House of York

• 1. The White Rose

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  A white rose marked the House of York, and a red rose marked its great rival, the House of Lancaster. Both were cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet, meaning younger family lines that had grown apart from the main trunk. In the second half of the 15th century they fought over the English crown. The struggle took the name Wars of the Roses because each house carried its flower in its coat of arms.

  Three men from York wore the crown in those decades: Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III. How did a younger branch come to claim the throne at all? Which of the two houses had the better right, and by what measure? And what became of the family once the fighting stopped?

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• 2. Two Lines to the Crown

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  Edmund of Langley was born at Kings Langley on the 5th of June 1341. He was the fourth surviving legitimate son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault. He became earl of Cambridge in 1362 and the first duke of York in 1385.

  His first wife was Isabella of Castile, daughter of Peter of Castile and María de Padilla. Isabella's sister Constance became the second wife of Edmund's older brother, John of Gaunt. The marriage gave Edmund two sons: Edward, later the 2nd duke of York, and the younger Richard of Conisburgh.

  Edmund's second wife, Joan Holland, gave him no children, yet her family mattered enormously. Joan's sister Alianore Holland was the mother of Anne Mortimer, a great-great-granddaughter of Edward III. That descent ran through Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, Edward III's second surviving son and the elder brother of John of Gaunt. Richard of Conisburgh married Anne Mortimer, and they had two children, Isabel of Cambridge and Richard of York. Anne's lineage supplied the Yorkists with their main claim to the throne.

  Edmund died in 1402, aged 61, and his son Edward inherited the dukedom. Edward had no children and was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Earlier that same year his brother Richard had been executed for treason. Richard had joined the Southampton Plot, a scheme to depose Henry V in favour of Edmund Mortimer, Richard's own brother-in-law. The dukedom therefore passed to Richard's son, Richard of York, who was born on the 21st of September 1411.

  This Richard could trace his descent from Edward III through both his father and his mother. If the Lancastrian line failed, that gave him a significant claim. Which house had the stronger right depended on the rule applied. Cognatic primogeniture, which allows inheritance through female lines, favoured York. Agnatic primogeniture, which follows male lines only, favoured Lancaster.

  In 1448 Richard became the first of the family to take Plantagenet as a surname, underlining his claim. He also inherited the March and Ulster titles. These made him the wealthiest and most powerful noble in England, second only to the king. His wife, Cecily Neville, was a granddaughter of John of Gaunt, and together they would have thirteen or possibly fifteen children.

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• 3. Cecily's Children

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  Anne of York, born in 1439, lived until 1476, and her bloodline helped identify a king. When the remains of Richard III were found in 2012, investigators used mitochondrial DNA from a descendant of her second daughter, Anne St Leger, Baroness de Ros.

  Five of Richard and Cecily's children are recorded as dying in childhood: Henry, William, John, Thomas and Ursula. Henry was born in 1441, William in 1447, John in 1448 and Ursula in 1455. Thomas was born in 1450 or 1451.

  Elizabeth, born in 1444, married John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk. She lived until 1503 and became the mother of several claimants to the throne.

  In her will, Cecily named Katherine and Humphrey as her children. Historians note that they may instead have been her grandchildren through the de la Pole marriage.

  Margaret, born in 1446, married Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and died in 1503, the same year as her sister Elizabeth. Her marriage tied the family to Burgundy, a connection that would resurface years later.

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• 4. Protector Turned Claimant

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  During Henry VI's period of incapacity in 1453-54, Richard served as protector of the realm. Yet he had long been shut out of government. The weak king's advisers kept him away, chiefly John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, and the queen consort, Margaret of Anjou. When the king recovered, Somerset's party reversed Richard's reforms.

  The First Battle of St Albans opened the Wars of the Roses soon afterwards. At first Richard wanted only to remove his Lancastrian opponents from influence over the king. Not until October 1460 did he claim the throne for the House of York.

  That year the Yorkists captured the king at the Battle of Northampton, but the victory was short-lived. On the 30th of December 1460, Richard and his second son, Edmund, were killed at the Battle of Wakefield. His claim passed to his son Edward, who was already showing great promise as a leader of men.

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• 5. Edward IV's Turbulent Reign

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  Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, nicknamed The Kingmaker, backed Edward through a succession of victories over the Lancastrians. While Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou campaigned in the north, Warwick gained control of London. There he had Edward declared king in 1461, and Edward's title of Duke of York merged with the crown. The same year, a decisive victory at the Battle of Towton virtually wiped out the Lancastrian army.

  Edward was born at Rouen in 1442. On the 1st of May 1464 he married Elizabeth Woodville at Grafton Regis, and they had ten children.

  Peace did not follow his victory. Lancastrian plots and uprisings in favour of Henry VI marred the early reign. Then Warwick himself changed sides. He joined Margaret of Anjou and the king's jealous brother George, Duke of Clarence, and together they briefly restored Henry in 1470-71.

  Edward regained his throne. Henry VI died in the Tower of London in 1471, which brought the House of Lancaster to an end.

  Clarence kept causing trouble, and in 1478 he was executed in the Tower of London. Popular tradition holds that he was drowned in a butt of malmsey wine.

  Edward IV died at Westminster on the 9th of April 1483, aged 40.

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• 6. The Princes in the Tower

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  His heir, Edward V, was twelve years old and had been born at Westminster on the 2nd of November 1470. The boy's reign lasted only from the 9th of April to the 25th of June 1483. Edward IV's younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was appointed Protector. The young king and his brother Richard were then lodged in the Tower of London.

  What happened to the two boys remains a mystery. Nobody knows whether they were killed, or who might have killed them.

  Parliament issued a document called Titulus Regius, which declared the boys illegitimate. Its reasoning was that Edward IV's marriage had been invalid. That made Richard of Gloucester the heir to the throne. He took the crown on the 26th of June 1483 and was crowned Richard III in July. His reign would last just over two years.

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• 7. Bosworth Field

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  Richard III was born at Fotheringhay Castle on the 2nd of October 1452. He married Anne Neville at Westminster Abbey on the 12th of July 1472, and they had one son.

  By 1485 his hold on the throne was uncertain. The Lancastrian claimants were now the royal houses of Portugal and Castile, through the two legitimate daughters of the Duke of Lancaster, who had married into them. Yet a rival appeared closer to home. Henry Tudor, a descendant of the Beauforts, a legitimized branch of the House of Lancaster, put forward his own claim. Some loyalists of Edward IV were also opposed to Richard, which divided his Yorkist power base. A coup attempt failed in late 1483.

  On the 22nd of August 1485, Richard met Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Some of his important supporters switched sides or withheld their retainers from the field. Richard was killed, aged 32. He was the last Plantagenet king and the last English king to die in battle.

  Henry Tudor declared himself king. He took Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV, as his wife, claiming to have united the surviving houses of York and Lancaster. As Henry VII he founded the Tudor dynasty, which reigned until 1603.

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• 8. The Last Pretenders

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  When Henry VII seized the throne, eighteen Plantagenet descendants might today be thought to have a stronger hereditary claim. By 1510 the birth of sixteen Yorkist children had raised that number. Henry's marriage to Elizabeth of York did make their children his cognatic heirs.

  Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, Edward IV's sister, kept trying to restore a Yorkist line. So did the de la Pole family, the children of Edward's other sister Elizabeth.

  Margaret's nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick, was the son of her brother George. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1487 Margaret financed a rebellion led by Lambert Simnel, who pretended to be Warwick, or "Edward VI". John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, joined the revolt. He was killed when the uprising was suppressed at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487.

  Warwick was later implicated in further failed invasions that Margaret supported. These were led by Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Edward IV's son Richard of Shrewsbury. Warwick was executed on the 28th of November 1499. The houses of Plantagenet and York became extinct in the legitimate male line, and no heir remained to carry the white rose.

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