After retribution had been dealt out to the rebel leaders, and an unknown number of their followers, taken at Shrewsbury, there remained the problem of the many other rebels still at large.
The Cheshire loyalist, Sir John Stanley, his desire for vengeance whetted by an arrow-wound in his throat that made him speak ‘rattlingly’, urged the king to ‘bren and slee! bren and slee!’ [‘burn and slay! burn and slay!’] in his treatment of the rebels. King Henry in fact chose to adopt a more moderate course of action.
The king had other immediate concerns, not least the condition of his eldest son, Prince Henry. The head of the arrow that had injured him was still lodged deep in his face, entering it from the left, burying itself in the cheek and reaching the bone behind the prince’s nose. For several days after the battle Henry was treated with plant and herb extracts, and sedated, probably with opium, while the royal physician, John Bradmore – possibly with some trepidation – considered his options. His solution was to design a specialized instrument. A keylike screw was produced, which was inserted into the wound and into the socket of the arrowhead, and then gradually retracted and withdrawn, bringing the arrowhead with it. The pain must have been excruciating and Henry will have borne the scar for the rest of his life, although, surprisingly, no contemporary writer appears to have remarked on it.
Arrangements would also have been made for the removal, and if they were lucky, treatment, of the other less illustrious wounded who had survived a night on the battlefield.
The king chose not to heed the advice of Sir John Stanley regarding the men of Cheshire. The reality was that, with the mounting threat from Glyn Dwr to the marches, Henry could not afford to lose the services of the highly experienced Cheshire troops. With the exception of a few ringleaders, who were outlawed, most were received into favour and indeed back into military service. The king’s aim was to reconcile the men of Cheshire to his regime and he succeeded to the extent that many would serve Henry V in France, and indeed, half a century later, Cheshire was strongly Lancastrian in sympathy at the start of the Wars of the Roses.
Even though Hotspur and Worcester were dead, and their army scattered, the danger to Henry’s regime was not over. The Earl of Northumberland was still at large in the north, and potentially at the head of a powerful army. On 23 July King Henry wrote to Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, ordering him to proceed against Northumberland without delay.
The course of events in the north over the next few days is unclear. Northumberland was probably still in North Yorkshire, raising his tenants. How far this process had gone before he received news of the disaster at Shrewsbury is uncertain. But the news clearly shattered, for the moment, any hope of further resistance to the royalist forces. Westmoreland seems to have moved into North Yorkshire with superior forces and Northumberland decided that it would be futile to engage him.
Together with some of the men he had mustered at Tadcaster, Northumberland headed north to Newcastle. News of the defeat at Shrewsbury had travelled ahead of him and the emboldened townspeople refused to admit the earl’s men, allowing only Northumberland himself, with a few attendants, to enter. In response, Northumberland’s men seem to have attempted to storm the town but were repulsed. The game was clearly now up for Northumberland and he disbanded his troops and took refuge at his favourite residence, Warkworth Castle.
King Henry was marching northwards and by 4 August had reached Pontefract. From there he sent a message to the Earl of Northumberland, ordering him to answer for his actions on 11 August at York. There is little doubt that Northumberland, if not actually instigating the revolt of his brother and son, had been deeply implicated in it. He could only hope that the slightly ambivalent attitude he had displayed and the king’s need for reconciliation in England might save him.
Hotspur’s head was already on display above one of the gates of York (probably Micklegate Bar), perhaps that through which Northumberland entered the city. If so, the sight probably deepened the earl’s hatred for the king, and his determination one day to seek vengeance for the death of his kin. For the moment, however, the pressing need was to save his own life.
The meeting between erstwhile rebel and monarch was a frosty one. Northumberland denied any part in the rebellion, placing all blame on Hotspur and Worcester. It may be that there was some doubt in the king’s mind regarding the earl’s guilt, or perhaps that he felt that enough blood had already been spilt. Northumberland had no surviving sons, his grandson was an infant, and Henry may have had no desire to make the Nevilles overpowerful in the north. In his letter ordering Northumberland to attend him at York, Henry had already promised the earl that he would be allowed to put his case to Parliament. In the meantime, he would be kept in custody at Baignton near Coventry, and his castles were to be handed over to the crown. The latter objective took some time to achieve. The constables of the Northumbrian Percy castles were mainly from the earl’s estates in Yorkshire and proved reluctant to surrender their charges.
As early as 26 July, the king appointed his squire, John Coppall, as governor of the great castle at Bamburgh, in place of the Percyite Thomas Knayton, who had probably been killed at Shrewsbury. Possibly because of the death of its governor, Bamburgh passed fairly quickly into royal control. King Henry, however, could afford neither the time nor the loss of royal dignity involved in remaining in person to secure all of the Percy garrisons. Instead, the task was delegated to loyalist Northumbrian gentry. However, Warkworth, Alnwick and Berwick-upon-Tweed were still holding out defiantly early in 1404.
It is hard to believe that this resistance was not on the instructions of the Earl of Northumberland, anxious to retain some bargaining chips when his own fate was eventually decided.
Parliament met at Westminster on 14 January 1404 and three weeks later Northumberland, who had been brought to Windsor, appeared before it. The king had already been given clear indications that many in Parliament opposed the burden of taxation that Henry was demanding to finance his war in Wales and against the French, and there were hints of some agreement with those who suggested that his right to the throne was by no means incontestable, even going so far as to suggest that Northumberland should be pardoned without further ado.
The king could not openly agree to this, and insisted the earl must petition Parliament for pardon. This was, of course, mere face-saving. The Lords promptly found Northumberland guilty of trespass, but not of treason, and sentenced him to a fine. The king, equally promptly, remitted the fine, and granted Northumberland a full pardon and restoration of his estates. The king may have believed that the earl, after his narrow escape, would no longer present a threat. He would soon learn otherwise.
Although Hotspur had gone down to defeat and death at Shrewsbury, and the Percy threat was for the moment quelled, in Wales Glyn Dwr continued to prosper. The unrest in North East Wales, partly kindled by Hotspur, continued after his death. In early August Welsh rebels based there raided into Shropshire and laid siege to the castles of Flint, Rhuddlan and Hawarden. These were fairly easy to supply by sea or land from nearby Chester, but other English garrisons in North Wales were more seriously threatened.
The temporary incapacity of the wounded Prince Henry meant he was replaced in Wales by a commission headed by the Earl of Arundel, Thomas, Lord Berkeley, Edward Charlton of Powys and Lord Audley. This joint leadership was not likely to be effective, and with the king preoccupied throughout August in dealing with the embers of the Percy revolt, Glyn Dwr took full advantage of the situation. His men raided deep into South Wales, as far as the shores of the Bristol Channel, carrying off livestock and other booty. Glyn Dwr himself was reported to be in North Wales, preparing to raid across the Dee estuary into Wirral.
Once again, beleaguered royal officials, with the men of Herefordshire on the verge of making terms with the Welsh, pleaded with the king to come to their assistance. Orders were given for levies to muster at Worcester on 10 September. But in the meantime, the English position continued to worsen. On 3 September, the same day that Henry reached Worcester, the Archdeacon of Hereford, Richard Kingeston, wrote desperately to the king that only his personal presence would save the county from devastation. Over 400 Welshmen were at large in Herefordshire, plundering and driving off cattle into the hills of South Wales. Kingeston had sent out virtually all of his men to oppose them, so that, ‘in faith, I have naught left with me but two men’. He urged that, at least, a respected commander such as the Earl of Somerset be sent to support him with 100 men-at-arms and 600 archers.
The king, meanwhile, remained at Worcester, crippled by lack of money, sending out orders to the Marcher lords to replenish and reinforce a large number of castles in South Wales and its borders.
Henry was able to extract a small amount of money from unwilling bishops and magnates who were with him at Worcester, and on 11 September reached Hereford, where he called out the neighbouring levies, and ordered that supplies be collected at Bristol and taken to the castles of South Wales – or at least to those of them that could be reached by sea.
By 19 September Henry had begun his own advance across the Golden Valley of Herefordshire, his objective being to relieve the castle at Carmarthen. As usual, he met with no opposition, as the enemy melted away into the hills. The king reached Carmarthen on 24 September and gave orders for the repair of its defences, leaving behind a force under the Earl of Somerset with supplies and pay for a month. Henry himself was back at Hereford on 3 October, ordering a new muster of levies for a renewed expedition into Wales, which never apparently happened. By now Glyn Dwr’s men were once again active in South Wales and the Herefordshire border.
By the middle of November, Henry was back in London. Although he was greeted by enthusiastic, though possibly staged, demonstrations of loyalty from the citizens, his only notable success of the summer – though admittedly a vital one – had been the crushing of the Percy rebellion. In Wales, the troops left at Carmarthen were in a state of mutiny, saying they would not remain beyond the agreed month ‘for anything in the world’. Their commanders warned that unless the situation was taken in hand, ‘the King is in great peril and on the high road to ruin’. The Duke of York was sent to take over command.
But this did nothing to mend the English position in Wales as a whole. In Anglesey, Beaumaris Castle was in trouble, though supplied to some extent by ships from Chester, while Cardiff was reliant upon supplies brought by sea across the Bristol Channel. Lampeter Castle, surrounded and with its garrison facing starvation, was in grave danger. Aberystwyth Castle, though again sometimes reprovisioned by sea, was under acute threat. Kidwelly Castle had been attacked and the Welsh insurgents in the area had been reinforced by men from French and Breton ships operating off the coast.
By the end of the year, the Duke of York had somewhat reluctantly assumed command in South Wales, with the authority to grant pardons, and partly financed by a fine of 3,000 marks levied on the citizens of Chester for their part in Hotspur’s rebellion. The Duke’s commission was for a year, and as well as the garrisons of South Wales, he was to have a mobile force of 250 men-at-arms and 780 archers.
But Glyn Dwr was dominant throughout much of Wales. In November, the war widened when French ships, led by Jean d’Espagne, joined in an attack on Caernarvon. The castle was under the command of a Cheshire man, William of Tranmere, with a dwindling force of soldiers and townsmen. His garrison included three men-at-arms, two of whom succumbed during the winter. Both were members of prominent Welsh families, one connected with the Royal House of Gwynedd, illustrating the fact that the war in Wales was also, in part, a civil conflict. Some families had members on opposing sides and were open to reprisals from both sides in consequence.