The Jack Cade Rebellion exposes how a volatile 1450 uprising transformed England toward the Wars of the Roses.

Between the years 1450 and 1455, England was wracked by turmoil that saw bishops and nobles murdered, skirmishes fought, castles besieged, rebellions rise and fall, international embarrassment, and the brewing of a rivalry that threatened to, and eventually did, tear the country apart, ultimately resulting in a brutal civil war. The Wars of the Roses are today regarded as one of England's bloodiest and most infamous chapters, having heavily influenced author George R. R. Martin and the filming of the hit series Game of Thrones. But whilst there have been volumes of work donated to this intermittent thirty-year civil war, little has been written on the fuse that lit the powder keg: Jack Cade's Rebellion.

In The Jack Cade Rebellion: The Revolt that Led to the Wars of the Roses, Newitt takes a look at the rebellion that rose out of England's south coast in the spring of 1450, marched through the country freely before defeating a royal army and stormed the capital, where they enacted their own vengeance against some of King Henry VI's leading advisors. However, the story does not end there, nor does it end upon the rebellion's collapse only a matter of months after its rise but in the narrow streets, and the market square of St Albans as the uncontrollable feud between Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York came to a brutal end in what would be the first battle of the Wars of the Roses.