The Battle of Wakefield took place at Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, on 30 December 1460. It was one of the major battles of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were a Lancastrian army, loyal to the captive King Henry VI, his Queen, Margaret of Anjou, and their infant son Edward, Prince of Wales on the one side, and the army of Richard, Duke of York, the rival claimant to the throne, on the other. York's army was destroyed and he himself wa...
more
The Battle of Wakefield took place at Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, on 30 December 1460. It was one of the major battles of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were a Lancastrian army, loyal to the captive King Henry VI, his Queen, Margaret of Anjou, and their infant son Edward, Prince of Wales on the one side, and the army of Richard, Duke of York, the rival claimant to the throne, on the other. York's army was destroyed and he himself was killed in the battle.
The House of Lancaster was established on the throne of England in 1399, when Henry Bolingbroke, the Duke of Lancaster, deposed his cousin, the unpopular King Richard II, and was crowned Henry IV.
Bolingbroke's grandson, Henry VI, became King in 1422 when only nine months old. He grew up to be an ineffective King, and prone to spells of mental illness. There were increasingly bitter divisions among the Regents and councillors who governed in Henry's name, mainly over the conduct of the Hundred Years' War with France. By...
less
