History

The Wars of the Roses are a major component of A Level History courses in England and are an essential background topic for courses on the Tudors. You can also choose to do an EPQ on the period and we have a list of possible topics to consider here.

The A Level syllabus is mainly focussed on high politics. You will find general information on this across this website. We are writing webpages specifically with the A Level specifications in mind: these include extracts from historians and contemporary sources to help you explore the politics in more depth (the Key Issues page), and points to consider when examining each topic. (Please note that these are suggestions from individual Society members. The Richard III Society does not have an agreed interpretation of events because we welcome continued re-examination of the available evidence and recognise that many of the questions can never be definitively answered).

In the A level History dropdown menu you will find several essays on aspects of the life of Richard III.

What was Richard III”s claim to the throne?

The Buckingham Rebellion

Richard III’s Government policy.

Yorkist Kings and the Nobility

Richard III as a Family Man

Richard IIII’s Downfall and the rise of Henry Tudor

Remembering Richard

Developing your knowledge of religion, society, culture and economics will help you to analyse the motives and context of political actions. Across this website you will find pages that help to provide that background.

There is a great website for A Level history teachers with lots of resources on it called Thinking History.
The Historical Association have published excellent support material online for students and teachers.

The Fifteenth Century

The fifteenth century was an extraordinary age. England was not the only European country to experience dramatic changes in government and frequent military conflicts. Historians vigorously debate the causes, consequences and nature of a mid-fifteenth-century economic slump. Yet it was also an age of innovation in science and in ideas. Leonardo da Vinci was born five months before Richard III and Nicolaus Copernicus only sixteen months after Edward V. In the 1440s a German goldsmith called Johannes Guthenberg invented the printing press which William Caxton brought to London in the 1470s. Voyages of exploration were launched from Bristol in the early 1480s and in 1496 Henry VII commissioned John Cabot to seek new lands: this resulted in the earliest known European exploration of coastal north America since the Vikings.

New approaches to art included the development of portraiture which aimed to provide a naturalistic, rather than a formal and generic likeness of the subject. The English language was shifting out of Middle English into a form that is relatively easy for us to understand today. English was used far more in government and politics as well as in literature, replacing Norman French and Latin. Religious devotion had remarkable consequences that ranged from exquisite art and sculpture to new educational foundations to Joan of Arc’s courage in leading French forces into battle and Margery Kempe’s desire to compose a book that was the first autobiography in English.

This website has several short articles on life in the fifteenth century.

Across the internet there are many introductions to the fascinating history of the fifteenth century. You can find just a few of them below and related podcasts here.

Dr Turi King’s Tedx talk on finding the skeleton of Richard III


Matthew Lewis on Richard III


Tony Robinson Richard III: Fact or Fiction on the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower


In Our Time (Radio 4): The Wars of the Roses


Great Lives (Radio 4): Richard III


Find out more about the medieval world:

detail from a medieval roll showing the family tree of Edward III's sons
The struggle for the throne by Edward III's descendants, 1461: BL MS Harley 7353 (detail)