The question that haunts the brutal decades of the Wars of the Roses (c. 1455–1487) is not a new one. It is a violent, obsessive echo of crises that had shaken the English polity for centuries: Who possesses the truest right to rule? Who holds the power to enforce that right? And by what alchemy can the raw fact of a bloodline be transformed into the sacred and recognised authority of a king? In the mid-fifteenth century, these questions, once debated in the courts and council chambers of the Plantagenets, exploded onto the battlefields of England. For a small county barony like Brattleby in Lincolnshire, seemingly remote from the high politics of Westminster, this was no abstract debate. The history of a place, of a family, of a tenure of land, does not cease when a title fades; it reverberates in these great crises of descent and loyalty. The name ‘Lancaster’ was no longer simply a ducal family; it was a pole of civil war, and any thread of allegiance, however small, that led towards it gained, by necessity, a terrible national significance.
The Original Sin: The Cracked Foundation of the Lancastrian Dynasty
To understand the calamitous reign of Henry VI, one must look back over half a century to the autumn of 1399. In that year, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, returned from exile, deposed his cousin King Richard II, and took the throne as Henry IV. This was the original sin from which the woes of the House of Lancaster flowed. While Richard II’s rule had become tyrannical and erratic, his claim to the throne was impeccable, derived from the eldest son of King Edward III. Bolingbroke’s was not. He was the son of John of Gaunt, Edward III’s third surviving son. To seize the crown, he bypassed the claim of the young Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who was descended from Edward III’s second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence.
Henry IV secured his new throne through a combination of military force, astute propaganda, and the acquiescence of a Parliament weary of Richard’s absolutism. He claimed the crown by ‘right of conquest,’ ‘right of descent,’ and by the ‘will of the people.’ Yet this pragmatic solution created a dangerous precedent: it demonstrated that an anointed king could be overthrown and that a superior claim of primogeniture could be set aside in favour of a claimant with sufficient power and political support. The Lancastrian foundation was, from its very inception, cracked.
Henry IV spent much of his reign suppressing rebellions—from the Welsh under Owain Glyndŵr to the powerful Percy family of Northumberland, former allies who felt betrayed. His son, the brilliant Henry V, papered over this fundamental insecurity with a string of dazzling military victories in France, culminating in the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which named him heir to the French throne. National pride and foreign conquest united the English nobility and silenced questions of legitimacy. But this glory was tragically short-lived. Henry V died in 1422, leaving his throne to his only child, an infant of nine months: King Henry VI.
A Long, Festering Peace: The Reign of Henry VI
The England into which the Wars of the Roses erupted was not a kingdom that fell suddenly into chaos. It was a slow, festering decline, presided over by a king wholly unsuited to his office. Henry VI grew to be a man of deep piety and gentle spirit, more fitted for a monastery than a throne. He abhorred violence and was easily swayed by his closest advisors, lacking the martial vigour of his father or the political ruthlessness of his grandfather.
During his long minority and subsequent personal rule, the hard-won gains in France were systematically lost. Military defeats, particularly the final loss of Normandy in 1450 and Gascony in 1453, were a source of national humiliation and economic distress for a nobility whose fortunes were often tied to continental lands and military careers. At home, the king's government became synonymous with corruption and mismanagement, dominated by a court faction led by figures like William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and later Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Justice became partisan, and royal patronage was channelled to a favoured few, alienating a broad swathe of the aristocracy.
The most potent of these alienated magnates was Richard, 3rd Duke of York. York possessed a formidable claim to the throne, one that was, by the strict laws of primogeniture, superior to the king's. Through his mother, Anne Mortimer, he was the direct heir of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward III's second son. Through his father, he was descended from Edmund of Langley, Edward III’s fourth son. He was the king’s cousin, the wealthiest man in the realm, and a respected soldier and administrator who had served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and in France.
York watched with growing frustration as the Somerset faction mismanaged the war, plundered the treasury, and excluded him from the king’s council. For years, he positioned himself not as a rival for the throne, but as the leader of a reform movement, demanding good governance and the removal of the king’s ‘evil counsellors.’ The commons, suffering under heavy taxation and the breakdown of local law and order, largely supported him. Yet to the queen, Margaret of Anjou, and her Lancastrian allies, York’s ambition and his dangerous bloodline made him the ultimate threat to her husband’s throne and, more importantly, the inheritance of her son, Prince Edward, born in 1453.
The Lincolnshire Web: Loyalty and Land in a Divided Kingdom
In the mid-fifteenth century, Lincolnshire was a landscape of competing loyalties, a microcosm of the kingdom’s divisions. The county was not a monolithic bloc for either Lancaster or York. Allegiance was a complex web woven from threads of lordship, kinship, personal rivalry, and economic interest. While its geographic distance from London might suggest isolation, the county was deeply connected to the heart of national power through its great landowners.
The single most dominant presence was the Duchy of Lancaster itself. As a vast estate held personally by the monarch, the Duchy commanded immense resources and loyalty throughout the county, with major landholdings and administrative centres like the Soke of Kirton-in-Lindsey and Bolingbroke Castle, the birthplace of Henry IV. For the tenants, reeves, and minor gentry living on Duchy lands—including those in and around the ancient Barony of Brattleby, which had its own complex tenurial history often intertwined with larger honours—loyalty to King Henry was not merely a political choice; it was a feudal and economic necessity.
This Lancastrian heartland was home to some of the dynasty’s most committed supporters. Chief among them was the Beaumont family. John, 1st Viscount Beaumont, was an archetype of the steadfast Lancastrian peer. He had served Henry VI his entire life, both in France and on the King’s Council. His power base at Folkingham Castle gave him significant clout in the south of the county. For Beaumont, the cause of Lancaster was the cause of legitimate, established authority against the perceived ambition of a dangerous upstart. His loyalty would ultimately cost him his life.
Another, more notorious, Lancastrian adherent was Sir William Tailboys of South Kyme. The Tailboys family were significant Lincolnshire landowners, and Sir William embodied the violent breakdown of law and order that characterised the era. He was a pugnacious and brutal enforcer of the Lancastrian faction’s will in the region. Court records from the 1440s are filled with accusations against him, ranging from intimidating juries and attacking royal officials to attempting to murder Ralph, Lord Cromwell, one of the most powerful men in England. Tailboys’ thuggery was not random violence; it was political, aimed at terrorising opponents and asserting the dominance of his patrons, the Dukes of Suffolk and Somerset. He was, in effect, the mailed fist of the court party in Lincolnshire.
Yet the county was not exclusively Lancastrian. The towering figure of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Treasurer of England, represented a different kind of power. From his magnificent, newly-built brick fortress at Tattershall Castle, Cromwell dominated the central part of the county. A veteran administrator who had served both Henry V and Henry VI, Cromwell was immensely wealthy and politically pragmatic. He was no friend of the Suffolk faction and had a long-running and violent feud with the Lancastrian partisan William Tailboys. While never an avowed Yorkist, his opposition to the Somerset regime and his emphasis on fiscal responsibility and good governance aligned him with York’s reformist agenda. His death in January 1456, just as the conflict was beginning, created a power vacuum in Lincolnshire that the rival factions would seek to fill.
The threads of loyalty that held the Barony of Brattleby were therefore tied to these greater magnates. The local lord of the manor, whether holding directly from the king or as a sub-tenant of a greater peer, had to navigate a treacherous political landscape. A summons to arms from Lord Beaumont on behalf of the King could not be ignored. Equally, pressure from a neighbouring Yorkist-leaning gentleman or fear of the depredations of a man like Tailboys were potent forces. For the ordinary husbandman tilling his fields near Brattleby, the abstract question of Yorkist versus Lancastrian translated into concrete anxieties: Will my lord be on the winning side? Will his lands be confiscated? Will I be conscripted to fight in a distant battle for a cause I barely understand?
The Storm Breaks: From St Albans to Wakefield
The simmering political crisis boiled over in 1453. While celebrating the final, crushing defeat of the English army in Gascony, King Henry VI received the news and suffered a complete mental collapse. He fell into a catatonic stupor, unable to speak, move, or recognise anyone, not even his newborn son. With the king incapacitated, government ground to a halt. After a protracted power struggle, Parliament had little choice but to appoint Richard of York as Protector and Defender of the Realm.
York’s first protectorate (1454–55) was marked by competent, responsible governance. He attempted to reform the royal finances and restore order. Crucially, he had his chief rival, the Duke of Somerset, arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Yorkist moment seemed to have arrived. However, on Christmas Day 1454, King Henry miraculously recovered his senses. His first act, under the powerful influence of Queen Margaret, was to undo everything York had accomplished. He released Somerset from the Tower and restored him to favour. York and his powerful allies, the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, were dismissed from the council and found themselves isolated and in mortal danger.
Convinced that Somerset and the Queen were plotting their destruction, York and the Nevilles took the fateful step of raising their armed retainers. They claimed they were acting to ‘free’ the king from his evil counsellors. The court party, escorting the king to a great council at Leicester (a Lancastrian stronghold), marched to meet them. On 22 May 1455, the two small armies confronted each other in the streets of St Albans.
The First Battle of St Albans was less a major battle than a brutal, targeted assassination. After a brief standoff, the Earl of Warwick’s men broke through the Lancastrian defences. The fighting was short and vicious. The key targets were eliminated: the Duke of Somerset was cornered and hacked to death in the stables of the Castle Inn, and the Percy Earl of Northumberland was also killed. King Henry himself was lightly wounded by an arrow in the neck and taken into ‘protective custody’ by the victorious Yorkists.
York was once again in control. He renewed his oath of loyalty to the bewildered King Henry and was re-appointed Protector of the Realm. Yet the blood spilled at St Albans had created an unbridgeable chasm. The sons of the men killed that day—the new Duke of Somerset and the new Earl of Northumberland—were now bound by the code of honour to seek vengeance. Queen Margaret, utterly untrusting of York, became the implacable leader of a regrouped and vengeful Lancastrian party.
The next four years were a period of ‘cold war,’ punctuated by failed attempts at reconciliation, like the farcical ‘Loveday’ procession of 1458, where rivals walked hand-in-hand to St Paul’s Cathedral in a public show of unity that convinced no one. By 1459, both sides were openly preparing for war. The conflict escalated dramatically. After a series of clashes, York and the Nevilles were defeated at Ludford Bridge and forced to flee the country, attainted as traitors by a Lancastrian-dominated Parliament. In 1460, they returned with a vengeance. The Earl of Warwick defeated a royal army at the Battle of Northampton, capturing King Henry VI once again. The staunchest of Lincolnshire’s Lancastrians, Viscount Beaumont, fell defending his king’s banner.
Emboldened, Richard of York finally made his ultimate move. In October 1460, he marched into Parliament, placed his hand on the empty throne, and formally laid claim to the Crown of England. The move shocked even his own supporters. After tense debate, a compromise was reached: the Act of Accord stipulated that Henry VI would remain king for life, but that York and his heirs would succeed him, disinheriting King Henry’s own son, Prince Edward.
This was a compromise Queen Margaret could never accept. Rallying a formidable army in the north, she defended her son’s birthright with ferocious determination. The Duke of York, massively underestimating her strength, marched north to confront her. On 30 December 1460, outside his castle at Sandal, near Wakefield, York’s small force was overwhelmed and annihilated by a much larger Lancastrian army. York himself was slain on the field. His seventeen-year-old son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, was captured and killed. The Earl of Salisbury was captured and executed the next day. In a final act of macabre mockery, the victorious Lancastrians placed a paper crown on the severed head of the Duke of York and displayed it over Micklegate Bar in the city of York.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Blood
The death of Richard of York did not end the conflict; it ensured its continuation with even greater bitterness. The question of who had the right to rule was now entirely subordinate to who had the strength to take and hold power. York's claim, based on bloodline, had been extinguished by the sword. But his cause and his superior genealogical right were immediately inherited by his eldest son, a formidable eighteen-year-old named Edward, Earl of March, who would, within three months, win the bloody Battle of Towton and be crowned King Edward IV.
For the people of Lincolnshire, these dramatic events were not distant news. The death of Lord Beaumont at Northampton meant the loss of a powerful regional protector, and his estates were now subject to forfeiture and redistribution by the victorious Yorkists. The violent career of Sir William Tailboys continued until he was eventually captured and executed after the Battle of Hexham in 1464, a stark reminder of the fate awaiting the losing side. The tenants on the vast Duchy of Lancaster estates found themselves holding land from a deposed king, their futures uncertain.
The Wars of the Roses were the final, bloody resolution of the ambiguity created in 1399. The crown of England, which Henry IV had seized by force and his son had sanctified with victory, was ultimately lost by his grandson, a man too gentle for the violent age he inhabited. The story of Brattleby and its surrounding county demonstrates that in a civil war, no one is merely a spectator. Loyalty to a lord, fealty to a duke, or tenancy under the Duchy of Lancaster were not abstract concepts. They were commitments that could lead to prosperity under a victorious regime or ruin, attainder, and death under a defeated one. The grand, agonizing question of who should wear the crown was answered, in the end, not by jurists or theologians, but by the sharp edge of a sword and the grim tally of the dead on a succession of bloody fields.
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Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459-1486. Edited by Nicholas Pronay and John Cox. Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986. (An invaluable, contemporary, and often well-informed narrative from a nearby Fenland abbey). English Historical Documents, 1327-1485. Edited by A. R. Myers. Routledge, 1996. (Contains translations of key documents, including the Act of Accord). The Paston Letters: A Selection in Modern Spelling. Edited by Norman Davis. Oxford University Press, 1983. (Provides unparalleled insight into the anxieties and allegiances of a gentry family during the period). Rolls of Parliament (Rotuli Parliamentorum). Records of the parliaments of Henry VI and Edward IV, detailing acts of attainder and settlement.
Secondary Sources:
Carpenter, Christine. The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c.1437-1509. Cambridge University Press, 1997. (A seminal analysis of the political and structural causes of the conflict). Gillingham, John. The Wars of the Roses: Peace and Conflict in Fifteenth-Century England. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981. (A classic and highly readable narrative history). Goodman, Anthony. The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452-97. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. (Excellent for understanding the military and social dimensions of the war). Griffiths, Ralph A. The Reign of King Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422-1461. University of California Press, 1981. (The definitive, exhaustive study of Henry VI’s reign and the causes of the war). Hicks, Michael. The Wars of the Roses. Yale University Press, 2010. (A modern, thematic overview of the conflict). Owen, A. E. B., ed. The Medieval Lindsey Marsh: Select Documents. The Lincoln Record Society, Vol. 85, 1996. (Provides a window into the local society and landholding of Lincolnshire during the later Middle Ages). Storey, R. L. The End of the House of Lancaster*. Barrie & Rockliff, 1966. (A classic study on the breakdown of law and order preceding the wars, with specific details on figures like William Tailboys).