The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (20 page)

Such was the cauldron of hatreds and rivalries into which Roger plunged himself at the end of September 1320. The situation quickly worsened. Even before he had returned from Ireland Gwennllwg was granted to Despenser, against all law and right. Despenser had so completely won the king’s heart that the king was more interested in furthering his new favourite’s interests than protecting those of his past infatuations. Once again Edward was ruling England as if it were his personal fief. While this was true in theory, it remained so
only
in theory; and Edward had no moral or legal justification for taking one lord’s land at whim and giving it to another. Nor did he have any right to overlook the laws of the land in favour of certain men, which is what he did next.

The trouble started in Gower.
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Having riled his fellow Marcher lords, Despenser now compounded his hatreds with an act of such supreme arrogance that he united most of England against himself and the king. The impecunious lord of the Gower peninsula, William de Braose, had supposedly put his lordship up for sale, soliciting offers from both Lords Mortimer, from Despenser, and even receiving a down payment from the Earl of Hereford. The dissolute de Braose, not particularly caring whom he aggravated, then sold his land to his son-in-law John de Mowbray, who had married one of his co-heiresses, and who was entitled to inherit the lordship anyway. Fearing Despenser’s likely response, as Despenser had wanted the lordship in order to round off his lands in South Wales, Mowbray took possession immediately.

Despenser was furious. He spoke to the king. Since Gower had been taken by John de Mowbray without royal licence, he argued, the acquisition was not legal. Had the lands been in England, this would have technically been correct, but even there lords who had a right to a lordship had often received it without royal assent. In the Marches Despenser was entirely wrong. Marcher lords had always enjoyed the right of entering their lands with no need of royal licence. Moreover, if Despenser could persuade the king to overlook this Marcher privilege, what other ones might follow? For Despenser to neglect Marcher law, and moreover to demand possession of Gower himself, was a red rag not just to one bull but the whole herd.

Roger was probably still making his way to Westminster in October 1320, and knew little or nothing of the developments taking place there. On 9 November he had only reached Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire,
and therefore would only have reached Westminster two days later, at the earliest. Thus he missed the whole of the parliament, including the most crucial act. On 26 October the king confiscated Gower from John de Mowbray.

In taking Gower into royal hands Edward was declaring that he would defend Despenser to the last, against all law, all reason and all arms. He did this no doubt out of a supreme wish to please Despenser, but in doing so he showed enormous lack of respect for the other Marcher lords. Immediately he was made aware of the outrage he had caused, and he was forced to placate some of his former friends. To Damory he allowed forgiveness of all his debts, and shortly afterwards he was forgiven a fine of 2,300 marks.
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To favour Roger, he accepted his advice to assist the heir of the dead Richard de Clare in Ireland.
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He further confirmed the estates of all three husbands of the co-heiresses of Gloucester – espenser, Damory and Audley – but this was little consolation to the Marcher lords, especially those who saw how intimate he now was with Despenser. To use a phrase employed by tactful contemporaries, ‘Despenser was the king’s right-hand man’. No one could see the king without his permission. Although this was a flagrant abuse of his position as Chamberlain, there was nothing any of the lords could do. In effect Despenser was shielding the king from the political responsibilities which he found tedious, and was taking the administration upon his own shoulders. England was once more plunging headlong towards civil war, on account of the king placing a personal friendship over and above the interests of the kingdom.

It is difficult to account for Edward’s policy without suspecting an emotional reliance upon Despenser as great as that he had felt for Gaveston. True, Edward had had favourites since Gaveston, but his affection for them had not reached the pitch of his love for his brother-in-arms. In fact, at points of crisis, he had let certain favourites, like Damory, be put away from him. Perhaps he did not understand the depth of the crisis in 1320 and imagined it would be smoothed over at a parliament some time in the future. However, by the end of November it was clear that the situation was very serious indeed. When the king’s officer tried to take Gower into his own hands, he was met with armed resistance.

Roger remained at Westminster, his accustomed position at times of crisis. He was still apparently at court on 16 November, two days after the king’s men managed to obtain control of Gower from the infuriated Mowbray. It was clear that each lord had to make a decision between the king in his support of Despenser’s nefarious schemes, or the principle of the Crown’s responsibility to the community of the realm.

A telling gauge of the seriousness of the situation was that the Earl of
Pembroke, the arch-moderator of the reign, decided to leave the country. Most of the Marcher lords withdrew from court soon afterwards, before Christmas, and began to arm their castles. Roger stayed for a few weeks longer, until January, trying desperately to reach a compromise, but the king was in no mood to listen to an enemy of Despenser. He had decided to support Despenser no matter what, and the more his enemies criticised him, the more he liked his new favourite.

Herein lies the tragedy of Roger and other men like him. He was forced to choose between supporting corruption and instigating a rebellion. To add to his problems, the man responsible for corrupting the government was his personal enemy, who had declared he would ‘despoil him and revenge the death of his grandfather upon him’.
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Nor was he alone in finding himself forced to oppose the king. Roger de Clifford had seen his mother’s lands taken by Despenser with no attempt at compensation. In May 1320 Despenser had finally managed to obtain Hugh Audley’s rich portion of the Gloucester inheritance, the lordship of Newport, in return for a few English manors of much less value. For men like Roger, Audley and Clifford, there was no solution in law. There was only war.

In January and February 1321 the battle lines of the opposition were drawn up. Roger, with his customary adherence to the king, and his self-grooming as a moderator, was not at first among them. On 30 January the Earls of Hereford, Surrey and Arundel, and a number of northern barons, were among twenty-eight lords ordered not to attend an assembly called to discuss the estates of the Crown. This is the first sign that the Earl of Lancaster and the Earl of Hereford were renewing their league against the king and his favourite, similar to their alliance against Gaveston, but now implying a new and more dangerous common cause between the Marcher lords and the confederacy of northern barons under the Earl of Lancaster. Probably only a day or two before this Roger had finally given up trying to reason with the king, being the last in a long line of refugee lords to leave court. At the end of January he was at Stratfield Mortimer, on his return journey to Wigmore. Edward acknowledged his opposition by removing him from his office of Justiciar of Ireland. In his place, on 1 February, he appointed one of Despenser’s henchmen, Ralph de Gorges.

Roger’s royal pedestal had crumbled. In October 1320 he had been the governor of Ireland, and unswervingly loyal to the king. Now, just a few months later, he had been removed from office, he was aligned with the king’s opposition, and all because he had opposed a man liable to bring disaster and ruin upon the king. Shocked at this treatment, Roger reluctantly began gathering an army. He and Joan settled all their Irish estates on their second son, Roger, aware of the dangers of the conflict ahead.
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In Brecon, the Earl of Hereford was also raising men-at-arms. In the north too, men, armour and castles were being prepared. On 27 February Lancaster held a meeting at which the Marcher lords’ representatives were present, and at which it was decided to attack the Despensers in South Wales.
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The Earl of Pembroke stayed abroad. The king lamented his absence, since he wanted the earl to treat with the Scots, but Pembroke himself secretly sympathised with the Marcher lords, and would not return to serve the king while Despenser was at court. Thus, with no check on his actions, with all his senior advisers in opposition to him, or abroad, the king trusted his own judgement and that of Despenser. Despenser’s advice was selfish and deliberately antagonistic. With clear intelligence that an attack was being planned on his Welsh holdings, he advised the king to take a royal army to defend his lands there.

This mobilisation of royal forces made Despenser’s enemies appear rebels against the king. It was an extremely unfortunate move; the Marcher lords were always reluctant to fight a royal army, not for fear of defeat but precisely because they were fundamentally royalists. It was Despenser against whom they were arraying their forces, not the king himself. The king’s personal identification with Despenser, however, alienated those who would otherwise have remained in his service. There was no better example than Roger’s uncle, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, who was still Justiciar of Wales. He was ordered to inspect all the castles in his authority, and to make sure they were defensible for the king. Thus he was forced to decide between his nephew and his monarch, to choose between his brother’s son and nearly fifty years of unstinting loyalty to the Crown. The elder Mortimer, now sixty-six, could not be expected to betray his nephew, especially when he too was threatened by the favourite. In this way the king managed to alienate both Mortimers, the Justiciars of Ireland and Wales, and found himself even more dependent on Despenser’s support and advice.

On 27 March, the king issued an order to the Earl of Hereford, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, Roger Damory, John de Hastings, and John de Charlton,

to maintain the king’s peace … and not to permit any assemblies to be made … as complaint has reached the king that many of their men … make assemblies and musters in a warlike manner, whereat the king is astonished, as it is unknown why such assemblies are made.
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The king’s pretended astonishment could only grow as the list of rebels
grew longer. On the following day, the king ordered those lords whom he still expected to obey him, namely Roger and his uncle, the Earl of Hereford, Lord Hastings, John Giffard and Lord Berkeley, to be at Gloucester on 5 April.
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Roger did not go to Gloucester. Instead he and the Earl of Hereford took it upon themselves to answer for all their fellow Marcher lords. They refused to come into the king’s presence, they said, while Hugh Despenser the younger remained in the king’s company. They put forward a compromise whereby Despenser should be removed safely by the Earl of Hereford to the custody of the Earl of Lancaster, and a parliament summoned at which the earl and Roger could put forward their grievances, and that if this were allowed, they would come to the king at Gloucester as requested.

The king at this point hesitated, and did not reply for some time. It is not difficult to see why. If one takes the list of Marcher lords who were liable to provide fighting men in 1317 for the war against the Scots, there were fifteen major lords in the region besides Roger and the Earl of Hereford; namely Maurice de Berkeley, William de la Zouche, John Giffard, William de Braose, Henry of Lancaster, John de Charlton, John de Hastings, John de Grey, the Earl of Surrey, the Earl of Arundel, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, Lady Mortimer (Roger’s mother), Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and John de Cromwell. Most of these were now openly in opposition to Despenser, and, by making Despenser’s enemies his own, the king had made enemies of nearly all the lords of the March. Lord Mortimer of Chirk was not openly hostile yet, nor were Lady Mortimer, John de Cromwell, the Earl of Arundel or the Earl of Surrey, but both Lord Mortimer of Chirk and Roger’s mother were definitely on the side of the Marchers. Moreover, Despenser’s enemies were joined by several southwestern knights, men such as John Maltravers; and of course they were in league with the northern forces under the Earl of Lancaster. The king had miscalculated badly, and so had Despenser.

Despite the increasing strength of the opposition, Despenser and the king remained firm. On 8 April Audley’s lands were confiscated. On 13 April orders were sent to Roger, Hereford, Hastings, Damory, Charlton, Giffard and both Berkeleys to maintain the peace in their lands, and ‘not to permit assemblies and demonstrations in warlike manner to be made … complaint having reached the king that many men of [their lordships] make such assemblies and demonstrations’.
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A show of equality was maintained by also naming Despenser as one of those preparing for war, but things had gone too far, and there was now no stopping the momentum of the resistance to the favourite.

On 21 April the king finally made up his mind to act, and wrote to more than seventy lords and all seventeen bishops urging them not to attend any musters or to believe ‘false news’ about a rebellion. Two days later he wrote to Roger and the Earl of Hereford regarding their refusal to come to Gloucester. His letter was effectively a declaration of war. He claimed that their reasons for nonappearance were insufficient because Despenser had been appointed to the office of Chamberlain in Parliament, and in their presence, and that no complaint had hitherto been received against him, and that, in any case, a royal summons was a protection for all who should obey it, so fear of Despenser was no excuse for nonattendance. In addition, conveying Despenser to the Earl of Lancaster would be contrary to the terms of Magna Carta, against the law, and in contradiction to the Ordinances. The letter concluded with the new summons for them to be at Oxford by 10 May.