Historians are still very uncertain about what happened in these years, in both high politics and the country at large, and equally uncertain about why exactly Henry VI was deposed and why the deposition took the form it did. The best way into the problem is to abandon the idea of two rival camps formed by 1455. Instead, the nobility should still be seen as trying to maintain an ever more precarious unity around the king and regrouping around him whenever possible. Those who were pared away from this neutralist centre to either side – and gradually they came to be in the majority – were in some cases firmly committed to one side or the other. In most cases, however, it was immediate circumstances that forced them to take sides, and they were not necessarily averse to taking up common ground again. As in the immediately preceding period, divisions among the nobility, which only a king could have healed, were usually what impelled nobles into a partisan position. However, it will be apparent that increasingly, as the decade drew to a close, partisanship was forced on them. In practice, because loyalty to the king was the single issue that could unite the nobility, whoever had control of the king would be likely to be the focus for magnate unity.

After St Albans this was patently York. The victorious Yorkists took Henry back to London where a parliament was immediately summoned for July.