Did the Houses of Lancaster and York continue to exist after the Battle of Bosworth Field put Henry Tudor on the throne? The Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 seems to have put Lancaster out of the running and then Bosworth put paid to the Yorkists in 1485. Did Henry VII destroy the houses after taking power, did they die out naturally, or did the various battles of the Wars of the Roses extinguish the dynasties?
Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, thus uniting the two houses into the House of Tudor. Yorkists accepted the union.
Oooh, that’s right! I should have remembered the source of the Tudor Rose.
Both Lancaster and York were branches of the Plantagenet family, and all male Plantagenets bearing that name were killed in the war.
The House of Lancaster had been nearly wiped out (otherwise the Lancastrian Henry Tudor would never have become King Henry VII - his claim was tenuous in the extreme but he was pretty much all they had left). He married Princess Elizabeth of York, to unite what was left of the houses. Their children, the Tudors, were therefore both Lancastrian and Yorkist, though some Yorkists continued to fight during Henry VII’s reign since he was Lancastrian.
Remember that in addition to being lineages within the Plantagenet line, “Lancastrian” and “Yorkist” were also factions on the British political scene. The ‘head of the Yorkists’ in this sense might, at a given time, have been Warwick, of the Lancastrians Somerset At any given time it would be two factions, and if one didn’t have a leader, there was a power vacuum that needed filling.
George of Clarence’s children survived Bosworth, one of them even outliving Henry VII to be executed by Henry VIII as an elderly lady.
There are still cricket teams from Lancashire and Yorkshire, if that helps…
Though that rivalry started long after the Wars of the Roses.
And there’s still a Duke of Lancaster and a Duke of York. (HM the Queen is the Duke of Lancaster).
The term ‘Wars of the Roses’ also started long after the Wars of the Roses.
It was coined by Walter Scott in his novel Anne of Geierstein (1829).
There was no shortage of Yorkist relatives of Edward IV still around. Polycarp has already mentioned the children of George, Duke of Clarence. Elizabeth of York also had four younger surviving sisters. Then there was Edward’s two surviving sisters, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, and Elizabeth de la Pole. The de la Pole sons, in particular, proved to be a recurring problem for the Tudors. The potential threat to Henry VII was always real and at times an actual one.
One of the great strengths of David Starkey’s new Henry: Virtuous Prince is that he shows just how crucial a factor in English politics these Yorkist family connections remained throughout Henry VII’s reign. Part of his argument is that, as a mummy’s boy, the young Henry VIII was at least as close to the Yorkist side of his family.
Just a minute…Didn’t Blackadder find the crown or summink?.
Or am I thinking of a different battle?
Sort of. The true history (suppressed by the Tudors) was the Richard IV took over after Richard III’s death at Bosworth Field. Blackadder did become king (briefly*) when Richard IV died, but Henry Tudor soon took over.
*Very briefly.
Yeah, but he makes up for the briefness of his reign by becoming ruler of the galaxy later* on.
*Much later.
Did Henry VII and Elizabeth of York genuinely love each other, either in the beginning or after awhile, or was it purely a marriage of political and dynastic convenience? Do we even know today?
It was a political marriage, but Henry seems to have genuinely fallen in love with Elizabeth after a while. Certainly he was devastated by her death and despite being notoriously miserly he spared no expense on her funeral, which was the most lavish royal funeral ever held up until then. I don’t know whether Elizabeth felt the same way - Henry wasn’t much of a looker. (But he was king, and some women find powerful men attractive.)
The above is more likely the case than not, but the evidence is a bit scanty. It’s not quite certain he was devastated by her death, though quite possible - all we know for sure is that he demanded privacy after she passed. To quote:
*Little precision can be given to any estimate of Henry’s relation to the queen, for lack of appropriate material.
Very few evidences survive of displays of affection by the couple, but it is not be expected that there would be.*
From Henry VII by S. B. Chrimes (1972, 1999 Yale University Press ).
What is certain is that they seemed to get along well enough in public, Henry is not known to have kept mistresses, she gave birth to eight children ( most didn’t survive long ), they regularly exchanged gifts and all in all seemed to give the impression of a happy marriage. As an older couple there is one recounting ( if accepted as genuine ) of a public moment of deep shared grief at the passing of their eldest son, where they mutually comforted each other.
So whether they were ever really in love in a romantic sense is hard to say, but as royal marriages go it seems to have been a pretty successful one.
OK, thanks. I’d wondered.
Yes, I know, make the zombie jokes…
I do wonder who it was who made the Henry , Elizabeth match? It was a maaterstroke , yet no one on the non Glosceter Yokist side seemed to be much of a brain to think of itRivers was dead, Dorset, though devoted to his mother half sisters, was a man of little ability
I would have thought it was Henry’s idea. He proved yo be pretty canny overall, and he knew his claim to the throne was paper-thin.
Henry announced his intention to marry Elizabeth in December 1483, over a year before he defeated Richard (August 1585). It was a clear political ploy to give the Yorkists a reason to rally behind him. Technically, Henry wasn’t even the Lancastrian claimant (which at the time was King Joao II of Portugal, though Joao wasn’t interested in the claim).
And the Duke of York is her son, Prince Andrew.
I guess the title is not really hereditary any more. It is in the gift of the monarch, and traditionally give to the monarch’s second son. Still, this emphasizes how, ever since the Tudors, the theory (or myth, or whatever) has been that the houses of York and Lancaster have been combined into the current Royal line.