History of Hertfordshire Kings Langley. He gave the alm of a groat to the poor. Henry Chichele, the Archbishop of Canterbury, visited Barnet in 1423. No bells rang, and the archbishop took offence at his poor welcome. When he returned in 1426, the church doors were sealed against him. Three important battles of the Wars of the Roses took place in Hertfordshire. At the First Battle of St Albans on 22 May 1455, which was the first major battle of the Wars of the Roses, Richard of York and Neville the Kingmaker defeated the Lancastrians, killed their leader, Edmund Beaufort and captured King
England in the Late Middle Ages government was in major financial difficulties, leading to the crisis of 1450 and a popular revolt under the leadership of Jack Cade. Law and order deteriorated, and the crown was unable to intervene in the factional fighting between different nobles and their followers. The resulting Wars of the Roses saw a savage escalation of violence between the noble leaderships of both sides: captured enemies were executed and family lands attainted. By the time that Henry VII took the throne in 1485, England's governmental and social structures had been substantially weakened, with whole noble lines extinguished. Medieval England was a patriarchal