This is the first modern scholarly study of north-eastern England during the Wars of the Roses. For a fleeting period in the late fifteenth century, the North dominated England: it was both the adopted home and the power base of Richard III. But this is more than simply an account of the rise and fall of the last Plantagenet as the Lord of the North. A. J. Pollard analyses regional politics and the interrelationship between province and centre from the beginning of the Neville-Percy feud in the 1450s to the establishment of Tudor authority by 1500. Themes explored include Anglo-Scottish relations, local government, the structure of landed society, the wealth, power, and the outlook of lords and gentry, and the economy of the region.

Dr Pollard sets political history in the context of the period, and paints a detailed portrait of lay society, based on intensive research among local records. He shows that, contrary to some recent views, the North-East was in certain significant respects more feudal, more conservative and, by the early sixteenth century, poorer than the South-East of England.