The Lancastrians had been raising forces to challenge Edward IV and in 1469 the Wars of the Roses broke out again. Battle of Edgecote Moor 26th July 1469 Henry VII was reserved in his usage of the Tudor rose. He regularly used the Lancastrian rose by itself, being the house to which he descended. His successor Henry VIII, descended from the House of York as well through his mother, would use the rose more often. [5] Levine, Alexandra S. (14 June 2017). "New York Today: Decoding Our Borough Flags". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 18 April 2019.

Lancastrians – Led by Sir Owen Tudor supported by Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke and James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire. So, here are half a dozen roses that Henry may have grown, all of which you should definitely have in your garden: After – Richard of York became Protector of England and ran the country with little problem for three years until Henry VI regained his mental faculty and resumed personal rule in 1459. He dismissed Richard Duke of York, without offering him any position in government. York responded by taking up arms against the king. Battle of Blore Heath 23rd September 1459 Elizabeth Woodville learned of the arrest of her relatives and took her children to the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. In the face of continued opposition from the Woodvilles, Richard was concerned that they would use Edward’s brother, Richard, as a focus for a challenge to the throne. The Princes in the Tower The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), a historical novel by Philippa Gregory, based on Mary Boleyn, the sister of Queen Anne BoleynA phoenix is a mythological bird which never dies but, after 500 years, is consumed by fire and born again, making it a symbol of the Resurrection, endurance and eternal life. Only one phoenix lives at a time, so it was also used to symbolize Elizabeth's uniqueness and longevity. The ermine

The purpose of the Acts of Union was to try and remove the differences between the two countries and ensure a single language, the same practices and the same administration. The Wars of the Roses is the name given to a series of conflicts in the fifteenth century fought between the members of the House of Lancaster and the House of York. It was called the Wars of the Roses because the House of Lancaster was represented by the red rose and the House of York was represented by the white rose. Elizabeth was a moderate Protestant; she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who played a key role in the English Reformation in the 1520s. She had been brought up by Blanche Herbert Lady Troy. At her coronation in January 1559, many of the bishops – Catholic, appointed by Mary, who had expelled many of the Protestant clergymen when she became queen in 1553 – refused to perform the service in English. Eventually, the relatively minor Bishop of Carlisle, Owen Oglethorpe, performed the ceremony; but when Oglethorpe attempted to perform traditional Catholic parts of the coronation, Elizabeth got up and left. Following the coronation, two important acts were passed through Parliament: the Act of Uniformity 1558 and the Act of Supremacy 1558, establishing the Protestant Church of England and creating Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England ( Supreme Head, the title used by her father and brother, was seen as inappropriate for a woman ruler). These acts, known collectively as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, made it compulsory to attend church services every Sunday; and imposed an oath on clergymen and statesmen to recognise the Church of England, the independence of the Church of England from the Catholic Church, and the authority of Elizabeth as Supreme Governor. Elizabeth made it clear that if they refused the oath the first time, they would have a second opportunity, after which, if the oath was not sworn, the offenders would be deprived of their offices and estates. The fifth marriage was to the young Catherine Howard, niece of the Catholic Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Catherine was promoted by Norfolk in the hope that she would persuade Henry to restore the Catholic religion in England. Henry called her his "rose without a thorn", but the marriage ended in failure. Henry's infatuation with Catherine started before the end of his marriage with Anne when she was still a member of Anne's court. Catherine was young and vivacious, but Henry's age made him less inclined to use Catherine in the bedroom; rather, he preferred to admire her, which Catherine soon grew tired of. Catherine, forced into a marriage to an unattractive, obese man over 30 years her senior, had never wanted to marry Henry, and allegedly conducted an affair with the King's favourite, Thomas Culpeper, while Henry and she were married. During her questioning, Catherine first denied everything but eventually she was broken down and told of her infidelity and her pre-nuptial relations with other men. Henry, first enraged, threatened to torture her to death but later became overcome with grief and self-pity. She was accused of treason and was executed on 13 February 1542, destroying the English Catholic holdouts' hopes of a national reconciliation with the Catholic Church. Her execution also marked the end of the Howard family's power and influence within the English court. [23]Protestant alliance [ edit ] Henry VIII of England: Henry's quarrels with the Pope led to the creation of the Church of England In total, the Tudor monarchs ruled their domains for 117 years. Henry VIII ( r.1509–1547) was the only son of Henry VII to live to the age of maturity, and he proved a dominant ruler. Issues around royal succession (including marriage and the succession rights of women) became major political themes during the Tudor era, as did the English Reformation in religion, impacting the future of the Crown. Elizabeth I was the longest serving Tudor monarch at 44 years, and her reign known as the Elizabethan Era provided a period of stability after the short, troubled reigns of her siblings. When Elizabeth I died childless, her cousin of the Scottish House of Stuart succeeded her, in the Union of the Crowns of 24 March 1603. The first Stuart to become King of England ( r.1603–1625), James VI and I, was a great-grandson of Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor, who in 1503 had married James IV of Scotland in accordance with the 1502 Treaty of Perpetual Peace.

Henry IV was succeeded by his son, another Henry, who strengthened the Lancastrian hold on the throne through. He did this through his victories in the Hundred Years War against France. Henry Tudor had, however, something that the others did not. He had an army which defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, in the field of battle and the support of powerful nobles to take the crown by right of conquest. Richard III's accession to the throne had proved controversial, even among the Yorkists. The Tudors' claim to the throne combined the Lancastrian claim in their descent from the Beauforts and the Yorkist claim by the marriage of Henry VII to the heiress of Edward IV.Henry Vll (representing the Lancaster family) married Elizabeth of York (representing the York family). This marriage united the two families. Henry created the Tudor rose, containing both the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster. It symbolized the end of a struggle between York and Lancaster, a Rose Gules, with a rose Argent superimposed, a thistle in its Proper colours, growing from the same stalk, crowned (for Great Britain, after the Acts of Union) If all this seems the act of a nouveau royal family desperate to create an impression, this is precisely what it was. The "Lancastrian" red rose was an emblem that barely existed before Henry VII. Lancastrian kings used the rose sporadically, but when they did it was often gold rather than red; Henry VI, the king who presided over the country's descent into civil war, preferred his badge of the antelope. Contemporaries certainly did not refer to the traumatic civil conflict of the 15th century as the "wars of the roses". For the best part of a quarter-century, from 1461 to 1485, there was only one royal rose, and it was white: the badge of Edward IV. Edward's rose was ubiquitous, blooming on royal seals, on coins and in the bulky manuscripts that he began to acquire consistently from the 1470s onwards. But Edward's death, and the usurpation of his teenage sons by their uncle Richard III, presented an opportunity to the man who would become Henry VII: the exiled Henry, Earl of Richmond, a focus for disaffected Yorkists and Lancastrians alike. The first was the Rebellion of the Stafford brothers and Viscount Lovell of 1486, which collapsed without fighting. [37] Elizabeth was interviewed by one of Edward's advisers, and she was eventually found not to be guilty, despite forced confessions from her servants Kat Ashley and Sir Thomas Parry. Thomas Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549.