The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (22 page)

The victory was technically complete.

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In the fourteenth century the philosophy of the Wheel of Fortune was one with which all people were familiar. It was the cycle of luck which carried men and women to dizzying heights of success and reward, and then tipped over and plunged them into the depths of loss, hardship and humiliation. The Wheel of Fortune now made one of its quickest turns of the fourteenth century, throwing down the Marcher lords who had seemed to sweep all before them, and raising the Despensers from miserable exile to previously undreamed-of heights.

The root of the problem for the Marcher lords lay in the fact that they and their northern allies had been united by their principal enemy, Hugh
Despenser, and he was now banished. Furthermore, unlike Gaveston, who had repeatedly attempted to return from exile, Despenser and his father removed themselves completely. Hugh Despenser became a pirate, robbing any vessels that he could catch, earning a new reputation as ‘a sea-monster, lying in wait for merchants as they crossed his path’.
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His father went to Bordeaux, blaming his losses on his son’s greed. Soon the coalition of northern barons, Marcher lords and the Earl of Pembroke, which had brought such pressure to bear on the king over Hugh Despenser, was no longer united.

There was another major factor underlying the Marchers’ change of fortunes: the mood of the king. Edward did not care that Hugh Despenser, as a pirate, was jeopardising international relations and damaging English trade, but he cared very greatly about the humiliation he had suffered in being forced to exile his favourite. His determination to exact revenge on the Marcher lords in particular was extraordinary. He believed wholeheartedly that he had been humbled purely for their advantage. Accordingly he put the resources of the realm towards reversing this personal slight and, in so doing, managed to galvanise the many lords who had remained neutral in the recent hostilities into a strong body of royal support. Many of these new royalists were very eager to help the king, for they hoped to win back some of the favour they had lost during Despenser’s period in power. As a result, the king was in a much stronger position after Despenser’s exile than he was before it. He now had the motive and the means to exact revenge.

Bartholomew de Badlesmere, isolated in Kent, was the first object of his attention.

Less than a month after the departure of the Despensers, Edward went on pilgrimage with Queen Isabella to Canterbury. The king then went on to meet the younger Hugh Despenser alone on the Isle of Thanet, and ordered Queen Isabella to return to London by way of Leeds Castle, which she was to enter if she could by asking for a night’s accommodation. Under medieval rules of hospitality, a housekeeper had an obligation to entertain anyone who should ask for shelter, and Lady Badlesmere, who had been left in charge of the castle during her husband’s absence, normally would have allowed entry to Isabella and entertained her as a royal guest without a second thought. However, Lord Badlesmere, aware of his delicate position and the heightened state of tension throughout the country, had told his wife not to allow anyone at all into the castle, under any circumstances. On 13 October Isabella asked for accommodation. She was refused. Furious, she ordered her men to try to force the gate. Isabella’s company was not equipped to attack a well-defended castle, and nine of her men
were killed. Shamed and infuriated, she returned to her husband, and unwittingly provided him with the perfect excuse to raise a royal army to attack Leeds. On 16 October the king announced his intention to make an example of Lord Badlesmere, and the following day he sent the Earls of Pembroke, Richmond and Norfolk to begin the siege.

The garrison of Leeds was under the command of Sir Walter Culpeper. He now saw that overwhelming forces would shortly come against them. Lady Badlesmere nevertheless ordered him to prepare to defend the castle. She sent messages to her husband, who was with Roger and the other Marcher lords at Oxford, to come quickly. Lord Badlesmere asked Roger and the Earl of Hereford to try to relieve the castle. Given his links to Badlesmere, and the marriage bond between their families, Roger could hardly refuse. His uncle and the Earl of Hereford supported him, thinking that everyone who had aided them against Despenser would stand by them now. It was a mistake. By choosing to defend Badlesmere, the Marcher lords were drawn into a new conflict which was not about Hugh Despenser, but about them and their obedience to the king.

Roger and his fellow rebels marched south until they came to Kingston upon Thames. There they halted. Aware of the new trouble, the Earl of Pembroke, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London hurried to meet them. Pembroke urged them not to proceed into Kent. He proposed that if Roger and Lord Hereford retreated, he would mediate with the king on their behalf. They replied that if the siege were raised, and the business discussed in Parliament, they would allow the castle to be surrendered. Pembroke took this message to the embittered king, knowing it would be refused.

At this moment the Earl of Lancaster sent one of the most short-sighted messages of his life. He declared that he did not approve of Roger and Hereford going to Leeds.
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This instruction, which almost certainly arose out of Lancaster’s petty dislike of Badlesmere, put the rebel lords in an awkward position. If the king were to march against them with a significant army, they would need Lancaster’s support. They remained at Kingston. With no relieving army on its way, the garrison at Leeds must have suspected that their lives were about to end. The king arrived to conduct the siege personally, and sent for his hunting dogs so that he could hunt Badlesmere’s game while he waited for the garrison to capitulate. On 31 October they opened the gates and pleaded for mercy.

Edward had made his point, and he should have left it at that. If he had punished Badlesmere for the insult to Isabella by confiscating the castle, or a few manors, a longer-lasting peace might have been established. But he wanted to make an example of the Leeds garrison. As soon
as the king’s men-at-arms entered the castle they seized twelve men and hanged them. Sir Walter Culpeper was one of the twelve. His brother Thomas Culpeper was sent to Winchelsea, and publicly killed there. Lady Badlesmere and her children, including her daughter Elizabeth (the eight-year-old wife of Roger’s son), were sent to the Tower of London. Badlesmere’s sister and her son, Bartholomew de Burghersh, were also sent to the Tower. With the imprisonment of women and children, and the needless execution of men on artificial charges, the tyranny of Edward II had begun.

Roger and Hereford could now see the weakness of their coalition. In order to bolster it they headed north to meet Lancaster. In the words of a contemporary, Roger and the Earl of Hereford ‘saw full well that the king was a man without mercy, and thought indeed that he would destroy them as he had done the others, and thus they made their way northwards as far as Pontefract …’
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There, at the end of November, Lancaster reassured them that they had his full support. Edward, however, had heard of their journey, and forbade them to meet Lancaster. In meeting the northern lords and strengthening the coalition against Edward, Roger and Hereford openly declared their opposition to him.

While they were travelling, the news of the shocking executions of the Leeds Castle garrison reached other rebel lords. Some, like the Earl of Surrey, were cowed by the king’s threats. The Earl of Pembroke, who had been so important in securing victory for the Marchers earlier in the year, also sided with the king. But Roger and Hereford remained steadfast in their opposition. They had the Earl of Lancaster’s support, Warwick Castle had fallen to their side, and there were stirrings in London in their favour. On 2 December Lancaster wrote to the Londoners stating that he had recently met Roger and the other lords, enclosing for their information the ‘Doncaster petition’ which Roger and others had sealed. This demanded that the king should stop supporting Despenser in his acts of piracy, and stop pursuing the peers of the realm on Despenser’s behalf. The king dismissed it as a further attempt by Lancaster to limit royal authority. The time had come for the Marcher lords’ confidence to be put to the test.

The royal army was ordered to muster at Cirencester on 13 December. In the few days beforehand the king increased his pressure on Roger. He ordered him to release Ralph de Gorges, who was still imprisoned at Wigmore. In Ireland, Sir John de Bermingham was given authority to remove all the men appointed by Roger and to appoint new officials, and to review all the acts which Roger had undertaken there in his capacity as Justiciar. It was a vindictive, personal act. Edward was prepared to throw Ireland into disarray just to spite Roger.

Now the tension in the Marcher camp increased to a very high level. They started to withdraw towards Wales, lest they be cut off from their castles by the large royal army mustering at Cirencester. Their allies turned against them – with Despenser banished, they had no reason to refuse a royal summons – and blindly obeyed their king against the royal enemies. The Welsh too took up arms against the Marcher lords, their hated neighbours. In fear, Lord Hastings deserted the rebels, throwing himself on the king’s mercy. Then the army left Cirencester and began to advance. At Gloucester the sheriff of the county was accused of supporting Roger. The evidence of his treachery seems to have been his possession of a Marcher tunic of green and yellow. The king’s men-at-arms dressed him in it and hanged him.

With the king’s large army moving towards them, Roger and Lord Hereford withdrew behind the River Severn. They secured the bridge at Worcester, to which the king came on 31 December. The next crossing place the royal army could use was at Bridgnorth. A royal vanguard raced ahead and secured the bridge there, but on the night of 5 January Roger and his uncle unfurled their banners and charged in upon the king’s soldiers. The king’s men were defeated with heavy losses, and Roger burnt the bridge and much of the town in the battle.
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The Mortimers were desperate now. Their forces were being strung out along the river, and their own men were beginning to desert. Remorselessly, the royal army pushed on to the next crossing, at Shrewsbury. Their only hope was that the Earl of Lancaster and the northern barons would come to their aid, as he had promised. But they did not come.

At this point Lord Mortimer of Chirk heard that his own lands in North Wales were being devastated by a Welsh knight, Sir Gruffydd Llwyd, who had remained loyal to the king. Chirk Castle itself had fallen, and the destruction across his lands was great. Clun Castle, held by Roger since the attack on the Despensers, had fallen. John de Charlton’s castle of Welshpool had also fallen, and so had Holt. The Marcher lords were being squeezed between a Welsh force and the royal army. Worst of all, it was becoming clear that the Earl of Lancaster was refusing to do anything to help them.

The situation came to a head at Shrewsbury. Roger and his uncle could have held the bridge there, but now saw little point in continued resistance without the Earl of Lancaster’s support. Hereford had taken his men north to join Lancaster, and Roger and his uncle were isolated. They could not oppose the king much longer. Perhaps with the noble example of Llywelyn Bren in their minds, they agreed that there was no merit in allowing their men to be killed in a fruitless struggle. They wrote to
Lancaster asking why he had not come as promised. His reply was that it was because they were protecting Bartholomew de Badlesmere, his enemy. Their cause was doomed, all because of Lancaster’s petty squabble. Betrayed and alone, Roger and his uncle resolved to abandon Lancaster to his fate, and to petition the king for mercy.

On Wednesday 13 January the king agreed to provide safe conduct until Sunday night for Roger and up to twenty of his companions to come to Betton Strange, near Shrewsbury, ‘to treat with the Earls of Richmond, Pembroke, Arundel and Warenne’. The pressure on the king to allow Roger to negotiate is clear from the fact that, in addition to these four earls, Norfolk and Kent also requested that Roger’s safe conduct be granted. But the negotiations were not successful, and Sunday night came around with no agreement. Letters of safe conduct were renewed, to last until Wednesday 20 January. The Mortimers were discussing a situation which could end in their deaths, and resisted being rushed into an agreement which did not guarantee their lives and liberty. Ominously, the king was not prepared to guarantee them anything. On 20 January time was running out. That day Roger received a further extension to submit to the king the following day. But still he did not submit.

The earls were anxious now, being detained against their better judgement while Roger negotiated, demanding his life be guaranteed. Elsewhere, especially in the north, other rebel lords were waiting to see how the Mortimers would be treated. Laying aside the king’s bitterness, the Mortimers had done nothing for which they deserved punishment, except their attack on Bridgnorth. Both men were far too valuable and experienced as royal servants to be imprisoned or executed, surely? But Edward was, by this stage, almost deranged with his lust for revenge, and demanded their total and complete surrender, without terms. Again the Mortimers refused.

The stalemate was only broken when Lord Pembroke lied to the Mortimers. With no authority from the king, he took matters into his own hands, and promised Roger and his uncle that their lives would be spared, and that they would be pardoned. Having acquired this apparent guarantee, there was nothing else to be gained by further negotiation. On Friday 22 January 1322 Roger and his elderly uncle were conducted into the hall of Shrewsbury Castle, to submit to the king. After a short unfriendly audience, they were ordered to be taken away. They were not pardoned, they were clapped in chains. They were to be sent to the most secure prison in the country: the Tower of London.