Abstract
The involvement of foreign troops in the battles of the Wars of the Roses is well known; so, too, the support that the protagonists received, in money and other ways, from foreign powers. In turn, events in England affected the political situation in western Europe. These themes are acknowledged in the standard accounts but rarely explored. English history tends to be discussed in insular terms; even ‘insular’ is an over-statement, since Anglo-Scottish relations are even more neglected than Anglo-French. What happened in England was part of a complex series of inter-related events which profoundly influenced the development of western Europe as a whole. At stake was the future power of the French monarchy: both the power of the monarchy within France itself, and with it therefore the nature of French political society. Equally important was the question of the future of the Netherlands, and whether a revived France would take over the provinces of Flanders and Brabant with their great cities of Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, the economic heartland of northern Europe. News of Towton, Barnet, and Bosworth were eagerly awaited in Bruges and Malines, in Nantes and Dijon, and in Paris; and were not without interest in Seville, Milan, Rome and Vienna.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Bernard Guenée, States and Rulers in later Medieval Europe (Eng. transl., Oxford, 1985), pp. 108–9.
Richard Vaughan, Valois Burgundy (1975), pp. 102–3.
David Potter, War and Government in the French Provinces: Picardy, 1470–1560 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 19.
K. B. McFarlane, ‘The Wars of the Roses’, Proceedings of the British Academy, L (1964),
repr. in his England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (Oxford, 1981), pp. 254, 256–7; Simon Walker shows that, far from joining his other lord, Clarence, as McFarlane implied, Vernon kept out of the way at Derby; ‘Autorité des Magnats et Pouvoir de la “Gentry”’, in P. Contamine (ed.), L’état et les Aristocracies (Paris, 1989), pp. 189, 202.
M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (1974), pp. 157–8;
S. H. Cuttler, The Law of Treason in later Medieval France (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 210–11.
G. L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR, 75 (1960), 30–53;
Caroline M. Barron, ‘London and the Crown, 1451–61’, in J. R. L. Highfield and Robin Jeffs (eds), The Crown and the Local Communities (1981), pp. 88–109;
J. L. Bolton, ‘The City and the Crown, 1456–61’, London Journal, 12 (1986), 11–24.
Ralph A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (1981), pp. 814–15 (letter from Charles VII to James II).
Ibid., pp. 815, 846 n. 262; Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (1981), pp. 314–15.
Cora L. Scofield, Edward IV, 2 vols (1923), 1, pp. 162, 179–80, 188.
Vale, Charles VII, 171; Vaughan, Valois Burgundy, 53.
Scofield, Edward IV, 1,159–60.
Margaret Harvey, England, Rome, and the Papacy, 1417–1464 (Manchester, 1993), pp. 193–213. See also R. G. Davies, above pp. 157–9.
Charles Ross, Edward IV (1974), pp. 105–6, 359–65, 377–8. See also R. H. Britnell, above pp. 44–6.
Scofield, Edward IV, 65, 96; Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold (1973), p. 61.
Christine Weightman, Margaret of York: Duchess of Burgundy (Gloucester, 1989); Mark Ballard, ‘Anglo-Burgundian Relations, 1464–72’ (University of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1992).
T. H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 200–3.
The first recorded meeting between Warwick and Charles appears to have been in 1466, although they had certainly exchanged gifts in 1457; the suggestion that their enmity dated from 1460 relates to Charles’s close dealings with Somerset when Somerset was trying to wrest Calais from Warwick; Scofield, Edward IV, I, 65, 96. For Rouen, ibid., I, 424–5, and Paul Murray Kendall, Warwick the Kingmaker (1957), pp. 201–5.
J. Calmette and G. Périnelle, Louis XI et l’Angleterre, 1461–83 (Paris, 1930), p. 124; Scofield, EdwardIV, 1, pp. 556–7, 560–3.
Ross, Edward IV, 160; Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 71.
Lloyd, England and the Hanse, 207–17, authoritatively challenges the usual view of a sell-out by Edward IV.
For Flemish and other soldiers, see P. W. Hammond, The Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury (Gloucester, 1990), p. 141. A detailed study of London in 1470–1 is badly needed.
Thomas Basin, quoted by P. Contamine, Des Pouvoirs en France, 1300–1500 (Paris, 1992), pp. 81–2.
See the story of Commynes persuading Louis to grant a pension of 2,000 crowns to Lord Hastings; Commynes had dealt with Hastings when he served Charles, who had paid him 1,000 crowns. Hastings distinguished himself by refusing to give Louis a receipt, although he had provided one for Charles. See Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs, ed. and transl. Michael Jones (Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 359–61,
and the comment by D. A. L. Morgan in David Starkey (ed.), The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (1987), p. 61.
Vaughan, Charles the Bold, pp. 346–51; Ross, Edward TV, 224–31; Contamine, Pouvoirs, pp. 87–98.
M. A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence (Gloucester, 1980), pp. 130–4; Weightman; Margaret of Burgundy, pp. 105–18, 127–30.
Scofield, Edward TV, II, p. 185; Weightman, Margaret of Burgundy, p. 109.
Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Gloucester, 1985), pp. 75–88.
C. S. L. Davies, ‘Richard III, Brittany, and Henry Tudor, 1483–1485’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 37 (1993), 1–18.
See the remarks of the Chancellor of France to the States-General in 1484, and other French opinions, quoted by C. A.J. Armstrong in his introduction to Mancini, 22–4.
Griffiths and Thomas, Making of the Tudor Dynasty, pp. 117–31; A. V. Antonovics, ‘Henry VII, King of England, “By the Grace of Charles VIII of France”’, in Ralph A. Griffiths and James Sherborne (eds), Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages: a Tribute to Charles Ross (Gloucester and New York, 1986), pp. 169–84. Chastellain had made a similar claim for Philip of Burgundy after Towton; Scofield, Edward IV, 1, p. 160.
The usual estimate is that the invading force was about 4,000 men, the great majority French or Scots; see, for instance, Alexander Grant, ‘Foreign Affairs under Richard III’, John Gillingham(ed.), Richard III: A Medieval Kingship (1993), pp. 127–30. However, seven ships would total about 500 tons, enough to transport about 700 soldiers; even if the fleet were larger than this, and if no horses were shipped, it seems unlikely that the force could have been much over 1,000 men, of which about 500 would be English exiles. Seven ships were sent to England in 1485 to transport a promised force of 1,000 archers to Brittany; see Davies, ‘Richard III, Brittany and Henry Tudor’, 111. I am grateful to Dr Anne Curry for her advice, based on her ‘Military Organisation in Lancastrian Normandy, 1422–1450’ (CNAA/Teesside Polytechnic Ph.D. thesis, 1985).
Michael Bennett, Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke (Gloucester, 1987).
Weightman, Margaret of York, 169–81. For the argument that Margeret may have been involved as early as 1491, see Mark Ballard and C. S. L. Davies, ‘Étienne Fryon: Burgundian Agent, English Royal Secretary, and “Principal Counsellor” to Perkin Warbeck’, HR, 62 (1989), 245–59.
See also I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 1491–99 (Stroud, 1994).
David Dunlop, ‘The “Masked Comedian”; Perkin Warbeck’s Adventures in Scotland from 1495 to 1497’, Scottish Historical Review, 70 (1991), 97–128.
S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (1972), pp. 92–4.
R. B. Wernham, Before the Armada (1966), pp. 32–7;
J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors (Oxford, 1952), pp. 81–111; Chrimes, Henry VII, pp. 277–82.
The possible emergence of a ‘German’ political system, with the King of France no more powerful than the Emperor, normally discounted, implicitly at least, by historians of France, is considered by Emmanuel le Roy Ladurie, The French Royal State, 1460–1610 (Eng. transl. Oxford, 1994), pp. 60–3.
Alexander Grant, ‘Foreign Affairs’, 114–15, 130–1, argues that the shift in the balance made English threats problematic, and explains Edward IV’s calling off of the 1475 invasion.
Ranald Nicholson, Scotland the Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), pp. 347–8.
Ibid., pp. 393–4; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses (Oxford, 1990), p. 223.
Nicholson, Scotland, 394–406; Pollard, North-Eastern England, 223–30.
Nicholson, Scotland, pp. 472–8; Pollard, North-Eastern England, 231–2. ‘Great Britain’ appears in the Treaty of Edinburgh of 1474, an unusual usage in the fifteenth century (‘Britain’ was normally used in a historical context rather than in reference to present-day reality), though it was to be common among advocates of political union in the sixteenth century.
Nicholson, Scotland, 489–517; Pollard, North-Eastern England, 235–44; Norman Macdougall, James III: a Political Study (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 140–83; 208–14.
Nicholson, Scotland, 518–19; Macdougall, James III, 215–17.
Nicholson, Scotland, 549–55; Norman Macdougall, James IV (Edinburgh, 1989), pp 112–46; Pollard, North-Eastern England, 393–6; Dunlop, ‘Masked Comedian’.
Anthony Goodman and David Morgan, ‘The Yorkist Claim to the Throne of Castile’, Journal of Medieval History, 11 (1985), 61–9.
In contrast to Pius II in 1460–1, Pope Innocent VIII in 1485 looked to French support in Italian politics; and this at least partly explains his marked favour to Henry VII after Bosworth. See C. S. L. Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton, the Holy See, and the Accession of Henry VII’, EHR, 102 (1987), 1–30.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1995 C. S. L. Davies
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davies, C.S.L. (1995). The Wars of the Roses in European Context. In: Pollard, A.J. (eds) The Wars of the Roses. Problems in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24130-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24130-9_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-60166-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-24130-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)