The Wars of the Roses, 1455–1487: Every March, Landing and Battle on One Map

A War of Marches

The Wars of the Roses were not a war of fronts. For thirty years England was mostly at peace, broken by short, fast campaigns in which a few thousand men under a great lord marched for a week or two, met their enemy and dispersed. Loyalty followed lords and the person of the king, not borders: the Neville north was Yorkist from 1455 to 1469, Kent sided with whoever stood for Calais and against the court, and whole regions changed sides when one magnate did.

So this map tells the war through its armies. Each force is a stitched token that slides along its route between dated stops, with the road it took trailing behind it, from the First Battle of St Albans in May 1455 to Stoke Field in June 1487. Where the chronicles allow it, the marches are followed day by day; in 1471 even the hours are known. Behind the armies, the counties are coloured by the side whose affinity dominated them in each phase.

York Against the Court, 1455–1461

In May 1455 Richard, Duke of York, and the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick marched south down the Great North Road through Royston and Ware and met Henry VI's army in the streets of St Albans on 22 May. Somerset was killed and the king taken. Four years later the war returned: Salisbury fought his way from Middleham past Lord Audley at Blore Heath on 23 September 1459, but at Ludford Bridge on 12 October the Yorkist army melted away. York fled to Ireland, his son Edward of March and the Nevilles to Calais.

In June 1460 the earls landed at Sandwich, entered London on 2 July and captured Henry VI at Northampton on 10 July. York claimed the throne, but on 30 December he was killed outside Wakefield by a Lancastrian army gathered in the north. Margaret of Anjou's army then marched south, beat Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461, and was refused entry to London. Edward of March, who had beaten Jasper Tudor at Mortimer's Cross on 2 February, met Warwick in the Cotswolds, entered London on 26 February and was proclaimed king. On 29 March 1461, in a snowstorm at Towton, he destroyed the Lancastrian army.

Castles, Kingmaker and Readeption, 1461–1471

After Towton the war shrank to castles. Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh in Northumberland changed hands again and again until Montagu's victories at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in 1464; Harlech in Wales held out for Lancaster until 14 August 1468. Then Edward's own ally turned on him. Warwick the Kingmaker and Edward's brother George of Clarence backed Robin of Redesdale's rising, beat the royal army at Edgecote in July 1469 and held the king prisoner. After the Lincolnshire rebellion collapsed at Losecoat Field in March 1470, Warwick fled to France, made his peace with Margaret of Anjou, landed at Dartmouth in September and put Henry VI back on the throne. Edward escaped from Lynn to Holland.

The campaign of 1471 is the best documented of the war, and it is the heart of the map. Edward landed at Ravenspur on 14 March, passed York, slipped past Warwick at Coventry, rejoined Clarence on 3 April and won at Barnet on Easter Sunday, 14 April. That same day Margaret of Anjou landed at Weymouth. Her army marched through Exeter, Wells and Bath to Bristol, was refused at Gloucester at ten in the morning of 3 May, and reached Tewkesbury that afternoon, where Edward's army caught it the next day. Prince Edward of Lancaster died in the battle, the Bastard of Fauconberg's attack on London failed, and Henry VI died in the Tower on 21 May.

Richard III and Henry Tudor, 1483–1487

Edward IV died in April 1483. His brother Richard of Gloucester intercepted the young Edward V at Stony Stratford, took the throne in June, and crushed Buckingham's rebellion that October while Henry Tudor's fleet waited off the south coast. In August 1485 Henry tried again: he sailed from Harfleur, landed at Mill Bay in Pembrokeshire on 7 August, marched up the Welsh coast and across to Shrewsbury, Stafford and Lichfield, and met Richard near Market Bosworth on 22 August. Sir William Stanley's charge decided the battle and Richard was killed. The last Yorkist challenge came in 1487, when the Earl of Lincoln landed in Furness with German mercenaries and the pretender Lambert Simnel and was defeated at Stoke Field on 16 June.

How to Read the Map

Lancaster is red, York is slate blue, Warwick and Clarence's rebellion of 1469–70 is ochre, risings against the king (Lincolnshire 1470, Buckingham 1483) are orange, and the Tudor crown is moss green. Scotland is shown in grey-violet for context. Each commander has one token across all his campaigns, so you can follow Edward of March from Mortimer's Cross to Tewkesbury; its colour changes when he changes sides, as Warwick and Clarence did. Hover over a token or a route to see whose army it is. Small patches mark castles that held out against the side around them, and Berwick changes hands between England and Scotland.

The coloured counties are a reconstruction, not a record of who controlled what: in peaceful years the whole realm takes the reigning king's colour, and in war years the counties show where each side's lords held sway. Dates are Julian, as in the sources. Where a battle's site or date is disputed, the marker says so.

How the Map Was Made

The armies come from dated itineraries compiled for each campaign: about 165 forces with roughly 2,000 waypoints, each marked as documented, reconstructed, disputed or inferred. The best-documented marches come from the Arrivall of Edward IV, Warkworth's Chronicle and the Coventry Leet Book (via the Tewkesbury Battlefield Society's daily series), the Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire for 1470, Polydore Vergil for 1485 and the Herald's Memoir for 1486–87. Gregory's Chronicle, the Paston letters, the Milanese state papers, Scofield's Life and Reign of Edward IV and John Ashdown-Hill's itinerary of Edward IV fill in the rest. Between dated stops the routes follow Roman roads and the Great North Road. Battlefield locations follow Historic England's registered battlefields and the Battlefields Trust; county borders come from the Historic County Borders Project.

Chronological Timeline

• 22 May 1455 — First Battle of St Albans: York captures Henry VI
• 23 September 1459 — Battle of Blore Heath
• 12 October 1459 — Rout of Ludford Bridge; the Yorkist leaders flee to Ireland and Calais
• 10 July 1460 — Battle of Northampton: Henry VI captured again
• 30 December 1460 — Battle of Wakefield: Richard of York killed
• 2 February 1461 — Battle of Mortimer's Cross
• 17 February 1461 — Second Battle of St Albans
• 29 March 1461 — Battle of Towton: Edward IV secures the crown
• 25 April and 15 May 1464 — Hedgeley Moor and Hexham
• 14 August 1468 — Harlech surrenders
• 24 July 1469 — Battle of Edgecote: Warwick holds Edward prisoner
• 12 March 1470 — Battle of Losecoat Field
• October 1470 — Readeption of Henry VI; Edward flees to Holland
• 14 March 1471 — Edward lands at Ravenspur
• 14 April 1471 — Battle of Barnet: Warwick killed
• 4 May 1471 — Battle of Tewkesbury
• 30 September 1473 – 15 February 1474 — Oxford holds St Michael's Mount
• 24 August 1482 — Berwick recaptured from the Scots
• October–November 1483 — Buckingham's rebellion
• 7 August 1485 — Henry Tudor lands at Mill Bay
• 22 August 1485 — Battle of Bosworth: Richard III killed
• 16 June 1487 — Battle of Stoke Field