The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (19 page)

Edward was mindful of Roger’s ambition and ability. While Damory or Audley had won the king’s unlimited affection for a month or six, Roger had increasingly gained the king’s respect. But, as the king’s interference in Roger’s Irish administration showed, he did not completely trust him. Roger, like Pembroke, was not a pawn. A good example is Roger’s move on the young Earl of Warwick. In early 1315, one of Roger’s vassals, Walter Hakelut, had died. The Earl of Warwick had claimed some of Walter’s lands in Wales, which Roger believed were his.
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The dispute outlived the earl, who died in 1316, passing to his under-age son. Roger saw an opportunity
and purchased from the king the right to marry one of his daughters to the heir. This aligned Roger with members of a family estranged from Edward, following the death of Gaveston. It was justified by Roger on the grounds that it solved the quarrel between him and the late earl, as the disputed lands could pass in dower to the heir and Roger’s daughter and their children.
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In this way Roger was able to strengthen his family alliances, preserve his independence from the king and solve a dispute without recourse to royal favouritism. But although such moves won the king’s respect Roger could not command the king’s wholehearted trust. It was not through favouritism but through his loyal work as a governor of Ireland, a negotiator, and as a military leader, that he deserved reward, and after the success at Faughart it was obvious where his talents could most usefully be employed. In mid-March Roger was once more made governor of Ireland.

Roger did not set off straightaway. First he had to attend to the burial of his younger brother John, who had been a yeoman in the king’s service. Afterwards, in May, Roger also probably attended the marriage of his eldest daughter Margaret with Thomas, the son and heir of Lord Berkeley, which secured an earlier alliance with an important lord of the Welsh Marches.
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Interestingly Berkeley and his adherents John Maltravers and Thomas Gurney had fallen out with the Earl of Pembroke at this time, and Berkeley’s move towards Roger was a long-term political shift, not a mere interweaving of alliances but a vote of confidence in him as a leader.

From Roger’s point of view, the king’s behaviour towards him only suffered in one significant respect: his preferment of Hugh Despenser. With the king losing Damory, Audley and Montagu from court, his affections fell most heavily on Roger’s rival and the sworn enemy of the Mortimer family. And Despenser was no fool: he was working himself into a position at court as strong as Roger’s. In 1318 Despenser had been appointed to negotiate with the Scots: he too was being entrusted with more serious diplomatic business. He and Roger were not just hereditary enemies, they were rivals. Now, as Roger made his way towards Ireland, it seemed Despenser’s ambitions were on the verge of being fulfilled, as he had already partly persuaded the king to command Hugh Audley to give the castle and town of Newport to him in return for other, less choice, manors in England. He was also making plans for acquiring the lands of Roger Damory which had belonged to the Earl of Gloucester. Despenser was gradually acquiring the whole of the earldom of Gloucester, and there was nothing Roger could do to stop him.

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Roger’s second period of administration in Ireland was far less eventful than his first. Very few Scots had survived the Battle of Faughart, and those who had had fled back to Scotland. All across the country English and Irish joined in one euphoric expression of relief. The satisfaction from the English point of view is easily understandable; the native Irish were just as glad to see the demise of the Scots. Describing the death of Edward Bruce, one Irish writer from Ulster stated that ‘there was not done from the beginning of the world a deed that was better for the men of Ireland than that deed. For there came dearth and loss of people during his time in all Ireland in general for the space of three years and a half, and people undoubtedly used to eat each other throughout Ireland.’
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As a consequence of this restored stability, the title under which Roger governed Ireland from his landing on 12 June 1319 was that of ‘Justiciar’. It was a less significant position than ‘King’s Lieutenant’, and had no huge fee attached, but it had the ring of permanency about it. In addition the king gave Roger the keeping of the royal castles of Roscommon, Rawdon and Athlone, and ordered the Exchequer not to demand any debts from him.
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Roger’s main objective as Justiciar was to keep order. In view of the recent war, this included having to make inquiries into who had aided and abetted the Scots, and who had fought well enough against them to deserve reward. Under his direction Thomas FitzJohn, Earl of Kildare, and Sir John de Bermingham (now Earl of Louth), Arnold le Poer and John Wogan were all ordered to root out the adherents of Edward Bruce, and Roger was to hold an inquisition of their findings.
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At the same time he was commanded to reward men who had fought well against Bruce. Not surprisingly he combined his rewarding of the faithful with his punishment of traitors, granting the lands of Hugh and Walter de Lacy and other rebels to his chosen faithful supporters. Among those who benefited were Sir Hugh de Turpington, John de Cusack, Miles de Verdon, Edmund de Bermingham and Adam le Breton. The rewarding of de Verdon, a pardoned rebel, in particular suggests that Roger had the essential diplomatic ability to forgive men as well as to pardon them.

Peace, and one successful harvest, were not sufficient in themselves to ensure a swift return to normality. The Dubliners, who had sacrificed their suburbs for the sake of defending their walls, needed to be pardoned for burning down a royal manor in the process, and begged to have half of the fee of their city remitted, since they could not afford to rebuild and pay their usual dues. Cork was in a similar position, having spent a large sum on a new defensive wall around the city in 1316. Limerick too was in an impoverished state. Then there were the estates of dead men. Many English subjects having been cut down in the wars, their heirs were left
under age, and Roger had to grant these wardships to others or take them in hand himself. Just after Roger’s departure from Ireland in May 1318, Richard de Clare, one of the greatest lords, was killed in a skirmish with the native Irish, and this too required an inquiry and a distribution of the wardship of his heir. Of course, Roger was in a strong position to affect such inquiries and allocations, and it is noticeable that the Irish estates of the dead Earl of Gloucester, which should have been allocated either to Despenser, Audley or Damory, remained in his hands. Since Roger assisted Audley’s steward and Damory’s rent collector in 1319,
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the logical explanation for the Gloucester inheritance not being allocated was that it was all at risk of being given to Hugh Despenser.

In addition to the rebuilding of the country, he had to deal with roaming bands of thieves and foragers who were taking advantage of the weakened law enforcement. Thus, although there was no full-scale military campaign, Roger’s responsibility was to stop the looters, and to bring them to justice. A glance at his itinerary shows that he quickly covered most of English-administered Ireland. Arriving in June, he stayed in Dublin for a month before setting out for Cashel. A few days later he was at Callan, just south-west of Kilkenny, before returning by way of Cashel to Dublin. Another long stay there ended in October when he moved to Athboy in Meath, a few miles north-west of Trim, then in another rapid shift he moved south to Wexford in November, settling at Cork for December. He stayed in the south, being at Waterford in February, until in March he moved back up to Drogheda and then back to Dublin, just in time to attend the parliament he had summoned to meet on the 30th. Thus in his tours he was accessible to many of the Anglo-Irish lords, and saw for himself what needed rebuilding and repairing, where force was necessary to protect a lordship, or where a grant of a local customs duty was necessary to finance the building or rebuilding of town gates and walls.

Along with the rebuilding of the wrecked institutions and edifices of the country, the period of Roger’s justiciarship allowed significant social progress to take place. Throughout Ireland bridges had been destroyed as the Scots and Irish had fought against each other and the English and the Anglo-Irish. Now a number of bridges at important crossing places were rebuilt in stone. A university was established in Dublin, in fulfilment of a plan first mooted by the then Archbishop of Dublin in 1311, when Roger had previously been in Ireland. It is possible that this was not a coincidence, for while such foundations were the preserve of the highly educated clerical elite, it has been noted that Roger had close links with the higher clergy, and was a man of judgement and intellect. As mentioned, his father had been Oxford-educated, and he seems himself to have had a link with
Oxford University as he mentions the Chancellor of the University and the Bishop of Hereford in a letter to the king which probably dates from about this time.
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Finally, there is a very good reason why Roger would have been in favour of establishing a university in Dublin: he wanted it to produce educated men of the calibre needed to run the country efficiently.

Parliament sat at Dublin throughout April under Roger’s justiciarship, concerning itself principally with establishing law and order on a stronger footing. Statutes were enacted to restrict the activities of bands of outlaws and other criminals, and an Act was passed to prevent ‘protection’ money being extorted from individuals. It was ordained that henceforth no one should extract rents from his tenants for protection, and that no one could grant protection except the king (in the person of the Justiciar) and the lords of liberties (like Roger). It was also ordained that a well-established lawyer and two knights should hold assizes and set up a gaol in each county. There was also provision for checking the work of sheriffs in administering justice. The Acts passed show a single-minded determination on the part of the representatives under Roger’s guidance to return Ireland to the rule of law.

Roger’s administration was strong, and it was popular. Its popularity was due to three factors: the famine was seemingly at an end, the destructive Scottish army had been removed, and the thoroughness and speed with which Roger set about re-imposing justice on the country impressed the inhabitants. Judging from the distances he covered, and how readily he applied himself to the task in hand, exercising royal justice was something in which he took pride and pleasure. In May 1320 he was in Dublin; in June Athlone; in August Kilkenny. But his time in Ireland was coming to an end. In early September he returned to Dublin, and by the end of the month he and his knights had gone, leaving the Earl of Kildare as his deputy.
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A few days later, on 7 October, the mayor and community of Dublin wrote to the king praising Roger’s period of office, stating he had ‘thought much of saving and keeping the peace of your land’. If their intention was the return of Roger as Justiciar, their compliments fell on deaf ears. Roger’s challenges now lay wholly on the British mainland.
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After five visits, totalling nearly six of the last twelve years, Roger had left Ireland for ever. The irony is that, when he had first crossed the Irish Sea as governor in 1317, he had been coming to a war zone. Now, having pacified the country, he was going back to one.

SEVEN

Rebel

SIR HUGH DESPENSER
the younger, lord of Glamorgan: there is no other way to begin this chapter but with his name, for by the end of 1320 he had become the pivot upon which the balance of Edward’s reign turned. Like Gaveston before him, he had won Edward’s confidence completely, and now he won the king’s devotion too. But whereas Gaveston had been Roger’s friend and jousting companion, Despenser was Roger’s sworn enemy, a man who had vowed to destroy him and his uncle and to take their lands. Slowly Despenser’s influence had grown. He had killed Llywelyn Bren. He had tried to seize the land of Gwennllwg from Hugh Audley in 1317. He had been made King’s Chamberlain in 1318, controlling access to the king. Now he was trying to make himself Earl of Gloucester in place of the dead Gilbert de Clare. If he and Roger had ever shared any feelings of goodwill towards one another – and there is no evidence that they ever did – then those feelings were nothing more than memories, if indeed either man cared to recall them.

Despenser’s desire to become Earl of Gloucester threatened other men besides Roger. When the last earl had died at Bannockburn he had left three sisters as co-heiresses. In 1317 the earldom was divided into three parts between the husbands of these three sisters: Despenser acquired the lordship of Glamorgan, the richest part, and Hugh Audley and Roger Damory acquired the other two thirds. The division only triggered envy and anxiety, especially on the parts of Damory and Audley. The land of Gwennllwg, which had once belonged to Glamorgan, was now legally separated from it, but a technicality like that did not stop Despenser from trying to wrest it from its rightful lord. On his first attempt he failed, but, undeterred, he set about trying to acquire other lands from Audley and Damory by force, intimidation and trickery. In this last aspect he was as wily as Roger himself, convincing the men of Gwennllwg that under his lordship they might enjoy similar privileges to the men of Senghennydd and Misguin and other favoured lordships. The men of Gwennllwg were duped. Despenser also obtained grants in Carmarthen, including the new town of Llandilo, whose constable was one of Roger’s most favoured vassals, Edmund Hakelut. This brought him into confrontation not only
with Roger but also the neighbouring lord, John Giffard of Brimpsfield. Slowly an alliance was forming against Despenser: John Giffard, Damory, Audley and, most importantly, Roger and the Earl of Hereford, both of whom had not forgiven Despenser for Llywelyn’s murder.