The two parties in the long contention had each assumed the badge of a rose--the Yorkists a white rose, the Lancastrians a red one. Hence the name of the Wars of the Roses. "As early as the time of John of Ghent, the rose was used as an heraldic emblem, and when he married Blanche, the daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, he used the red rose for a device. Edmund of Langley, his brother, the fifth son of Edward III., adopted the white rose in opposition to him; and their followers afterwards maintained these distinctions in the bloody wars of the fifteenth century. There is, however, no authentic account of the precise period when these badges were first adopted." _Mrs. Hookham, Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou, volume 2, chapter 1._ ALSO IN: _J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York._ _Sir J. Ramsay, Lancaster and York._ _C. W. Oman; Warwick, the King-maker, chapter 5-17._ See, also, TOWTON, BARNET, and TEWKSBURY. {821} The effects of the Wars of the Roses. "It is astonishing to observe the rapidity with which it [the English nation] had settled down to order in the reign of Henry VII. after so many years of civil dissension. It would lead us to infer that those wars were the wars of a class, and not of the nation; and that the effects of them have been greatly exaggerated. With the single exception of Cade's rebellion, they had nothing in common with the revolutions of later or earlier times. They were not wars against classes, against forms of government, against the order or the institutions of the nation. It was the rivalry of two aristocratic factions struggling for superiority, neither of them hoping or desiring, whichever obtained the upper hand, to introduce momentous changes in the State or its administration. The main body of the people took little interest in the struggle; in the towns at least there was no intermission of employment. The war passed over the nation, ruffling the surface, toppling down high cliffs here and there, washing away ancient landmarks, attracting the imagination of the spectator by the mightiness of its waves, and the noise of its thunders; but the great body below the surface remained unmoved. No famines, no plagues, consequent on the intermittance of labour caused by civil war, are recorded; even the prices of land and provisions scarcely varied more than they have been known to do in times of profoundest peace. But the indirect and silent operation of these conflicts was much more remarkable. It reft into fragments the confederated ranks of a powerful territorial aristocracy, which had hitherto bid defiance to the King, however popular, however energetic. Henceforth the position of the Sovereign in the time of the Tudors, in relation to all