walls of our town, the awful prelude to so many more between the
rival houses, through the remainder of the century, we have five
contemporary and perhaps independent narratives; but one of them is a
mass of errors, and another extremely succinct, and of the others
only one is circumstantial: nor is any of them sufficient to satisfy
the minute curiosity of the local historian: but the best account
that can be drawn from a comparison of the whole, supplied in some
instances by a consideration of the ground, and in a few others by
modest conjecture, shall be laid before the reader as the conclusion
of the present chapter.
“We are unable to trace the progress of Hotspur’s long march from the
North to Shrewsbury, a journey of not less than 250 miles. He
probably set out in the beginning of July; and skirting along the
eastern side of Cheshire, where his army received a considerable
augmentation, passed through Stafford, and was joined there by his
uncle the earl of Worcester. The king, aware of his intention to
gain possession of Shrewsbury, and desirous of cutting off his
junction with Glendower, pursued him with hasty marches. We find his
majesty on the 16th of July at Burton-upon-Trent, and on the 17th at
Lichfield: whence, finding that he could not overtake his enemy, he
hastened on to reach Shrewsbury before him. He would naturally take
the Watling Street road, and enter this town over the Abbey Bridge.
The route of Hotspur was more to the north, in order to keep up a
communication with the Severn, so important for his junction with
Glendower. In all probability he marched through Newport, by High
Ercall and Haghmond Hill; and hoped to gain admittance through the
North or Castle Gate. The king arrived just in time to save the
town: he entered it only a few hours before Hotspur, who reached the
Castle Foregate on the evening of Friday, July 19th, and the king’s
forces could not have advanced from Lichfield before the morning of
that day. They were certainly here before Percy: for, aware of the
intention of that young nobleman, and desirous to save the Castle
from his attack, they set fire to that extensive suburb, and marched
out of the Castle gates to offer him battle. Hotspur, unwilling to
bring his army into action at the close of a toilsome march, and
learning, from the royal banner which waved on the walls, that the
king was in possession of the town, called off his followers from the
attack, and retired to the Bull-field, an extensive common which
stretched from Upper Berwick to the East. He thus protected his rear
by the woody and impervious precipices extending to Leaton shelf, and
had the river not only on his side, but also, if it had not entirely
deserted its ancient channel under Cross-hill, (as there is reason to
believe it had not,) in his front also. This position enabled him
likewise to communicate readily over that stream by the ford of
Shelton with the forces of Glendower, when they should arrive, as he
hoped, on the opposite bank. Here he passed the night in council.
His army consisted of 14,000 chosen men, of whom a considerable part
were of the county of Chester, at that time eminent for its skill in
archery; but, if Hall is correct, the royal army was nearly double
that number; for he writes that above 40,000 men were assembled on
both parts, and every circumstance of the battle proves that the king
was at the head of a very superior force. His situation was,
however, by no means devoid of anxiety. He must have been conscious
how slender the title was which he possessed to the throne: and how
ill-disposed his peerage of the realm were to maintain him upon it.
From the Castle he might view, as the dawn arose, the plain which
stretched to the north glittering with hostile arms: while the
dreadful Glendower was believed to be in full march from Oswestry, to
join the rebels with his Welsh forces. But the difficulties of the
crisis only sufficed to call forth his energies and display his
talents.
“Henry was himself a distinguished warrior. In earlier life he had,
in company with his princely uncle the duke of Gloucester, travelled
into the north of Europe in quest of martial glory; and under the
banners of the renowned Teutonic order had made a glorious campaign
against the Pagans of Lithuania. He was still in the vigour of life,
being much under forty years of age, and an adversary every way
worthy of the gallant Percy; whom, relying upon the superiority of
his numbers, he determined, if possible, to force to an engagement,
before that nobleman should receive his reinforcements from Wales or
the north. By break of day, therefore, he dispatched, it is
probable, a strong force, under the nominal command, for it could be
no more, of the young prince, the future hero of Agincourt, but then
a youth of fourteen years, to come up with Hotspur at Berwick, if
possible. He himself, with the main body, appears to have marched
out on the Hadnall road, ready to proceed as occasion might demand,
either to the north of Cross Hill and Almond Pool, and close the
rebels between his two divisions; or else to advance further on upon
that road, where it branches off to Shawbury, with the view of
cutting off their retreat, if Hotspur, aware of his design, should
attempt to march to the east. It happened as the king anticipated.
Hotspur, on his advance, broke up in some disorder, and marched by
Harlescot and Abright Hussey to Hately-field, which stretches from
thence eastwards. Here, however, finding it impossible to avoid an
engagement, on account, as we may suppose, of the obstruction to his
retreat presented by the king’s movement above mentioned, he made his
stand in the rear of a field of peas nearly ripe; behind which he
stationed his army, and hoped thereby to deter the king from
advancing over a tract which must necessarily impede his operations.
“He then addressed his little army in a short harangue, of which
Walsingham has preserved the heads. ‘We must desist,’ said he, ‘from
any further attempt to retreat, and turn our arms on those that come
against us. Ye see the royal banner, nor is there time to seek a
passage even though we wished it. Stand, therefore, with steadfast
hearts: for this day shall either promote us all, if we conquer; or
deliver us from an usurper, if we fall: and it is better to die in
battle for the common wealth, than after battle by the sentence of
our foe:” and with this, to support the courage of his men by proving
his design to fight to the outrance, he dispatched two of his
esquires, Knayton and Salvayn, with that strange defiance, in which
he loads the king with the most horrid crimes. * * * *
“No one has informed us how the king received this furious manifesto.
He had something else to engage his attention. He proceeded to
marshal his forces, dividing them into two columns, or wedges. Of
one of these he took the command himself, and entrusted the other to
his son. The front rank of his own column was led on by his nephew
the young earl of Stafford, a soldier of conspicuous valour, on whom
he had that morning conferred the high office of constable of
England, recently enjoyed by the earl of Northumberland. Previous to
the final onset, the king, in compliance with the customs of
chivalry, bestowed the honour of knighthood on certain of his most
distinguished esquires. Hotspur, perceiving that an engagement was
unavoidable, called for his favourite sword. His attendants informed
him that it was left behind at Berwick, of which village it does not
appear that he had till then learned the name. At these words he
turned pale, and said, ‘I perceive that my plough is drawing to its
last furrow, for a wizard told me in Northumberland that I should
perish at Berwick: which I vainly interpreted of that town in the
North.’ His courage did not, however, yield to the impressions of
superstition; he rallied his spirits, and arranged his troops with
his usual ability: assigning their respective stations to his uncle
Worcester, the Scottish earl of Douglas, his recent captive at
Halidown, sir Richard Venables, baron of Kinderton, Hugh Brow, Hugh
Vernon, and others. His troops appear to have been chiefly stationed
on the north side of the spot now occupied by the church in a field
still called _the Hateleys_: on the east side of the church is a
field denominated _the King’s croft_, in which, it may be presumed,
were ranged those which the king commanded in person. These
positions exactly agree with the objects which we have assigned above
to the respective leaders; and lend, it is hoped, some confirmation
to the conjectural part of the preceding narration.
“While the hostile armies, drawn up in battle array facing each
other, waited, with mute expectation, the sound of the trumpet, the
dreadful signal for combat, two venerable divines, Thomas Prestbury,
lord abbot of Salop, and the clerk of the privy seal, advanced out of
the royal army, and proceeded towards that of Percy. The king,
desirous to spare the blood of his subjects, offered him and his
adherents pardon and peace, and redress of all grievances of which
they could justly complain. Hotspur was touched by these unexpected
overtures, made under circumstances of such numerical inequality, and
requested his uncle of Worcester to repair to the royal presence in
company of these holy men, and state the grounds on which he had
taken up arms. The king, we may suppose, was in his turn somewhat
softened by the sight of the earl, who had been so recently engaged
in the domestic office of governor to the prince of Wales; and a
recollection of the obligations he had received from the Percy family
might mix itself with his other reflections. It is certain that to
the remonstrances of Worcester, delivered in a fierce and haughty
tone, he listened with respect, and replied with a condescension
which, in the opinion of the spectators, was somewhat unbefitting the
royal dignity. A contemporary writer has preserved, though with a
mistake of the person, the dialogue supposed to have passed between
them. The king ‘counselled him to put himself on his grace.’ To
which the other replied, ‘I trust not in your grace.’—‘I pray God,’
rejoined the king, ‘that thou mayest have to answer for the blood
here to be shed this day, and not I. March on standard-bearer!’ and
the battle was set.—It is certain that the stern temper of Worcester
rejected all attempts at conciliation: he was conscious how deeply he
had been engaged in fomenting the quarrel; and, on his return to his
friends, he misrepresented the demeanour of Henry in such a manner to
his nephew, that the latter, with whatever reluctance, was compelled
to relinquish all hopes of accommodation. At length, therefore, much
of the day having been consumed in these fruitless negociations, both
parties flew to arms, and the air was rent with the war-cries of
‘_St. George_’ on one side, and ‘_Esperance Percy_’ on the other. In
the meanwhile, Glendower had advanced as far as Shelton on the
opposite bank of Severn, where he awaited the issue of the contest,
determined to proceed or retire according to its event. He is said,
by the constant tradition of the country, to have ascended there the
branches of a lofty oak, whose venerable trunk yet remains, for the
purpose of viewing the battle; at least of gaining, from personal
inspection, the earliest intelligence of its event.
“The fight began by furious and repeated volleys of arrows from
Hotspur’s archers, whose ground, as may be seen, greatly favoured
that kind of warfare: and they did great execution on the royal army.
The king’s bowmen were not wanting in return, and the battle raged
with violence. The military art had not yet attained that perfection
which almost supersedes the effect of individual exertion; and
Hotspur, with his associate Douglas, bent on the king’s destruction,
rushing through the midst of the hostile arrows, pierced their way to
the spot on which he stood. To adopt the vivid language of a
contemporary, ‘in the ardour of his spirit, he assembled a band of
thirty warriors, broke into the royal army, and made a great alley in
the midst thereof,’ (such was the terror which his presence inspired)
‘even to the stoutest of the king’s guards.’ Monstrelet says, Henry
was thrice unhorsed by the Scottish earl, and would have been taken
or slain had he not been defended and rescued by his own men. And
the fortune of the day would have been forthwith decided, if the
Scottish earl of March had not withdrawn him from the danger; for the
royal standard-bearer was slain, his banner beaten down; and many of
the chosen band appointed to guard it (among whom were the earl of
Stafford and sir Walter Blount,) were killed by these desperate
assailants,—while the young prince of Wales was wounded in the face
by an arrow. In short, notwithstanding all the exertions of the
royalists, victory seemed inclined to favour the rebel army, who
fought with renewed ardour, from an opinion naturally derived from
the overthrow of his standard, that the king himself had fallen, and
animated each other to the combat with cheering and redoubled shouts
of ‘_Henry Percy_, _king_! _Henry Percy_, _king_!’
“In this critical moment the gallant Percy, raging through the
adverse ranks in quest of his sovereign, fell by an unknown hand;
alone, and hemmed in by foes. The king lost no time to avail himself
of this event. Straining his voice to the utmost, he exclaimed
aloud, ‘_Henry Percy is dead_!’ The sound was heard by either army:
into those it struck dismay, while these it animated and encouraged.
The rebels fled in every direction, nor could the king, anxious as he
was to terminate the slaughter, restrain the impetuous pursuit of his
own troops, till the flower of Cheshire, two hundred knights and
esquires (besides pages and footmen) were slain. Douglas broke
through, and endeavoured to escape in the direction of Haghmond-hill:
being closely pursued, and leaping from a crag, he experienced a
severe injury, and was captured: but the king, in admiration of his
valour, set him at liberty. The loss in both armies was great. * * *
An ancient manuscript rates the number of gentlemen at two thousand
two hundred and ninety-one, besides commons. They were chiefly
buried, says that authority, in a great pit, the dimensions of which
are there specified, and over which the present church of Battlefield
was afterwards erected: but many are stated to have lain dispersed in
various directions for the space of three miles about the field of
battle: a fact which confirms what has been said above of the
desultory nature of the conflict. Others, of the most distinguished
rank, were interred in the neighbouring town, chiefly in the cemetery
of the Dominican or St. Mary’s Friars.
“The body of Hotspur was at first delivered to his kinsman lord
Furnival for interment, and it was by him committed to the ground
with the suffrages of the church, and with all the honours which, in
that haste, could be procured as due to his rank. It is painful to
reflect, that the king afterwards repented him of this generous
attention to the remains of deceased valour. He caused the corpse to
be taken out of the tomb in which it had been laid, and to be placed
between two mill-stones in the public street, near the pillory;
where, as if he feared lest the general sympathy should rescue it
from its ignominious situation, it was kept under military guard,
till the head was severed from the body, which was divided into
quarters, and transmitted to several cities in the realm.”
Thus closes this circumstantial and able description of the celebrated
battle of Shrewsbury; an event so interesting in the annals of the
county, that we make no apology for having transferred so detailed an
account of it to our pages. A nobler theme could not well be conceived
for the lay of a minstrel. “The characters of the leaders, both of the
royal and of the rebel party, the chivalrous spirit of the times in which
they lived, and the magnitude of the cause that roused them to arms, are
circumstances highly susceptible of poetical description, while the train
of incidents from the very origin to the termination of the feud, is of
that romantic cast which requires little embellishment from fiction.
There is indeed one objection which may have deterred our later Poets
from the undertaking; it is, that the ground which Shakspeare has trod is
sacred; but without any violation of the reverence due to his memory, it
may be wished that this magnificent subject had also been celebrated by
the muse that sang the tale of Flodden Field.”
We have already stated that on the deposition of Richard II. the Earl of
Wiltshire, recently appointed lord of the Manor of Oswestry, fell a
victim to popular fury, and Thomas, son of Richard, Earl of Arundel, was
restored in blood. This last-named nobleman was a liberal supporter of
the Corporation of Oswestry. In 1406 he gave it a release for £100 (a
large sum in those days,) which that body was indebted to him, in
consideration of the distresses which the town had suffered during the
Glyndwr insurrection. He also obtained pardon from the king for his
vassals in Chirk, Bromfield, and the Manor of Oswestry, for the share
they had taken in that rebellion. In the same year with the release he
granted a most extensive Charter to the town, containing many matters
showing the customs of the times. This Charter ordered, that “neither
the lord nor his heirs should confiscate or seize the effects of persons
with or without will in the corporation; that no burgess should be
compelled to be the lord’s receiver-general, but only collector of the
issues arising within the borough; that the burgesses should be
discharged from all fees demanded by the Constable of the castle, or any
of his menial servants, for any felonies or trespasses committed out of
the same liberties, when brought to the prison of the castle; saving that
the Constable might receive one penny at his own election, from every
mansion-house in the town, and a farthing from every cottage, on the
feast of St. Stephen annually; that the burgesses should be free for the
future from all excise of ale, brewed and sold in the town, which had
hitherto been payable at the rate of seven-pence for every _Bracena
cervisiæ_ exposed for sale; that they were to be freed from the duty of
_Amobyr_, or _Lyre-Wyte_; that whoever lived in the house of a burgess,
and happened to die there, the burgess was to have a heriot after his
decease, in the same manner as the _Uchelwyr_, or freeholders residing on
the lands of the lord in the Hundred of Oswestry; that no Shrewsbury ale
should be sold in the town without license, while any ale brewed in the
town was to be had, under the penalty of 6s. 8d.; that none of the
inhabitants of the lordships of Oswestry, Melverley, Kinardsley,
Edgerley, Ruyton, and the eleven towns, should drive or carry any cattle,
corn, or victuals, or other wares, to any foreign fair or market, before
the same had first been exposed for sale in the town of Oswestry, under
the penalty of 6s. 8d.; that none of the lord’s tenants should be
compelled to pay the _redditus advocarii_ for the security of the
castle,” &c. The _Amobyr_ of the Welsh, and the _Lyre-Wyte_ of the
Saxons, were fines paid by the vassal to his lord, to buy off the power
to violate domestic relations. Pennant gives a different interpretation
to the term _Amobyr_, but does not succeed in giving us its literal and
precise meaning. There is one curious fact mentioned in the aforesaid
Charter, and which, even in these days must excite a smile. The
respective _six-and-eightpences_ of the gentlemen who now study “Coke
upon Littleton” was actually prescribed even so far back as the fifteenth
century. It would be a still more curious fact developed, were we
acquainted with the lord of the Manor’s law-adviser when this Charter was
granted, because we might perhaps then be able, from the knowledge of
that fact, to ascribe the origin, if not honour, of lawyers’
_six-and-eightpences_ to the ancient Borough of Oswestry!
According to Pennant, “until the time of the above-mentioned Charter, the
lord’s Welsh tenants of the Hundred of Oswestry were accustomed by their
tenure to keep watch and ward, for three days and three nights, at the
four gates of the town, during the fairs of St. Andrew and St. Oswald,
with a certain number of men called _Kaies_; but these treacherously,
with others, ravaged and plundered the place. On this the tenants were
compelled to pay a sum of money as wages to a sufficient number of
Englishmen, as the burgesses should think convenient, for the custody of
the four gates; and the Welsh men were for ever to be discharged from
that duty. The vassals of the Earl of Arundel in these parts were of a
mixed nature; either descendants of the Norman followers of Alan, or of
the native Welsh, who were most numerous, and bore an hereditary dislike
to their co-tenants of foreign stock. The Welsh part was called
_Walcheria_, and lay in the upper part of the parish.”
Reverting to Owain Glyndwr’s career, we see that his escape from the
Shelton Oak, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, did not deter him from fresh
enterprises. Evidently regardless of the ruin of his allies—they, as
Leland tells us, “whom he promised to unite with” at that battle—he
continued to infest the English borders, where he committed great havoc,
the king being unable, from the want of funds, to resist his aggressions.
Owain’s marauding parties committed serious damage to Shrewsbury and
several of the adjoining townships, and extended their ravages as far as
Buildwas Abbey, which they wasted with fire, so that divine service was
for a time discontinued, and the monks were reduced to the greatest
poverty. At length Henry directed a writ to Edward Charlton, Lord Powys,
to raise forces with which to subdue the renewed rebellion; and similar
orders were sent to Lords Arundel and Grey, and Sir Richard L’Strange,
Lord of Knockin, Ellesmere, and other bordering manors. Glyndwr had
despatched to Shrewsbury two of his best officers, Rhys Ddu and Philipot
Scudamore, to command the insurrectionary party; but Lord Powys, having
promptly obeyed the orders of his sovereign, fortified several castles,
and speedily took as prisoners the above-named two leaders, and they were
both soon afterwards executed in London. Holinshed says, that “Glyndwr
himself in the same year, dreading to show his face to any creature, and
finally lacking meat to sustain nature, for mere hunger and lack of food
miserably pined away and died.” He was living, however, six years later,
but in a state of concealment, chiefly at the house of one of his
daughters, married to a gentleman of Herefordshire named Monnington. In
July, 1415, the new king Henry V., anxious to leave his country in
tranquillity before he engaged in the war with France, offered a pardon
to Glyndwr; and this would probably have been accepted by the Cambrian
chieftain, had not the negotiation been interrupted by his death, which
occurred September 30th, 1415, in the 61st year of his age. It is said
that David Holbetch, Steward of the manors of Oswestry, Bromfield, and
Yale, and founder of the Oswestry Free Grammar School, took a
distinguished part in this negotiation, and obtained the promised pardon
for Glyndwr. Tradition states that he was buried in the churchyard of
Monnington-on-Wye.