Henry’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, strong-willed in contrast to her feeble husband, has established an ascendancy at the court, together with the powerful Beaufort family, headed by Edmond Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.

Cade’s rebellion, though unsuccessful in its aims, had eroded royal authority, enabling Richard, Duke of York, to return in autumn 1450 from his new post as Lieutenant of Ireland to England, where he had been recognized as heir to the childless King Henry VI.

He had marched on London, demanding Somerset's removal and reform of the government.

At this stage, few of the nobles support such drastic action, and York had been forced to submit to superior force at Blackheath.

He has been imprisoned for much of 1452 and 1453 but is released after swearing not to take arms against the court.

The loss of Bordeaux in 1453 has turned the English towards the Yorkists and against the Lancastrian Beaufort family.

The increasing discord at court is mirrored in the country as a whole, where noble families engage in private feuds and show increasing disrespect for the royal authority and for the courts of law.

The Percy-Neville feud is the best-known of these private wars, but others are being conducted freely.

In many cases, they are fought between old-established families, and formerly minor nobility raised in power and influence by Henry IV in the aftermath of the rebellions against him.

The quarrel between the Percys—long the Earls of Northumberland—and the comparatively upstart Nevilles follows this pattern, as does the feud between the Courtenays and Bonvilles in Cornwall and Devon.

A factor in these feuds is the presence of large numbers of soldiers discharged from the English armies that had been defeated in France.

Nobles engage many of these to mount raids, or to pack courts of justice with their supporters, intimidating suitors, witnesses and judges.

This growing civil discontent, the abundance of feuding nobles with private armies, and corruption in Henry VI's court form a political climate ripe for civil war.

With the king so easily manipulated, power rests with those closest to him at court, in other words Somerset and the Lancastrian faction.

Richard and the Yorkist faction, who tend to be physically placed further away from the seat of power, find their power slowly being stripped away.

Royal power also starts to slip, as Henry is persuaded to grant many royal lands and estates to the Lancastrians.

Margaret’s position is greatly reinforced in October 1453 by the birth of a son, Edward, whose status as royal heir presents a problem for the Yorkist claim.

However, Henry suffers the first of several bouts of complete mental collapse, during which he fails even to recognize his newborn son.

A Council of Regency is set up in April 1454, headed by the Duke of York, who still remains popular with the people, as Lord Protector.

York soon asserts his power with ever-greater boldness (although there is no proof that he had aspirations to the throne at this early stage).

He imprisons Somerset and backs his Neville allies (his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, and Salisbury's son, the Earl of Warwick), in their continuing feud with the Earl of Northumberland, a powerful supporter of Henry.

Henry recovers in 1455 and once again falls under the influence of those closest to him at court.

Directed by Henry's queen, the powerful and aggressive Margaret of Anjou, who emerges as the de facto leader of the Lancastrians, Richard is forced out of court.

Margaret builds up an alliance against Richard and conspires with other nobles to reduce his influence.

An increasingly thwarted Richard (who fears arrest for treason) finally resorts in 1455 to armed hostilities.

Richard leads a small force toward London and is met  on May 22, 1455, by Henry's forces at St. Albans, north of London.

The relatively small First Battle of St. Albans is the first open conflict of the civil war.

Richard's aim is ostensibly to remove "poor advisors" from King Henry's side.

The result is a Lancastrian defeat.

Several prominent Lancastrian leaders, including Somerset and Northumberland, are killed.

The Yorkists after the battle find Henry hiding in a local tanner's shop, abandoned by his advisors and servants, apparently having suffered another bout of mental illness. (He had also been slightly wounded in the neck by an arrow.)

York and his allies regain their position of influence.

With the king indisposed, York is again appointed Protector, and Margaret is shunted aside, charged with the king's care.

For a while, both sides seem shocked that an actual battle had been fought and do their best to reconcile their differences, but the problems that caused conflict soon reemerge, particularly the issue of whether Richard the Duke of York, or Henry and Margaret's infant son Edward, will succeed to the throne.

Margaret refuses to accept any solution that will disinherit her son, and it becomes clear that she will only tolerate the situation for as long as the Duke of York and his allies retain the military ascendancy.

Later in the year, the late Somerset’s twelve-year-old niece, Margaret Beaufort, will make a second marriage to Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond and half-brother to Henry VI.

How York is treated now depends on how powerful the Queen's views are.

York is regarded with suspicion on three fronts: he threatens the succession of the young Prince of Wales; he is apparently negotiating for the marriage of his son Edward into the Burgundian ruling Family; and as a supporter of the Nevilles, he is contributing to the Percy/Neville feud, the major cause of disturbance in the kingdom.

Here, the Nevilles lose ground; Salisbury gradually ceases to attend meetings of the council.

When his brother Robert Neville, Bishop of Durham, dies in 1457, the new appointment is Laurence Booth, a member of the Queen's inner circle.

The Percys are shown greater favor both at court and in the struggle for power on the Scottish Border.

York and Salisbury, faced with the threat of attack from the Percys, and with Margaret of Anjou trying to gain the support of new king James III of Scotland, on December 2 head north.

With them goes York's son Edmund, Earl of Rutland.

They arrive at Sandal Castle on 21 December to find the situation bad and getting worse.

Forces loyal to Henry control the city of York, and nearby Pontefract Castle is also in hostile hands.

York and his forces leave Sandal on December 30, possibly to obtain supplies.

Intercepted near Wakefield, both York and Rutland are killed, the latter executed the following day together with the captured Salisbury.

Margaret orders the heads of all three placed on the gates of York.

The Act of Accord and the events of Wakefield leave the eighteen-year-old Edward, Earl of March, York's eldest son, as Duke of York and heir to the throne.

Salisbury's death leaves Warwick, his heir, as the biggest landowner in England.

Warwick, with the captive King Henry in his train, has been made outstandingly wealthy by his father’s death.

Margaret travels to Scotland to negotiate for Scottish assistance.

Mary of Gueldres, Queen Consort to James II of Scotland, agrees to give Margaret an army on condition that she cede the town of Berwick to Scotland and Mary's daughter be betrothed to Prince Edward.

Margaret agrees, although she has no funds to pay her army and can only promise booty from the riches of southern England, as long as no looting takes place north of the River Trent.

She takes her army to Hull, recruiting more men as she goes.

Margaret moves south, wreaking havoc as she progresses, her army supporting itself by looting as it passes through the prosperous south of England.

In London, Warwick uses this as propaganda to reinforce Yorkist support throughout the south—the town of Coventry switches allegiance to the Yorkists.

Warwick fails to start raising an army soon enough and, without Edward's army to reinforce him, is caught off-guard by the Lancastrians' early arrival at St. Albans.

At the Second Battle of St. Albans on February 17, 1461, the Queen wins the Lancastrians' most decisive victory yet, and as the Yorkist forces flee they leave behind the bemused King Henry, who is found unharmed, sitting quietly beneath a tree singing.

The Queen having recovered control of her husband, Henry knights thirty Lancastrian soldiers immediately after the battle.

Two Yorkist knights (one of them Sir Thomas Kyriell, a veteran leader of the Hundred Years War), who had sworn to let him come to no harm, had remained with him throughout the battle.

In an illustration of the increasing bitterness of the war, Queen Margaret asks her seven-year-old son Edward of Westminster, how, not whether, the two knights are to die.

Edward, thus prompted, sends them to be beheaded.

The Lancastrian army advances southwards as a wave of dread sweeps London, where rumors are rife about savage northerners intent on plundering the city.

Margaret and her army can now march unopposed onto London, although they do not do so.

The people of London shut the city gates and refuse to supply food to the queen's army, which is looting the surrounding counties of Hertfordshire and Middlesex.

This had caused Margaret to hesitate, as had the news of the Yorkist victory at Mortimer's Cross.

The Lancastrians fall back through Dunstable, losing many Scots and Borderers who desert and return home with the plunder they had already gathered.

Meanwhile, Edward advances towards London from the west where he had joined forces with Warwick.

The two men enter London with their army on March 2, where they are welcomed with enthusiasm, money and supplies by the largely Yorkist-supporting city.

Edward can no longer claim simply to be trying to wrest the king from bad councilors; it has become a battle for the crown.

Edward needs authority, and this seems forthcoming when the Bishop of London asks the people of London their opinion and they reply with shouts of "King Edward".

This is quickly confirmed by Parliament, and on March 4 Edward is unofficially crowned in a hastily arranged ceremony at Westminster Abbey amid much jubilation, although Edward vows he will not have a formal coronation until Henry and Margaret are executed or exiled.

He also announces that Henry has forfeited his right to the crown by allowing his queen to take up arms against his rightful heirs under the Act of Accord, though it is being widely argued that Edward's victory is simply a restoration of the rightful heir to the throne, which neither Henry nor his Lancastrian predecessors had been.

It is this argument that Parliament had accepted the year before.

Edward IV and Warwick march north, gathering a large army as they go, and meet an equally impressive Lancastrian army at Towton.

Edward defeats Queen Margaret on a snowy March 29 in the Battle of Towton, (thought to be the bloodiest battle ever fought in England, with casualties believed to have been about twenty-eight thousand, roughly one percent of the entire English population), to make good his claim to the English throne.

It is thought that fifty thousand, or perhaps even one hundred thousand men fought, including twenty-eight Lords (almost half the peerage at that time), mainly on the Lancastrian side.

The numbers often given are forty-two thousand for the Lancastrians and thirty-six thousand for the Yorkists.

Part of the reason that so many died is because both sides had resolved beforehand that the issue was to be settled that day, with no quarter asked or given.

The deposed Lancastrian royals flee to Scotland to raise resistance, where they stay with the court of James III, implementing their earlier promise to cede Berwick to Scotland.