By the time that the armies were deployed, it was approaching midday. As was often the case in civil conflict, a last-ditch attempt was made to broker a peaceful solution when Thomas Prestbury, the Abbot of Shrewsbury, accompanied by a royal clerk, was despatched by the king to negotiate with Hotspur. It is unlikely that Henry had any real expectation, or indeed desire, that the talks would bear fruit, but by giving Hotspur this final opportunity he was declaring himself absolved of any responsibility for the bloodletting to come.
There are differing accounts of what followed. Some versions suggest the king invited Hotspur to a personal meeting, but that the latter declined, sending his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, instead. There is no certainty that this meeting actually took place, still less that it followed the course sometimes claimed. What is clear is that talks continued for several hours.
The rebel manifesto was presented to the king, according to John Hardynge carried by Hotspur’s esquires, Thomas Knayton and Roger Savey. In the manifesto – probably drafted by Worcester – the rebel leadership made a sweeping condemnation of Henry, accusing him of breaking his oath not to depose Richard, then murdering him. As well as ruling without the consent of lords and commons, and imposing illegal taxes, he had usurped the throne without regard to the claims of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and had declined to allow the ransom of Sir Edmund Mortimer. The wording was not likely to placate Henry, declaring that:
The Price of Battle
In recent years considerable light has been thrown on the nature of medieval combat by the discovery of a mass grave of men killed at the Battle of Towton in 1461. The findings also give a vivid picture of the effects on those who took part in the savage fighting at Shrewsbury.
The victims of Towton spanned a wide age range. Eleven of them were between the ages of 26 and 35; the same number between 16 and 25; eight between 36 and 45, with two others of uncertain age. Bearing in mind that Towton involved the raising of extremely large armies on both sides, it may be that older men were not generally levied, and this is likely to have been even more the case at Shrewsbury.
The most common injuries found at Towton were multiple head wounds and evidence of facial mutilation, though only injuries involving skeletal damage are now identifiable. The evidence suggests that sharp ‘force’ wounds, inflicted by weapons such as poleaxe blades, swords and daggers, are by a ratio of 86 per cent to 14 per cent much more frequent than is evidence of ‘blunt’ force injury caused by weapons such as hammer staffs, maces, sword pommels or war hammers.
The most numerous wounds were those inflicted on the forearm, consistent with attempts by the victim to parry or fend off an attacker’s blows. Wounds to hip and buttock indicate attacks being concentrated, in the case at least of lightly armoured foot soldiers on a weakly protected area, while evidence of torso injury is uncommon, which may indicate that the body was sufficiently protected – even by a quilted ‘jack’ – to prevent more than flesh wounds in this area.
There were many examples of head injuries, in some cases multiple injuries. Of the dead, twenty-seven had suffered, at some time or other in their lives, between one and thirteen head wounds. Of these, around 36 per cent of the injuries had been inflicted to the front of the head and 32 per cent suffered at the back. The majority of these injuries were to the left side of the head or body, indicating right-handed attackers.
Very few obvious arrow injuries were identified, possibly because of the nature of the circumstances in which these men were killed, or because any arrow injuries were flesh wounds.
The evidence suggests that the most common tactic in mêlées was for two or more men to bring an adversary to the ground by disabling his legs, and then to kill him with blows to the head.
when thou didest enter England thou madest an oath to us upon the Holy Gospels, boldly touched and kissed by thee at Doncaster, that thou wouldest never claim the crown, kingdom or state royal, but thine own proper inheritance and the inheritance of thy wife in England, and that Richard our sovereign lord the king and thine, should reign during his term of life, governed by the good council of the lords spiritual and temporal […] WHEREFORE THOU ART FORESWORN AND FALSE
that where thou sworest upon the same Gospels in the same place and time to us that thou wouldest not suffer any monies to be levied of the clergy, nor fifteenths on the people, nor any other tallies and taxes to be levied on the realm of England on behalf of the realm during thy life, but by consideration of the three estates of the realm, except for great need in causes of importance […] WHEREFORE THOU ART PERJURED AND FALSE
that thou hast caused the same our Sovereign Lord and thine, King Richard, traitorously within the Castle of Pomfret, without the consent or judgement of the Lords of the realm, by the space of fifteen days and so many nights (which is horrible among Christian people to be heard) with hunger thirst and cold to perish, to be murderd [sic]. WHEREFORE THOU ART PERJURED AND FALSE
that thou at that time, when our Sovereign Lord and thine, King Richard, was horribly murdered as above said, thou by extorted power, didst usurp and take the kingdom of England, and the name and the honour of the kingdom of France, unjustly and wrongfully, contrary to thine oath, from Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March and of Ulster, then next direct heir of England and of France immediately by due course of inheritance after the decease of the aforesaid Richard. WHEREFORE THOU ART PERJURED AND FALSE
that thou fraudulently and contrary to the law of England and thy council, have written through almost every shire in England to choose such knights for to hold a Parliament as shall be for thy pleasure and purpose, so that in thy Parliaments no justice should be ministered against thy mind, in these our complaints now moved.
Also we do allege, say and intend to prove, that when Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March and Ulster was taken prisoner by Owen Glendor [sic] in a pitched and foughten field, and cast into prison and laid with iron fetters, for thy matter and cause, whom falsely thou hast proclaimed willingly to yield himself prisoner to the said Owen Glendor, and neither wouldst deliver him thyself, nor yet suffer us, his kinsmen, to ransom and deliver him, yet notwithstanding we have not only concluded and agreed with the said Owen for his ransom at our proper charges and expenses, but also for a peace between thee and the said Owen. Yeah hast thou then not only published and declared us traitors, but also craftily and deceitfully imagined purposed and conspired the utter destruction and confusion of our persons. For the which cause we defy thee, thy supporters and accomplices as common traitors and destroyers of the realm, and the invaders, oppressors and confounders of the very true and right heirs of the crown of England. Which thing we intend with our hands to prove this day, Almighty God helping us.
He [the king] frequently sent envoys, the Abbots of Shrewsbury and Haughmond and others, asking Henry [Percy] to cease from his purpose and whatever just aims he had would gladly have fulfilled. Indeed the gentle king, following the advice of the wise men ‘the greater a man you are, humble yourself the more in all things’, and of scripture, which says ‘He who has shed men’s blood will have his own bloodshed.’ When Henry refused to yield, the king sent peacefully through Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, to find out from Henry the reason for the battle and why they had come against him. He replied immediately to the king that the cause was the unjust seizure of the crown, which by the law of inheritance should go to the son of the Earl of March. Thereupon the king proposed to depart without slaughter and to go to Parliament, notwithstanding the fact that he had been elected by them and the lords. The evidence that Henry Percy did not agree with him was that on the day of the coronation he did not come to the feast because it was certainly against his wishes that the coronation took place, since Duke Henry swore to the other two Henrys [Percy] on the relics of Bridlington that he would never aim for the crown. And then he said that if anyone more worthy of the crown were to be found he would willingly yield to him. He said openly that the Duchy of Lancaster was enough for him. They seemed not to agree with this at all, but were disposed to restore the crown to themselves or to fight for it. The king, notwithstanding his impudent reply, endeavouring at this juncture as so often to avoid men’s bloodshed, aimed to fight a duel with Henry so that more men should not die on their account. When this was clearly rejected and they had persevered with their earlier purpose the king said: ‘I confess that your wicked plan has been divulged which, as long as I live, will never happen. Your purpose is to give your approval to the bastard sons of the Earl of March and the traitor Edmund Mortimer and thus to crown as King Henry Percy or his son by reason of his wife’s right to inheritance.’ And as they discussed peace, which was in no way agreed, the day drew down to the hour of vespers.
It is doubtful if, after such a sweeping and comprehensive condemnation, that any grounds were left for negotiation. For there were no concessions the king could afford to grant without compromising his entire position.
Some writers, however, placed blame for the breakdown of talks on Worcester, suggesting that Hotspur had favoured an attempt to reach a peaceful solution and that Henry had been prepared to soften his own demands, but that Worcester had returned to his nephew and deliberately misrepresented what the king said. It does seem unlikely that Worcester and the king actually met face-to-face. Capgrave’s version of the exchange between Worcester and the king ran:
Worcester: We brought the one against King Richard, and now thou rulest worse than did he. Thou spoilest yearly the realm with taxes and tallages, thou paist no man, thou holdest no house, thou art not the heir of the realm…
Henry: I take tallages for needs of the realm, and I am chosen king to common assent of the realm, wherfor I counsel thee to put thee in thy grace.
Worcester: I trust not in thy grace.
Henry: Now I pray God that thou must answer for all the blood that here shall be shed this day and not I.
There were suspicions that the rebels were deliberately dragging out talks until it would be too late to fight that day. The edicts of the Church forbade the shedding of blood on a Sunday, and Hotspur may have hoped that either his father or Glyn Dwr would arrive by Monday. It was said that the Earl of Dunbar strongly opposed the granting of any truce, and advised the king to give the signal for the enemy refused to consent to what was reasonable. ‘The signal was needless, so eager were both sides for the fight.’ Whatever the truth of the matter, the time for talking was at an end. The decision would now rest with the sword.
Hotspur, outnumbered as he was, had no intention of leaving his advantageous defensive position in order to attack the enemy, until his archers had taken a heavy toll of the royalists and disorganized them. In the event, the king’s men were apparently quick to advance. By now it was probably early evening and the king was doubtless anxious to force a decision that day, in case Hotspur was reinforced either by his father or Glyn Dwr.
Some accounts suggest that it was the royalist left wing, commanded by Prince Henry, which was first to advance, but in reality the move was probably made simultaneously by the king’s whole army. That said, the divisions may have advanced slightly in echelon, with Stafford’s division on the right engaging first.
Fighting evidently began with an exchange of archery. Although outnumbered, Hotspur’s Cheshire archers had the advantages of higher ground and greater experience, and their storm of arrows soon began to tell. The royalist archers not only had to shoot uphill, but they were also probably hindered and thrown into some confusion by the entwined pea tendrils through which they had to pick their way. These would have been growing up stakes around 4 or 5 feet high, and would have been a much more formidable obstacle than sometimes realized. They may also have been unsighted by the rays of the setting sun in their eyes.
The royalist advance seems to have quickly ground to a halt, as, for several minutes, the king’s men endured a hail of arrows. The chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, suggests that the rebels were first to begin the barrage:
Therefore the archers of Henry Percy began the fight and the place for the arrows was not on the ground […] for men fell on the king’s side as fast as leaves fall in autumn after a hoar frost. Nor did the king’s archers fail to do their work, but sent a shower of sharp points towards their adversaries.
The arrow storm is unlikely to have continued for more than a few minutes – perhaps five at the outside. It has been suggested that Hotspur’s men may have had a greater quantity of reserve arrows available than did their opponents, but there is no hard evidence to support this theory. It is clear, however, that with their advantage of the higher ground – and perhaps because their opponents already were thrown into some confusion by the pea tendrils – the Cheshire archers gained the upper hand. It is possible that the wind direction caused the barrage to drift slightly eastward, so that the royalist vanguard on the right suffered more heavily than either the centre or left. A good deal of the barrage’s impact was upon royalist morale.
Few, if any, of the men on either side had ever been on the receiving end of an arrow storm, but the effect on Henry’s less experienced soldiers was devastating.
Prince Henry appears to have made the error common among less experienced soldiers of opening his visor in order to obtain a clearer view. It was probably in the first stage of the battle that he was hit in the face by an arrow that pierced his left cheek just below the eye, and remained embedded in the bone. Contemporary chroniclers suggest that he remained in action and continued to lead his men, but this is difficult to believe. At the very least he must have been severely incapacitated. In fact, considering the prince’s youth and relative inexperience, it is likely that he had with him some more experienced commander as his military mentor, who would have continued to direct his command. In any event, the prince’s division, which included a number of veteran professional soldiers who had served with him in Wales, remained in the field and capable of playing a decisive role.
Less fortunate was the royalist right wing, possibly commanded by the young Earl of Stafford. These troops were mainly militia, who had never previously experienced the hail of arrows, which now fell upon them. It may be – although contemporary accounts are contradictory – that it was at this stage of the battle that Stafford fell. At any rate this division of around 3,000 men broke and fled, some of them routing through the royalist baggage train from which they took horses to aid their flight.
Stafford, possibly with some of his household troops, may have joined the king in the main battle, which so far stood firm, although its advance had been brought to a halt, and indeed it may have fallen back a short distance out of effective arrow range.
The initiative now lay with Hotspur. He has been accused of rashness in quitting his strong defensive position, just as Richard III would be blamed in a similar situation eighty years later at Bosworth. But in reality, remaining on the defensive any longer was not a viable option for the outnumbered rebels, who had probably used most of their stock of arrows. If they stayed passive, then the royalists might be reinforced by further contingents of militia and renew their attack. Hotspur’s best hope lay in exploiting the confusion in the enemy ranks by launching his own attack, given some impetus by the sloping ground.
As so often happened, once the royalist right collapsed – perhaps even before the rebel counter-attack began – a large number of Hotspur’s men charged off the field in pursuit, some joining erstwhile enemies in looting the royalist baggage train, carrying off valuables and horses.
Hotspur launched a general attack with both his men-at-arms and his archers, the latter throwing down their bows and attacking with swords or war hammers and mallets. With cries of ‘Esperance Percy!’ the attackers surged forward, a few pursuing Stafford’s fleeing men or looting the royal baggage. But the main weight of the assault fell on King Henry’s ‘battle’ in Bateley field. Although his suggestion that many of the combatants were mounted is untrue, Walsingham captures the nature of the rebel advance:
Henry Percy, leader of the opposite army, and the Earl of Douglas, than whom no one was ever more spirited, in spite of the rain of arrows and the dense bodies of horsemen, urged their men against the king’s person alone, and concentrated all their arms on him.
Still heavily outnumbered, perhaps, given the departure in pursuit of many of Hotspur’s men, with the proportionate strength of the opposing forces much as it had been at the start of the battle, these were sound tactics. If King Henry could be speedily cut down, or even if he were forced to flee the field, the royalist army was likely to collapse. But this manoeuvre left Prince Henry’s left wing unengaged. It may be that the prince’s men were slightly concealed by a dip in the terrain or that Hotspur’s frontage was simply too narrow to engage them as well as the king’s division. In any event, whoever was now in effective command of the prince’s division was quick to seize the opportunity. He swung his men to the right to attack the right flank of Hotspur’s army, perhaps overlapping to take some of them in the rear as King Henry’s own division recoiled. According to the chronicler, Edward Hall:
the Prince Henry that day helped much his father, for although he were wounded in the face with an arrow, yet he never ceased either to fight where the battle was most strongest, or to corage [sic] his men when their hearts were daunted.
Certainly, the rebel right seems to have been pushed into its centre, and the opposing sides became closely locked together in a fiercely contested mêlée. Those who fell were likely either to be trampled to death or, in the case of fully armoured men, to die of suffocation.
Normally, periods of intense hand-to-hand fighting seem not to have been continuous. Opponents often pulled back for short periods, almost by mutual consent, to take breath and possibly to bring up reserves. However, the probable short duration of the fighting at Shrewsbury – possibly no more than two hours in total – suggests that such was not the case on this occasion. The fighting instead seems to have been particularly fierce and intense, as Hotspur’s men pressed their attack. They had little alternative: outnumbered as they were, with royalist reinforcements always likely to arrive, they had little option but to try to capitalize on their initial success and complete the rout of King Henry’s army.
Some men on both sides, particularly among the commanders, may have gone into action on horseback, although this made them tempting targets for those archers who still had arrows.
Hotspur will have realized that his best chance of victory lay in killing or capturing King Henry. The king’s position was apparently marked by the royal standard, and Hotspur, with thirty of his household troops, launched a fierce attack towards it. He seems to have been supported by Archibald Douglas and his Scottish knights, and the rebels started to break into the ranks of the king’s division. If King Henry were captured or killed, the battle would effectively be lost and George Dunbar was quick to see the danger. He persuaded the king to withdraw to a safer position in the rear. This in itself was a risky manoeuvre, for if his troops saw Henry apparently preparing to flee, they might themselves begin to rout.
As it was, Hotspur and his men reached the royal standard, whose bearer, Sir Walter Blount, was cut down and killed, possibly by Douglas. Other reports even suggest that King Henry himself was captured briefly until freed in a counter-attack. There is some suggestion that the Earl of Stafford may have donned a surcoat bearing the royal arms in order to assist in the deception but this conflicts with other reports that Stafford had fallen earlier in the battle. In any case, he was struck down now, and cries of ‘the King is dead!’ were heard in the rebel ranks. Other accounts claim that a second knight was also dressed in the royal livery, although this seems unlikely, as it would clearly have been seen as dishonourable for the king deliberately to skulk in the rear, according to a pre-arranged plan, while others took his place in disguise.
Sword and Bow: ‘Combined Arms Tactics’
Traditionally, the great English victories of the Hundred Years’ War have been attributed to the famed ‘longbowman’. Although there is some truth in this, the English success was actually due to a number of factors, not least the development of a remarkably effective partnership of bowman and man-at-arms.
There has been considerable uncertainty regarding the manner in which archers in particular were deployed, largely as the result of the difficulty in arriving at an exact meaning for the phrase used by the chronicler, Jean Froissart, in describing the deployment of the English archers at Crécy: ‘au manier d’un herce’. While it is generally agreed that Froissart is referring to the agricultural implement known as a harrow, this could take several radically differing forms.
In seeking a solution it is instructive to look ahead several decades to the engagements of the Wars of the Roses, when there is clearer contemporary evidence of how archers were deployed. At Towton (1461) it is clear that the opposing archers began the battle deployed five or six deep in staggered formation across the full frontage of the armies and shot their initial barrages from this position. It seems possible that a similar deployment was used at Shrewsbury.
As a battle progressed, and attacking forces drew closer, it seems most likely that the archers pulled back onto either flank, forming ‘wings’ deployed several ranks deep in ‘chequerboard’ formation, and projecting slightly forwards. This would leave the way clear for men-at-arms situated in the centre to engage the enemy, while the archers continued to fire into the attackers’ flanks, and sometimes launch their own attacks in support of their men-at-arms. The latter were normally formed into three divisions, of varying depth, depending on the numbers available. Usually the best armed and equipped would be in the front ranks, with less well-equipped levies further to the rear.
English ‘combined arms’ tactics were most effective when the enemy took the offensive, as the Lancastrian forces did at Shrewsbury. After the archers had delivered their barrage (see the textbox: ‘Arrowstorm’, p. 52) the (hopefully) weakened and disorganized attacking force would close in mêlée with their own men-at-arms.
The hand-to-hand combat that followed was the most bloody phase of the engagement. Ideally, the attackers had been weakened both by the effects of the arrow storm and by obstacles placed in front of the defenders’ position. At Shrewsbury these apparently consisted of pea plants plaited together, which probably tripped and slowed the attackers. They had also probably become closely bunched together, making it only possible for their first one or two leading ranks to engage the defenders on a fairly narrow front.
It seems more likely that the king’s possibly brief retirement at Dunbar’s suggestion was a spur of the moment decision. Even allowing for the exaggerated nature of claims that the king had so far personally despatched thirty-six of the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting, it is clear that he had been in the thick of the action, and may well have been exhausted and vulnerable to the ferocious onslaught of Hotspur and his bodyguard. It was probably at this stage that someone, possibly Stafford, was allowed to don the royal surcoat and act as ‘substitute’ under the royal banner, to avoid any loss of morale among neighbouring royalist troops. However, the fall of both the royal banner and of the substitute ‘king’ was seen by some of the troops and they began to waver, their alarm heightened by triumphant rebel cries of ‘Henry Percy King!’ The growing disorder among his men caused King Henry and George Dunbar, with their escort, to plunge into the fighting once more. It was now about 8pm and the gathering dusk was heightened by a total eclipse of the moon, which may have been viewed by those on both sides as a bad omen.
The battle seemed finely balanced. Many of King Henry’s men, particularly those on his right, had fled, and numerically speaking, the opposing sides may now have been roughly equal. But the royalist centre was still holding its ground, while on the left, Prince Henry’s division was attacking the rebel flank and beginning to close in on Hotspur’s rear. Clearly, if they were to win at all, the rebels had to do so quickly. There was also the danger that Hotspur and his household troops would be cut off from the rest of their army. At this critical moment, Hotspur was killed.
The circumstances of his death remain unclear. Thomas Walsingham noted that ‘while he led his men in the fight rashly penetrating the enemy hosts, [Hotspur] was unexpectedly cut down, by whose hand is not known’. A feasible tradition has Hotspur killed by an arrow, which hit him in the face while he had his visor raised, drawing breath or attempting to gain a better view of events. It is arguable whether Hotspur’s death made any real difference to the outcome of the battle. His army was clearly losing when Percy fell. Although it is said that shouts of ‘Henry Percy dead!’ rang out from the royalists, it is unclear how widely Hotspur’s death was known as his men began to make off into the darkness to avoid being completely surrounded. It seems unlikely that King Henry’s troops were able to mount much in the way of an organized pursuit. The men of both sides were hopelessly intermingled amid the darkness and confusion. Many men, trusting in the anonymity of night, were more concerned to loot the dead and wounded, regardless of party.
Most of Hotspur’s men fled up the Whitchurch road, back towards Cheshire. The royalists succeeded in capturing a number, however, including several rebel leaders. Chief among them were Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, and Archibald Douglas – the latter reportedly after falling from a rock and injuring his testicles, which suggests that he was taken some distance from the battlefield. Also taken were at least two of the Cheshire leaders, Sir Richard Venables and Sir Richard Vernon.
It was probably not until daylight on 22 July that the grim task of tallying and disposing of the dead, and treating any wounded felt to warrant such, began. It was left to Thomas Percy to identify the body of Hotspur, over which King Henry himself was reported to have shed tears. If such was indeed the case, it seems that his grief was soon mastered.
Initially Hotspur’s body was handed over to Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival, for burial at Whitchurch, but no later than Monday, 23 July was brought back to Shrewsbury for more ignominious treatment.
After passing Sunday in little doubt of their fate, the captured rebels next day faced royal justice. Quite how many were executed remains unclear, although the implication is that more were disposed of than those whose names we know. Worcester, Venables and Vernon were given a swift hearing, found guilty of treason, and beheaded the same day in Shrewsbury market place. Worcester’s head was despatched to London to be displayed on London Bridge until the end of the year, when it was brought back to be buried with his body in Shrewsbury abbey church. The heads of Vernon and Venables were displayed at Chester.
Hotspur’s corpse, rubbed in salt as a preservative, was placed on public display between two millstones in Shrewsbury market place. And then, this local exhibition complete, the body was butchered, the head being sent for public display in York, and the quarters to London, Bristol, Chester and Newcastle.
Just how many men died in those few bloody hours at Shrewsbury will never be known. Some accounts give totals as high as 7,000 or 8,000, but more likely estimates range between 1,600 and 2,291 dead, with perhaps 3,000 wounded, many of whom will have died later. Many of the dead were reportedly buried in a common gravepit 126 feet long and 65 feet wide, over which Battlefield Church was supposedly later built. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the initial success of the rebels, there are indications that the royalists lost most heavily. Of those knights known by name to have died in the battle, sixteen were royalists and eight rebels. Another account says twenty-eight royalist knights and eight rebel knights died. However, another version lists 200 Cheshire knights and squires among the dead. Not all of these would have been on the rebel side.