The Battle of Mortimer's Cross, 1461

The Battle of Towton in March 1461 was Britain’s bloodiest day. But it was preceded that year by a battle on the other side of the country: Mortimer’s Cross. Steve Roberts explores another forgotten Medieval battlefield.

At the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460, the Duke of York’s bid for supremacy had ended in his death in a battle that lasted barely 30 minutes. His second son, the Earl of Rutland, survived the fighting, but was mercilessly slain on Wakefield Bridge by Lord Clifford, whose own father had been killed at First St Albans five years before.

The Duke of York’s estate, retinue, and ambition were inherited by his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, who now had both a father and a brother to avenge. Prodigiously tall, at 6ft 4in, for a man of the mid 15th century, Edward must have cut an imposing figure, and also possessed one of the most important attributes for a man who was shortly to have to prove himself in Medieval battle – reach.

Edward was only 18, celebrating Christmas at Shrewsbury, when he learned of his father’s death, but this was not such a young age in those days when 16-year-olds were routinely expected to fight. It was possible that he was not that close to his father, who was known to be an aloof man and had spent much time in Ireland, but he would have been badly affected by the loss of his brother, with whom he had grown up and who was just a year younger than himself. Edward was a young Leviathan, intent on revenge.

The campaign

Mortimer’s Cross is probably one of the least well-known English battles, but it was to be the making of Edward, Earl of March. The death of the Duke of York had him in a precarious situation. Edward was gathering forces in Gloucester when he heard that Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, was leading a Lancastrian army out of Wales, heading for the Midlands.

As was to become his trademark, he acted quickly and decisively, moving to intercept Pembroke’s army, which Edward could not afford to allow to move into England and join with other Lancastrian forces under the Queen, Margaret of Anjou.

Mortimer’s Cross is not well documented, but it is possible to reconstruct reasonably accurately what happened. It was fought near the villages of Kingsland and Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire, and is close to my heart as my own father’s family came from this area. My grandfather lived in Kingsland and worked in Mortimer’s Cross. My father grew up in Kingsland and attended the village school. He told me about the battle fought over his childhood stomping-ground when I was but a small child myself.

In terms of numbers, Mortimer’s Cross was a modest engagement, with only a few thousand involved on either side; but its significance far outweighed its size. If another Lancastrian victory had ensued, the Yorkist threat would have been nullified, Margaret of Anjou’s regency would have been assured, and so would the eventual succession of her son, Edward, Prince of Wales. In the event, Mortimer’s Cross ensured that none of this would happen.

As the Welsh army of Pembroke emerged from the mountains on 2 February 1461, they were confronted by the young Earl of March’s force, fresh out of Wigmore Castle, ready and waiting on the lands of one of his associates, Sir Richard Croft. Croft’s local knowledge would prove invaluable on a day when the River Lugg was swollen and the ground boggy. Croft had apparently advised Edward to position himself on the crossroads and rely on his archers, with the river behind him.

Three suns

My family knows of the treacherous nature of the River Lugg only too well, for the man who would have been my great-uncle Jim was to die tragically young in these waters, bravely trying to save the life of another. This happened just north of the battlefield at Aymestrey.

Pembroke’s Welshmen were joined by French and Irish mercenaries led by the Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond and by his own father, the 60-or-so-year-old Owen Tudor, who decades before had married the widow of Henry V.

The battle is recalled as much for what took place prior to the fighting as for the fighting itself. In the sky, both armies saw not one sun, but three, an omen that could be interpreted as either a harbinger of victory or doom. Today we understand this to have been a ‘parhelion’, when the sun, shining through ice crystals, creates the effect of a mirror and those below, awe-struck, see the sun twice reflected. On this day was born the motif and the myth of the future Edward IV: the ‘Sun in Splendour’. ‘Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?’, asks Edward, according to Shakespeare.

Some of the Yorkists were said to have cried out in alarm, but Edward was quick to take advantage of the omen. He is alleged to have wheeled his charger around to face his frightened men and shouted, ‘Be of good comfort and dread not! This is a good sign, for these three suns betoken the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In the name of Almighty God do we march against our enemies!’

Edward was determined to intercept the Lancastrian army at this point and therefore deployed his army in a blocking position. Edward’s Yorkist force outnumbered its enemy, who also lacked experienced commanders; so on the face of it, his prospects looked propitious.

Position and plan

Edward faced battle with his back protected by the 20ft-wide Lugg. He aimed to hold Pembroke’s centre in check, but to allow the enemy wings to move forward on to marshy ground near the river where they could be decimated by his archers as they attempted to cross.

Looking at the terrain today, Edward’s starting position looks odd, as there is higher ground just beyond the River Lugg, on the Ludlow road, which seemingly offers a more advantageous position. The young pretender’s tactics, however, were to work perfectly.

A figure named ‘Blue Mantle’, believed to have been a herald of Edward’s, was slain during attempts to hold peace talks before the battle. There is a Blue Mantle cottage, which stands next to the battlefield, which is reputed to stand at the spot where these events took place. It is rumoured that Blue Mantle was carrying a challenge from Edward to Jasper Tudor to settle things through personal combat. Whatever the truth, he died for his pains. When I last visited the battlefield in June 2012, this pretty cottage was up for sale, its front gate bearing the name ‘Blue Mantle’.

There may be some truth in the story, since it appears that the Lancastrians were reluctant to join battle and may therefore have been willing to parley. By midday, however, they had come to the conclusion that if they wanted to cross the River Lugg and march to join the main Lancastrian army, they were going to have to fight their way over.

The battle

The battle was in fact three small battles in one. Wiltshire and Ormond attacked Edward’s right wing and pushed it over the river. Edward himself decisively won the struggle in the centre against Jasper Tudor. And Owen Tudor tried to move towards Kingsland and encircle the Yorkist left, but was routed.

As Edward had anticipated, Pembroke’s centre was weakened by his need to reinforce his wings, battered by the arrow storm, until a point of crisis was reached and the centre broke.

As the battle turned into a rout, those with horses, including Pembroke, Wiltshire, and Ormond, were best placed to escape. Owen Tudor was less fortunate, being stopped and surrounded by the local men of Leominster and Kingsland, who captured him somewhere near the present monument on the A4110 and B4360 junction. He was then beheaded in Hereford market place the next day.

It was tough on poor old Owen, who had been dragged from his peaceful home to do battle for the Lancastrian cause. He is said to have expected a reprieve because of his relationship with the former royal family. Owen reportedly was not convinced of his approaching death until the collar was ripped off his doublet by the executioner. At this point he is alleged to have said that ‘the head which used to lie in Queen Catherine’s lap would now lie in the executioner's basket’.

It is believed that nearly 4,000 Lancastrians died during the battle. Yorkist losses were light by comparison. Critically, Edward had stopped Jasper Tudor’s untried army from linking up with the successful Wakefield force, an event which might have created a Lancastrian army of unstoppable power.

Mortimer’s Cross today

Mortimer’s Cross has changed little in the ensuing centuries. There is a battlefield monument, erected Kingsland in 1799, outside what was the Monument pub, some three miles away; it details the events of the day. This inn is now a private house.

The monument’s wording states: ‘This pedestal is erected to perpetuate the memory of an obstinate bloody and decisive battle fought near this spot in the civil wars between the ambitious houses of York and Lancaster on the 2nd day of February 1461 between the forces of Edward Mortimer, Earl of March (afterwards Edward the Fourth) on the side of York and those of Henry the Sixth on the side of Lancaster. The King’s troops were commanded by Jasper Earl of Pembroke. Edward commanded his own in person and was victorious. The slaughter was great on both sides, four thousand being left dead on the field and many Welsh persons of the first distinction were taken prisoners among whom was Owen Tudor (great grandfather to Henry the Eighth and a descendant of the illustrious Cadwallader) who was afterwards beheaded at Hereford. This was the decisive battle which fixed Edward the Fourth on the throne of England, who was proclaimed King in London on the fifth of March following.’

The Mortimers Cross Inn has a pub sign adorned with the red and white roses and the Sun in Splendour, and sits right on the crossroads where the Yorkists lined up. There is little else in this tiny hamlet other than a timber merchant’s and stove showroom.

Fifty feet west of the bridge over the Lugg at Mortimer’s Cross, in front of which Edward had drawn up his forces, is a gate which leads into the meadows to the south. It was here that Edward broke the Lancastrian army, chasing them south towards Kingsland.

Croft Castle, a National Trust property on the road to Ludlow, is worth visiting as well. The tomb of Sir Richard Croft, a veteran of Mortimer’s Cross, Towton, and latterly Stoke Field (1487) can be found in the church there. It was from here that Croft set forth with his soldiers for the battlefield at Mortimer’s Cross, just a few miles away.

After the battle

Mortimer’s Cross ensured that another, far greater battle would be fought. Edward took London, mobilised in full strength, and then marched a great Yorkist army, dominated by Londoners and men of the South-East, northwards to confront the Lancastrian power in its heartland.

The Lancastrians, too, had mustered a mighty army, and so – on a bleak, snow-swept field near Towton in Yorkshire – the greatest battle of the Wars of the Roses was fought out: a battle between north and south, Lancastrian and Yorkist, old nobility and new order.

Victory at Towton confirmed Edward IV as the first Yorkist King of England and ultimately condemned Henry VI to a premature death in the Tower of London. Edward’s reputation as a warrior king was enhanced and confirmed. His slaughter of the Lancastrian nobility on the field of Towton secured his rule against serious challenge.

So, 1461 was the year of two battles, one small, one huge. Both were Yorkist victories for the emerging Edward, Earl of March (Edward IV). They were the making of one King and the nemesis of another. Towton, the bloodiest single day in English history, heralded 24 years of Yorkist rule until Edward’s younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III), was to lose life and throne at Bosworth. The significance of a small battle in Herefordshire should not be overlooked, though, for without Mortimer’s Cross, there almost certainly would have been no Towton.

This article appeared in issue 26 of Military History Matters.

About the author: Steve Roberts is a history graduate and former history teacher, who is now a freelance writer. Several generations of his family lived close to the battlefield of Mortimer’s Cross.