chapter 5-17._

See, also, TOWTON, BARNET, and TEWKSBURY.

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The effects of the Wars of the Roses.

"It is astonishing to observe the rapidity with which it [the English nation] had settled down to order in the reign of Henry VII. after so many years of civil dissension. It would lead us to infer that those wars were the wars of a class, and not of the nation; and that the effects of them have been greatly exaggerated. With the single exception of Cade's rebellion, they had nothing in common with the revolutions of later or earlier times. They were not wars against classes, against forms of government, against the order or the institutions of the nation. It was the rivalry of two aristocratic factions struggling for superiority, neither of them hoping or desiring, whichever obtained the upper hand, to introduce momentous changes in the State or its administration. The main body of the people took little interest in the struggle; in the towns at least there was no intermission of employment. The war passed over the nation, ruffling the surface, toppling down high cliffs here and there, washing away ancient landmarks, attracting the imagination of the spectator by the mightiness of its waves, and the noise of its thunders; but the great body below the surface remained unmoved. No famines, no plagues, consequent on the intermittance of labour caused by civil war, are recorded; even the prices of land and provisions scarcely varied more than they have been known to do in times of profoundest peace. But the indirect and silent operation of these conflicts was much more remarkable. It reft into fragments the confederated ranks of a powerful territorial aristocracy, which had hitherto bid defiance to the King, however popular, however energetic. Henceforth the position of the Sovereign in the time of the Tudors, in relation to all classes of the people, became very different from what it had been; the royal supremacy was no longer a theory; but a fact. Another class had sprung up on the decay of the ancient nobility. The great towns had enjoyed uninterrupted tranquility, and even flourished, under the storm that was scourging the aristocracy and the rural districts. Their population had increased by numbers whom fear or the horrors of war had induced to find shelter behind stone walls. The diminution of agricultural labourers converted into soldiers by the folly of their lords had turned corn-lands into pasture, requiring less skill, less capital, and less labour."

_J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII., volume 1, chapter 2._

"Those who would estimate the condition of England aright should remember that the War of the Roses was only a repetition on a large scale of those private wars which distracted almost every county, and, indeed, by taking away all sense of security, disturbed almost every manor and every class of society during the same century. ... The lawless condition of English society in the 15th century resembled that of Ireland in as recent a date as the beginning of the 19th century. ... In both countries women were carried off, sometimes at night; they were first violated, then dragged to the altar in their night-dress and compelled to marry their captors. ... Children were seized and thrown into a dungeon until ransomed by their parents."

_W. Denton, England in the 15th Century,