The Wars of the Roses Explained

York, who took the place of Gloucester, was in alliance with Cambridge, though the main Yorkist network was in the South and West.  The Lancastrians rose in Kent.  Norfolk was for York, but not Warwick, while the king was stricken with measles at Durham. The Earl of March drove the King to Wiltshire in July and August.  York was summoned to Leicester but retired in spurs to Sandal, in Yorkshire, where he was joined by Warwick and Salisbury.  Buckingham and Dorset were wounded and carried home in a cart.  York became the stronghold of the Lancastrians while Exeter, remembering St Albans, beheaded Salisbury, the son of Buckingham.  Somerset went north and the ensuing battle took place in a blinding snowstorm. 

Or a fog.  At Barnet, Warwick turned the king’s left flank, but Warwick too was turned while Oxford from Lancaster overlapped the Yorkist left before getting lost.  He eventually arrived in Somerset’s rear, whose flank had already been routed meaning a pedestrian Warwick battered to death.

On balance, historians believe, the winner was England.