Events on March 29 in history

Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton: Edward of York defeats Queen Margaret to become King Edward IV of England.

The Battle of Towton was fought on 29 March 1461 during the English Wars of the Roses, near the village of Towton, now in North Yorkshire. It has "the dubious distinction of being probably the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil". An estimated 50,000 soldiers fought for hours during a snowstorm on that day, which was Palm Sunday. It brought about a change of monarchs in England, with Edward IV displacing Henry VI, establishing the House of York on the English throne and driving the incumbent House of Lancaster and its key supporters out of the country.

The incumbent King of England, Henry VI, on the throne since 1422, was a weak, ineffectual and mentally unsound ruler, which encouraged the nobles to scheme for control over him. The situation deteriorated in the 1450s into a civil war between the supporters of his queen, Margaret of Anjou, and those of his cousin Richard, Duke of York. In 1460 the English parliament passed an act to let York succeed Henry as king. The queen refused to accept the dispossession of her own son, Edward of Westminster's right to the throne and succeeded in raising a large army of supporters, who then promptly defeated and killed York in the Battle of Wakefield. The late duke's supporters considered the Lancastrians to have reneged on the parliamentary act of succession a legal agreement and York's son and heir, Edward, found enough backing to denounce Henry and declare himself king. The Battle of Towton was to affirm the victor's right to rule over England through force of arms.

On reaching the battlefield, the Yorkists found themselves heavily outnumbered. Part of their force under the Duke of Norfolk had yet to arrive. The Yorkist leader Lord Fauconberg turned the tables by ordering his archers to take advantage of the strong wind to outrange their enemies. The one-sided missile exchange, with Lancastrian arrows falling short of the Yorkist ranks, provoked the Lancastrians into abandoning their defensive positions. The ensuing hand-to-hand combat lasted hours, exhausting the combatants. The arrival of Norfolk's men reinvigorated the Yorkists and, encouraged by Edward, they routed their foes. Many Lancastrians were killed while fleeing; some trampled one another and others drowned in the rivers, which are said to have run red with blood for several days. Several who were taken prisoner were executed.

The strength of the House of Lancaster was severely reduced as a result of this battle. Henry fled the country and many of his most powerful followers were dead or in exile after the engagement, leaving a new king, Edward IV, to rule England. Later generations remembered the battle as depicted in William Shakespeare's dramatic adaptation of Henry's life Henry VI, Part 3, Act 2, Scene 5. In 1929 the Towton Cross was erected on the battlefield to commemorate the event. Various archaeological remains and mass graves related to the battle were found in the area centuries after the engagement.

The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century, fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: Lancaster and York. The wars extinguished the male lines of the two dynasties, leading to the Tudor family inheriting the Lancastrian claim. Following the war, the Houses of Tudor and York were united, creating a new royal dynasty, thereby resolving the rival claims.

The conflict had its roots in the wake of the Hundred Years' War and its emergent socio-economic troubles, which weakened the prestige of the English monarchy, unfolding structural problems of bastard feudalism and the powerful duchies created by Edward III, and the mental infirmity and weak rule of Henry VI, which revived interest in the Yorkist claim to the throne by Richard of York. Historians disagree over which of these factors were the main catalyst for the wars.The wars began in 1455 when Richard of York captured King Henry VI in battle and was appointed Lord Protector by Parliament, leading to an uneasy peace. Fighting resumed four years later. Yorkists, led by Warwick the Kingmaker, recaptured Henry, but Richard was killed in 1460, leading to the claim by his son, Edward. The Yorkists lost custody of Henry the following year but destroyed the Lancastrian army, and Edward was crowned three months later in June 1461. Resistance to Edward's rule continued but was defeated in 1464, leading to a period of relative peace.

In 1469, Warwick withdrew his support for Edward due to opposition against the king's foreign policy and choice of bride, and changed to the Lancastrian claim, leading to a renewal in fighting. Edward was briefly deposed and fled to Flanders the following year, and Henry was reinstalled as king. Henry's renewal in reign was short-lived however, as the Lancastrians suffered decisive defeats in battle in which Warwick and Henry's heir were killed, Henry was reimprisoned, and much of the Lancastrian nobility were either killed, executed, or exiled. Shortly afterwards, Edward reassumed the throne, after which Henry either died or was assassinated on Edward's order. Edward ruled unopposed and England enjoyed a period of relative peace until his death twelve years later in 1483.

Edward's twelve-year-old son reigned for 78 days as Edward V until he was deposed by his uncle, Richard III. Richard assumed the throne under a cloud of controversy, particularly the disappearance of Edward IV's two sons, sparking a short-lived but major revolt and triggering a wave of desertions of prominent Yorkists to the Lancastrian cause. In the midst of the chaos, Henry Tudor, son of Henry VI's half-brother, returned from exile with an army of English, French, and Breton troops. Henry defeated and killed Richard at Bosworth Field in 1485, assumed the throne as Henry VII, and married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and sole heir of Edward IV, thereby uniting the rival claims.

The Earl of Lincoln then put forward Lambert Simnel as an impostor Edward Plantagenet, a potential claimant to the throne. Lincoln's army was defeated and Lincoln himself killed at Stoke Field in 1487, ending the wars. Henry never faced any further serious internal military threats to his reign. In 1490, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Edward IV's second son and rival claimant to the throne, but was executed before any rebellion could be launched.The House of Tudor ruled England until 1603. The reign of the Tudor dynasty saw the strengthening of the prestige and power of the English monarchy, particularly under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and the end of the medieval period in England which subsequently saw the dawn of the English Renaissance. Historian John Guy argued that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time since the Roman occupation.