HOUSE OF YORK 1461-1470 EDWARD IV 1470-1471 HENRY VI (HOUSE OF LANCASTER RESTORED) 1471-1483 EDWARD IV (RESTORED) 1483 EDWARD V (REIGNED FOR 75 DAYS) 1483-1485 RICHARD III
FACTS: 1485- BATTLE OF BOSWORTH FIELD Edward IV (House of York, White Rose)--1461-1483: During the whole of Edward IV's reign the war went on with varying success, but unvarying ferocity, until at last neither side would ask or give quarter. Some years after the accession of the new sovereign, the Earl of Warwick quarreled with him, thrust him from the throne, and restored Henry VI. But a few months later, at the battle of Barnet, near London, Warwick, who was "the last of the great barons," was killed, and Henry, who had been led back to the Tower of London again, died one of those "conveniently sudden deaths" which were then so common. The heroic Queen Margaret, however, would not give up the contest in behalf of her son's claim to the crown. But fate was against her. A few weeks after the battle of Barnet her army was utterly defeated at Tewkesbury (1471), her son Edward slain, and the Queen herself taken prisoner. She was eventually released on the payment of a large ransom, and returned to France, where she died broken-hearted in her native Anjou, prophesying that the contest would go on until the Red Rose, representing her Edward V's nominal reign of less than three months must be regarded simply as the time during which his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, perfected his plot for seizing the crown by the successive murders of Rivers, Grey, Hastings, and the two young Princes. Richard III (House of York, White Rose)--1483-1485: Richard used the preparations which had been made for the murdered Prince Edward's coronation for his own. He probably gained over an influential party by promises of financial reform. In their address to him at his accession, Parliament said, "Certainly we be determined rather to adventure and commit us to the peril of our lives...than to live in such thraldom and bondage as we have lived long time heretofore, oppressed and injured by extortions and new impositions, against the laws of God and man, and the liberty, old policy and laws of this realm, wherein every Englishman is inherited." The importance of Richard's reign is that it marks the close of the Wars of the Roses. Those thirty years of civil strife destroyed the predominating influence of the feudal barons. Henry Tudor now becomes the central figure, and will ascend the throne as Henry VII. | 
