For others, Henry was prepared to trade threats for other means to secure support. By the time he reached Machynlleth, Henry understood that Rhys ap Thomas was driving a hard bargain. In particular, it was clear that his support would come at a price: according to Vergil, it was a price Henry was willing to pay, promising Rhys either in letters or through messengers ‘the perpetual governorship of Wales if he came over to his side’. It must have been at Machynlleth that Henry planned the final course of his route, deciding that he would enter England through the town of Shrewsbury. There he would need to cross the river Severn, the Rubicon between Wales and England. To do so, some significant obstacles needed to be overcome: firstly, without Rhys ap Thomas’s support, it was likely that he would be cut off at the pass; secondly, Henry desperately needed the Stanleys to show their hand and join his cause. Hoping that whatever previous agreements had been made would now be honoured, Henry sent his chaplain Christopher Urswick with instructions to Thomas Stanley and his mother Margaret, residing at Lathom, ‘so that the friends whom he trusted should know in what district to meet him’. Letters were also sent to Sir William Stanley at Holt Castle, Gilbert Talbot ‘and some others’. According to Vergil: ‘This was the gist of his instructions: he had decided, relying on the help of his friends, to cross into England through Shropshire, [and] accordingly to ask them to meet him and he would tell them more about his plans in a suitable place and at a suitable time.’
After a march of ninety-two miles in seven days, Henry was about to embark on the last and most perilous stage of his journey. He looked to gather strength from wherever he might find it. While at Machynlleth, tradition records that Henry paid a visit to the home of one of his most devoted supporters, the Welsh bard Dafydd Llwyd at Mathafarn, six miles east of the town. One story relates how Henry asked Dafydd, a noted prophesier, whether he would be victorious in his campaign. Dafydd was too nervous to give an immediate answer in case he gave the wrong reply, promising instead that he would return a verdict the following morning. Retiring to his bed somewhat dejected, his wife asked Dafydd the reason for his sudden melancholy. When the poet explained, she retorted incredulously that the answer was simple: it was obvious that he should tell Henry that he should succeed to the throne. If that proved to be the case, she argued, Dafydd could only be rewarded; ‘if not, you need not fear that he will return here to reproach you for being a false prophet’. One can assume the answer Dafydd gave to Henry on his return; whether Henry truly believed him is impossible to say.
On 15 August Henry resumed his march knowing that as he made his way inland, there could be no quick escape or turning back. The next stage of his journey would be both a bleak and difficult one. Leading his army across the divide between the Dyfi and Severn rivers, down the Severn valley into Newtown, without halting, the army moved northwards away from the Severn, continuing across the hills, following the desolate divide between the Dyfi valley and the valley of the Upper Banwy known as the pass of Bwlchyfedwen. It was a punishing thirty-mile journey; twenty-four miles was considered a good day’s march by the standards of the day, without taking into account the narrow and twisting unpaved tracks which made fast progress impossible. It was evening before Henry reached his intended destination, the mansion of Dolarddyn near Castle Caereinion, a few miles west of Welshpool.
The following morning on Tuesday 16 August, the army travelled the six-mile journey to Welshpool. Without stopping in the town, Henry led the troops several miles outside its walls to climb up to the top of a hill nearby. Long Mountain, known in Wales as the Mynydd Digoll, was a well-known site, with a vast plain at its summit across which traversed a Roman road, leading to Shrewsbury and on to Watling Street. With views stretching into the horizon and the Severn below, Henry could see England within his grasp.
Long Mountain had not been chosen as Henry’s destination for the night simply because of its views or strategic importance. It was here that, after setting up camp for the night, Henry could first hear, then witness, the arrival of Rhys ap Thomas, his banners displaying his insignia of the black raven heralding the arrival of his ‘battle’ described as ‘a goodly number of soldiers’, estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000 men. It had taken some bargaining to convince Rhys to join with Henry, but the offer of making Rhys the chamberlain of South Wales, made at Machynlleth two days before, had its desired effect. On Long Mountain, Rhys formally pledged his loyalty to Henry and ‘submitted to his authority’.
Rhys ap Thomas was not the only Welshman to commit to Henry’s cause that evening. Throughout the night, other members of the Welsh gentry arrived to join Henry’s assembled army on Long Mountain, including William Griffith of Penrhyn near Bangor and Richard ap Howell of Mostyn in Flint and Rhys Fawr ap Meredudd of Plas Iolyn in the upper Conwy valley. With them they brought not only men and arms, but provisions such as fattened oxen to refresh Henry’s exhausted troops.
The rendezvous point at Long Mountain had been carefully planned, with its location chosen in advance, probably at Machynlleth two days earlier when Henry had sent messengers to Rhys and the surrounding gentry in a final appeal for their support. After Henry’s offer had been relayed to him by messengers, Rhys ap Thomas had decided that the moment to finally defect from Walter Herbert’s forces had come. Nevertheless, Rhys could not be entirely sure whether he was making the right decision. Marching northwards from Brecon, he decided to leave a contingent of 500 cavalry commanded by his two brothers to act as a rearguard in case he changed his mind. Travelling across the Eppynt hills to Builth, Rhys journeyed along the upper Wye valley to Rhayader then to the upper Severn valley at Llanidloes before making the short final march to Henry at Long Mountain.
The impact of Rhys ap Thomas’s decision to join Henry at Long Mountain could not be underestimated. The author of the ballad ‘The Rose of England’ wrote how Rhys’s defection had drawn ‘Wales with him, a worthy sight it was to see, how the Welshmen rose wholly with him’. The following morning, on Wednesday 17 August, his confidence bolstered by Rhys’s support, Henry decided to advance upon Shrewsbury in the Severn valley below. It was essential that he enter the town in order to cross the Severn across its Welsh bridge. He could not afford a repeat of what had taken place at Gloucester in 1471, when the city refused to allow Margaret of Anjou and the Duke of Somerset’s Lancastrian troops to enter, delaying their crossing of the Severn and forcing them to embark upon an exhausting march to their fateful end at Tewkesbury.
Yet the prospect of history repeating itself was exactly the nightmare Henry faced when he arrived at the town’s gates. When he requested entry to the town, in spite of his insistence that the town would remain unharmed, its gates remained locked. According to the town’s chronicle, Henry arrived to find the town’s gates shut against him with the portcullis let down. When Henry’s messenger came to the gate, ‘commanding them to open the gates to their right King’, the head bailiff Thomas Mitton refused outright, swearing that he ‘knew no king but only King Richard to whom he was sworn, whose life tenants he and his fellows were, and before he should enter there he should go over his belly’.
Thomas Mitton, whom Richard considered ‘our trusty and wellbe-loved squire’, had served twice as town bailiff, once before in 1480. After Buckingham’s rebellion, Richard had granted Mitton ‘in consideration of his good and acceptable service’ the castle and lordship of Cawes in the Welsh Marches, together with lands worth £50. It is hardly surprising that Mitton remained steadfastly loyal to a king in whose service he had already been well rewarded. Mitton’s insistence that he would not break the oath he had taken was so vehement – he declared to the messenger that he would need to be ‘slain to the ground and so to “roon ov’hym” before he entered’ – that Henry decided to withdraw his forces to the nearby village of Forton, three miles away, where his men spent the night on the heath, with Henry himself staying at a certain Hugh of Forton’s house in the village. The Hugh in question was likely to have been Hugh Fortune, described in a taxa
tion return as owing 20s, yet in the margin of the document it was recorded how Henry ‘lay in his house one night in the journey of his arrival’.
The following morning, Thursday 18 August, Henry sent his messengers once more to entreat with Mitton, insisting that his forces wished only to ‘pass quietly’ and that ‘the Earl their master did not mean to hurt the town nor none therein but to go to try his right’. Further, they were to promise that Henry would protect Mitton’s oath. Henry had devised an ingenious plan. Returning from Forton to the town, Henry summoned Mitton and explained that he wanted him to lie on his back. The town’s chronicler recorded the extraordinary scene: ‘upon this they entered and in passing through the said Mitton lay along the ground and his belly upward and so the said Earl stepped over him and saved his oath’.
The image of Thomas Mitton lying down so that Henry might step over him in order to preserve his oath may have been apocryphal; an identical and unlikely story is recorded in the seventeenth-century ‘Life of Sir Rhys ap Thomas’ that Rhys too lay on the ground and ‘suffered the earl to pass over him, so to make good his promise to King Richard, that none should enter in at Milford, unless he came first over his belly’. Alternatively, it may have been an acknowledged method of avoiding the implications of breaking an oath before God, perhaps influenced by biblical and classical examples.
In any case, something, or more importantly, someone had persuaded Mitton to change his stance overnight. What had caused the bailiff to quite literally roll over? The arrival at Shrewsbury of several influential local gentry from the surrounding region strengthened Henry’s forces: William Megheyn joined Henry ‘toward the town of Shrewsbury’, while it would later be remembered how Richard Crompe ‘by his means and diligent labour caused the town of Shrewsbury to be delivered’ to Henry ‘at your coming by that way’. The most significant arrival to join Henry’s army, however, was Sir Richard Corbet, who later wrote how he ‘was one of the first, to his poor power, that took your part, and first came unto your Grace at the Town of Shrewsbury, and there was sworn your liegeman’. Corbet brought with him a company of 800 men, ‘gentlemen and others his friends that came with him’. Corbet’s influence arose not only from the number of men he had brought with him, but also from the fact that he was Lord Thomas Stanley’s son-in-law.
Important clues are also to be found in Polydore Vergil’s manuscript history. It was, Vergil notes, on the same day that Henry arrived at the gates of Shrewsbury, that Christopher Urswick returned ‘laden with money’ from ‘the individuals to whom he had been sent’. Urswick was also to inform Henry that ‘all was safe with his friends’, and that they ‘were prepared to do their duty at the right time’.
It must have been Stanley’s influence that had caused the gates of Shrewsbury to be lifted to Henry. The ballad traditions, which must be treated with caution given their origin within the Stanley household and the subsequent degree of importance they place upon the Stanley involvement in Henry’s enterprise, provide a detailed insight into the nature of that influence. The ‘Ballad of Lady Bessie’ records that it was Sir William Stanley, rather than Thomas Stanley, who had sent his messenger Rowland Warburton to Shrewsbury, together with letters signed by his own hand, ordering that the citizens there admit Henry and his army. When Warburton arrived, he found the portcullis down and the citizens and bailiffs ‘in full great scorn’ refusing to allow anyone inside the city, especially Henry who they claimed ‘in England he should wear no crown’. Only when Warburton decided to tie Sir William Stanley’s instructions to a stone and threw it over the city walls, asking that the bailiffs read them, did the town open its gates and allow Henry’s troops to proceed through its streets, though the ballad states that Henry did not stay overnight there, hearing that Richard was preparing his forces. Another ballad, ‘The Rose of England’, indicated that through a garret on the city walls, Thomas Mitton had shouted out: ‘At these gates no man enter shall’, and kept Henry waiting outside the town for the night and the following day, until letters arrived from Sir William Stanley, whereupon ‘the gates were opened presently’. The ballad adds the additional flourish that when the troops entered the town, the Earl of Oxford was so furious at Mitton’s initial refusal to open the gates that he threatened to cut his head off with his sword, being only prevented from doing so by Henry, who suggested that ‘if we begin to head so soon, in England we shall bear no degree’.
With the town’s gates finally opened, Henry and his troops were led through Shrewsbury escorted by the bailiffs, with Henry riding in the middle of the columns of his forces. The ‘Life of Rhys ap Thomas’ recorded that Henry was received with a hero’s welcome, ‘the streets being strewed with herbs and flowers, and their doors adorned with green boughs, in testimony of a true hearty reception’. Clearly the town’s citizens felt that they had much ground to make up after their initial frosty refusal to admit the earl: the bailiff accounts for the town, signed off by Thomas Mitton and Roger Knight, record that £4 4s 10d was ‘paid for divers costs incurred by the town at the time of the coming of King Henry VII against King Richard, and for wages of divers soldiers hired by the king himself’.
10
SECRET FRIENDS
Since his discovery of Henry’s landing in Wales, Richard had remained calm, confident that he would be able to deal with the invasion. When reports had reached him that Henry was ‘utterly unfurnished and feeble in all things’, the king believed that Henry had ‘proceeded rashly, considering his small company’ and would ‘surely have an evil end’. Lord Strange’s arrest, bringing with it news of a plot involving Sir William Stanley, had left him unsettled, but still Richard was prepared to wait at Nottingham. He decided to delay his departure from the city until Tuesday 16 August, since the Monday was the religious festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, a public holiday that had special significance in Nottingham, where the borough church had been dedicated to the Virgin Mary. When Tuesday arrived, however, Richard had still not made up his mind to leave, and instead returned to his hunting lodge at Bestwood where he stayed the night.
Richard remained at Bestwood for the rest of the next day. It was here that the king was greeted by two men, John Sponer, the sergeant of the mace of the city of York, and another messenger, John Nicholson. They had ridden through the night for an audience with him, having been sent by the mayor and citizens of York, who had met the previous morning in their council chamber, having heard the news that the king’s rebels, led by Henry Tudor, had landed. Yet, somewhat alarmingly, the citizens had still not received any instructions from the king to assemble an armed force. That summer the plague had raged though the city, and they were understandably anxious as to what demands needed to be placed upon them. ‘It was determined,’ the recorder of the minutes of the meeting wrote, ‘that John Sponer … should ride to Nottingham to the king’s grace to understand his pleasure as in sending up any of his subjects within this city to his said grace for the subduing of his enemies late arrived in the parties of Wales.’ Meanwhile, the city had sent out proclamations of their own, ordering that every citizen should be ‘ready in their most defensible array to attend upon the mayor, for the welfare of this City, within an hour’s warning, upon pain of imprisonment’.
Hearing this news related to him in his chamber at Bestwood by the two messengers, Richard must have been puzzled. Commissions of array had already been ordered to muster in preparation. Letters had been sent out to commissioners ordering them to prepare their forces: for York, the Earl of Northumberland, as commissioner for the East Riding, should have given them warning. If Richard mused on the reasons why the earl had not yet sent out summonses to York, he kept his thoughts to himself. He thanked Sponer and Nicholson for the city’s loyalty, asking them to inform the mayor that he would require 400 men to be sent to him as soon as possible. John Nicholson immediately set off to return to York with the king’s message, while John Sponer chose to remain in Richard’s household, accompanying him back to Nottingham.
For now, it was clear to Richard that he would have to confront Henry as soon as he possibly could. In order to ‘espy what route’ Henry’s forces were taking, he sent out his own men, known commonly as ‘scurriers’, to track the oncoming march of his enemy. In the records of the borough of Nottingham, there is reference to Thomas Hall being paid 6s 8d ‘by the Mayor’s commandment’ on Thursday 18 August, ‘riding forth to aspye for the town before the field’. Slowly, the city was filling with thousands of armed men as the commissions of array creaked into action, the Crowland chronicler remarking that ‘there was a greater number of fighting men than there had ever been seen before, on one side, in England’. As soon as Richard could discover what his enemy’s next moves were, he would be ready to face him in battle.
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