History Cafe
History Cafe
Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe
#96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?
29 minutes Posted Apr 1, 2026 at 7:00 am.
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Henry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over… or at least we thought it was, until now. (R)

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