Henry V

by Teresa Cole

  The rebellion was spreading, however, through north and west Wales and down towards the south. Despite having informed his son that Wales was his responsibility, King Henry turned out himself in September 1401. The two raided as far as Aberystwyth and Harlech with the same result as the previous year. Glendower gave before them, removing into the hills, and flowed back after they had gone, to reoccupy the land once again.

  This policy of raid and withdraw may have been the only option open at the time, with Henry permanently short of money and Parliament unsympathetic to raising funds for a Welsh campaign. Pitched battles, though, were a rarity in the Middle Ages. Certainly it was not in Glendower’s interests to face the English king in the field, where he was outweighed in men and arms and armour. His advantages of speed, mobility and knowledge of terrain were, then as now, best served by a guerrilla campaign.

  There is some evidence that Hotspur was in touch with Glendower at this time and seeking to broker an end to the hostilities. The mood of Parliament was against this, however, and nothing came of it. Instead, from an English point of view the situation worsened.

  Throughout 1402 troubles for the king seemed to flow in like Atlantic storms, one after another to break over his head. In April Lord Grey of Ruthin, originator of the troubles, was taken by Glendower and held captive for a large ransom. Soon after, Hotspur resigned from Wales saying he was needed more in his own northern lands to hold back the trouble on the Scottish border. He also complained loudly that the king had failed to provide money to pay his soldiers in Wales, and similar problems were reported by Prince Henry.

  Then in June a force led by the Marcher lord Edmund Mortimer was ambushed by Glendower in mid Wales, and Mortimer himself taken prisoner. This was by far the most significant captive of the campaign. Edmund was effective head of the House of Mortimer, uncle of the young Earl of March, Richard’s designated heir (still held securely by King Henry), and was, through descent from John of Gaunt’s elder brother, closer in line to Richard’s throne than Henry himself. He was also brother-in-law of Hotspur, and, as Henry seemed to drag his feet over a ransom for Mortimer, this added another complaint to Harry Hotspur’s growing tally against the king.

  Encouraged by his successes, Glendower turned his attention to the south, marching into Glamorgan in August and finding support all the way. In retaliation, and using all the money he had available, King Henry assembled armies for a three-pronged attack intended to deal with the Welsh rebel once and for all. Prince Henry was to lead an army westwards from Chester, the king himself set out from Shrewsbury and a third force marched from Hereford.

  This time it was the weather that defeated them. The Welsh were nowhere to be found, but such storms arose as to lead to a legend that Glendower was a wizard with mastery over the forces of nature. Wind and rain devastated the armies, and at one point the king’s tent blew down while he slept within, nearly causing him to be impaled on his own lance.

  Again the English trailed back over the border, only to hear that Hotspur and his father, Northumberland, had won a famous victory over the Scots at Homildon Hill, taking numerous prisoners including the Earl of Douglas. What should have been good news turned into another clash with Hotspur when, in October, the king demanded that Northumberland and his son hand over their prisoners, including Douglas, to be ransomed. There were clear precedents for this and Northumberland surrendered his prisoners, but Hotspur flatly refused to do so. He repeated the old complaint that the Percy family was financing Henry’s wars in Scotland and Wales, and he challenged the king about ransoming his brother-in-law, Mortimer.

  Parliament was sitting at the time and readily approved a ransom for Lord Grey, but nothing was said about any other. Shortly afterwards the Mortimer tenants on the Welsh border were informed by their lord that he was transferring his loyalty to Glendower, and in December of that year Edmund Mortimer married Glendower’s daughter.

  This was a huge blow for King Henry. Not only was it an open challenge to his authority, but it also left a great gap in the buffer zone between England and Wales and deprived the English of all the resources of the Mortimer estates.

  Prince Henry, meanwhile, had a new governor, Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester and brother of Northumberland. He was also rapidly learning to do without the support of his earlier mentor. In the spring of 1403 he was appointed the king’s lieutenant for the whole of Wales, and perhaps to celebrate this led a raid on Glendower’s own estates near Oswestry, burning the manor house and ravaging the land all around. Increasingly he was using his own resources to pay his men, and increasingly he was also, no doubt, realising that this was no way to deal decisively with so mobile an opponent. Advancing as far as Aberystwyth and Harlech, he found no one to fight, for, while he was busy in the north, Glendower was making himself master of all the western counties down to Carmarthen, only being kept from Pembrokeshire by the actions of Thomas, Lord Carew. Another conflict was brewing, however, which, for a time at least, would make Glendower the least of the problems of Prince Henry and his father.

  In exchange for their Scottish prisoners, Henry had granted to the Percys the estates of the greatest of them, the Earl of Douglas. The drawback to this was that they had first to conquer those estates, and that is what they, Northumberland and his son Hotspur, had set about doing in 1403. As late as the end of June Northumberland had written to the king asking for more resources for the campaign, and reminding him of what benefit it would be to the Crown if it was to be successful. It was the letter of a mildly aggrieved yet loyal subject.

  So it came as a complete surprise when, in early July, Hotspur abruptly took his forces from the Scots borders down to Chester, and raised his banner against the king. He issued a proclamation with a list of grievances, among them the accusation of illegal taxes and corruption, the failure to ransom Edmund Mortimer, and the failure to negotiate an end to the Glendower rebellion. The chief claim, however, was that King Henry was no king at all. He was referred to throughout as Henry of Lancaster, and accused of breaking the oath he took at Doncaster in 1399 that he had come only to claim his inheritance and not the crown. Hotspur, therefore, intended to take back that crown and restore it to its rightful owner – to Richard ‘if he lives’, or otherwise to the young Earl of March, Richard’s rightful heir. Since Hotspur had seen Richard in his coffin it is unlikely he would have believed he was still alive, but a rumour had begun in Scotland that he had escaped from Pontefract and some had even identified a poor wandering man as the former king, since which time he had been kept carefully secret by the Scots, and the rumour heavily promoted.

  The supporters claimed for Hotspur’s act of treason showed that a considerable conspiracy must have been put together, probably over a number of months past. Northumberland was an obvious one, supporting his son, but Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester and recently governor of Prince Henry, had also slipped away from Shrewsbury to join his nephew, and Glendower and Mortimer were also named, along with Hotspur’s former prisoner the Earl of Douglas. Of these, however, only Worcester and Douglas were actually at Chester. Northumberland was bringing an army down from the north, and Glendower from the farthest corner of Wales. In the meantime there was a prize ready for the taking – Prince Henry of Wales, recently returned to Shrewsbury Castle.

  It no doubt seemed like an easy target, a sixteen-year-old boy with a small force and in a most strategic place. Hotspur, however, had miscalculated in two important ways. First, both Northumberland and Glendower moved slower than he might have wished to their rendezvous at Shrewsbury, and second, King Henry was not where he had supposed him to be, far away in the south of England.

  Having received Northumberland’s letter, Henry had decided to go north in person to his assistance. It was at Nottingham, therefore, that he received news of the revolt on 13 July, and he immediately turned westward, at the same time calling out all the Midlands levies in his support. The threat to his son was clear to him, and some have suggested he may even have been unc
ertain as to which side the prince would choose. Be that as it may, by a series of forced marches, urged on by the Scottish Lord Dunbar who had much to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the English king, Henry arrived at Shrewsbury ahead of the rebel army.

  Any doubts about his son’s loyalty seem to have swiftly disappeared, and when, on 20 July, Hotspur arrived to find the king already firmly in control, it was soon apparent that the young prince would be lining up beside his father to face the first battle of his life.

  On 21 July Hotspur lined up his forces on a slight ridge some three miles north of the town, adjacent to where the battlefield church stands today, and where a field of peas and three small ponds would hamper the approach of the enemy. Even now the king offered negotiations to avoid a conflict, though he must have been aware that all the time Hotspur’s reinforcements might be drawing closer. By some accounts it was Worcester, employed as embassy between the two, who destroyed any chance of a settlement, deliberately misrepresenting the king’s offers to his opponents. In any event it was late afternoon before the two armies engaged each other in what had become known as the ‘English method’ of battle.

  Each army was fronted by an array of archers, who began the action with flight after flight of lethal arrows. The Prince of Wales, heading the forces to the left of the king, found himself facing his own famous Cheshire longbowmen, now backing Hotspur in the name of the long-dead Richard.

  The prince would, of course, have been in full plate armour with a visored helmet, but at some point he must have raised the visor, either to breathe easier on a hot day, to obtain better vision of the action around him, or simply to show his face to rally his troops. Whatever the reason, the action could have cost his life for he was struck full in the face by an arrow.

  An expert has assessed that it must have been deflected, or possibly it was only half-drawn or at the limit of its range, for a fully drawn arrow would surely have killed him. Instead this smashed through the facial bone below his eye, missed both brain and spinal cord, and lodged in the thicker bone at the back of the skull.

  Despite this serious wound the prince refused to leave the field, and indeed led his men so well that they broke through the flank of Hotspur’s forces and turned to come at them from behind, trapping them between the armies of prince and king. In the wild confusion of the fight that followed it was hard to tell who was friend or foe.

  Hotspur’s one aim was to slay the king, but he was foiled in this by the use of several decoys dressed in the royal livery. On the fall of one of these the cry went up, ‘The king is dead,’ only to be refuted by Henry himself from another part of the field. In fact it was Hotspur who was slain at Shrewsbury. Worcester was taken prisoner along with the Earl of Douglas, and the defeat of the rebels was total. It is claimed that Prince Henry wept over the body of his former mentor, which was then in rapid sequence buried, exhumed, beheaded and quartered, with the head set over the gateway to York and the remaining parts displayed around the country as an example to other traitors.

  The prince, though, had his own troubles to think of. The shaft of the arrow had been pulled from his face but the head was still embedded in his skull. There was a strong possibility that the wound would turn septic and kill him after all, in the same manner as Richard the Lionheart had perished some two hundred years before. He was, in fact, saved by the skill of one John Bradmore, who later wrote an account of how he did it.

  First the wound was reopened and enlarged little by little, using probes made from the dried pith of the elder wrapped in purified linen and infused with rose honey. Then Bradmore designed and had made special metal tongs with a screw down the middle to enable them to be opened to the width of the arrow shaft. These were inserted into the wound some six inches deep, and then the screw turned until the tongs engaged the arrowhead. Gently moving this to and fro, the metal could at last be withdrawn – and all this in the days before anaesthetics. No doubt the prince was drugged and immobilised in some way, but the whole long-drawn-out process must have been excruciating. Even then it was not finished. White wine was squirted into the wound, and over a period of another twenty days further probes of decreasing length, made of barley flour, honey and flax fibres, were inserted, allowing the wound to gradually close up and heal. No doubt this was followed by a long period of recuperation, and it is unlikely that the prince took any part in the further actions of the king that year.

  In the north Northumberland was permitted to surrender at York, though stripped of castles, offices and estates. In Wales Glendower, who was little affected by the failure of the Percys’ rebellion, consolidated his hold on the southern counties. Though Henry set out in September in an effort to retake Carmarthen, he was humiliatingly forced to turn back through lack of money to pay his troops.

  This lack of money was to continue to block progress until Parliament could be persuaded to take the Welsh rebellion more seriously. In January 1404 Prince Henry was put in overall charge of operations in Wales, but with only a small force, largely paid for by selling his own jewels and plate, there was little he could do. Glendower, in the meantime, was going from strength to strength.

  A treaty had been sealed with the French, and French ships had helped him take Cardiff, Aberystwyth and Harlech. He had been crowned Prince of Wales in Machynlleth and had called his first Welsh parliament. Early in 1405 the so-called ‘Tripartite Indenture’ was issued. This was an agreement between Northumberland, Mortimer and Glendower to depose Henry and divide up England and Wales between them. Northumberland would take the north of England down as far as Warwickshire and Norfolk, Mortimer would have the south and Glendower would have Wales.

  Northumberland, however, was about to overreach himself, backing another rebellion, this time led by Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk. There was to be no pardon after this, and when the revolt was ended by the efforts of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, Northumberland fled with his grandson, first to Scotland, then to Wales, France and back to Scotland again. His power was gone, though, long before his life was finally ended in one last rebellion, at the Battle of Bramham Moor in 1408.

  In Wales, in the meantime, 1405 was known as the year of the French, although Prince Henry, now in his late teens, was beginning to make his presence felt and enjoyed some success. In February Glendower’s son was captured, in March Glendower was defeated at Grosmont in Monmouthshire, and in May the prince himself led a victory against Glendower’s forces at Usk. After this, however, he turned his attention to the north, moving his base back to Chester. With more money from Parliament at last coming through, a new policy was being formulated.

  In August of that year, following the terms of their treaty, a French force landed at Milford Haven in the west and marched across the country, almost reaching Worcester before coming to a halt. For several days they confronted the forces of King Henry, freshly arrived from mopping up Scrope’s rebellion in the north, and there were a number of skirmishes but no battle. In fact the king was desperately trying to raise more men and money, and the French too seem to have run out of resources, and in the end both sides withdrew without a fight.

  This was the high point of Glendower’s rebellion and he was never to hold such sway again. Gradually the French forces withdrew, finding less profit than they had expected in the campaign. The last of them was gone early in the next year. At the same time Prince Henry was proving a figurehead that could unite all the scattered loyalties of the English lords, and was also bringing a fresh approach to the problem.

  The policy of raid and withdraw, so clearly ineffective, was now replaced by a steady encroachment on the land. Castles were taken, garrisoned and held, forming fixed points for defence and further advance, and more importantly for blockade. Slowly supplies of weapons were reduced, trade cut off and the lifeblood of the rebellion shrunk to a trickle. This, of course, cost money, and regular payments from Parliament helped. The prince was also thanked regularly by Parliament fo
r his efforts.

  Gradually Glendower was forced back into his chief strongholds, and now siege came into play. Aberystwyth came under siege in 1407 and was almost brought to surrender before being relieved at the end of that year. The siege was renewed, however, with increased vigour in the following year, even using cannon brought by sea from Bristol. This was almost the first time cannon were used in Britain, and though they were not as effective as the prince might have hoped, they were employed again at the siege of Harlech, which also began in 1408.

  In September 1408 Aberystwyth fell and forces were concentrated on Harlech, the headquarters and home of Glendower. Surprisingly, given his earlier tactics, Glendower himself, his family, his chief supporter Edmund Mortimer and his family were all within the castle during the siege. Prolonged bombardment damaged the castle walls, but it was starvation and the exhaustion of supplies that finally led to its surrender in March 1409.

  Mortimer had died, probably of starvation, but his wife and daughters were taken prisoner and died later in London. Glendower himself and a son managed to slip away, but although occasional raids into Shropshire and Brecon tried to continue the rebellion, it was by now effectively over. The last reliable sighting of Glendower was in 1412, but he was reputedly still alive in 1414 and is believed to have died and been buried somewhere near his old estate in the Dee Valley in 1415.

  The conflict in Wales had occupied most of Prince Henry’s teenage years, and though he was not always personally present, most accounts give him full credit for the change of tactics that led to victory. Certainly the weapons of blockade and siege were down to him, along with the innovative use of artillery. We might also say that his persistence with these weapons over a period of years showed a tenacity of purpose that was to stand him in good stead in the future. No doubt he drew his own lessons from these years – the need for a regular supply of money and other resources, the need for secure bases, the use of siege and the need for long-term planning. What he also acquired was a group of skilled and trusted captains, who in turn gave him their own personal trust and loyalty, and many of whom would again be at his side in all the conflicts to come.