Nearly 600 years ago,
England was torn apart by a series of bloody battles for the throne.
In just 30 years, the crown changed hands seven times.
Tens of thousands were slaughtered.
It was one of the most turbulent and violent periods in British history.
It's known as the Wars Of The Roses.
In 1461, six years after The Wars Of The Roses erupted, the imbecilic Henry VI -
pretty much the weakest king England had ever known -
had his throne snatched away by a young and charismatic Edward IV.
The man who put him there was one of England's most powerful barons:
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
The story goes that Warwick the Kingmaker turned bad,
plunging the country into anarchy and Edward had to destroy his mentor.
I'm going to show you that the truth is
the seeds of Warwick's destruction were sown
from the day Edward became king.
All the same, it took Edward seven long years
to learn the hardest lesson of kingship.
That, to save his country, a good king must do bad things
and, to be a great king, the Kingmaker must die.
In the frozen bog of a Yorkshire field...
...the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil...
..is finally ended.
Edward Earl of March has gambled that he can snatch the crown
from the useless Henry VI and his scheming wife Margaret of Anjou.
And in this battle, he has succeeded big time.
The King and Queen's forces have been wiped out.
The incompetent King Henry VI is forced to flee to Scotland
with his wife and son.
This is total victory for Edward.
This is the battlefield where Edward triumphs.
Just outside the village of Towton, south of York.
Perhaps 60,000 men lined up in this field
and contemporaries estimate
that 28,000 of them were slaughtered in just ten hours.
That's pretty much half the troops who took to the field that morning.
The soil is saturated with their blood.
Henry VI may still be alive, but the throne of England is now Edward's.
Standing alongside him is the man who, more than anyone else,
made it all happen: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker.
Long live the King!
Vigorous, ambitious and just 18 years old...
Let us give thanks to God.
Edward, Earl of March is now Edward IV,
the 12 Plantagenet King of England.
Arise!
But Edward's inherited a country that's been torn apart by blood feuds.
It's just three months since the same soldiers Edward's just defeated
killed his father the Duke Of York.
To secure his position as King,
Edward needs to end the cycle of violence.
It's a mighty challenge for any leader.
The man who's going to help him pull it off
is his closest ally, Warwick.
England is a hotbed of unrest.
To stabilise it, one of Edward's first jobs
is to snuff out trouble in the violent north.
And, of course, Warwick goes willingly to do it.
This is Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland,
the freezing, rainswept northern powerbase of Sir Ralph Percy,
leading troublemaker and a staunch supporter of Henry VI and Queen Margaret.
The dangerous Queen is in exile just across the Scottish border,
barely 20 miles from Percy.
Edward needs to make sure that she won't be welcomed back
if she tries to take revenge on him.
So, on Christmas Eve 1462, after a siege lasting less than a month,
Warwick burst into this castle and takes Percy prisoner.
While Edward was fighting for the throne,
Percy sided decisively with Margaret and Henry VI.
That's now treason and Percy should die.
Instead, Edward offers him an extraordinary choice.
He could have his head chopped off
or, alternatively, he could come on side to Edward's cause
and keep his castles, his land and, of course, his life.
Decapitation or a life of luxury?
It's not the toughest decision he's ever made.
And this is Edward's big plan to secure his rule.
Turn his enemies into allies.
Build a broad alliance to bridge the fractured politics of England.
And it seems to work.
For the first time in more than six years, the country calms down...
...and Edward settles into the role of King.
One man more than any other is responsible for Edward's success.
Warwick's been the young King's mentor
since long before Edward's father died.
He's the go-to guy.
The man who gets things done for the King and he knows it.
Warwick truly is the Kingmaker.
Edward's right-hand man and he wants it to stay that way.
Three years into his rein, things are looking up for Edward.
He's getting the country's nobility on side
and money's started trickling in to a treasury
that was bankrupt under Henry.
There's just one more thing on his to-do list:
find himself a wife.
And it's not just about producing an heir to the throne.
A well chosen royal marriage could cement foreign alliances,
boost trade, even increase military strength.
Your Grace...
Or, with a bit of luck, all three at once.
As the King's right-hand man, Warwick believes
there's only one man capable of picking a winning bride for Edward.
Him. My pardon, Your Grace.
Might I take my leave, Your Grace,
for the affairs of state of which we spoke?
I'm most pleased to find you well, sir.
Please.
In March 1464, with Edward's blessing,
Warwick meets envoys from King Louis XI of France
to arrange the King's marriage to the French Princess Bona of Savoy.
This union could stamp out the never-ending conflicts
with England's deadliest enemy: France.
It is of much detail, but I pray of order.
Over the course of several weeks,
he successful brokers a deal for the King to marry the French Princess.
Warwick is clearly a man in charge.
Hm. To the extent that one French dignitary later jokes
that the English have two rulers:
'Warwick and another whose name I've forgotten.'
That sort of thing can go to a man's head.
Warwick is the power behind the throne.
He's made Edward king.
Now he's organised the future of the royal dynasty too.
In September 1464, Warwick arrives at Reading Abbey
with England's other senior nobles
to confirm marriage arrangements for Edward.
And he gets to announce it to the adulation of the realm's great and good.
What could possibly go wrong?
Before Warwick or indeed any of the other nobles has a chance to speak,
Edward stands up to make an announcement of his own.
My Lords.
I have glad tidings for you.
He's already married.
In fact, he got married almost five months ago,
while Warwick was still negotiating with the French.
My consort is a lady of great virtue, wit and beauty.
The Lady Elizabeth Woodville.
Worse. Instead of a valuable foreign princess,
he's chosen one of his own subjects.
And she's been married before. It's unheard of.
The King has made a total fool of Warwick and everybody knows it.
After the coronation ceremony, Edward celebrates
and lays on a spectacular feast for his new Queen.
Edward may be pleased with his new bride.
But in the eyes of Warwick and many of the other nobles,
Queen Elizabeth's family is basically the enemy
because her father, Sir Richard Woodville, fought against Edward at Towton.
Warwick feels so betrayed he doesn't even make an appearance.
But even if the Woodvilles were whiter than white,
most of the nobility would find
their elevation to the top of society pretty hard to swallow.
Elizabeth may be extraordinarily beautiful, but she's a widow.
She already has two children
and she comes from a large family of extremely ambitious but very minor nobles.
Edward IV, King of England, has basically married a chav.
Elizabeth brings along her whole family to celebrate.
That's two sons, three brothers, six sisters,
her mum and dad and her extended family.
This looks less like a celebration for Edward and his new Queen.
More like a pitch invasion by the Woodvilles.
Most of the senior nobility are pretty unhappy
about what they see as a huge bunch of low-ranking opportunists
muscling in on the well-established order.
And they're right to be concerned.
Edward's already planning to start forcibly marrying the Woodvilles into the old aristocracy.
Elizabeth's 20-year-old brother John will end up married to the 65-year-old Countess of Oxford.
It's all very unsavoury.
So what was Edward thinking by marrying Elizabeth?
He knew it would enrage Warwick,
which is why he kept it secret for so long.
Rumours spread that Edward's fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
That the beautiful Elizabeth simply played hard to get.
Apparently, marriage was the only way he could bed her.
Elizabeth's certainly the kind of person who'd have played that card.
She's smart, beautiful,
ruthlessly loyal to her own family and extremely ambitious.
Incredibly, it looks as though
the strong-willed Edward IV has married for love,
or at least for lust.
And that's pretty easy for people to believe.
Edward has a fabulously well-deserved reputation
for being led by his loins.
But I think there's more to it than that.
The marriage fits perfectly
with Edward's plan of reaching out to his former enemies,
starting with the Woodvilles.
He's prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.
As far as Edward's concerned,
they just backed the wrong horse at
And, in July 1465, three months after Elizabeth's coronation,
Edward receives a late wedding present...
...Henry VI.
He's left exile in Scotland and been caught skulking around in the north of England.
Edward has him locked up here at the Tower of London
but, instead of having him executed,
Edward maintains his policy of reaching out to his former enemies.
So he orders that Henry's well treated.
He's put up in the royal apartments.
He's given good food and wine.
He's even allowed visitors.
Things seem to be going incredibly well for Edward...
...but he knows he snubbed Warwick.
The King goes all out to make it up to him.
He gives him the Castle of Cockermouth,
the hereditary office of Sheriff of Westmoreland,
custody of all the Royal Forests north of the Trent.
And profits of all the royal gold and silver mines in the same region,
wardship of the lands of the wealthy peer Lord Lovell
and control of England's most imposing castle: Dover.
But Warwick already has money and land.
What he wants, what he needs is to be Edward's indispensible right-hand man.
Just as he's always been.
That's the one thing Edward can't give him.
Warwick was the perfect ally for snatching the crown.
Ruthless and bold.
But that's in the past.
What England needs now is stability, not war
and that's why, from Edward's point of view,
the Woodvilles are the future.
They're an essential part of his plan
for spreading royal influence into the rest of the nobility.
But, from Warwick's point of view,
well, he's the only one who should be able to exert that kind of influence over the reign.
Edward can have Warwick or he can have the Woodvilles.
He can't have both.
Squaring that circle will dog the next five years of Edward's reign.
In 1467, Edward sends Warwick to see his French allies.
Both Warwick and the French King Louis XI believe
they are negotiating a lucrative new trade deal between the two countries.
They're not.
Edward just wants Warwick out of the way...
I pray you are well, My Lord. Thank you.
...because he's about to humiliate him utterly.
With Warwick out of the way,
Edward organises a massive tournament at Smithfield,
just outside London's city walls.
Ooh!
It has one purpose.
To ally England with the Burgundians - the Woodvilles' favourites.
Unfortunately, they just happen to be the mortal enemies of Warwick's pals the French.
Enough, my Lords!
Enough.
Pride of place goes to the Queen's brother Anthony Woodville.
Argh!
He's been fighting the guest of honour,
the son of the Duke of Burgundy in the tournament show fight.
Putting a Burgundian in the show fight
is the most public possible advertisement
that Edward doesn't give a damn about the French.
When the French discover that
the English king is in bed with the hated Burgundians,
they will know that Warwick has become utterly irrelevant.
My King would most solemnly accept these terms.
Many thanks. My Lord...
Edward has clearly made his choice.
He's chosen the Woodvilles over Warwick.
Warwick's supposed to be the King's
Edward has made him look a fool again.
It's no surprise that Warwick is becoming paranoid
that his influence over Edward is slipping away.
It is.
Warwick's not the sort of man to disappear quietly into retirement,
so he comes up with a plan to win back his influence with the King.
He's going to marry his daughter Isabel
to the King's shallow, self-serving younger brother the Duke of Clarence.
Until Elizabeth produces a son, Clarence is heir to the crown,
so Warwick clearly sees this as a way to leapfrog the Woodvilles.
...the union of my daughter with Lord Clarence would clear -
Enough.
It shall not be.
Edward flat-out refuses Warwick's proposition.
Pray we shall discuss it no more.
He argues that Clarence has to marry for political gain...
Your move, cousin.
...which is pretty rich, considering Edward's own track record.
Come on.
Warwick's power and influence over the King has gone.
It's an intolerable position for the Kingmaker.
Is it by design you have made my victory so easy?
If there's any doubt about who he blames for the rift,
Warwick spells it out by refusing to attend a meeting of the King's Council in Coventry
if the Queen's father Lord Rivers is present.
Warwick hates the Queen's Woodville family with such a passion
he can't even stand to be in the same room as them.
So what's he going to do about it?
Warwick doesn't have to wait long to take his revenge.
Just two years after the tournament,
tax riots break out across the north.
Fuelled by rumours that
the Woodvilles are skimming off tax money for themselves.
The riots threatened to tear apart the fragile peace that Edward has built up.
And one man is poised to fan the flames and set the kingdom ablaze.
By June 1469, rumours circulate that
there are 60,000 men being mustered in Yorkshire
under the banner of the mysterious rebel Robin of Redesdale.
Chroniclers describe it as the Great Insurrection.
Robin of Redesdale has to be stopped.
Suddenly, the King needs Warwick back in the game.
On July 9th, Edward writes to Warwick asking for his help.
What he gets in return is a deafening silence.
Hurt and embittered at being discarded by the King,
Warwick's turned to Edward's weak and venal younger brother Clarence.
They're in Calais, where Warwick's married Clarence to his daughter.
This is some piece of scheming from
It's a direct violation of royal orders
and a very explicit challenge to royal authority.
Edward writes to Warwick again, almost immediately.
He says he's heard he's up to no good
and demands that he meet the King in Nottingham to explain himself.
Warwick and Clarence don't come.
Instead, they publish an open letter.
There's a 500-year-old copy of it here at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
And this is it.
It begins, 'Right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well.
Well, that's Medieval English for hello.
Then it gets straight down to business.
It says that 'certain seditious persons
have been practising a deceivable covetous rule about the King.'
Who are those persons? Well, here they are named.
'Lord Rivers and the Duchess of Bedford.'
That's the Queen Elizabeth Woodville's mother and father.
It mentions 'Lord Scales, ' that's her brother Anthony.
'Sir John Woodville and his brethren
and others of their mischievous rule, opinion and assent.'
In other words, anyone of the Woodville clan
we might have forgotten to mention.
It accuses them of 'enriching themselves at the country's expense.'
But what's really amazing is the last line of this letter
which says that 'anyone who shares this opinion,
should be at Canterbury, upon Sunday next.'
That's an open invitation to rebellion.
So, far from siding with the King,
Warwick and Clarence are supporting the rebels.
Or, if you want to put it another way, they've gone rogue.
Get those horses moved!
On July 16th, 1469, Warwick lands in Kent
with his new son-in-law, Edward's younger brother Clarence.
Two days later, they head north from London
with a vanguard of an army.
Publicly, Warwick tells anyone who'll listen that he's on Edward's side
and is only trying to save his friend from the Woodvilles.
How very selfless of him (!)
In reality, with the King in Nottingham with a small army,
Warwick's craftily creating a pincer movement.
The King is caught between Warwick approaching from the south
and Robin of Redesdale's men in the north.
Warwick is going to war with the King.
The confrontation on July 26th is less of a battle and more of a rout.
Warwick's forces annihilate the Royalists
and Warwick brings Edward as a prisoner here to Midland Castle.
Warwick's success may look like an opportunistic punt
that takes advantage of Robin of Redesdale's rebellion.
And that's certainly what Warwick wants everyone to believe.
But we now know that the shadowy figure of Redesdale
is almost certainly Sir John Conyers,
a loyal servant of the Kingmaker.
The entire rebellion was stage-managed by Warwick.
So Warwick's got the King banged up.
The question is: what's his end game?
Cos, if you're going to imprison a king,
you'd better prepared to replace and to kill him too.
So Warwick's best bet might be to have Edward declared a bastard
and replaced with the vain and malleable Clarence.
But that'll never work so long as Edward's still alive
and Warwick's not prepared to take the final step.
So maybe he's trying to keep his options open.
But he's got the King locked up.
I don't think he's really thought this through.
Warwick has balked at killing the
Instead, he takes out his frustration and hatred
in a killing spree designed to wipe out as many of the Woodvilles as possible.
The highest profile victim is Edward's father-in-law, Lord Rivers.
On August 12th 1469, he's executed at Kenilworth Castle, without a trial.
Without a king at large, the fragile peace that Edward built up between his warring nobles
now collapses into violence with astonishing speed.
The unrest that Warwick engineered during the Redesdale Riots
backfires on him, setting off the rest of the country.
Desperate to put a lid on the violence,
Warwick appeals to other nobles for help stabilising the country,
but there's nothing in it for them in helping Warwick, so they just laugh at him.
After all, he's one who arrested the King and triggered all the trouble in the first place.
This is exactly why Warwick is such a poor peacetime ally
and exactly why Edward was sidelining him.
Warwick's great at the rapid action.
The pincer movement he used to capture Edward,
well, that's right up his street.
What he can't grasp are the politics
and the compromises necessary to actually run a country.
Warwick's decision to grab Edward without a coherent plan
to replace or to kill him has blown up in his face
and England is descending into anarchy.
Little more than a month after locking Edward up,
Warwick is forced into a catastrophic climb-down.
The word 'awkward' probably doesn't do justice
to the first meeting between Warwick and the King.
Sire, all that was done was done for the good of the realm.
Edward's back in control of England.
Astonishingly, he sticks to his policy of appeasing his enemies.
He forgives Warwick and Clarence.
It's recorded that Edward even calls them his best friends.
But Warwick clearly remains a dangerous man
and England remains perilously unstable.
In March 1470, rebellion breaks out in Lincolnshire
and Edward sends in the troops.
They meet the rebels at the village of Empingham near Peterborough.
Edward's men scatter the rebels and as they run,
they tear off any clothing that could identify them,
which is why the battle site is known as Loose Coat Field.
But when Edward's men run through the rebel leader Sir Robert Wells,
they find hidden inside his helmet
letters implicating Warwick and Clarence in the rebellion.
It's a damning piece of evidence.
Edward can never trust them again.
This is Warwick's second act of treason.
He's bull-headed, but he's not a fool.
He knows the King will be coming for him
and this time, there'll be no hugs and best buddies.
Warwick the mighty Kingmaker, utterly disgraced,
is reduced to running for the safety of France, taking Clarence with him.
Warwick now has just two choices.
He can live out his life in exile,
or he can go large and try to wipe out Edward permanently.
But to pull that off, he needs a powerful ally.
Someone who, if it were possible, hates Edward even more than he does.
Margaret of Anjou.
Wife of the previous King, Henry VI.
My Lord.
The Duke of Clarence.
Since her husband's capture nearly ten years ago,
she's been living in frustrated and powerless exile in her native France.
My Queen.
Out of this meeting
between the incensed Warwick and the furious ex-Queen,
comes a breathtaking, outrageous plan.
Kick Edward off the throne and replace him with Henry VI,
the old king, currently locked up in the Tower.
After all, Warwick's the Kingmaker, isn't he?
He did it for Edward.
Surely he can do it for Henry.
Warwick lands on the Devonshire coast
with a small, fast-moving army and heads north.
Edward's near Doncaster when he's woken in the middle of the night
and warned that enemy troops are just a mile away.
Edward's troops are completely outnumbered.
He can stand and fight, but the odds don't look good.
Or he can run for it.
Edward flees to Flanders.
And as if that wasn't enough,
Edward has been forced to abandon the woman
who precipitated all his problems.
Elizabeth Woodville, now pregnant again,
has sought sanctuary here at Westminster Abbey.
In October, after ten years in captivity,
Warwick releases Henry VI from the Tower.
This is the man that Warwick's depending on
to save England from itself.
He must be mad.
Henry was always a disastrous king and nothing's changed,
but he's the only card that Warwick has left.
So, for the second time in his life,
Henry VI is King of England.
With thousands of men behind him, Edward heads south to London.
To avoid confronting Edward, Warwick's holed up in Coventry.
He sends a desperate message to
to try and rally support behind Henry VI.
The result is indeed desperate.
On Maundy Thursday 1471,
in a shambolic piece of political theatre,
Henry's paraded through the streets of London.
But all that the thin crowd that turns out sees is a feeble, half-senile man.
So all that Warwick is doing is pointing out
in the bluntest possible way all the King's failings.
On the same day that Henry's paraded through the streets,
Edward enters London at the head of an army.
The contrast with the weak and feeble old king couldn't be more extreme.
Edward's a strapping, energetic young man.
The picture perfect example of
Whereas Henry's parade was greeted with derision,
Edward's welcomed with universal acclaim.
The first thing he does is come here to St Paul's
to give thanks for his safe arrival.
Then it's down to business.
Edward heads across the river to Lambeth Palace, where Henry VI is waiting.
My cousin of York.
All will be well.
Edward may sound reassuring
but ominously, he immediately has Henry taken back to the Tower.
Then Edward heads back across the Thames as fast as possible.
He comes here, to Westminster Abbey,
to be reunited with his wife Elizabeth
who has been sheltering from Henry's men under the laws of sanctuary.
While he's been away, Elizabeth has given birth to a fine baby boy.
Edward has got his throne back, his wife back and he's got a son and heir.
He is King of England again...
...but he's learned the lessons of kingship the hard way.
However much Edward wants to avoid bloodshed and recrimination,
forgiveness has its limits.
Sometimes, the only way to keep your throne is to deploy the ultimate sanction...
...death.
So Edward heads north with his army to hunt Warwick down.
Come on! Come on!
On April 14th 1471,
Warwick and Edward go into battle one last time at Barnet.
Just like at Towton, Edward and Warwick are in the thick of it.
They must both known that only one king can leave the field alive.
Warwick throws 15,000 men into the fight.
Edward, 12,000.
The odds favour Warwick but, confused by heavy fog,
his army accidentally attacks itself.
In the chaos, Edward's army overwhelms Warwick's men.
Warwick flees the battlefield...
...but he's hunted down like a dog by Edward's troops.
The Kingmaker is dead.
Edward has Warwick's body brought to London.
It's stripped naked, except for a cloth covering the genitals
and is put on display for everyone to see
at the old medieval cathedral here in St Paul's.
Edward's sending a very simple, very plain message to the entire country.
The new King has learned the old lessons.
Your Grace.
There will be no more forgiveness.
Make sure it's done.
On May 21st 1471, barely a month after Edward's victory over Warwick...
...Henry dies.
The official cause is pure displeasure and melancholy,
but few people believe that.
It's reported that his corpse is found
with congealed blood in his hair.
Whether he was cudgelled to death or not,
there's no doubt at all that Edward has had him killed.
Edward came to the throne determined to break the cycle of violence that had been consuming England,
but it just couldn't be done.
I mean, look at the last 11 weeks.
He's invaded England, raised an army, fought a brutal battle,
killed his friend and murdered a rival king.
And that is the reality of medieval
In the end, there was only ever one way
that Edward was going to earn his crown:
in blood.
Next time, the most infamous story in the entire blood-soaked era.
Richard III snatches the throne.
The only obstacles are his own nephews, the Princes in the Tower.