Chapter 12: Warwick the Kingmaker?
Chapter 12: Warwick the Kingmaker?
Whilst the Percys were establishing their control over the north with the Siege of Lancaster and ‘recruitment’ of Richard of Conisburgh, the Mortimers were having a rather more torrid time in the south. Thomas I arrived in Bristol in March, having fled Preston by sea in late February, and almost immediately began to gather soldiers to him in order to attack the Mortimers in Stafford. In the meantime, however, several naval raids were launched against the port towns of south Wales, the Lancasters having not agreed any actual peace deal with the Welsh, These raids were largely punitive and there was little hope, or indeed intention, of them resulting in a Lancaster invasion of Wales, they did result in some not inconsiderable damage to the port towns of Caerdydd[1] and Casnewydd[2] before the fledging Welsh navy, still made up principally of French and Breton privateers, managed to drive them off. This ultimately proved to be little more than a distraction for the Lancasters as nothing significant came of it and Thomas I and his men moved instead to fight the Mortimers at Stafford. In this campaign, Thomas I was accompanied by the recently ransomed Edward of Norwich and John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset and half-brother of his father Henry IV, as well as his brother John. The force that they assembled was a large one, but smaller than that which Henry IV had taken with him to Cae[3], and numbered some 8,000 men, which were drawn largely from the west country. They marched north through the Hafren[4] valley, a rash choice given the river’s new role as the Welsh and English border claimed by Glyndŵr., though of course the Lancasters did not acknowledge this border. It can hardly be a surprise, therefore, that Thomas I and his army were harassed by Welsh guerrilla forces as they headed northwards and thus arrived outside Stafford having weary after the long march.
One of the Welsh guerillas in the Hafren Valley
To make matters more inconvenient for Thomas I and the Lancasters, they arrived at Stafford to find that the Sir Edmund Mortimer had led his army to attack Lichfield, only a day or two previously. Whilst this did improve the possibility of the Lancasters retaking Stafford from the Mortimers, it also ended Thomas I’s hope of ending the Mortimer rebellion in one fell swoop. Nonetheless Thomas I laid siege to the Stafford Castle, which did serve to trap Edmund I, the Mortimer King, in Stafford, though only after the repulsion of a rash assault on the castle by the garrison. This assault cost the Lancasters some 400 men but saw them gain little, and whilst the number of casualties wasn’t hugely significant it was a blow to the morale of the besieging force and a boost for the defenders. Sir Edmund and his army, meanwhile, had seized Lichfield and had their celebrations cut short by news of the Lancaster siege of Stafford. As a result, Sir Edmund was promptly forced to turn his army around to try and relieve their trapped king from the grip of the Lancasters. The situation for the Mortimer cause was swiftly becoming desperate, not least because their army of 6,000 was tired and outnumbered by the Lancasters, though they did have the advantage of Sir Edmund being a far more experienced soldier than Thomas I, who was commanding his own army for the first time.
So it was that the Battle of Stafford began with there being a very real possibility of the Mortimer cause being crushed just as it was getting started. On the one side was the Lancaster army which had hastily been reorganised to the face their oncoming enemy, abandoning their earthworks and defences that had been constructed around Stafford as part of their siege in the process, and on the other side was the Mortimer army which had been carefully arrayed against the Lancaster force by Sir Edmund. Some distance off, meanwhile, sat the army of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and godson of Richard II, who had yet to decide where his loyalties lay in this fight. On the one hand, he had been loyal to Henry IV in the years of his reign but on the other he bore no loyalty to the rash young Thomas I and victor for the Mortimers represented an opportunity for him to advance the fortunes of his house. The battle got off to a good start for the Mortimers, thanks in no part to their better organisation, as the battle began under a cloud of arrows from both sides. The battle was a long and hard one, with the Lancaster numerical advantage telling, slowly but surely. The Lancaster right wing was doing especially well under the command of Beaufort, the seasoned campaigner and veteran of the Barbary Crusade and more, as they ravaged the Mortimer left flank. Indeed, the situation was steadily worsening for the Mortimers as Beaufort and his men began to threaten the Mortimer centre, which had until that point been holding off Thomas I and his Lancaster centre. Things looked bleak for the Mortimers as Beauchamp and his men continued to refuse to commit, but Sir Edmund himself fought bravely, surrounded by his retinue and slowly began to turn back Beaufort and his men.
John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset
At this point in the battle, Thomas I made a near fatal mistake as he, thinking the battle all but won, led a group of knights, including his brother John, in a charge at Sir Edmund himself, hoping perhaps to cut the head off the Mortimer snake and the end the rebellion in that battle. Things turned bad for Thomas I as the Mortimer soldiers fought hard against the charging knights and by the time they reached Sir Edmund himself Thomas and his knights were flagging. It was at this most opportune of all moments that Beauchamp sent his men charging into battle, smashing into the Lancaster centre, which had been abandoned by their commander. Beauchamp and his forces cut through the Lancaster centre and joined the resurgent the Mortimers and the battle finally ended after a long and bloody day of hand-to-hand fighting as the Lancasters rapidly retreated under the command of Beaufort and John of Lancaster, leaving Thomas I in the clutches of the Mortimers and Beauchamp after he had been cut off from the body of his forces by his rash charge. This was a big moment for the Mortimers as the Lancaster King fell in to their hands and Beauchamp, one of the most powerful of the English nobles as Earl of Warwick, joined their cause in the hope of avoiding the lurking menace of the Percys in the north.
Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick
The Battle of Stafford, devastating for both sides fighting, ended the campaigning in the south of England as the Lancasters, now commanded by the far more competent John, aided and abetted by the seasoned John and Thomas Beaufort, Earls of Somerset and Exeter respectively, retreated to lick their wounds. This changing in commanded might appear to be a major blow to the Lancaster cause but closer inspection suggests that it might well be a blessing in disguise as the increased influence of the Beauforts on matters and the elevation of John of Lancaster, a more able politician and general than his rash older brother, substantially improved the quality of the Lancaster command. For the Mortimers, on the other hand, much of their old army had been slaughtered on the field at Stafford, but the defection of Beauchamp to their cause, along with the capture of Thomas I, more than made up for this.
[1] Cardiff
[2] Newport
[3] Chester
[4] Severn
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As promised, here is another chapter, this time dealing with the south of England rather than the north. As usual, feel free to comment and, more importantly, enjoy.
Gwyn
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