The inexorable almanac urged us on, but one excursion that we could not forego was that to Battlefield Church. Thither we drove through such a tender afternoon, the soft sky brooding close above the earth as if she loved it, that it was hard to realise associations of wrath and war. The sun made golden windows in the clouds. The brown Severn was slyly breaking down its banks as it ran. We took our way through Shropshire lanes whose hawthorn hedges on either side were fringed with yellow wisps of rye scraped off from the harvest loads. Beyond we came upon the harvest fields with their shining stacks. And in Battlefield Church itself we found, almost rough-hewn from the tree-trunk, a mediæval image of Our Lady of Pity.
Here was fought on another summer day, July 21, 1403, the decisive battle between Henry IV and the Percies. Henry had sat but four years upon his troubled throne when these proud nobles of the north, by whose aid he had ousted Richard II, rose against him. Although Richard had been murdered, Edmund Mortimer, the next of blood, was a thorn in Henry's pillow. Mortimer had been taken prisoner by the revolting Welsh leader, Owen Glendower, and Henry, if we may take Shakespeare for our historian, listened coldly and incredulously to Harry Percy's assurances of Mortimer's resistance. In vain did this eloquent Hotspur, Mortimer's brother-in-law, pour forth his impetuous tale—how
"on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,
In single opposition, hand to hand,
He did confound the best part of an hour
In changing hardiment with great Glendower;
Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink,
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;
Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank
Blood-stained with those valiant combatants."
When the king refused to ransom Mortimer, Hotspur's anger bubbled over:
"He said he would not ransom Mortimer,
Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer,
But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I'll holla 'Mortimer!'
Nay,
I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but 'Mortimer' and give it him."
Thus Hotspur, and his father, the Earl of Northumberland, his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, "the irregular and wild Glendower," and the valiant Douglas of Scotland raised their united banners against the usurper. Many Cheshire gentlemen, to their sorrow, joined Hotspur as he marched through their county. He came in sight of Shrewsbury on the evening of July nineteenth. But Henry was there before him; the royal standard floated over the castle; and it was three or four miles to the north of the town that the shock of battle came. Five thousand of the rebels and three thousand of the loyal forces fell. The Earl of Worcester was slain on the field, and "that spirit Percy" himself, "the theme of honour's tongue," he who had ever been "sweet fortune's minion and her pride," perished there in the toils of his "ill-weav'd ambition." The traditional spot where he fell is pointed out, as also the antique oak from whose leafy top Owen Glendower is fabled to have watched, at a safe distance, the fortunes of the fight.
Battlefield Church was built in gratitude for this victory, and a perpetual chantry of eight canons was endowed to serve it with daily masses "for the king's salvation during his life, and after his death for his soul, and for the souls of his progenitors and of those who were slain in the battle and were there buried, and for the souls of all the faithful departed." The meadow behind the church, which, with its mounds, ridges, and depressions, still bears the battle-scars, is supposed to be the grave of thousands of the soldiers. The masses were duly said for nearly one hundred and fifty years, until the chantry was surrendered to Henry VIII. The church, abandoned after the Dissolution and suffered to fall into decay, has been restored. Its curious image of Our Lady of Pity was an ancient treasure of Albright Hussey, a neighbouring hamlet where we paused on our homeward way to see a veritable moated grange, and was brought to Battlefield early in the fifteenth century, when the church was consecrated. In the vestry are two small windows that keep such bits of the original glass as could be gathered up from the pile of shreds and splinters stored away in a farm-building close by. One of the recovered designs is a figure of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, vivid, ascetic, with loaf in hand. But more vital yet is the portrait of Henry IV—a royal form robed in such glowing, living crimson as only the old craftsmen knew how to pour into their glass. The face, "wan with care," is earnest and sorrowful.
Many are the battle-tales of these counties on the Welsh marches. William the Conqueror gave leave to certain of his followers to take and hold what land they could in that wild region, and a line of strong castles was erected; but the fierce British, making sudden raids from their mountain fastnesses, were a constant threat and trouble, until Edward I, despite the tuneful curses of all the Welsh bards, reduced them to subjection, putting the last native Prince of Wales to a cruel death at Shrewsbury and transferring the title to his own firstborn son. As the jurisdiction of the Marches became of importance, special courts were held by the Prince of Wales either in person or through a deputy known as the Lord President of Wales,—an office not abolished until 1688. The seat of these courts was Ludlow, a place that even to our partial eyes rivalled Shrewsbury in beauty and is counted by many the banner town of England. It stands in the very south of Shropshire on a commanding height just where the river Teme, which forms the Hereford boundary, is joined by the Corve. The lofty-towered Church of St. Lawrence, only second in praise to St. Mary Redcliffe of Bristol, and the impressive remains of what was once both Castle and Princely Palace crown this precipitous mass of rock, from which broad streets, retaining a goodly number of stately timbered houses dating from the times when the Courts of the Marches gathered illustrious companies at Ludlow, descend to plain and river. No description of this once royal residence, with its pure, bracing atmosphere, can better the honest lines of old Tom Churchyard:
"The towne doth stand most part upon a hill,
Built well and fayre, with streates both longe and wide;
The houses such, where straungers lodge at will,
As long as there the Counsell lists abide.
"Both fine and cleane the streates are all throughout,
With condits cleere and wholesome water springs;
And who that lists to walk the towne about
Shall find therein some rare and pleasant things;
But chiefly there the ayre so sweete you have
As in no place ye can no better crave."
The magnificent old castle has seen strange sights. While undergoing siege by Stephen, in his war against Maud, Prince Henry of Scotland, who accompanied him, was caught up by a long iron hook and all but pulled within the walls. Stephen himself galloped up just in time to cut the cords with his sword and rescue the dangling prince. The redoubtable Sir Hugh de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, once lay captive in what is still known as Mortimer's Tower. It cost him three thousand marks of silver, besides all his plate, horses, and hawks, to go free again. Ludlow Castle was, at a later period, added by marriage to the already formidable holdings of the Mortimers. Roger de Mortimer took an active part in the deposition of Edward II and was created Earl of March. In imitation of King Arthur, whose great tradition arches over all that countryside, the ambitious young noble held a Round Table, and conducted Queen Isabella, with whom his relations were not above suspicion, and his boy sovereign, Edward III, to his castles of Wigmore and Ludlow, where he entertained them with "great costs in tilts and other pastimes." There was not room in England for him and for a king, and his arrogant career was ended on the Smithfield gibbet. Marlowe gives him a proud exit from the tragic stage: