John Edgar - The Wars of the Roses

"Edward the First hath justly been styled the English Justinian. For, in his time, the law did receive so sudden a perfection, that Sir Matthew Hale does not scruple to affirm that more was done in the first thirteen years of his reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom than in all the ages since that time put together… It was from this period that the liberty of England began to rear its head." — Blackstone's Commentaries.

"Lionel of Clarence married Elizabeth, daughter of William de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, and had a daughter, Philippa, wife of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. John of Gaunt was thrice married. His first wife was Blanche, heiress of Lancaster, by whom he had a son, Henry the Fourth, and two daughters – Philippa, married to the King of Portugal, and Elizabeth, to John Holland, Duke of Exeter. His second wife was Constance, eldest daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, by whom he had a daughter, Katherine, married to Henry the Third, King of Castile. His third wife was Katherine Swynford, by whom he had two sons – Henry Beaufort, Cardinal of St. Eusebius and Bishop of Winchester, and John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, ancestor of the dukes who fought in the Wars of the Roses, and of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry the Seventh. But both the sons of Katherine Swynford were born before wedlock. Edmund of Langley espoused Isabel, second daughter of Peter the Cruel, and had two sons – Edward, Duke of York, who fell at Agincourt, and Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who married Anne Mortimer, daughter of the Earl of March, and left a son, Richard, Duke of York." – See Sandford's Genealogical History .

A serious quarrel – destined to be fought out eight years later on Hexham Field – occurred about this date between the chief of the Beauforts and Warwick's younger brother, who, in 1461, became Lord Montagu. "It was not long after that dissension and unkindness fell between the young Duke of Somerset and Sir John Neville, son unto the Earl of Salisbury, being then both lodged within the city. Whereof the mayor being warned, ordained such watch and provision that if they had any thing stirred he was able to have subdued both parties, and to have put them in ward till he had known the king's pleasure. Whereof the friends of both parties being aware, labored such means that they agreed them for that time." — Fabyan's Chronicle.

"But the earl's two sons – the one called Sir John Neville, and the other Sir Thomas – were sore wounded; which, slowly journeying into the north country, thinking there to repose themselves, were in their journey apprehended by the queen's friends, and conveyed to Chester. But their keepers delivered them shortly, or else the Marchmen had destroyed the jails. Such favor had the commons of Wales to the Duke of York's band and his affinity, that they could suffer no wrong to be done, nor evil word to be spoken of him or of his friends." — Hall's Union of the Families of Lancaster and York.

"At that period, the men-at-arms, or heavy cavalry, went to battle in complete armor; each man carried a lance, sword, dagger, and occasionally a mace or battle-axe; his horse, also, was, to a certain extent, in armor. A considerable part of an English army consisted of archers, armed with long bows and arrows; and another part consisted of men armed with bills, pikes, pole-axes, glaives, and morris-pikes." — Brooke's Visits to Fields of Battle.

"One of the greatest obstacles to the cause of the Red Rose, was the popular belief that the young prince was not Henry's son. Had that belief not been widely spread and firmly maintained, the lords who arbitrated between Henry VI. and Richard, Duke of York, in October, 1460, could scarcely have come to the resolution to set aside the Prince of Wales altogether, to accord Henry the crown for his life, and declare the Duke of York his heir." — Sir E. B. Lytton's Last of the Barons.