White Rose of York

The White Rose of York (also called the Rose alba or rose argent), a white heraldic rose, is the symbol of the House of York and has since been adopted as a symbol of Yorkshire as a whole.

The origins of the emblem are said to go back to the fourteenth century, to Edmund of Langley, the first Duke of York and the founder of the House of York as a cadet branch of the then ruling House of Plantagenet (although other reports suggest the rose and Yorkshire have links going back further than that.) The actual symbolism behind the rose has religious connotations as it represents the Virgin Mary, who is often called the Mystical Rose of Heaven. The Yorkist rose is white in colour, because in Christian liturgical symbolism, white is the symbol of light, typifying innocence and purity, joy and glory.

During the civil wars of the fifteenth century, the White Rose was the symbol of Yorkist forces opposed to the rival House of Lancaster. The red rose of Lancaster would be a later invention used to represent the House of Lancaster, but was not in use during the actual conflict. The opposition of the two roses gave the wars their name: the Wars of the Roses (coined in the 19th century.) The conflict was ended by King Henry VII of England, who symbolically united the White and Red Roses to create the Tudor Rose, symbol of the Tudor dynasty. In the late Seventeenth Century the Jacobites took up the White Rose of York as their emblem, celebrating "White Rose Day" on 10 June, the anniversary of the birth of James III and VIII in 1688.

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