The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (10 page)

It might seem surprising that a military commander heading to a war zone and expecting to do battle should take his wife with him, but he had good reasons. Joan was herself an Irish heiress, and there may have been some legal technicality requiring her to go in person, to take possession of lands, for example, or to answer a case in court. More probably, travelling with Roger was simply her practice. Judging from the number of children they produced, Roger wanted his wife to be with him in Ireland (as in England) as a sexual companion, especially as he would be there for months if not years. But there is also the fact that the lady of a household was second in command after her lord. If anything should happen to Roger, Joan was the ideal person to hold the lines of feudal duty together and to take command, she being the heiress of Meath in her own right.

Upon landing Roger and Joan found that Meath, like most of Ireland, was in turmoil. The previous year John FitzThomas had gone to war with Roger’s vassals, the brothers Hugh and Walter de Lacy, and Roger had obtained pardons for manslaughters committed by those of his men who had resisted the attack.
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There is also evidence that the native Irish had attacked deep into West Meath in 1310, and had been repulsed. The Annals of Clonmacnoise record that in 1310 ‘Geoffrey O’Farell, with the forces of the Annaly, came to Donover, in Kyneleagh, to take the spoils and prey of that country, but the natives and inhabitants defended their country so well that they killed Donnell MacHugh Oge O’Farell, Hugh MacMoylissa and Geoffrey MacMortagh’.
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This ‘Donover’ probably relates to Donore in the barony of Moycashel, close to Roger’s lands. These enemies may have been politically unimportant in England, and had too few retainers to make a major impact upon Ireland as a whole, but it did not take many men to terrorise a neighbourhood, or to burn a granary, or to steal a few dozen head of cattle. Such acts could destroy a community, a manor, and accordingly destroy the income of the lord. The lands of absentee lords like Roger were especially at risk.

Worryingly for the absentee Irish lords, these attacks were not isolated incidents. Throughout English-held Ireland incursions were being made into English rights. What was happening was more than just a rebellion: the entire existence of the English in Ireland was under threat from a move to reintroduce Gaelic law and customs to Ireland, to Gaelicise the country.
English lords saw opportunities this way; they could become petty princes by marrying Irish heiresses and switching between Irish and English allegiances as they found fit. Indeed, some had done this from the mid-thirteenth century and spoke Irish as naturally as French, the language of the English aristocracy. Just as worrying for the English lords was the fact that the Irish Exchequer revenues had collapsed, and there was pitifully little money for raising troops now: between a third and a half of the revenue available in the reign of Edward I.
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And then there was the succession question. Certain lords, especially those who were part-Irish, from mixed marriages, held that Irish inheritance laws applied to their lordships. These varied from tribe to tribe, but in some cases women were altogether debarred from inheriting. If such laws were taken into account, Roger and Joan should not have inherited Meath through Joan’s grandmother, Maud de Lacy, and Roger should not have inherited his grandmother’s estate at Dunamase. It is thus important to see Roger’s ambitions in Ireland in this light: he had to fight to retain his lordships, and to retain the loyalty of his tenant lords, otherwise he would lose his lordships in Ireland altogether.

We know little of what direct action Roger took in Ireland over the course of the next year. In April and September 1311 he was firmly stationed at his great fortress of Trim, probably protecting his inheritance through force of arms and negotiation. Ironically, the most important thing about this period of his life is what he was
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doing. He had so far supported Gaveston and the king completely. Now his powerful and respected kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, had broken with the king and sided with the other earls. This altered things. Gaveston was clearly hell-bent on antagonising Lancaster and Warwick, and he would drag down with him many who supported him. Perhaps Pembroke warned Roger to keep clear of Gaveston. Roger’s Irish campaign was undertaken for military reasons, but it helped remove him from the company of Gaveston, and thus protected him from later events. Never again did Roger put himself in a position of risk for the sake of helping the king’s favourite.

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While Roger was facing the turmoil of Ireland, Edward was struggling in Scotland. The campaign started badly when, of the ten earls besides Gaveston, only Gloucester and Surrey accompanied him on the expedition. In October they reached Linlithgow, but failed to meet Bruce in battle. Bruce was far too wise to risk venturing an attack on a better equipped army which would sooner or later retire to England, as it always did. Instead he hid battalions of men ready in defence. On one occasion, a number of Scotsmen hidden in a cave above a narrow valley road saw
an opportunity too good to miss, and took advantage of the higher ground, massacring the English footsoldiers below them. By the time the English knights were on the scene, and able to rally the men and to order a systematic advance on the position, the Scots had disappeared, leaving three hundred dead and many wounded.
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Thus the English campaign failed in all its objectives, including its main one: to distract the English earls from the impeachment of Gaveston.

It was the summer of 1311 by the time Edward came south. He ordered Gaveston to remain in the safety of Bamburgh Castle, and summoned a parliament for 8 August. Roger was also summoned, but, in all probability, ignored the writ, as he habitually did when in Ireland. The rest of the lords came with a purpose: to present Edward with the Ordinances, and to force him to accept them all.

There were forty-one Ordinances. These included six which had been issued directly on the appointment of the Lords Ordainers the previous year, which included general statements about the rights of the Church, the keeping of the king’s peace throughout the realm, and the keeping of Magna Carta. The thirty-five new Ordinances touched upon such subjects as the king’s right to declare war without the consent of his lords (as Edward had recently done with regard to Scotland), and the removal of royal officials especially close to Gaveston, among them John de Charlton, John de Hothum and John de Sapy. Interestingly, the sixteenth Ordinance stressed that the lands of Ireland, Gascony and Scotland were at risk of being lost unless capable and efficient ministers could be appointed as their keepers. But Edward cared only about one Ordinance: the twentieth. This stated that Gaveston had to leave the realm by 1 November, for the crime of having misled and poorly advised the king. In case of any doubt, the lords stressed that by ‘the realm’ they meant England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and all the other dominions of King Edward. There would be no new appointments for Gaveston.

Edward could do nothing. He offered to accept all the Ordinances except the twentieth, but he underestimated the gravity with which the Lords Ordainers viewed the situation. He delayed as long as he could, squirming under the attack on his authority. Eventually, in October, he agreed to all the Ordinances, and prepared to say goodbye to his beloved once more. The following month, Gaveston embarked on a ship at a London quayside, and sailed down the Thames and away from England.

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The Lords Ordainers had observed that Gascony, Scotland and Ireland might be lost because of inefficient government, but they conspicuously
did not mention Wales. There Lord Mortimer of Chirk was governing the principality with efficient ruthlessness. He had demonstrated this quality in his youth, and even now at the age of fifty-six he was just as uncompromising. By the beginning of 1312 he had successfully exercised the office of Justiciar for four years. When Edward had secured the Welsh royal castles by granting them out to his loyal retainers, Lord Mortimer of Chirk received the constableships of Blaenllyfni and Dinas, in addition to those already in his keeping, which included several of the most strategic Welsh castles. Numerous small grants came his way with regularity over the subsequent years. In effect he ruled Wales as a surrogate prince.

Like Roger in Ireland, Lord Mortimer of Chirk avoided being drawn into the worsening situation surrounding Gaveston. While the rest of the country was nervously preparing for a conflict over the king’s favourite, the elder Mortimer prepared for an attack on Griffin de la Pole, the repercussions of which were to prove far-reaching. Three years earlier the heir to the lordship of Welshpool had died while a royal ward.
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Lord Mortimer of Chirk, as Justiciar of Wales, had been ordered to take custody of the lordship, which he had done. An inquiry had found that the rightful heir was the dead heir’s sister Hawise, who was married to John de Charlton, the King’s Chamberlain, and a friend of Roger and Gaveston. The lordship was accordingly delivered to John de Charlton. But Griffin de la Pole, the brother of the late lord and Hawise’s uncle, had complained, insisting that according to Welsh custom the inheritance was rightfully his. To further his claim, he sought a commission of inquiry to determine whether the lordship was held according to Welsh or English law. Edward had prohibited this from being held, hoping that the question would end there. It did not. Griffin de la Pole attacked John de Charlton in early 1312, besieging him and his wife in Welshpool Castle.

If Griffin de la Pole had been acting completely independently, the matter would have been over quickly and soon forgotten. But he had sought and obtained the support of the Earl of Lancaster, who, as the king’s cousin, had decided his role was to lead the opposition to Edward’s personal style of government and, in particular, his acts of favouritism. There is little doubt that Edward had not been fair in his appointment and suppression of the inquiry. As for the Earl of Lancaster, to take de la Pole under his wing only contributed further to his status. Now that he had inherited a fifth earldom – that of Lincoln, after the death of Henry de Lacy in 1311 – he lurked like a fat black spider at the centre of his huge web of estates in the north, pulling together the threads of feudal obligation, and international and national political disaffection. So great was his power, and so extensive his influence, that one did not go to war with an ally of his without good reason.

For Lord Mortimer of Chirk, the reason for war was simple: the king ordered him to break up the siege of Welshpool Castle by force.
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He raised an army, encamped near Welshpool, and waited. He offered de la Pole recourse to the law courts, but the man refused. The king wrote, offering to recompense de la Pole, sending the Steward of the Royal Household, John de Cromwell, to pacify him.
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But still de la Pole held out. It took several weeks to persuade him that the Earl of Lancaster was not going to ride to his rescue, and that his cause was best fought diplomatically. In the mean time de la Pole had found another supporter in the Earl of Arundel, a cousin of the Mortimers. Arundel gave shelter to de la Pole’s men as they ransacked the countryside. This was a personal betrayal, as well as treason. Lord Mortimer of Chirk eventually broke the siege, rescued John de Charlton and his wife, restored order, and arrested de la Pole. But in the eyes of the Earl of Lancaster, who was an impetuous and spoilt man, with little sense of duty and a commensurate inability to appreciate others’ dutifulness, he had sworn enmity. Early the following year, when Lord Mortimer of Chirk was appointed to sit on the commission to investigate the debacle, the Earl of Lancaster objected to his presence. An estrangement between the two men resulted, which would ultimately lead to the destruction of both of them. In the meantime it meant the breakdown of trust between the Earl of Lancaster and Roger too, for the two Mortimers invariably acted as one in political matters.

For the time being, however, Roger remained in Ireland. In April and May 1312 he was in Dublin. A distant kinsman, Robert de Verdon, had started a rebellion in Louth during Lent, and, as the younger brother of the heir to the de Verdon half of Meath, it had swept up a number of Mortimer and de Verdon followers in its fury.
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They rode over the baronies of Ferrard and Ardee, and so desecrated that of Louth that John Wogan, the Justiciar, was forced to take it into his own hands. Wogan then collected an army to put down the revolt, and, having sent men to Ardee to defend that barony, he marched to Drogheda. There the people asked that they might themselves defend their lands with an army commanded by another two of the de Verdon brothers, Miles and Nicholas. Rather than remain loyal to their elder brother, who was in England, they simply joined Robert. Under the guise of King Edward’s banner, the de Verdons together attacked the force at Ardee and defeated them. As the local lord and the brother-in-law of Theobald, Roger was bound to intervene, even before this last outrage became known. After Wogan had raised a second army, and had again been ‘miserably defeated’ by the de Verdons, Roger took control of the situation, and forced them to surrender and to appear in
court in return for their lives.
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At the end of May 1312 he handed over forty of the ringleaders to the Justiciar to be imprisoned.

By the end of the summer of 1312, Roger had fully come of age. He was twenty-five years old, had witnessed political decision-making at the heart of government, and had spent the previous two years coming to terms with the brutal circumstances of Ireland. He had tackled armies composed of Irishmen and Englishmen, and rabbles of Anglo-Irish rioters. He had observed the inability of some administrators to deal with insurrection, and he had also seen the enormous prizes which could be won by those who remained loyal to King Edward. He had a well-connected and devoted wife, and a growing number of children. He was in a position to return to England and take a role at the front rank of English politics.