- Story of past open to interpretation
- Carefully edited and deceitful version of events
- Not just a version of what happened – more a tapestry of different stories woven together by whoever was in power at the time
- Wars of the Roses was invented by the Tudors to justify their power
- Immortalised by Shakespeare – darkest chapter in English history
- Lancaster and York locked in battle for the crown of England – kings deposed, innocent children murdered, cousin fought against cousin
- 1485 Richard III slain and Henry Tudor took the throne
- Henry VII’s victory hailed the ending of the Medieval period
- Line between fact and fiction often gets blurred
- 1455 Stubbins in Lancashire scene of a legendary battle in the Wars of the Roses beginning with volleys of arrows but ran out of ammunition
- Lancastrians pelted the Yorkists with black pudding – local legend
- Yorkists pelted the Lancastrians with Yorkshire puddings – local legend
- Wars of the Roses in national memory
- History books – rivalry between Lancaster (red rose) and York (white rose) – bloody rivalry largely a creation of the Tudors
- 1461 bloodshed real in the middle of a snowstorm at Towton
- Lancastrians started out well but tide turned against them, chased by the Yorkists down the slope to a river and so a massacre began
- Blood stained the snow red, so location became known as the bloody meadow
- Shakespeare portrayed the battle as a bloody Armageddon – represented a country torn apart by war, nothing as bad in our history
- Somme 19,000 British soldiers killed on the first day, Towton 28,000 killed
- 20 years ago Bradford University revealed barbarity of fighting with remains of 43 men killed at Towton
- Head forced down into the spine, poleaxes – exceptional even for the Wars of the Roses
- Skirmishes, but real battles only around 8 in 30 years
- Not ravaged by all-out war – later myth
- Out of 32 years of wars, fighting on lasted a total of 13 weeks
Tudor Blogger 