I’d heard about the Wars of the Roses, listened to a few lectures that outlined the major events, and read the fictional “Sunne in Splendour,” but this was the first serious book I’d read about them. As a neophyte to the subject, I found it informative, readable, and quite interesting.
Hicks starts out by laying down the various factors that set the stage for conflict—economic distress, popular discontent, foreign wars, and one very large ego. He also discusses relevant ideologies concerning the monarchy and inheritance. He paints a sympathetic portrait of Henry VI as a man who was quite capable of ruling, but preferred to leave certain aspects of governance to others. When he did step in and make decisions, he sometimes had little or no choice. Richard of York, in contrast, is portrayed as aggressive, arrogant, and entitled.
Where the book gets really interesting is in the discussion of the three wars and the years separating them. Hicks does a superb job of relating the issues, events, and personalities that kept the conflict going for so long. He argues that the Wars of the Roses did NOT end with the victory of Henry Tudor in 1485, but extended beyond Bosworth perhaps as far as the reign of Henry VIII, when the factors that had given rise to them in the first place finally disappeared. Hicks presents his case well and I look forward to comparing his views with other historians’.
My quibbles are few and minor: Professor Hicks refers often to “bastard feudalism” without ever defining the term. His phrasing at times is confusing, for example, stating that the royal family (Lancasters) escaped capture when he means everyone but Henry VI, or writing that every king was descended from William the Conqueror and all from Henry II without making clear why he is making this distinction. He leaves unspecified some details such as how Edward IV sought to wrest his Crown from Warwick when Edward was being controlled by him, or what the precise allegations against Edward and the Wydvilles were.
But these are drops in a vast ocean of fascinating scholarship. In this book, Professor Hicks makes this tumultuous and sometimes confusing period of English history comprehensible to the amateur reader. I highly recommend this volume.
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Top reviews from other countries
Daniel Garcia
Good Exposition but fails to Explain
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Here is the overall “war of the roses”
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