Board: AQA | Option: 2B | Component: Component 2 (Depth Study) | Assessment Objective: AO3
This option examines the dynastic struggle between the Houses of Lancaster and York from the breakdown of Henry VI’s government to the consolidation of Henry VII’s Tudor dynasty. Students trace the political instability of the mid-fifteenth century, the role of magnate power and noble faction, the careers of Edward IV and Richard III, and the transition to the more stable Tudor regime — engaging with a debate that has been transformed by recent archival and revisionist scholarship.
What this option covers
- The weakness of Henry VI: mental illness, court faction, and the loss of France
- Richard, Duke of York: protectorate and the first phase of conflict
- Edward IV: Yorkist consolidation and the Readeption of Henry VI
- Richard III: the usurpation, character, and the rehabilitation debate
- The Battle of Bosworth 1485 and the Tudor succession
- Henry VII: consolidating the new dynasty, Yorkist pretenders, and the settlement of 1499
Key historiographical debates
- The nature of the Wars of the Roses: constitutional crisis or aristocratic feuding?
- Richard III: villain, victim, or misunderstood pragmatist? (The revisionist rehabilitation)
- How decisive was Bosworth? Was the Tudor settlement inevitable?
- The role of ‘bastard feudalism’ in producing political instability
Debate 1 — What caused the Wars of the Roses? (free sample)
Did the wars spring from the personal failure of one king, from the ambitions and feuds of over-mighty magnates, or from a deeper crisis in the system of personal monarchy itself? This first debate is free and open to all. The full pack adds three more debates (below).
K. B. McFarlane — a crisis of kingship. England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (Hambledon, 1981). The wars sprang from the personal inadequacy of Henry VI, not structural decay: ‘only an undermighty ruler had anything to fear from overmighty subjects’. (source)
Charles Ross — magnate faction. The Wars of the Roses: A Concise History (Thames & Hudson, 1976). Noble rivalries and local feuds, escalating amid weak royal leadership, drove the descent into civil war. (source)
Christine Carpenter — a constitutional crisis. The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c.1437–1509 (Cambridge University Press, 1997). The wars were a crisis of the whole system of personal monarchy and the political nation’s expectations of it — not mere faction. (source)
Comparison task. Compare McFarlane’s and Carpenter’s interpretations of the Wars’ causes. To what extent does Carpenter’s structural account challenge McFarlane’s focus on the personal failings of Henry VI?
Mark-scheme note. Top-band answers separate the role of individual kingship from structural features of late-medieval politics (‘bastard feudalism’, the constitution), and judge whether faction was a cause or a symptom.
Provenance prompts. (1) McFarlane reshaped the field by stressing personality; Carpenter writes after decades of local-records research — how does each approach shape the causes it finds? (2) Why might Tudor-era sources exaggerate the chaos of the Wars? (3) What evidence — chronicles, or gentry and estate records — best reveals whether instability was endemic or personal?
The full pack — three more debates
Subscribers get the full AO3 pack as a downloadable PDF: Debate 1 above plus three more, each with named historians, a comparison task, mark-scheme guidance and provenance prompts.
- Richard III: villain, victim, or misunderstood pragmatist? — Paul Murray Kendall, Rosemary Horrox, Michael Hicks.
- How decisive was Bosworth? Was the Tudor settlement inevitable? — S. B. Chrimes, John Gillingham.
- The role of ‘bastard feudalism’ in producing instability. — Charles Plummer, J. R. Lander, A. J. Pollard.
AO3 Interpretation Pack — download
The AO3 Interpretation Pack for AQA 2B covers all four major historiographical debates examined in this option, with named historians, paired comparison tasks built to AQA mark scheme logic, and provenance prompts for every debate.
£9.99 per pack
