The Battles
The Battle of Mortimer’s Cross
2nd (or 3rd) February 1461
Result of the Battle – Yorkist victory
There is controversy as to the date of the battle, which could have taken place on either 2nd or 3rd February 1461.
While his father had marched north to meet the royalist army, the young Edward, Earl of March was sent to the Western March to raise men and contain any Lancastrian activity, a tactic particularly important following the events at Ludlow the previous year. The earl probably spent Christmas at Shrewsbury where he heard of his father’s defeat and death at Wakefield. Perhaps the plan of the new Duke of York (as Edward would have become upon his father’s death) was initially centred on retaliating against the Lancastrians in the north but he was threatened more immediately in the west by Jasper Tudor and the arrival in Pembroke of the Earl of Wiltshire.
Probably moving to either Ludlow or Wigmore, where he drew support from the lords of the Southern Marches, Edward may have had an army of between 2,000 and 3,000 men who had a vested interest in the area. Tudor’s army on the other hand could be described as a motley bunch with little experience of battle and augmented by foreign mercenaries. The Lancastrian army marched towards the Yorkists and battle was joined about four miles south of the latter’s stronghold of Wigmore at Mortimer’s Cross. Geoffrey Hodges describes the site: ‘Two valleys, cutting through the limestone escarpment whose dip slope rises gently from the north Herefordshire plain, meet there at right angles.’ Close to their base the Yorkists were prepared for their enemy but the day before the battle, on the feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a natural phenomenon (known today as a parhelion) appeared to cause three suns to blaze in the sky. According to the sources, Edward quickly turned the fear this caused in his men into strong rhetoric, telling them this was a sign of victory for their cause. This ‘sun in splendour’ was afterwards adopted by Edward as one of his personal emblems.
There is no clear account of the battle but due to the steep escarpments either side of the battlefield site it has been suggested that the traditional ‘battles’ of van, centre and rear of both armies were each drawn up one behind the other, with the Yorkists facing south and the river Lugg to their left. Due to the congestion caused by the Yorkists’ onslaught with their archers, followed by an infantry charge, the Lancastrian line broke and the probably superior forces of the Yorkists led to their victory after a possible last stand by the Lancastrians where Jasper’s father, Owen Tudor, and Throckmorton were taken prisoner. The victors moved south to Hereford where the captives were executed and Edward learnt of another Yorkist army under Warwick’s charge having been defeated at St Albans.
Further Reading
- ‘Crowning Victory of Edward IV’ by C.V. Hancock in The Birmingham Post.
- Ludford Bridge and Mortimer’s Cross: the Wars of the Roses in Herefordshire and the Welsh Marches and the Accession of Edward IV by Geoffrey Hodges, 1989 (booklet).
- ‘The Civil War of 1459 to 1461 in the Welsh Marches: Part 2 The Campaign and Battle of Mortimer’s Cross by Geoffrey Hodges in The Ricardian, June 1984.