White Rose of York

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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.^[1]

[edit] History

Traditionally the origins of the emblem are said to go back to Edmund of Langley in the fourteenth century, the first Duke of York and the founder of the House of York as a Cadet branch of the then ruling House of Plantagenet.^[2] The actual symbolism behind the rose has religious connotations as it represents the Virgin Mary, who was often called the Mystical Rose of Heaven.^[2] 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.^[3]

During the civil wars of the fifteenth century, the White Rose was the symbol of Yorkist forces opposed to the rival House of Lancaster, whose symbol was the Red Rose of Lancaster.^[2] The opposition of the two roses gave the wars their name: the Wars of the Roses. 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.^{[citation needed]}

At the Battle of Minden on August 1, 1759, Yorkshiremen of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry's predecessor the 51st Regiment picked white roses from bushes near to the battlefields as a tribute to their fallen comrades who had died.^[2] They stuck the plucked white roses in their coats as a tribute.^[4] Yorkshire Day is held on this date each year.^[2]