Historical sources on the Wars of the Roses

Extract A

"The reign of Edward III. may be considered the [height] of [medieval] civilisation and of England's early greatness. It is the age in which chivalry attained its highest perfection. It is the period of the most brilliant achievements in war and of the greatest development of arts and commerce before the Reformation. It was succeeded by an age of decay and disorder, in the midst of which, for one brief interval, the glories of the days of King Edward were renewed; for the rest, all was sedition, [chaos], and civil war. Two different branches of the royal family set up rival [claims] to the throne; and the struggle, as it went on, [produced] acts of violence and ferocity which destroyed all faith in the stability of government." 

Extract B

"During the period of the Wars of the Roses we have, comparatively speaking, very few contemporary [accounts] of what took place, and anything like a general history of the times was not written till a much later date. But the doings of that stormy age — the sad calamities endured by kings — the sudden changes of fortune in great men — the [splendour] of chivalry and the horrors of civil war — all left a deep impression upon the mind of the nation, which was kept alive by vivid traditions of the past at the time that our great [playwright] wrote." 

Contextual information:

James Gairdner was a Scottish historian who worked as Assistant Keeper of the Public Record Office in London. He wrote The Houses of Lancaster and York in 1874 as part of the Epochs of Modern History series, drawing directly on contemporary records and chronicles. The work covers the conflict between the royal houses of Lancaster and York during the fifteenth century. 

Bibliographical reference:

Adapted from Gairdner, J. (1875). The houses of Lancaster and York, with the conquest and loss of France (pp. 1, v–vi). Estes and Lauriat. 

Copyright: Public domain. 

"Of all the great men of action who since the Conquest have guided the course of English policy, it is probable that none is less known to the reader of history than Richard Neville Earl of Warwick and Salisbury. The only man of anything approaching his [importance] who has been treated with an equal neglect is Thomas Cromwell, and of late years the great minister of Henry the Eighth is beginning to receive some of the attention that is his due. But for the Kingmaker, the man who for ten years was the first [most important] subject of the English Crown, and whose figure [appears] with a vague grandeur even through the misty [records] of the Wars of the Roses, no writer has [dedicated] a monograph. Every one, it is true, knows his name, but his personal identity is quite ungrasped. Nine persons out of ten if asked to sketch his character would find, to their own surprise, that they were falling back for their information to Lord Lytton's Last of the Barons or Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth." 

Contextual information:

Charles Oman was an English military historian at Oxford University who published Warwick the Kingmaker in 1891. The book examines the career of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who helped place two different kings on the throne of England during the Wars of the Roses. Oman drew on chronicles and official records to reconstruct Warwick's role in the civil conflicts of the fifteenth century. 

Bibliographical reference:

Adapted from Oman, C. (1891). Warwick the Kingmaker (pp. 1–2). Macmillan and Co. 

Copyright: Public domain.

Extract A

"Richard the third son, of whom we now [speak], was in wit and courage equal with either of them, in body and prowess far under them both, little of stature, ill featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard favoured of visage, and such as is in [kings] called [warlike], in other men otherwise, he was malicious, wrathful, envious, and from afore his birth, ever [difficult]. None evil captain was he in the war, as to which his disposition was more meetly than for peace. Sundry victories had he, and sometime overthrows, but never in default as for his own person, either of hardiness or politic order, free was he called of [spending], and somewhat above his power liberal, with large gifts he got him [unstable] friendship, for which he was fain to [rob] and spoil in other places, and get him [firm] hatred. He was close and secret, a deep [deceiver], lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly [friendly] where he inwardly hated, not [hesitating] to kiss whom he thought to kill: [cruel] and [merciless], not for evil will always, but [later] for [self-advancement], and either for the surety or increase of his estate." 

Extract B

"For Richard the Duke of Gloucester, by nature their Uncle, by office their Protector, to their father beholden, to themselves by oath and allegiance bound, all the bands broken that bind man and man together, without any respect of God or the world, unnaturally contrived to bereave them, not only their dignity, but also their lives." 

Contextual information:

Sir Thomas More was an English lawyer and humanist scholar who lived from 1478 to 1535. He composed The History of King Richard III around 1513 to 1518, drawing on the memories of people who had lived through the events he described. More's account became the foundation of the traditional view that Richard III was responsible for the deaths of his two nephews in the Tower of London. 

Bibliographical reference:

Adapted from More, T. (1883). The history of King Richard the third (J. R. Lumby, Ed.; pp. 7, 8). Cambridge University Press. (Original work composed ca. 1513–1518). 

Copyright: Public domain.