The Battle of Shrewsbury occurred on 21 July 1403 between the forces of King Henry IV of England (AKA Henry of Bolingbroke) and those of the rebelling Henry “Harry Hotspur” Percy, the 1st Earl of Northumberland. Henry IV had made Henry Percy a whole bunch of promises about how Hotspur would be rewarded if he backed Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne from Richard II. Hotspur had kept his end of the bargain, but the newly-crowned Henry IV did not, and the Percy’s were fighting mad about it.
The Percy’s and their allies met the the king’s army at Shrewsbury on 20 July 1403. Shrewsbury is less than 15 miles from the Welsh border, and Hotspur was almost certainly expecting some help from the Prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr, who was also rebelling against Henry IV as well. Shrewsbury and the whole boarder county of Shropshire leaned heavily pro-Welsh, and doubtlessly the rebels were expecting many locals to rise up with them. King Henry IV was well aware of the Welsh sympathies in Shropshire and that Owain Glyndwr’s seasoned troops were on the way to support the Percy’s men, so the wily king march his soldiers to Shrewsbury double-quick in order to get there before the Welsh could arrive to reinforce the Percy army.
The Percy’s were disconcerted to see the royalist troops arrive before the Welsh, and Henry IV was smart enough to want to avoid a civil war if possible, so there was an initial attempt to resolve the conflict peaceably. Alas, it was not to be. When dipolmacy failed the two camps joined in battle shortly before dusk on the 21st. The employment of longbow archers by each side resulted in mass casualties. Both Hotspur and the Prince of Wales – the future Henry V — were shot in the face by an arrow during the battle.
Hotspur died of his arrow wound, demoralising his troops and swinging the tide of battle in the king’s favour, but Prince Henry miraculously survived — thanks to luck and the skilled treatment of military chriurgeon John Bradmore. Bradmore used “honey, alcohol and a specially designed surgical instrument” that basically acted like a corkscrew and drew out the remainder of the arrow’s shaft like cork from a wine bottle. (That must have been a pleasant experience for the prince!) Considering Henry V was the source of the French defeat at Agincourt and his son was the tinder for The Wars of the Roses, history would have been a LOT different without John Bradmore’s quick thinking. Medieval chriurgeons deserve more credit than they’re given, considering how much they did with how few tools.
After the battle, which Henry IV had won by a whisker, several of the ringleaders – including Hotspur’s uncle Thomas Percy – were hung, drawn, and quartered as an example of what happens to those who rise up against the king.
It didn’t seem to have been much of a deterrent because nobles rebelled against Henry IV in 1405 and 1408 as well. It didn’t even deter the Percys, who would go on to act against the English throne numerous times, including the Rising of the North, scheming to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and the Gunpowder Plot. Due to these various naughty behaviors, the eighth and ninth Earls of Northumberland spent many years in the Tower.
The Percys redeemed themselves to the crown when the tenth Earl, Algernon, fought for King Charles in the Civil War. In the 18th century the Percys ran out of male heirs, and the heiress of Northumberland, Elizabeth Percy married the Duke of Somerset. Elizabeth’s son, Algernon Seymour, 7th Duke of Somerset, had a daughter, Lady Elizabeth Seymour, who married on Sir Hugh Smithson 16 July 1740, through a private Act of Parliament. Smithson adopted the surname Percy, and was created the first Duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy in 1766. Hugh and Elizabeth’s descendant, the 12th Duke of Northumberland, still lives in the ancestral seat of Alnwick Castle and Syon House.