In Henry VI, Part One, the Earl of Warwick
responds to the scene in which nobles picked roses in the Temple Garden to
represent their allegiance to the House of Lancaster or the House of York with
this prescient prediction: “And here I prophesy: this brawl today,/Grown to
this faction in the Temple Garden,/Shall send, between the red rose and the
white,/A thousand souls to death and deadly night” (2.5.124-127). His prediction proves true for both the
nobles and the common people as the events of the three parts of Henry VI unfold. As civil discord grows into organized
conflict, Somerset, the Duke of York, Prince Edward, and King Henry VI all die,
while the commoners’ lives are interrupted and sometimes destroyed by the civil
war, as highlighted in the poignant scene in Part Three when Henry observes the lamentations of a son who
unwittingly killed his father and the cries of a father who unknowingly killed
his only son.
In Part Three, Henry rightly describes the
conflict as “civil war” (1.1.197) but the series of battles depicted in Parts Two and Part Three had another name: the Wars of the Roses. Historically, the Wars of the Roses lasted
from 1455-1485 and were a series of conflicts over succession to the English
throne that were eventually resolved in the foundation of the Tudor dynasty
with coronation of Henry VII and his marriage to Elizabeth of York. Scholars are quick to point out that the Wars
of the Roses were more than just a clash for power among the nobility, but, for
the purposes of understanding the three parts of Henry VI, we will focus on the struggle between the House of
Lancaster and the House of York.
The
quarrel between the Lancasters and the Yorks began in conflicts between the
grandsons of King Edward III, who ruled England from 1312-1377. Edward III had seven sons; the first, Edward,
Black Prince of Wales, the third, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the fourth, John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and the fifth, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, are
crucial to the rise of the conflict that led to the Wars of the Roses. John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke,
deposed Edward’s son, Richard II, and became Henry IV, the first Lancastrian
king of England. Henry IV’s son was the
famous King Henry V, whose son was King Henry VI, whose death brought the swift
end of Lancastrian control of the crown.
While Henry V was admired for his achievements in conquering much of
France, some people viewed all the Lancastrian kings as usurpers. Many people, including Hall, whose Chronicles Shakespeare relied on in
writing Henry VI, viewed the
deposition of Henry VI as punishment for his grandfather’s sins in keeping with
the message of Numbers 14:18 that promises God will “[visit] the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”
Richard
Plantagenet, Duke of York, traces his claim to the English throne through his
mother, the granddaughter of Edward III’s third son, Lionel, Anne Mortimer, who
married her cousin, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, the son of Edward III’s fifth
son, Edmund of Langley. York’s claim to
the throne rests on the perceived illegitimacy of Henry VI’s claim because of
his grandfather’s usurpation of King Richard and the assertion that the
descendants of Edward III’s third son should take precedence over the
descendants of the fourth. The Earl of
Warwick explains York’s thought process: “Henry doth claim the crown from John
of Gaunt/The fourth son, York claims it from the third./Till Lionel’s issue
fails, Gaunt’s should not reign;/It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee/And
in thy sons...” (2.2.54-58). In Henry VI, as in history, the Yorks initially
triumph; Henry is killed and Edward IV becomes King. The Wars of the Roses officially concluded
after the reign of King Richard III and his death, when Henry Tudor, whom Henry
VI predicts “will prove our country’s bliss” (4.6.70), was crowned Henry VII in
1486, establishing the Tudor dynasty and ushering in a new age of stability and
intellectual and artistic advancement associated with the Renaissance.
For
an overview of the Wars of the Roses, including all of the facets of the
conflict not covered here, check out Martin Dougherty’s 2015 book, The Wars of the Roses: The Conflict That
Inspired Game of Thrones.
