Battle of Mortimer's Cross, 1461: three suns and a new king

The chronicler who told the story in London set down two scenes. In one, as the young Earl of March mustered his men in a marsh outside the town, three suns were seen shining over him. In the other, an old Welshman in a red velvet doublet waited for a pardon until the collar was ripped from his neck, then said that the head which used to lie in Queen Katherine's lap would now lie on the block, and took his death meekly. Between those two scenes lies the battle of Mortimer's Cross, one of the least documented and most consequential of the Wars of the Roses. The battle is one chapter in the military history of Wales.²

Who won the Battle of Mortimer's Cross and why?

The Yorkists won. Edward, Earl of March, turned back from his march on London and caught the Lancastrian army of Jasper Tudor and the Earl of Wiltshire near Wigmore before it could join Queen Margaret. His prompt attack broke it; both earls fled, and Owen Tudor and other captains were beheaded at Hereford.³

Background: why Edward of March fought in February 1461

In 1460 Richard, Duke of York, was recognized as heir to Henry VI, cutting out the king's son, and Queen Margaret refused to accept it. Gathering their forces in the north, the Lancastrians surprised and killed York at Wakefield at the end of December. His claim passed to his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, who was then on the Welsh border raising men.⁴

Edward was young for the task. Born at Rouen on 28 April 1442, he was eighteen when he fought at Mortimer's Cross. He was also heir, through his father, to the great estates and the title of the Mortimer earls of March, whose lands lay along the Welsh border; the English Chronicle traces York's claim to the throne through the same Mortimer line.⁵

Edward had gathered his troops on the Welsh border and was on the point of starting for London, Cora Scofield writes, when he heard that the Earls of Pembroke and Wiltshire had come to Wales by sea with Frenchmen, Bretons and Irishmen and were raising men for the queen. He turned back into Herefordshire. Ramsay too has him checking the gathering of Lancastrian forces, and the Battlefields Trust describes an army marching into England out of south Wales.⁶

Armies and commanders

The Lancastrians. Their leader was Jasper Tudor, Henry VI's half brother, whom the king had raised to the earldom of Pembroke; the year before, the Duke of York's castle of Denbigh had at last fallen to him. With him came James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire, who had served Henry VI as treasurer, and Jasper's father, Owen Tudor. Both the Battlefields Trust and Scofield record French, Breton and Irish soldiers in the army beside the Welsh.⁷

Owen Tudor was a Welsh squire who had secretly married Henry V's widow, Catherine of Valois, and got himself into trouble for it. Their sons Edmund and Jasper were thus half brothers of Henry VI, and Edmund was the father of the boy who would become Henry VII. Henry VI later showed him favor, rewarding him with new grants as late as 1460, and he stayed a loyal Lancastrian into old age.⁸

The Yorkists. The Battlefields Trust assumes that Edward's army was a local force of the Marches. How large either army was is unknown. Scofield thought that Edward had a much larger army than his opponents; the Battlefields Trust cites the historian Geoffrey Hodges, who, counting named followers, suggested about 3,500 Lancastrians and perhaps as few as 2,500 Yorkists.⁹

The commanders' decisions

Edward's choice was between London and the west, and he turned on the army in Wales first. Scofield credits the victory less to numbers than to the promptness of his attack; the Battlefields Trust notes that it was fought in the middle of winter, well outside the normal campaigning season.¹⁰

On the other side, Pembroke and Wiltshire were trying to bring a second Lancastrian army out of Wales into England while Margaret advanced from the north. Ramsay presents the battle as the blow that checked that concentration; only after it did the queen begin her advance on London from York.¹¹

What were the three suns at Mortimer's Cross?

The English Chronicle puts the sign on the feast of the Purification, about ten in the morning: three suns shining full clear in the firmament, at which the people marveled and were afraid. Gregory's Chronicle says only that men say three suns were seen over Edward as he mustered his men.¹²

In the English Chronicle Edward turned the fear into confidence: "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, and therefore let us have a good heart, and in the name of Almighty God go we against our enemies." Scofield quotes the speech in full and adds that it is said Edward ever after used the badge of the sun in memory of the three suns.¹³

The Battlefields Trust explains the sight as a parhelion, a reflection effect in ice crystals that makes it look as if three suns stand in the sky. It also notes that the Tudor chronicler Edward Hall linked the sun in splendor badge to that morning.¹⁴

When was the battle fought?

Even the day is disputed. Gregory's Chronicle gives 2 February, Candlemas; the English Chronicle gives 3 February and places the three suns on the Monday before, the feast of the Purification. Scofield notes that William Worcester's annals put the battle on the eve of the feast, 1 February, but judges from Edward's movements that it was fought on 3 February, St Blaise's Day; the Battlefields Trust also gives 3 February, while Ramsay has 2 February.¹⁵

The battle

Of the fighting almost nothing is known. The Battlefields Trust calls Mortimer's Cross one of the most poorly documented battles of the war: the sources fix it only at or near Mortimer's Cross, or near Wigmore, and give no detail of the action. The English Chronicle, Scofield and Ramsay all place it near Wigmore.¹⁶

Two sites are argued. The standard modern interpretation, set out by Hodges, puts the armies just south of Mortimer's Cross, where the old road from Hereford enters the narrow gap of the Lugg valley; a reading of the road system from Ogilby's map of 1675 favors a site about a mile to the south-east, near Kingsland, where the monument now stands. Either way, the Trust writes, the action probably opened with an arrowstorm and soon came to close combat.¹⁷

What is certain is the result. The English Chronicle says Edward put the two earls to flight, and Scofield that both Wiltshire and Pembroke escaped. Scofield and Ramsay both have Edward chase his enemies as far as Hereford, and Ramsay adds that he drove them into the corners of Wales.¹⁸

Counting the losses

The chroniclers give round and doubtful figures. Gregory's Chronicle says Edward took and slew knights, squires and others to the number of 3,000; the English Chronicle speaks of 4,000 Welshmen killed. Scofield accepts that the dead numbered three thousand or more, more than at Wakefield; the Battlefields Trust regards such claims as the usual exaggeration of medieval chronicles.¹⁹

The executions are better recorded. Owen Tudor was captured in the pursuit and brought to Hereford, where he was beheaded in the market place. By the counts of both Scofield and Ramsay, nine other prisoners died with him.²⁰

Aftermath: from earl to king

Mortimer's Cross did not end the war. On 17 February the queen's army beat the Earl of Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans. Henry VI, whom the Yorkists had brought with them, watched his own men fall on both sides, the English Chronicle says, and was taken back by his wife's army. Edward had set out for London as soon as he heard of the defeat, and he met Warwick on the road. On 27 February by Scofield's reckoning, the 28th by the English Chronicle's, the two earls entered London, whose gates had been shut against Queen Margaret, and crowds came to join them. On 4 March Edward began his reign as Edward IV. He then marched north and won at Towton, and was crowned on 28 June 1461.²¹

Jasper Tudor would come back. He fought on for Lancaster for another decade, and after Tewkesbury in 1471 he fled from Tenby with his young nephew Henry, Earl of Richmond; meaning to reach France, the two ended up as guests of the Duke of Brittany. In 1485 Owen Tudor's grandson took the crown from the House of York at Bosworth and became Henry VII.²² › Battle of Bosworth Field, 1485

Why the Battle of Mortimer's Cross mattered

For the Battlefields Trust the battle was important if relatively small: it reversed, for a while, the disaster of Wakefield, and it was the first of a series of crushing victories that destroyed the Lancastrian cause for more than a decade. Scofield goes further: Mortimer's Cross was the first victory Edward could claim as his own, won without Warwick's help, and it showed that he possessed a remarkable genius for war.²³

It is also a battle of Welshmen on both sides: an army raised in Wales by Jasper Tudor against an earl whose power lay in the March. In 1799 a monument was raised by subscription at Kingsland. Its inscription, recorded by Historic England, calls it an obstinate, bloody and decisive battle that fixed Edward IV on the throne, and claims four thousand dead. The figures belong to the 18th century, not to the evidence.²⁴

Where is the Mortimer's Cross battlefield today?

The monument's pedestal stands on the A4110 at Kingsland, beside the Monument Inn, and is listed at Grade II. The Battlefields Trust notes that the valley has changed: hedged fields have replaced open field and meadow, and the old road through it has gone. There is no interpretation on the battlefield, and Croft Castle, a National Trust property, lies about three miles away.²⁵