Great Civic Sword
The battle of Bray was fought outside Dublin on 11 July 1402. The accounts are quite confused, so the below is my attempt to make sense of them.
On the day of the battle, two fairs were held in Dublin. This was the city's annual fair, held on 11 July and the twelve days after, and the fair held by the archbishop of Dublin within his liberty of St Sepulchre's. With lots of cattle and goods for sale, the two fairs probably explain the Irish raid on Dublin.
John Drake, the mayor, led out the Dubliners in pursuit of the Irish. The battle that followed is recorded in two primary sources. One was written on the fly-leaf of the Christ Church Psalter by James de Redeness, prior of Holy Trinity Dublin. This is now held at the Bodleian in Oxford. The second is an entry in the chronicle of Henry Marlborough, a Dublin-based chronicler.
Bray is on the lowest crossing point of the River Dargle, where the Wicklow mountains come down to the sea. Later writers confused the battle in 1402 with another fight between the O'Tooles and O'Byrnes, in which the former made a last stand on Bray Common. This was the battle remembered as 'Bloody Bank'; it was not connected with Drake's battle until 1907.
The most likely scenario is that Drake's men caught up with the Irish when the latter were trying to cross the river, either at the bottleneck over the single bridge, or by wading across and then up the steep bank on the other side. Marlborough wrote that 493 Irish 'men of war' were killed, although the Christ Church entry gives the number as 487.
These are very specific numbers, especially since medieval chroniclers usually exaggerated and rounded up casualty stats: for instance, a later account of the battles gives the number of Irish dead as 4000. Little is known of the makeup of the Irish host, although historians agree it was probably led by the O'Byrnes.
Drake was well rewarded. Thomas of Lancaster, the lieutenant, gave him a life grant of five marks per annum. In 1409, shortly before leaving Ireland, he presented Drake with a gilt sword, which had been gifted to Thomas by his father, Henry IV. Known as the Great Civic Sword, it is still carried before the mayor of Dublin on ceremonial occasions.
