Qualla: Battle of Blore Heath

Battle of Blore Heath: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the fighting began, Yorkist soldiers knelt on the heath and kissed the ground they stood on. They believed it would be the ground on which they died. Across about 300 metres of barren land, separated by a steep-sided brook running fast with September rain, Lord Audley had set up his Lancastrian army to spring a perfect ambush. The Yorkists, marching south-west through the Midlands toward Ludlow under Richard Neville, the Earl of Salisbury, had walked into the trap. They were outnumbered. They had no easy line of retreat. They drew their wagons into a defensive ring and arranged the troops behind them, and they prepared, as the chronicles put it, for the ground they would meet their deaths on. That was on 23 September 1459. By nightfall, Audley was dead and the Yorkists were marching south through a countryside scattered with fugitives.

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Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

Battle of Blore Heath: Why an Empty Heath

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Henry Ramsay (1859–1925)[1], Public domain. The Wars of the Roses had been simmering since the First Battle of St Albans in 1455. Queen Margaret of Anjou, governing in the name of her unsteady husband Henry VI, had been quietly distributing a silver swan emblem to knights and squires loyal to the Lancastrian cause; the Duk...

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Image: James Henry Ramsay (1859–1925)[1] | Public domain

Battle of Blore Heath: The Trick at the Brook

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dunderklumpen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Both commanders tried to parley before the killing began. When that failed, the battle opened in the formal medieval way, with an archery duel between English longbows. The two armies stood too far apart for the bows to settle anything, and the arrows fell short or did little dam...

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Image: Dunderklumpen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Blore Heath: Audley Falls

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy and Hilary, CC BY-SA 2.0. A second Lancastrian assault made it across the brook in greater numbers, and a long and bloody melee followed in which Lord Audley himself was killed. Command passed to his second, Lord Dudley, who ordered the remaining 4,000 men to attack on foot. That attack also failed, and a...

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Image: Andy and Hilary | CC BY-SA 2.0

Battle of Blore Heath: The Friar with the Cannon

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Dean, CC BY-SA 2.0. Salisbury could not stay on the field. He worried that fresh Lancastrian forces were close by, and he needed to press south to Ludlow. According to Gregory's Chronicle, he hired a local friar to remain on Blore Heath through the night and to fire a cannon at intervals, so that an...

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Image: Roger Dean | CC BY-SA 2.0