Amid the chaos, Henry Tudor, a descendant of Edward III through Lady Margaret Beaufort and a veteran Lancastrian, returned from exile with an army and defeated and killed Richard at Bosworth Field in 1485.

[27] Henry IV based his right to depose Richard II and subsequent assumption of the throne upon this claim,[28] since it could be argued that the heir presumptive was in fact Edmund Mortimer, the great-grandson of Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

In France, much of the territory conquered by Edward III had been lost,[citation needed] leading Richard to negotiate a peace treaty known as Truce of Leulinghem with Charles VI in July 1389.

[citation needed] Richard decided to negotiate a de facto peace directly with Charles without seeking Parliament's approval and agreed to marry his six-year-old daughter, Isabella of Valois.

[58] Overseas, the French had rallied around Joan of Arc and had inflicted major defeats on the English at Orléans,[59] and Patay,[citation needed] reversing many of the gains made by Henry V and leading to the coronation of the Dauphin as Charles VII in Reims on 17 July 1429.

[citation needed] However, Bedford had died two years earlier in 1435, and Beaufort largely withdrew himself from public affairs sometime thereafter, in part because of the rise to prominence of his ally William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk as the dominant personality in the royal court.

Additionally, the blame of the unfavourable request to cede Maine and Anjou to the French was laid at Suffolk's feet, though he continued to insist he made no promises during negotiations to such a demand.

[93] York's allies were soon in ascendancy thanks to the temporarily stabilised situation, particularly the young Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, who, in his capacity as Captain of Calais, had conducted anti-piracy operations in the English Channel.

[99] To quell the growing discontent, Henry attempted to broker a public display of reconciliation between the two sides at St. Paul's Cathedral on 25 March 1458, however, no sooner had the procession dispersed than the plotting resumed.

[102] York instead summoned the Nevilles to rendezvous at his stronghold of Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches; Warwick departed Calais with a portion of the garrison there to join the main Yorkist forces.

[112] In March 1460, Warwick sailed to Ireland under the protection of the Gascon Lord of Duras[113] to concert plans with York, evading the royal fleet commanded by Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter,[114] before they returned to Calais.

[121] That September, York returned from Ireland, and, at the Parliament of October that year, he made a symbolic gesture of his intention to claim the English crown by placing his hand upon the throne,[122] an act which shocked the assembly.

[156] Edward sought to win the affections of his vanquished foes; he pardoned many of the Lancastrians he attainted following his victory at Towton after they submitted to his rule,[157] and permitted them to retain their property and titles.

They returned to London, where they assembled their troops, ostensibly to remove 'evil councillors' from the king's company and re-establish good governance and moved north to link with the Yorkshire rebels.

[194] It soon became clear to the rebels that neither Warwick nor Clarence enjoyed significant support, and unable to quell the growing disorder, Edward was released in September of that year and re-assumed his duties as king.

[282] Anxious to press his claim, with the backing of the Woodvilles, Henry set sail from France on 1 August with a force consisting of his English and Welsh exiles, along with a large contingent of French and Scottish troops,[283] landing near Dale, Pembrokeshire, in Wales.

[225] John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, who himself had a claim on the throne as a Plantagenet descendant and Richard III's nephew,[310] left the royal court on 19 March 1487 for Burgundy to capitalise on the rumours.

[315] Lincoln had no intention of remaining in Ireland, and with Simnel, 2,000 German mercenaries and an additional large host of Irish troops, landed on Piel Island in Lancashire and proceeded to march on York.

[358] Henry VIII's need for a male heir, impelled by the potential for a crisis of succession that dominated the Wars of the Roses, was the prime motivator influencing his decision to separate England from Rome.

[367][368][369] Military strategy in the medieval period was predominated by siege warfare; fortifications provided a powerful bastion of defence for a regional populace to shelter from large-scale pillaging that characterised groups such as the Vikings or Mongols,[370] and castles evolved as a central point of control and protection for local elites to exercise their authority over a given area.

[371] Pitched battles were generally rare compared to the Classical period due to a dramatic reduction in logistical capability,[372] and those that were fought tended to be decisive encounters that risked the deaths of the leaders and the potential destruction of the army as a fighting force, discouraging them from taking place.

[373] The Wars of the Roses were anomalous in this regard; nobles had a great deal to lose by the ruin of the countryside in a protracted conflict, so they tended to deliberately seek pitched battles to resolve their grievances quickly and decisively.

[375] The Wars of the Roses continued this trend; Edward IV was noted by contemporary Philippe de Commines as ordering his troops to spare common soldiers and kill the nobles.

[338] Ensuring the deaths of nobles in battle often led to one side wielding lopsided political control in the aftermath as a result, as occurred after Towton at which 42 captured knights were executed,[376] and Barnet, which irrevocably broke the influence of the powerful Neville family.

[383][384] English armies of the time tended to favour a mix between infantry equipped with bills supported by massed longbowmen, a combination they would continue to use well into the Tudor period.

[citation needed] Despite their frequent association with medieval warfare, swords were rare among the common soldiery and were instead favoured by men-at-arms or knights as a personal weapon indicating prestige and wealth.

[393] Early cannon were expensive to cast as they were often made from bronze,[394] as such few commanders were willing to risk their capture on the field; at Barnet in 1471, the Yorkist artillery withheld their fire so as not to betray their location.

[395] The invention of the blast furnace in Sweden in the mid-14th century increased and improved iron production,[396] which led to advances in plate armour to protect soldiers from the powerful crossbows, longbows, and the advent of gunpowder weaponry, such as the hand cannon and the arquebus, that began to emerge around the same time.

[401] Following the climax of the Hundred Years' War, large numbers of experienced unemployed soldiers returned to England seeking work in the growing forces of the local nobility.

[402] Edward III had developed a contractual system whereby the monarch entered into agreements named indentures with experienced captains who were obliged to provide an agreed-upon number of men, at established rates, for a given period.