First Blood at St Albans: The Wars of Roses Begin

Blood ran through the streets of an English market town, and three decades of civil war began. On May 22, 1455, Richard, Duke of York, marched an army to St Albans and attacked King Henry VI's forces in the narrow lanes of the town center, launching the conflict that history would name the Wars of the Roses. The roots were dynastic. Henry VI, a Lancastrian king who suffered bouts of mental incapacity, had alienated powerful nobles through weak governance and the influence of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and her allies. Richard of York, with a strong claim to the throne through descent from Edward III, had served as Protector during Henry's episodes of insanity but was pushed aside once the king recovered. The battle lasted barely an hour. York's forces, numbering about 3,000, found the town barricaded and attacked through back gardens and side streets. The fighting was concentrated and vicious. Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was killed outside the Castle Inn. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Clifford also fell. King Henry himself was wounded by an arrow to the neck and captured. York's victory was complete but politically awkward. He had taken up arms against a crowned and anointed king, an act that demanded justification far beyond personal grievance. The immediate result was a brief Yorkist ascendancy, but the deeper consequence was the normalization of armed conflict between England's greatest noble families. Over the next thirty years, the crown would change hands five times, thousands of English nobles and soldiers would die, and the conflict would only end when Henry Tudor destroyed Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485, founding the dynasty that produced Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.