing that he was inducted into the Order of the Garter together with Richard II ( and in fact were the last two people to be admitted by Edward III) while he didn't bother to do the same for Thomas of Woodstock so this should imply some special fondness which Edward had for Harry. But on the other hand, Richard lost his father and elder brother quite early so Edward may have thought that there is a real likelihood of the same happening to Richard which would have ensured that Henry would become king in the future ( through John of Gaunt) so his knighting could reflect Edward wishing to knight someone whom he deemed had a viable chance of succeeding him. And this is why I am so curious about the relationship that Edward III had with Henry Bolingbroke.

Unfortunately, we don't know know anything about their relationship beyond the fact that Henry was knighted in April 1377. It's impossible to say what kind of contact they had before then, the evidence just isn't there. Edward III seems to have relied on John of Gaunt in his later years and both Edward and Philippa of Hainault seemed to have had a close relationship with Henry's mother, Blanche of Lancaster. According to Chris Given-Wilson, Henry spent his childhood in the Blanche, Lady Wake's household, then at Tutbury and then in the future Richard II's court. It seems possible that there was some contact between Edward and Henry before the St. George's day festivities but it's impossible to say for sure if there was or what kind of contact there was. I think there was probably very little contact due to Henry's youth and Edward's declining health. I think it's likely Edward thought fondly of Henry, even if he probably knew very little about him.

I'm afraid that I'm very resistant to the idea that anyone had any serious expectation Henry would one day be king, mainly out of spite at Ian Mortimer, lol. I think there was an awareness of the possibility - Edward's only brother died when he was young, he had several children predecease him - but I think the only people who seriously believed that Richard would die and Gaunt or Gaunt's son would become king were those who thought Gaunt was planning to murder Richard. Hell, Henry was Gaunt's only legitimately born son who lived to see 1377 so Edward could have harboured fears that Henry might drop dead just as much as, if not more so, than Richard might. The Order of the Garter had a strictly limited membership: no more than 24 members (plus the monarch and Prince of Wales) - Richard was likely stepping into his father's place as the new Prince of Wales, which meant only one slot was available. Why Henry and not Thomas of Woodstock? Beyond the fact that Edward seems to have neglected Woodstock's public career (he was knighted very late in life compared to his brothers, he had to wait until 1385 for a dukedom), inducting Henry into the Order of the Garter may have been a gesture of support or gratitude for Gaunt, given that Gaunt was basically running the country for Edward and bearing the brunt of public hate.

[wonder-worker]

"Among their complaints [in 1460, the Yorkists] specifically blamed the earls of Wiltshire and Shrewsbury and Viscount Beaumont for ‘stirring’ the king [Henry VI] to hold a parliament at Coventry that would attaint them and for keeping them from the king’s presence and likely mercy, asserting that this was done against [the king's] will. To this they added the charge that these evil counselors were also tyrannizing other true men* without the king’s knowledge. Such claims of malfeasance obliquely raised the question of Henry’s fitness as a king, for how could he be deemed competent if such things happened without his knowledge and against his wishes? They also tied in rumors circulating somewhat earlier in the southern counties and likely to have originated in Calais that Henry was really ‘good and gracious Lord to the [Yorkists] since, it was alleged, he had not known of or assented to their attainders. On 11 June the king was compelled to issue a proclamation stating that they were indeed traitors and that assertions to the contrary were to be ignored." - Helen Maurer, "Margaret of Anjou: "Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England"

Three things that we can surmise from this:

We know where the "Henry was an innocent helpless king being controlled and manipulated by his Evil™ advisors" rhetoric came from**.

The Yorkists were deliberately trying to downplay Henry VI's actual role and involvement in politics and the Wars of the Roses. They cast him as a "statue of a king", blamed all royal policies and decisions on others*** (claiming that Henry wasn't even aware of them), and framed themselves as righteous and misunderstood counselors who remained loyal to the crown. We should keep this in mind when we look at chronicles' comments of Henry's alleged passivity and the so-called "role reversal" between him and Queen Margaret.

Henry VI's actual agency and involvement is nevertheless proven by his own actions. We know what he thought of the Yorkists, and we know he took the effort to publicly counter their claims through a proclamation of his own. That speaks louder than the politically motivated narrative of his enemies, don't you think?

*There was some truth to these criticisms. For example, Wiltshire (ie: one of the men named in the pamphlet) was reportedly involved in a horrible situation in June which included hangings and imprisonments for tax resistance in Newbury. The best propagandists always contain a degree of truth, etc. **I've seen some theories on why Margaret of Anjou wasn't mentioned in these pamphlets alongside the others even though she was clearly being vilified during that time as well, and honestly, I think those speculations are mostly unnecessary. Margaret was absent because it was regarded as very unseemly to target queens in such an officially public manner. We see a similar situation a decade later: Elizabeth Woodville was vilified and her whole family - popularly and administratively known as "the queen's kin" - was disparaged in Warwick and Clarence's pamphlets. This would have inevitably associated her with their official complaints far more than Margaret had been, but she was also not directly mentioned. It was simply not considered appropriate. ***This narrative was begun by the Duke of York & Warwick and was - demonstrably - already widespread by the end of 1460. When Edward IV came to power, there seems to have been a slight shift in how he spoke of Henry (he referred to Henry as their "great enemy and adversary"; his envoys were clearly willing to acknowledge Henry's role in Lancastrian resistance to Yorkist rule; etc), but he nevertheless continued the former narrative for the most part. I think this was because 1) it was already well-established and widespread by his father, and 2) downplaying Henry's authority would have served to emphasize Edward's own kingship, which was probably advantageous for a usurper whose deposed rival was still alive and out of reach. In some sense, the Lancastrians did the same thing with their own propaganda across the 1460s, which was clearly not as effective in terms of garnering support and is too long to get into right now, but was still very relevant when it came to emphasizing their own right to the throne while disparaging the Yorkists' claim.

[elizabethan-memes]

My dad: what are you working on today? Me: i'm prepping a class on Henry vii my dad: oh, we like him! he was a chartered accountant!

[bythequeenmargaret]

Are you staunch Lancastrian

In general I think I would say yes. I've been into them for nearly four years now I believe (my memory on the specific dates is a bit fuzzy) and my interest in them has shown no signs of wanting. In fact it's only grown intenser. The reason why I am so into them is kinda weird, I don't like talking about it because it embarrasses me somewhat. I've got ADHD + autism and my brain is fixated on them 24/7. I can barely focus on anything else, but I am kinda grateful for having such a burning...love I guess...for this house since it's what got me back into writing after I'd been gone so long.

[fideidefenswhore]

The new queen's white falcon was on prominent display throughout the pageant, resting on a bed of Tudor roses. Although it is now synonymous with Anne and the Boleyns in general, Henry had only granted it to her on her elevation to the marquessate of Pembroke. It was a fitting choice because the same bird had long been an emblem of Anne's Irish ancestors, the Butlers, earls of Ormond. It also had strong royal associations and had been used as an emblem by the celebrated warrior king Edward III, as well as by Henry's maternal grandfather, Edward IV, with whom he strongly identified.

Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I (2023), Tracy Borman

[burtlancster]

Bill Forsyth on his decision to cast Burt Lancaster as Mr. Happer from “The Making of Local Hero,” 1983.

[nostalgia-tblr]

Richard III may have killed those two nephews of his but he did leave that other nephew for Henry VII to kill so you can't say he wasn't generous about sharing the nephew-murdering with even his worst enemies.

[bstag]

[unopenablebox]

it’s a pincushion with the pins stuck in the wrong way

[une-sanz-pluis]

The 'normative' years of Edward III witnessed the establishment of sodomy as the ultimate statement of political unfitness. Inheriting this aspect of gendered monarchy, among many others, Richard II was made to fit into an interpretative scheme that had been created over the course of many decades. Many of the charges from the Lancastrian period repeat nearly word for word the accusations familiar to us from the 1330s and onward. A fifteenth-century Lincolnshire chronicle, for instance, notes that, after being crowned king, Richard 'immediately, after the manner of Roboam, despising the counsel of the wise, attended to the suggestions of the young. Infatuated by their persuasions he oppressed his native subjects.' [...] Similarly, Adam of Usk writes in his Chronicle that 'this Richard, with his callow counsellors [consilium iuuenum], should more correctly be compared to Roboam … who, because he followed the counsel of youths, lost the kingdom of Israel'. The Kirkstall writer raises the spectre of Edward II when (writing after Richard's deposition) he reports the opinion of 'learned men' that Richard, like Edward of Carnarvon, had spurned the counsel of the greater dukes and lords in 1386, relying instead on the wishes and advice of the young lords and of others of less power and influence.' [...] Like these examples drawn from the Lancastrian propaganda of the early 1400s, the queering of the king in the 1380s and 1390s was accomplished through the invocation of certain stock rhetorical figures and characters - like Roboam, for instance, or like the generic type of the excessively passive young man, or the tyrannically perverse old man. Richard himself assisted in the drawing of his reputation as a deviant by stubbornly invoking the memory of the deviant Edward II: in 1383 the king arranged for his great-grandfather's anniversary to be celebrated each year at Gloucester Abbey, and beginning in 1385 he began to press for Edward's canonization - a course he continued to pursue, unsuccessfully, throughout the 1390s. Unlike Edward Ill's calculated restoration of Edward II's moral reputation, Richard's more vigorous attentions toward his ancestor were politically disastrous insofar as they led more or less directly to the revival of the cult of Thomas of Lancaster, who had been murdered and his inheritance seized by Edward II in 1322. No one in this period actually charged Richard with sodomy. But no one needed to; the cultural discourse of sexual misrule from the 1330s onward was so profound as to serve as a kind of code with which to speak about unnatural politics, and its punishment, while preserving the status of sodomy as the 'unmentionable' sin.

Sylvia Federico, "Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourtheen-Century England", Medium Ævum, vol. 79, no. 1, 2010.

[wonder-worker]

Any judgement on (Richard III)’s reign has to be seen as provisional. The critic of the reign only has to consider how the Tudors would now be regarded if Henry VII lost at Stoke, to realize the dangers of too many assumptions about the intractability of Richard’s problems. But it would be equally unrealistic to ignore Richard’s unpopularity altogether. The fact that he generated opposition among men with little material reason for dissent, and that the disaffection then continued to spread among his own associates, says something about what contemporaries regarded as the acceptable parameters of political behaviour. There is no doubt that Richard’s deposition of his nephews was profoundly shocking. To anyone who did not accept the pre-contract story, which was probably the majority of observers, the usurpation was an act of disloyalty. Gloucester, both as uncle and protector, was bound to uphold his nephew’s interests and his failure to do so was dishonourable. Of all medieval depositions, it was the only one which, with whatever justification, could most easily be seen as an act of naked self-aggrandizement.

It was also the first pre-emptive deposition in English history. This raised enormous problems. Deposition was always a last resort, even when it could be justified by the manifest failings of a corrupt or ineffective regime. How could one sanction its use as a first resort, to remove a king who had not only not done anything wrong but had not yet done anything at all?

-Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service