Published in 1577, Holinshed’s account of the tripartite division of England and Wales into spatially distinct units by individuals acting on behalf of the rebel leaders foregrounds issues of representation of space and spatiality in the narratives of the revolt. Holinshed’s narrative description of the carving up of England and Wales is explicitly spatial and the end product is maplike in its division of space. Certainly Shakespeare, who used Holinshed as a source, imagined the use of a map in Henry IV Part One; Glendower announcing ‘Come, here’s the map: shall we divide our right …?’ In the Tripartite Indenture, the division of England and Wales was symbolic only, and part of a plan that first required that the king of England be overthrown.

It was a plan that was never accomplished; Holinshed provides a lengthy account of the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 soon afterwards, at which Henry (Hotspur) Percy is dramatically killed, after shouts of ‘Eſperance Percy!’. Immediately following his account of the Tripartite Indenture, Holinshed continues his narrative, providing reasons as to why the indenture did not come to fruition:

The linking of future-time (prophecy) and future-space (a tripartite England and Wales) here was important and something Halle also included in his account of the Tripartite Indenture. It was a lesson in not getting too far ahead of oneself in reconfiguring space.