The Making of the Wars of the Roses
Anthony Pollard visits the History Today archive to examine Alan Rogers’ claim that a lack of principle among rival lords resulted in the great conflagration of 15th-century England.
When he wrote this essay in 1967, Alan Rogers was a young researcher at Nottingham University and part of the new wave of historians setting out to rescue the 15th century from neglect. Because this period of perceived lawlessness and disorder seemed to interrupt the onward march of the English constitution, it had come to be dismissed as an age unworthy of serious study. The intellectual climate in which Rogers worked is reflected in his focus on ‘maintenance’, the perversion of the course of justice by the mighty in favour of their adherents through means of bribery and intimidation.Rogers extended this concept to encompass the practice of retaining by indenture and the payment of money,which had been named ‘bastard feudalism’ in the 19th century because it was perceived as a debasement of true, legitimate feudal relationships and could result in a breakdown of law and order.
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