The Wars of the Roses: Peace and Conflict in Fifteenth-Century England

The Wars of the Roses have traditionally been seen as the last dying convulsion of the Middle Ages, a marker between the medieval and the modern, and above all as a period of violence, horror, and civil disorder. John Gillingham's new book shows that this is a spurious view of the period. His authoritative analysis of fifteenth-century warfare proves that the actual battles of the wars involved far fewer men than has been assumed, and that, apart form Northumbria and the Scottish border, England was a society organized for peace.

The arts of peace flourished in the fifteenth century, which saw the beginning of printing in England, the rise of literacy and growing interest in vernacular architecture. The wars which sporadically interrupted that peace were fought in a manner calculated to bring them to a swift conclusion. The author shatters the Shakespearian myth of perpetual bloody conflict and shows that the wars had remarkably little effect on the social and religious life of the country or on the structure of politics.

John Gilingham is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the London School of Economics. He is the author of numerous books and articles on British, French and German History.