The  Wars of the Roses
Subtitle: peace and conflict in fifteenth-century England
By: John Gillingham.
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 1981
Place of publication: Baton Rouge
Language: eng
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Great Britain -- History, Military -- 1066-1485; Great Britain -- History -- Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485
Description: The War of the Roses have traditionally been seen as the last dying convulsion of the Middle Ages, a marker between the medieval and the modern, and above all as a period of violence, horror and civil disorder. John Gillingham's new book shows that this is a spurious view of the period. His authoritative analysis of fifteenth-century warfare proves that the actual battles of the wars invovled far fewer men than has been assumed, and that, apart from the Northumbria and the Scottish border, England was a society organized for peace. The arts of peace flourished in the fifteenth century, which saw the beginning of printing in England, the rise of literacy and growing interest in vernacular architecture. The wars which sporadically interrupted that peace were fought in a manner calculated to bring them to a swift conclusion. The author shatters the Shakespearian myth of perpetual bloody conflict and shows that the wars had remarkably little effect on the social and religious life of the country or on the structure of politics. -- from dust cover.
Notes: Bibliography: p. [258]-265.
Includes index.