Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland was accomplished. In December, the king rallied sufficiently to resume control of government, and York's protectorate was terminated. With Somerset back at the centre of power, civil war seemed imminent. In May 1455, Northumberland was travelling with the king and Somerset to a great council at Leicester, when the party was intercepted by York and the Nevilles. On 22 May 1455, at the First Battle of St Albans, the royal forces clashed with the forces loyal to the Duke of York, in what has been described as the first battle of the Wars of the Roses. The battle was a
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