The Wars of the Roses begin at the First Battle of St Albans
On this day · 22 May 1455
In barely an hour of street fighting, a feud between two royal cousins erupted into England's longest dynastic civil war.
On 22 May 1455, England’s simmering court rivalry finally drew blood in the streets of St Albans, a market town some 20 miles north of London. Richard, Duke of York, backed by the powerful Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, confronted a royal force escorting King Henry VI and his chief minister, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.
This was no sweeping field battle. When negotiations failed, Warwick’s men burst through gardens and alleys into the town centre, catching the Lancastrians unprepared. The clash lasted barely an hour and cost only a few hundred lives, yet it was politically decisive: Somerset was killed, and Henry VI, lightly wounded by an arrow, was taken into York’s custody.
A skirmish of half an hour reshaped a kingdom: the king became a prisoner of his own subject.
With the king captured, York was soon reappointed Lord Protector. Historians traditionally treat St Albans as the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, the 30-year struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York that ended only with the rise of the Tudors in 1485.
Sources & references
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