Suffolk bore the brunt of the upset over the losses in France (although they were largely due to Somerset's inability). Many of the nobles, including Richard of York who had been superseded in France by Somerset, also harbored personal resentments and grudges against Henry's ministers, for slights and lacks of preferment. Somerset and Suffolk, the king's favourites, were nearly universally loathed for their undue power and unwise wielding of the same. When fighting a common enemy for a century was no longer an option, it was perhaps just a matter of time until the great warriors began to fight each other.Īfter the leadership of King Henry V, "The Flower of Chivalry" and the "Mirror of all Christian Kings," the weak and placid Henry VI was a great disappointment. These, combined with career soldiers turned mercenaries after the French campaigns, meant that the peers could rouse large armies for themselves as easily, and in some cases more easily, than the king. Since the fall of feudalism, the " Livery and maintenance" system meant that the great peers of the kingdom could call upon minor lords in their dominions to come fight on their side, under one banner. The French Wars also had put a strain on the royal treasury. Furthermore, the death toll of the plague had caused a great shift in the social order previously minor landholders grew wealthy and upwardly mobile, taking over lands whose owners had all died.
This caused severe inflation in the prices of labor and agricultural products, and, in years of crop failures, periods of grave famine. The Black Plague, which had first arrived in England in 1348 and made several returns, had caused enormous losses in population, which in turn caused a dearth of labor force to tend the crops. 1Ģ) FINANCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOCIETAL CHANGES The rebels in 1450 harps on the losses in France. Furthermore, to the landowners who lost their French holdings, the financial loss was considerable.Įvery version of the complaints put forward by Nearly a hundred years and five generations' worth of battling and occupying France, and finally losing was a cause of great upset to the populace. The English had just suffered their final defeat in the Hundred Years' War: Maine was surrendered in 1448, Normandy was lost in 1450, and finally Bordeaux in 1453. Causes of the Wars of the Roses: An OverviewĬAUSES OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES: An Overviewġ) EFFECTS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (THE FRENCH WARS)
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