Battle of Blore Heath Battle of Blore Heath The Battle of Blore Heath was one of the first major battles in the English Wars of the Roses. It was fought on 23 September 1459, at Blore Heath in Staffordshire. Blore Heath itself is a sparsely populated area of farmland, two miles east of the town of Market Drayton in Shropshire, and close to the towns of Market Drayton and Loggerheads, Staffordshire. After the First Battle of St Albans in 1455, an uneasy peace held in England. Attempts at reconciliation between the houses of Lancaster and York enjoyed but marginal success. However, both sides became
Wars of the Roses line, as descendants of Edward III's second son Lionel of Antwerp. Edmund's second son, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who was executed by Henry V, had married Anne de Mortimer, daughter of Roger Mortimer and sister of Edmund Mortimer. Anne's grandmother, Philippa of Clarence, was the daughter of Lionel of Antwerp. The Mortimers were the most powerful marcher family of the fourteenth century. G.M. Trevelyan has written that "the Wars of the Roses were to a large extent a quarrel between Welsh Marcher Lords, who were also great English nobles, closely related to the English throne." Anne de Mortimer had died