Year 1459 (MCDLIX) was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, 6th Earl of Salisbury, known as Warwick the Kingmaker, was an English nobleman, administrator, landowner of the House of Neville fortune and military commander. The eldest son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, he became Earl of Warwick through marriage, and was the wealthiest and most powerful English peer of his age, with political connections that went beyond the country's borders. One of the leaders in the Wars of the Roses, originally on the Yorkist side but later switching to the Lancastrian side, he was instrumental in the deposition of two kings, which led to his epithet of "Kingmaker".
The Battle of Barnet was a decisive engagement in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic conflict of 15th-century England. The military action, along with the subsequent Battle of Tewkesbury, secured the throne for Edward IV.
The Battle of Towton took place on 29 March 1461 during the Wars of the Roses, near Towton in North Yorkshire, and "has the dubious distinction of being probably the largest and bloodiest battle on English soil". Fought for ten hours between an estimated 50,000 soldiers in a snowstorm on Palm Sunday, the Yorkist army achieved a decisive victory over their Lancastrian opponents. As a result, Edward IV deposed the Lancastrian Henry VI and secured the English throne.
Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, KG was an English nobleman. He was the stepfather of King Henry VII of England. He was the eldest son of Thomas Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley and Joan Goushill.
Audley's Cross is a cross sited in Blore Heath, Staffordshire to mark the spot on which James Touchet, Lord Audley was killed at the battle of Blore Heath in 1459.
The Battle of Northampton was fought on 10 July 1460 near the River Nene, Northamptonshire. It was a major battle of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were an army led by nobles loyal to King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, his Queen Margaret of Anjou and their six-year-old son Edward, Prince of Wales, on one side, and the army of Edward, Earl of March, and Warwick the Kingmaker on the other. The battle was the first in which artillery was used in England.
The Rout of Ludford Bridge was a largely bloodless confrontation fought in the early years of the Wars of the Roses. It took place on 12 October 1459, and resulted in a setback for the Yorkists. Although this seemed to be a triumph for the rival Lancastrians at the time, they had thrown away their advantage within six months.
James Tuchet, 5th Baron Audley, 2nd Baron Tuchet of Heleigh Castle was an English peer.
John Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford, 9th Lord of Skipton was a Lancastrian military leader during the Wars of the Roses in England. The Clifford family was one of the most prominent families among the northern English nobility of the fifteenth century, and by the marriages of his sisters, John Clifford had links to some very important families of the time, including the earls of Devon. He was orphaned at twenty years of age when his father was slain by partisans of the House of York at the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of St Albans in 1455. It was probably as a result of his father's death there that Clifford became one of the strongest supporters of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, who ended up as effective leader of the Lancastrian faction.
John Neville, Baron Neville was an English nobleman who fought for the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses. He belonged to a senior but impoverished branch of the Neville family of northern England, which had earlier been disinherited in favour of a younger branch headed by John's half–uncle, Richard, Earl of Salisbury. John Neville and his brothers spent several years feuding with Salisbury over the contested inheritance and, when the dynastic wars broke out, John sided with the Lancastrians whilst the junior Nevilles sided with the House of York.
Events from the 1450s in England.
Events from the year 1459 in England.
Sir James Strangeways was Speaker of the House of Commons of England between 1461–1462. and a close political ally of Edward IV's Yorkist faction.
Francesco Coppini or dei Coppini was an Italian prelate whom Pope Pius II sent to England in 1459 to arrange a reconciliation between the houses of Lancaster and York during the Wars of the Roses.
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, was a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These wars were fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: Lancaster and York. The wars extinguished the last male line of the House of Lancaster in 1471, leading to the Tudor family inheriting the Lancastrian claim to the throne. Following the war and the extinction of the last male line of the House of York in 1485, a politically arranged marriage united the Houses of Lancaster and York, creating a new royal dynasty which inherited the Yorkist claim as well, thereby resolving the conflict.
The First Battle of St Albans took place on 22 May, 1455, at St Albans, 22 miles (35 km) north of London, and traditionally marks the beginning of the Wars of the Roses in England. Richard, Duke of York, and his allies, the Neville Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, defeated a royal army commanded by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Unusually, the battle was contested in the town of St Albans itself, with the bulk of the fighting taking place in the streets and a tavern being used as a redoubt. Somerset was killed in the battle, and King Henry VI captured, clearing the way for a subsequent parliament to appoint Richard of York Lord Protector.
The Second Battle of St Albans was fought on 17 February 1461 during the Wars of the Roses in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.
Sir Thomas Neville was the second son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, a major nobleman and magnate in the north of England during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses, and a younger brother to the more famous Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the 'Kingmaker'. Thomas worked closely with them both in administering the region for the Crown, and became a significant player in the turbulent regional politics of northern England in the early 1450s, especially in the Neville family's growing local rivalry with the House of Percy. His wedding in August 1453 is said to have marked the beginning of the armed feud between both houses, in which Thomas and his brother John led a series of raids, ambushes and skirmishes across Yorkshire against the Percy family. Historians describe the feud as setting the stage for the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne, and Thomas played a large role in the Neville family's alliance with his uncle, Richard, Duke of York.
The siege of the Tower of London was an episode of the Wars of the Roses, in which adherents of the rival Plantagenet houses of Lancaster and York were pitted against each other. In June 1460, several Yorkist nobles, who had unsuccessfully rebelled against King Henry VI the year before and had fled to Calais, invaded the south east of England at Sandwich. They enjoyed widespread support through popular discontent with the ruling court among the populace of Kent and the merchants of London, and were greeted by enthusiastic crowds when they entered London on 2 July.
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