Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (41 page)

Henry’s scouts returned, informing him that though Rhys and Herbert ‘were before him in arms’ they ‘were keeping to their camp’. Henry could no longer avoid confrontation: he had pushed as far north as he was able, and now needed to turn inland, making his way to the English border. After a ‘speedy consultation with his people’ Henry
decided that he would continue to ‘march towards them’ and ‘set out for England as soon as possible’. The following morning on 13 August, Henry continued his march into the Dyfi estuary and on to Machynlleth, a distance of twenty-three miles, arriving at the town by the evening where tradition records that he lodged in a house still surviving in the town.

Henry’s arrival at Machynlleth was laden with significance. The former capital of Wales, it was here that Owain Glyn Dwr had declared himself Prince of Wales and had held his own parliament during the rebellion that had drawn Henry’s ancestors into combat with Henry IV. Nearly eighty years later, once more it provided the focus of yet another assault upon the crown. Henry used his time there to send out another round of letters in preparation for the next stage of his journey. During his march along the Welsh coast, letters sent out in advance to the nearby Welsh gentry along the route had ensured that his forces had swelled with new recruits to his cause. In this next stage of his journey, across particularly difficult terrain, Henry hoped that as he approached the English border, he might maximise the potential number of his troops, or at least ensure that he would receive a welcome passage without the inconvenience of any hostility.

One of Henry’s letters written from Machynlleth on 14 August survives. As was becoming common practice for Henry by now, the letter begins with the common formula of the royal signet: ‘By the King. Trusty and wellbeloved, we greet you well’. It is addressed to Sir Roger Kynaston, a Shropshire knight and the uncle by marriage of John Lord Grey of Powys; Grey was an important and powerful local magnate, who held the surrounding lordship of Merioneth and the constableship of the impregnable Harlech Castle, the former bastion of Lancastrian dissent that had served Jasper Tudor so well during his renegade years. Grey was also considered one of Richard’s allies: a member of the king’s council, for which he received £100, the previous year he had been placed in command of the thousand archers sent by Richard to Brittany to serve under Duke Francis II.

Yet Henry had discovered that Grey was currently absent from Wales. With Kynaston placed in charge of his estates, he hoped instead that he might be able to persuade him to support his cause. In order to achieve this, Henry was prepared to make some remarkable claims. He
wrote to Kynaston that he had been ‘credibly informed that our trusty and wellbeloved cousin the Lord Powis hath in the time passed be of that mind and disposition that at this our coming in to these parts he had fully concluded and determined to have do us service’. It is worth considering here the timing of Grey’s mission to Brittany with the English archers. The archers had departed shortly after 26 June 1484, while Grey was back in England by September, where he was a witness to the peace treaty with Scotland. At the same time, Henry appears to have remained in Brittany until mid-September. Did Grey meet Henry during his mission, secretly giving him his allegiance? Henry certainly believed he did; if so, it is testament to the detail and time that had gone into planning the invasion. Henry continued:

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 taxation 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.