How far was English society and the economy affected by the Wars of the Roses, 1450-71?

Question 1

Introduction:

Answer 1

• There were social and economic changes during the period. Some were caused by the wars; others were on-going anyway - and sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two
• Most affected were the nobility

Question 2

Recruitment and participation

Answer 2

• Numbers and losses: always grossly over-inflated (Gregory claims 200,000 Yorkists fought against even more Lancastrians at Towton, when the military aged male population in the whole country was probably 600,000!). There may have been as many as 50,000 at Towton, and perhaps 9,000 died
• Estimates for actual fighting vary between 12 weeks to 2 years in the 32 year period 1455-1487. Many historians agree with that England was peaceful compared to much of the rest of Europe
• Tactics - the longbow rendered cavalry charges impractical and so knights tended to fight on foot. Poleaxes and maces were designed to crush armour in a way that swords could not. Standard infantry were usually short-term and local. Tactical direction was near impossible once the fighting started, not least because nobles led from the front and could not coordinate meaningfully. Battles were usually short, as fighting in armour was so exhausting. The loss of a leader could lead to the loss of that unit. Gentry did not always follow their lords, especially if the lord was changing sides - there was often going to be the need for some persuasion in recruitment despite feudal obligations
• The reigns of Edward I, II, III saw militarisation of English society to gear up for war with Scotland and France, with the growth of armies and the knock-on effects in terms of adapting taxation and training to be able to put these large armies in the field
• By the time of the Wars of the Roses, soldiers were recruited via commissions of array sent to special commissioners in the shires (usually the leading nobleman) and also through the recruitment of nobles’ retained and indentured followers
• Nobles: most lords remained loyal to Henry until Towton. Edward created many peers himself, who were naturally loyal to him in the next round of fighting; but this in itself contributed to the alienation of older families and therefore their willingness to support Warwick in 69-71

Question 3

Nobility

Answer 3

• Main impact was regarding ownership of lands and titles, with Edward creating peerages during his first reign and with obvious transfers from Lancastrian to Yorkist supporters. Hence rise of Woodvilles, Stanleys, Herberts etc.
• A good proportion of the political nation were willing to risk their lives and livelihoods in the civil wars. This was particularly apparent among the nobility e.g. Ludford Bridge 1459: 6 Yorkist lords, 21 Lancastrians; St Albans 1461: 12 Yorkist lords, 15-17 Lancastrian; Towton 1461: 9 Yorkist lords, 21 Lancastrian
• The battles of 1459-61 undoubtedly took a savage toll on the nobility, with over a quarter of the parliamentary peerage being wiped out in less than two years (Grummitt)
• New nobles (previously merely gentry) were not popular with the more established families
• The Yorkist regime never achieved the level of widespread noble support that it needed to survive
• Edward sought to restore law and order during his first reign by banning livery and maintenance, thus curtailing the nobility’s ability to raise private armies
• Pickering argues the nobility was the most affected part of society. The number of peers had changed little, but the personalities had, and family fortunes were made and lost in short order
• Even then, many old families remained, and indeed even in times of peace families tended to be displaced or die out every three or four generations. Noble families were more likely to die out through lack of male heirs than through the impacts of the wars
• Grummitt suggests that the horror of the 1459-61 battles may explain why aristocracy were less willing to turn out to fight in the later phases of the wars - only 4 Warwick nobles and 7 Edward IV nobles turned out in 1469-70, and only 18 peers in total fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury, and several of those had no choice as they were basically fighting for survival rather than support of a leader (e.g. Warwick, Somerset, Hastings, Gloucester)
• The trend continued - by Bosworth only 6 peers definitely turned out (with another 6 possibles) for Richard and only 3 or 4 for Henry. More were there for Stoke (6 senior peers and 4-9 more junior barons for the king: 3 for the rebels) but again the vast majority of the nobility was absent from the battle
• Nobles were more willing to turn out for foreign wars rather than the domestic battles

Question 4

Gentry

Answer 4

• Sumptuary Law 1463 clarified social distinctions (curbed the spending if people in certain social groups)
• The gentry comprised (in descending order of rank): knights; esquires; gentlemen- c. 500, 800, 5000 respectively. Status was by virtue of land ownership (not money per se)
• Whereas nobles were invited to parliament by personal invitation of the king (and this privelige was inherited), the gentry were not (elected by landowners to sit in the Commons)
• Knights were created by royal prerogative, but this was not inherited. That said, the tradition of awarding knighthoods because of military valour was starting to be replaced by awarding the title by virtue of land ownership - therefore sons often became knights via inheriting land (but the title still had to be granted, it was not inherited in its own right)
• Gentry relied on noble patrons, who could provide opportunities for sons. Often gentry would be ‘retained’ for a fee by a lord, in return for services
• The Woodville experience of elevation to the nobility was rare
• Money could not usually buy a place in the gentry - e.g. rich merchants from towns could rarely find opportunities to buy rural land as demand grew
• Hard to be precise, but the attainders against Lancastrians in 1461 seem to suggest that at least 32 men who sat in the Commons during Henry’s reign had fought for him at Towton, and 15 fought there for Edward. 42 Lancastrian gentry were executed after Towton (Grummitt)
• Grummitt suggests that the horror of the 1459-61 battles may explain why gentry were less willing to turn out to fight in the later phases of the wars
• Evidence is really only anecdotal but seems to suggest a decline in the number of gentry willing to fight as the Wars of the Roses progressed. Even powerful lords lacked the ability to actually compel the gentry to fight (Grummitt)
• Gentry tended to continue to prosper during the war if they were not personally involved

Question 5

Common people

Answer 5

• How much were the common people affected? ‘Unfortunately, the nature of the evidence precludes with any definitive answer to this question’ (Grummitt)
• ‘In 1471 it is clear that the commissions of array succeed in putting several thousand men into the field’ (Grummitt) e.g. on Edward’s return he faced several thousand locally-raised troops
• Numbers of soldiers appearing in the field dwindled between 1461-85
• The Towton mass grave of 37 fighters shows them to have been from a very broad cross-section of society. That they were mostly brutally killed, probably executed, refutes the claim by Commynnes and by Edward IV himself that commoners were generally spared (Grummitt) and similar results have been seen at Hexham were relatively humble supporters were executed alongside the aristocracy
• Huge social changes, but principally because of the lingering legacy of the Black Death, rather than war
• Plague returned to England on average every 4-10 years up to 1480. Population declined in 14th century, continued to do so during the 15th (bottoming out at about 2 million in 1450) and did not recover to pre-Black Death levels until the 17th century)
• Peasants were also hit hard by sweating sickness (bad flu)
• Lower populations and subsequent labour shortage meant peasants could command wages and better conditions and cheaper rents, leading to the erosion of traditional feudalism. Many moved to towns to become artisans (workers in skilled trade, especially making things by hand)
• Men were pressed into service at points, and their land and food supplies would be raided if they were in the line of march. But the fragmented nature of the fighting meant that generally the impact on the rural poor as a whole was minimal
• Beyond battle deaths, the common people were affected by law and order - the wars were often used as a cover for pursuing personal vendettas in the shires (Grummitt) - the opening address of the 1472 Parliament by the Bishop of Rochester pointed out that although Henry VI was now dead, yet ‘many a great sore, many a perilous wounde’ remained and many ‘riotous people’ were still causing trouble, with examples on record of murder and local disputes flaring up (Talbot/Berkeley feud in Gloucestershire) - these were seen as symptomatic of the results of unnatural civil strife

Question 6

Economy and Finance

Answer 6

• Main industries were cloth, mining, salt, fishing, metallurgy and building. Little technological advance from previous centuries
• Much wool exported raw to the more sophisticated weavers across the Channel
• General increase in trade that century saw the growth of a merchant class, with specific trade companies and guilds for each commodity
• Much trade was via the Hanseatic League (organisation of German merchants)
• The late 1440s and early 50s saw the virtual cessation (stopping) of trade with Gascony
• The Hanseatic League responded to state-sponsored piracy in 1449 by capturing English possessions abroad and banning the eastward sale of English cloth
• English merchants were often alienated from the English government by favourable trade deals with foreigners (Italians, Hanse) which spared them customs duties and gave them privileged status (especially under Henry)
• Trade increased under Edward and Louis (who was willing to trade despite political differences)
• Disputes with the Hanse continued under Edward but were curtailed when he was deposed in 1470, giving the Hanse the advantage
• Edward then came to a deal with the League, and in return for 14 of their ships to help him return to England in 1471, he restored many of their trade privileges
• Pickering points out the surprising fact that industry and trade grew during the wars, on the whole
• “Despite bouts of civil war, the late fifteenth-century economy was relatively stable”
• Towns and merchants were generally ‘remarkably unscathed’ and endeavoured to remain neutral. Few towns were directly affected by war
• Taxes were by their very nature extraordinary, but the amount of tax paid increased during the times of fighting to fund armies, be they national parliamentary grants, or local taxes to support the local troop levies (e.g. in 1460 John Paston describes how villages in Norfolk raised the money to pay for 400 fighting men - Grummitt)
• Compared to the reigns of Edwards I-III, more and more government money was being raised by domestic loans (e.g. from wool merchants, or the City of London) rather than those from foreign banks (Grummitt)
• Towns may have been particularly worse hit by taxation as a result of the wars (Grummitt)

Question 7

Towns

Answer 7

• England was relatively non-urbanised. By far the largest city was London, with 40,000 residents, others didn’t come close (Norwich, York, Bristol at about 5,000). Most people lived within a day’s journey of a town of 2-3,000 (Grummitt)
• This period saw a decline in size and wealth of nearly all urban centres BUT it is hard to argue that this was a direct result of the wars. Urban governing bodies (e.g. groups of aldermen) often tried to keep out of the conflicts (Grummitt) but were always called on to provide men for war, and sometimes had to end up supporting whichever side was winning - Grummitt gives the example of Coventry which provided troops in 1471 who served Warwick at Barnet but then quickly supported Edward shortly after
• As well as losing lives to battles, towns were concerned to protect their own infrastructure and property, e.g. Canterbury mounted a watch during 1450 (Grummitt) and many others built walls, bought cannons etc.
• Townspeople may have been particularly worse hit by taxation as a result of the wars, and local power-brokers may have used the wars as a way of expanding their powers to do so

Question 8

Religion and culture

Answer 8

• The strength and stability of the church in England is historically controversial! Therefore hard to judge changes. General opinion is that the church was flourishing
• People generally paid their tithes. Church land in each parish provided a decent income
• The church benefitted from patronage, especially from Henry VI. During fighting, the lavish patronage was curtailed on big projects. But local parishes continued to build and upgrade
• During this period, the church faced challenges from humanists, who began to challenge many of the preconceptions
• The architecture of nobles and gentry was often decorative rather than defensive, suggesting that an attitude of ‘total war’ and the need for defence did not prevail
• Art and music tended to be stifled by the civil wars, but generally the impacts of the fighting were mild and certainly nowhere as severe as seen on the continent

Question 9

Conclusion

Answer 9

• The traditional view of a country devastated by war no longer holds sway
• Philippe de Commynes (councillor to Louis XI) ‘England enjoyed this peculiar mercy above all other kingdoms, that neither the country not the people, nor the houses were wasted, destroyed or demolished; but the calamities and misfortunes of the war fell only upon the soldiers, and especially on the nobility’
• Thus the main impact was on the nobility - other aspects of English society were affected if in the direct path of war, but otherwise the life of the gentry and below, and the economy and cultural life of England changed only within the context of longer term developments

‘There seems a general consensus among recent historians that the Wars of the Roses had little immediate and even less long-lasting impact on English society. The Tudor portrait of gloom and doom (which saw 100,000 Englishmen slaughtered, the nobility decimated, and the nation impoverished) has been replaced by one in which gentry culture flourished and the domestic economy grew while fighting was limited in both duration and intensity’ (Grummitt) HOWEVER Grummitt himself believes that the ‘impact of the Wars of the Roses upon all levels of English society has been underestimated by most recent historians’