On 2 February 1461, or on 3 February according to some chroniclers, the 18-year-old Edward, Earl of March, defeated a Lancastrian army near Mortimer's Cross in Herefordshire, close to the Welsh border. Before the fighting his men saw what looked like three suns in the sky, a sight Edward is said to have read as a sign of God's favor. Among the prisoners was Owen Tudor, the Welsh squire who had married the widow of Henry V; he was beheaded at Hereford. Within weeks Edward was proclaimed King Edward IV.
A son avenging his father
In 1460 Richard, Duke of York, was recognized as heir to the Lancastrian king Henry VI, but on 30 December he was killed at the Battle of Wakefield. His claim passed to his eldest son Edward, who was then raising men in the Welsh Marches. A Lancastrian army from Wales, led by Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, his father Owen Tudor and James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire, was marching into England from South Wales. Owen Tudor was the Welsh squire who had married Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V, and the founder of his family's fortunes. Edward moved to intercept it.1
The Battlefields Trust notes that the Lancastrian army included Welsh troops along with Irish, French and Breton mercenaries. How large the two armies were is unknown. Contemporary accounts speak of 15,000 Yorkists and 8,000 Lancastrians, figures the Trust treats as serious overestimates; it cites an estimate by Hodges, based on named followers, of about 3,500 Lancastrians and perhaps as few as 2,500 Yorkists.2
Three suns in the sky
On the morning of the battle the Yorkists saw a parhelion, an effect of light in ice crystals that puts bright patches on either side of the sun, so that three suns seem to hang in the sky. The Battlefields Trust writes that it was supposedly taken as a good omen, a sign of the Holy Trinity looking down on the Yorkist cause. According to the Tudor chronicler Edward Hall, this was why Edward later adopted the sun as one of his badges, the sun in splendor. Shakespeare put the scene into Henry VI, Part 3.3
The battle and the execution
Very little is known about the fighting itself. The Battlefields Trust calls Mortimer's Cross one of the most poorly documented battles of the Wars of the Roses: even the exact site, somewhere between Mortimer's Cross and Kingsland in the valley of the River Lugg, is uncertain. What the sources agree on is that the Lancastrian army broke and fled. Jasper Tudor and the Earl of Wiltshire escaped. Owen Tudor was captured and beheaded at Hereford together with other Lancastrian prisoners; Gregory's Chronicle, quoted by the Battlefields Trust, adds that he was beheaded in the market place and his head set on the market cross.4
The chroniclers claim heavy losses: Gregory's Chronicle speaks of 3,000 taken and slain, the English Chronicle of 4,000 Welshmen killed. The Battlefields Trust regards such numbers as the usual exaggeration of medieval chronicles.5
Which day, and what came next
The date is disputed. Gregory's Chronicle gives 2 February, the feast of Candlemas, while the English Chronicle and the Annales Rerum Anglicarum give 3 February. Britannica uses 2 February, while the Battlefields Trust dates the battle to 3 February. England then followed the Julian calendar, so in the modern Gregorian calendar the battle fell on 11 or 12 February.6
Mortimer's Cross did not end the war. On 17 February the Lancastrians beat the Earl of Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans. But Edward reached London first, Britannica writes, on 26 February, was proclaimed king on 4 March and then won the crushing victory at Towton. He was crowned on 28 June 1461. A grandson of Owen Tudor, Henry VII, would end the Yorkist line a generation later: the story of how the wars closed is told in our article on the Battle of Bosworth Field.7
Also on this day
- 1141: Battle of Lincoln. King Stephen of England was besieging Lincoln Castle when a relief army loyal to Empress Matilda, led by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, attacked him in the civil war known as the Anarchy.
