ABSTRACT
The fifteenth century opened with the seizure of the Crown by the House of Lancaster, continued with its capture by the House of York, and ended with its seizure by the House of Tudor. The House of York, the descendants of Edward III's second son, had a stronger claim to the throne than the House of Lancaster, the descendants of Edward III's third son. During the first half of the century the English renewed the Hundred Years' War with France, won a glorious victory at Agincourt, and then lost the fruits of that victory in a long, costly, inglorious series of small defeats. By 1453 England had surrendered all its possessions in France but Calais and its mercenary soldiers came home to contribute to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455. From 1455 to 1485 factious nobility and a weak king plunged England into a civil war that historians have called the Wars of the Roses.
