The Roses of the Roses SEEMED to be over; and King Edward IV began to consolidate his rule over the land. What follows are 9 years where London begins to try and regain its equilibrium while Grocers and mercers fall out over who stands where in St Paul’s, where we examine the much overlooked ‘other’ duties of the cities Sargent-at-Arms; where suddenly the Hundred Years War seems to be starting again, and where the young and energetic Edward IV seems to turn from a eager young warlord, into a fat, vicious and dangerous spider… bringing order even at the cost of his close family.

In 1471 London as a city came under a three pronged attack- well armed and well trained soldiers assailed London Bridge, Bishopsgate in the West End and Aldgate in the East End, while artillery showed shells from Southwark into London itself… one of the most overlooked moments of the cities history, coming as it did only a few weeks after a massive battle just north of the city in Barnet. The Story of London details one of the more exciting moments in its history with a detailed account of those mad few weeks.

We have reached 1469, and arguably the three most intense, most insane, years of the Wars of the Roses- the wild, forever unstable Kingdom was rocked as regimes rose and fell with alarming speed; two kings; two invasions from Europe; three separate governments, seemingly constant insurrections and rebellions… London found itself trying to cope with a failing nation around it. And upon its streets and within its civic buildings, drama and melodrama was played out, as the carnage began, with slow and terrible certainty, to draw itself closer to the capital.

Young, charismatic, intelligent, and highly popular in London, Edward IV seemed to have it all. For our city, his reign promised much, a new start, a new dawn even, of a king inclined to their sensibilities and with a long and prosperous reign before him. And yet, while the city became host to marvellous royal pageants and tournaments, it was still seeing show trials and executions, and the miasma of Civil War hung over everything. In truth, Edward IV was doomed, a young man who would never be able to solve the crisis the kingdom was in, and the decade, and this chapter, explores what went wrong…

After a weeks break due to ill health, the Story returns with an episode that unashamedly takes a short break from the grand narrative of the Wars of the Roses, to look at the politics and changing fortunes of London’s Grocers, Mercers, Wool Staplers and Merchant Adventurers in the aftermath of the city siding with the Yorkist faction. How did the city cope with the huge recession the civil wars had caused, and how did it recover… welcome then to Yorkist London.

The saga of London during the Wars of the Roses continues in this fast paced chapter, which covers one of the dramatic few months this nation has ever seen; the city had mostly sided with the Yorkists in the aftermath of the Siege of the Tower of London, but now they had to choose to whom they would swear allegiance to- and they did so in a most dramatic manner. While London as a community took one of the biggest gambles in the history of the City, events elsewhere rocked the nation as the size and scale of the fighting escalated into something this nation had never seen before…

1460… that one time, in London, the Tower of London started firing cannon and napalm into the nearby houses. Seriously. A chapter that explores the extraordinary moment when the Earl of Warwick took London, his father was placed in command of the city, and a small bunch of royalist nobles and a dodgy grocers fled into the Tower, and began a brutal stand off. The siege was an incredibly vicious moment, as the Wars of the Roses suddenly became all too real to the residents. Welcome to a bumper chapter exploring this amazing year in the tale of our city.

The Wars of the Roses are warming up, and London is trying NOT to pick a side… but the Queen is unleashing a smart campaign upon the city, turning Livery Companies upon one another, and political scandle rocks the community. This chapter is an examination into the full reasons why London ended up picking the side it did, as we immerse ourselves in the complicated world of the late 1450’s- dodgy Italians in London, dodgy Londoners in Southampton, a NEW war starting up in the north and medieval pirates making the city of London swoon… welcome to the chaos.

The tale of London in the Wars of the Roses continues as we examine the aftermath of the Battle of St Albans and the fall of the second protectorate of York; Italian merchants sleeping with married English women (allegedly), the King trying to make everyone hug it out, violent law students, prison riots, and a new wave of pirates- all form the backdrop to one of the most extraordinary moments in the cities history; the amazing story of how, over one later winter and early spring, a mayor tried to keep hundreds, if not thousands, of heavily armed soldiers staying in London, from kicking the hell out of one another!

And so we begin the tale of London in the Wars of the Roses, setting the scene, and dropping us straight into the city- as the Duke of York and the Duke of Somerset’s five year rivalry moves towards its bloody end on the streets of St. Albans, in London, the city was to see young Mercers attacking the homes of Italians, the Grocers company politically shift dramatically when one side is winning, to quickly following the other side, before just as quickly having to reverse course… and as disparate factions begin to come together due to circumstances in the rest of the country, a savage political protest takes place on Fleet Street… let the games begin!