Entry extracted from the book The Plantagenets 
Although the date that is traditionally indicated as the starting gun of the War of the Roses (of which Ricardo Plantagenet was the main protagonist) is May 22, 1455, in which the first battle of St. Albans took place, it is not possible to understand this dynastic conflict without knowing how Richard II was deposed from the throne by Henry IV Bolinbroke.
Henry IV's coronation saw the succession to the throne of descendants of Edward III's third son, John of Gaunt. This branch is known as the House of Lancaster, although they remained part of the Plantagenet dynasty as descendants of Edward III.
Throughout the reign of Henry IV, those dissatisfied with it used as a recurrent argument to express their opposition to the king both the unusual conditions in which his accession to the throne took place, as well as the dark circumstances of the death of his predecessor Richard II. The terms usurper and murderer accompanied the new monarch at all times and the eyes of those malcontents repeatedly turned to the descendants of the other sons of Edward III, especially those of his second son, Leonel de Antwerp duke of Clarence, who bore the surname Mortimer. They argued that since Richard II had died without issue and the line of Edward III's first son had become extinct, the crown should have passed to the hereditary line of Leonel of Antwerp, his second son, and not to that of his third offspring John of Antwerp. Ghent.
The waters seemed to return to their course after the death in 1413 of Henry IV. His eldest son Henry V was free from the accusations that weighed on his predecessor and gained enormous popularity after his resounding victory against the French at Agincourt in the Hundred Years' War. His prestige increased when the Treaty of Troyes of 1419 agreed to marry him with Catherine de Valois, daughter of the French king, also designating the couple as heir to the French crown. The old dream of the Plantagenets of uniting the thrones of England and France under their rule seemed to be consolidated when Catherine of Valois gave Henry V an heir in 1421.
But the untimely death of Henry V in 1422 dramatically upset those plans. The head of the family of the descendants of the third son of Eduardo III, Juan de Gante, went from being represented by the new winner of Agincourt at the hands of his one-year-old son, Enrique VI.
Meanwhile, the offspring of his second and fourth sons, Leonel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, and Edmund Langley, Duke of York, had joined as one with the marriage of two descendants of both, Anne Mortimer on the part of Clarence and Ricardo de Conisburgh, on the part of York. Since 1415 the title of Duke of York had passed to their son, the protagonist of our entry Richard Plantagenet.
One factor further complicated matters:John of Gaunt, apart from several legitimate marriages, had had three children with his mistress Catherine Swynford, who took the surname Beaufort. Henry IV validated his father's union with Swynford, thus freeing his half-brothers from the stigma of bastards. However, he took care to make it very clear that this patina of legitimacy did not imply the recognition of any inherited right over his father's titles:no man surnamed Beaufort would ever be placed in the line of succession to the throne of England. /p>
And, as if that were not enough, Henry V's widow, Catherine of Valois, had met a Welsh nobleman named Owen Tudor on her return to England with whom she had had a up to five children, all half-brothers of Henry VI.
A charismatic king with prestige earned on the battlefield like Henry V could, not without difficulty, have managed with an iron fist his relatives from the houses of York, Lancaster and Beaufort as well as the families of the high nobility such as the Percys of Northumbria and the Nevilles of Salisbury and Warwick and have transformed them into a formidable machine in defense of their domains on both sides of the English Channel.
But Henry VI was not his father. As he grew older it was shown that he had inherited a severe mental illness from his French grandfather; he was also a man with a weak personality, overwhelmed by the avalanche of adverse events in France and England. In these circumstances it was a matter of time before someone wondered if the king was fit to wear the crown and the unquenchable embers of the old quarrels between the branches of the Plantagenet family were fanned.
In 1450 Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, was stationed in Ireland when, alerted by his supporters to news arriving from England about the disastrous course of the war in France and After a rebellion started in Kent by a certain Jack Cade, he decided to return to the country at the head of five thousand men without requesting permission from the king or the Council. Henry VI tried to reassure him and even allowed him to join the Royal Council.
But the Council was dominated by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, an enemy and rival of the Duke of York. Seeing that his presence on the Council was merely decorative, Richard urged one of his supporters in Parliament to make a motion demanding that he be named heir and that Somerset be expelled from the Council, which he would lead. Parliament was unimpressed by the show of force and dismissed all his claims. Faced with the rejection of his position, York withdrew to his possessions in the north and disregarded the problems of the country.
In 1452 York changed his plans and returned to London at the command of an imposing army in order to alert of the existence of a secret plan by the Duke of Somerset to hand over Calais to the French. He camped on Dartmoor where an embassy of nobles heard his request that Somerset be deposed and imprisoned. They returned soon after with the monarch's agreement to his request. York ordered his army back to his lands, but when he was brought into the royal presence he found Henry VI with his wife Margaret of Anjou and the Duke of Somerset. Deceived and humiliated, the proud Duke of York was forced to enter the capital like a common criminal and take an oath of loyalty and obedience to King Henry VI in St. Paul's Cathedral.
The following year, 1453, was a difficult one for England. Although the queen eventually became pregnant, the news from France was invariably negative; after the battle of Castillon, of what had been a vast continental empire of the Plantagenets only Calais remained in English hands. And things took a turn for the worse when in August the king suffered a rare stroke that left him unable to speak or even walk. When his son was born in October, Henry VI could not even perform the formal recognition ceremony necessary for his offspring to become his heir.
The members of the Royal Council turned their eyes towards Richard Plantagenet, but they knew that they could not count on him if they did not first get rid of the Duke of Somerset who in any case would never have agreed to submit to the new situation. Edmund Beaufort was arrested and confined in the Tower. Margaret of Anjou tried to oppose this situation and demanded that she be allowed to rule with full rights as the representative of her husband and her son. She claimed to run the treasury, the chancery, justice to the sheriffs and all the royal officials. She also demanded an annual pension for her and her son.
The Royal Council strongly opposed the proposal and unanimously asked Richard Plantagenet to agree to become the king's lieutenant and leader of a group of nobles and ecclesiastics who, after reiterating their obedience and fidelity to Enrique VI, took the reins of the government of the country. And on April 3, 1454, York was appointed Protector and Defender of the Kingdom and the Church by Parliament, although he made it clear that he did so only under the obligation of the circumstances and for the time strictly necessary.
Richard Plantagenet quickly began to take measures for the defense of Calais. In addition, he surrounded himself with his faithful for the most important positions:his brothers-in-law Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and Thomas Bourchier were appointed Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury respectively. He also launched a plan to recover the battered English public coffers. The contemporary Benet's Chronicle notes that "for a year he (York) ruled the whole kingdom of England very nobly and in the best manner."
But things changed when Henry VI came to his senses at Christmas 1454:the appointments of the Duke of York as Protector and the Earl of Salisbury as Chancellor were revoked. Somerset was released from the Tower and reappointed captain of Calais. In a few months everything that York had started was undone and York, Salisbury and Neville were summoned to a great Council that would be held in Leicester on April 21, 1455. Anticipating that they would be asked to account for their performance in the year previous and that they would not come out well, the aforementioned began to recruit an army:the war of the Roses was served... and we will dedicate the second entry of those dedicated to him to the role of Ricardo Plantagenet in it.
Matt Lewis. Richard, Duke of York:King by Right .Amberley Publishing, Stroud. 1st edition (2016)