The 16–year–old Prince Henry, having led his own army into Wales against Owain Glyndŵr, joined forces with his father (Henry IV) to fight Harry Hotspur at Shrewsbury. It was there that the prince was almost killed by an arrow that became lodged in his face. An ordinary soldier might have died from such a wound, but Henry, as heir to the throne, had the benefit of the best possible care. Over a period of several days, John Bradmore, the royal physician, treated the wound with honey to act as an antiseptic, crafted a tool to screw into the broken arrow shaft and thus extract the arrow without doing further damage, and then flushed the wound with alcohol. The operation was successful, but it left Henry with permanent scars – evidence of his experience in battle.
Prince Henry fared better than his namesake and adversary Henry Percy (son of the Duke of Northumberland, and leader of several rebellions against Henry IV, nicknamed Harry Hotspur), who was fatally wounded at Shrewsbury. Shakespeare, writing almost 200 years later, has Hotspur killed by the Prince of Wales, but according to one contemporary chronicler he was "unexpectedly cut down, by whose hand is not known".
King Henry, upon being brought Percy's body after the battle, is said to have wept. The body was taken to be buried at Whitchurch, Shropshire, but when rumours circulated that Percy was still alive, the king had the corpse exhumed and displayed, propped upright between two millstones, in the market place at Shrewsbury. He then dispatched the head to York, where it was impaled on the Micklegate Bar (one of the city's gates); Percy's four quarters were sent to London, Newcastle–upon–Tyne, Bristol, and Chester, before finally being delivered to his widow. She had them buried in York Minster in November of that year. In January 1404, Percy was posthumously declared a traitor, and his lands were forfeited to the Crown.
© Haydn Thompson 2017