26-F Description of 1408 Battle

THE BATTLE OF BRAMHAM MOOR - 1408
THE KEY FIGURES IN THE DISPUTE
King Henry IV
Following King Richard II’s surrender at Conway castle in August 1399 to the forces of his cousin Henry
Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster and eldest son of John of Gaunt, Parliament was summoned in September to
hear a list of King Richard II’s “many crimes and failings” and his “voluntary” abdication. The proclamation of
Henry as King Henry IV (the first Lancastrian king) followed on 30 th September 1399. Richard II was
subsequently imprisoned in Pontefract Castle where he starved to death in 1400 - very probably murdered on
Henry’s orders.
Henry IV Coat of Arms
Henry IV as depicted in Cassell’s
“History of England”
This usurpation of the throne by Henry was to cause future problems because he was not the heir presumptive
to the crown. The best theoretical claim was that of Edmund de Mortimer, 5 th Earl of March but, as a child of
eight at the time, he was in no position to assert it.
Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland
Henry Percy was given the title of Marshall of England and created 1st Earl of Northumberland by Richard II in
1377.
In 1384 he married Maud de Lucy. This union between the two families made the Percies with all their lands
and castles in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cumberland, and Westmorland the most powerful and richest family
in the north of England. Situated just below the border with Scotland they were responsible for defending the
border against the Scots.
1st Earl of Northumberland
Coat of Arms
Lord Percy from a manuscript
in the British Museum
In 1399 when King Richard appointed Lord Percy’s chief rival, Ralph Neville, 1 st Earl of Westmorland, Percy
switched to the side of Henry Bolingbroke and was a leading supporter of Henry in the usurpation of 1399. At
the succession of King Henry IV, Lord Percy was made Constable of England for life.
THE ORIGINS OF THE REBELLION
Lord Percy’s support of Henry came to an end when, after the earl had defeated an invading Scottish army at
the Battle of Homildon in 1402 and captured a large number of Scottish nobles, the king did not allow Henry
Percy to benefit from the tradition of the day and make a large sum of money by allowing the nobles to buy
their freedom through ransom. Instead the king, who was suffering financial crisis at the time, demanded the
handover of the hostages and offered only token reimbursement.
In consequence, in 1403, Lord Percy with his younger brother Thomas and famous son Sir Henry ‘Harry
Hotspur’ declared their support for Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, as pretender to the throne. However,
‘Hotspur’ was killed at Shrewsbury in the same year while he was trying to join forces with Owen Glendower’s
Welsh rebellion, and Thomas was captured in the same engagement and subsequently beheaded. Lord Percy,
who was in Warkworth at the time of that battle, submitted to arrest at York, having suffered the indignity of
entering the city past the impaled head of his son. He lost his title of Constable of England and was fined but,
as he had not directly participated in the Battle of Shrewsbury, was not convicted of treason. Nevertheless by
1405 he was plotting again; he supported Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl
of Nottingham in another unsuccessful rebellion following which Lord Percy with Lord Bardolph escaped and
with 300 men fled to Scotland. Both Scrope and Nottingham were executed and Percy’s estates were
confiscated. After about a year in Scotland he and Bardolph travelled to Wales, France and Flanders seeking
help but with little success before returning to Scotland in the summer of 1407 where they set about raising a
new force ready to move southward. Their best hope was that discontent in England was sufficient to win them
the necessary support.
Lord Percy made his final attempt to seize the throne for the 5 th Earl of March in 1408. It has been said that,
until the sixteenth century, the North knew no prince but a Percy and that the tenants and clients of the family
were willing, or could be pressured, to support their political exploits and power struggles. That did not quite
happen on this occasion partly, no doubt, because the winter of 1407-8 was the worst in living memory, with
snow persisting from December until March, just the conditions to encourage men to stay at home. Having
gathered together his army of lowland Scots and loyal Northumbrians, but without the full support expected
from his tenants in Northumberland, he marched south in February once more toward York. Reaching Thirsk,
Percy and his deputy Lord Bardolph issued a proclamation inviting the people to rise but they failed to gain
widespread support. Chroniclers have described this army of liberation as having no men of note, rank or
military experience, its following being ‘mostly smiths, tailors, falconers, countrymen, mercers and artisans,’
with few possessing any military experience.
THE BATTLE
Learning of the approach of Lord Percy’s rebellious army, King Henry set off to meet them but Sir Thomas
Rokeby, the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, did not wait for the King to arrive with his army but gathered together a
force of local Yorkshire levies and noble retinues and blocked the river bridge at Knaresborough. Lord Percy’s
army advanced via Boroughbridge and Wetherby, where he hoped to raise his tenants then, with Rokeby in
pursuit, passed through Tadcaster (one of the Percy manors) before the two forces met on Bramham Moor (then
an unenclosed common) a couple of miles to the south-west of Tadcaster, on Monday 19th February 1408. The
exact sizes and compositions of the contending armies is not recorded but they were certainly far smaller than
the thousands engaged at Shrewsbury three years earlier and little detail of the actual engagement survives.
It is likely that the action followed the course of many medieval battles where the armies and generals were
evenly matched. Lord Percy is said to have positioned his men carefully and awaited Rokeby’s arrival at 2.00
p.m. when battle was instantly joined and, though not long in duration, was said to be sharp, furious and bloody.
It is generally believed that the English longbow, the ultimate weapon of its day (as evidenced at Agincourt
seven years later), thinned the rebel lines before the English charged the northern forces and violent hand-tohand combat ensued in a huge melee, probably with little tactical direction. The battle, often referred to locally
s Camp Hill, ranged over the area bounded by Camp Hill, Headley Hall and Oglethorpe Hills (the highest
THE BATTLE
point of the Moor) either side of the road to Toulston. The training of the loyalist yeomanry was probably a decisive
factor against the rebels who were quickly defeated after Lord Bardolph was mortally wounded in the early stages very few escaped back to Scotland. The Earl himself, at the age of 66, died in a rearguard action. Judging from the
original site of the Percy memorial cross he is believed to have died in the small hollow that lies between Oglethorpe
Hills and Old Wood some 250 metres to the north of, though hidden from, Toulston Lane, where he was either killed
fighting or was captured and summarily executed. The earl’s head was cut off, fixed on a hedge stake, and carried
with mock procession to London where it was set up on the bridge “as a monument to Divine justice” and the four
parts of his torso were exposed at Newcastle, Berwick, York and Lincoln. After his head and quarters had been
displayed for several months, the Earl’s remains were buried at the right side of the high alter in York Minster beside
the grave of his son, Hotspur, on 2nd July 1408.
Bardolph’s head with one of his quarters was also sent to London. Sixteen others were beheaded and quartered and,
when King Henry arrived in York, many more were condemned to death and many heavily fined. A number of the
unknown dead from the battlefield now lie in two communal graves at the east end of Bramham churchyard where the
cherry trees stand today.
The fortunes of war are illustrated by the fates of the Abbot of Hailes and the Bishop of Bangor both of whom were
with the rebel army. The former, taken in complete armour, was executed whereas the bishop, not appearing in the
vestments of war was spared. In the early years of the nineteenth century a ring and seal were found that were
supposed to have belonged to one of these ecclesiastical warriors.
THE AFTERMATH
For this victory Sir Thomas Rokeby received a grant for life of Spofforth, one of the largest Percy manors in
Yorkshire, from a grateful King Henry. With the threat of rebellion in the North of England removed, King Henry
was able to direct all his forces against the Welsh and, when Harlech Castle fell in the following year, Glendower fled
to the hills never to return. Thus it can be said the relatively small engagement at Bramham Moor effectively secured
the position of the Lancastrian monarchy for the next half century.
Nevertheless the usurpation of King Henry IV continued to rankle, ultimately giving rise to conflict between the
Yorkists and the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses. On Palm Sunday 1461 at the battlefield of Towton, only 3½
miles to the south east of Bramham Moor, in the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil (and where incidentally
Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland was among the slain), the Yorkists took their revenge when in a field of
about 90,000 men some 28,000 were killed, defeating the forces of King Henry VI and securing a victory for Edward
Duke of York, 7th Earl of March who became King Edward IV
THE ROYAL FAMILY TREE
THE YORKISTS
THE LANCASTRIANS
LOCAL CONDITIONS IN 1408
The population of Bramham at the time is not known but an idea of its size can be gained from the fact that 29
years earlier the 1379 poll tax return, designed to include the names of all persons over the age of 16 years
(clergy and ‘notorious mendicants’ being exempt), showed that Bramham had 82 taxpayers. In comparison
Wetherby had 98. Farming was the main occupation of the region so it is likely that the majority of Bramham’s
male population were agricultural labourers. The effect of the Black Death in the middle of the 1300s had by
this time immeasurably improved the lot of these workers because labour had become scarce and land abundant
enabling landless people to take over abandoned land
Excavations in other areas indicate that by the start of the 15th century most villages consisted mainly of
substantial houses, the labourers’ houses being structures of standard size but distinguished from the houses of
the better-off by the quality and quantity of the materials used, or the standard of carpentry. Houses were
generally built about a cruck frame, shaped like an ‘A’, of jointed timbers. The spaces between timbers were
filled with wattle and daub (panels of woven branches and clay) then painted with a mixture of lime and water
for protection. Windows had no glass; wooden shutters gave protection from wind and rain and all houses had
a hall open to the roof. In a peasant house, everybody in the family, which probably included three generations,
shared the hall for eating, sleeping and relaxing. With greater prosperity, a room for sleeping may have been
introduced at first floor level at one end of the hall. Their possessions included pewter tableware, glazed pots,
dice, cards, footballs and musical instruments. In addition to bread and cheese they ate pork, lamb and beef,
fruit and vegetables and even fish. Village life was healthier than life in a town but nevertheless infant
mortality was high, childbirth was dangerous and agricultural labourers were old at 40. Animals drank at the
pond and grazed on common land there being in those days none of the fields separated by hedges that came
with the enclosure act over four centuries later.
It is probable that none of Bramham’s villagers were directly involved in the combat on the day because, unlike
the situation in Wetherby, Tadcaster and the villages on the north side of the River Wharfe, it is not thought that
any Bramham residents were tenants of the Percy family.
th
WHERE A 14 -CENTURY FAMILY ATE AND
SLEPT
The main part of a medieval House was the hall, with its
fire burning in the centre, and smoke drifting into the
rafters. Meals were cooked either over the fire or in a
detached kitchen. In a simple yeoman’s (small farmer’s)
house, the family probably slept in a first-floor room.
THE SELF-SUFFICIENT YEOMAN FAMILY
Yeoman farmers were the tenants or freeholders who
worked small farms of about 30 acres. The yeoman
and his family were self-sufficient, cultivating their
land themselves, and keeping sheep, cattle, hens,
pigs and bees. In time of war the yeoman could be
called on to fight for his lord and he was compelled by
law to own a bow and arrows.