The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (40 page)

Chivalry was an elusive concept even in 1328. King Edward still seethed with anger at being forced to surrender Scotland. It was, in his eyes, an appalling act, an act of cowardice. It belittled him as a king, and he wanted everyone to know exactly what he thought of it. While Roger had the honour of entertaining the king at Ludlow, the honour was greater than the pleasure. After two days the royal party with all its noise, servants, clerks, general bustle and scowling young monarch moved on, first to the nearby manor of Bromyard, and then to Worcester.

At Worcester, while the royal party waited to discuss the French war with Henry of Lancaster, the king agreed to give Roger the roof lead which he had requested. It seemed that the king’s anger was abating. Then Lancaster arrived, and, petulantly, he refused to discuss France. This council, he said, referring to Roger and his coterie of lords and prelates, was too small to discuss such a weighty issue.
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This was an open accusation: that Roger was appropriating power to himself. Edward agreed with the earl, again expressing his anger at how Scotland had been taken from him. Lancaster insisted Parliament be called in the north. Roger acquiesced, and ordered that such a meeting would take place at York six weeks later. The king protested that he did not want the treaty with Scotland to go ahead. It was too late, Isabella explained: the king’s own sister, Joan, was due to be married to David Bruce, the future King of Scotland, in a month. Edward declared defiantly that he would never recognise Scottish independence and that he would not attend the wedding. The end of the argument was its solution: if the king did not wish to attend, they would leave him behind. And they did.

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Roger and Isabella went north with Henry de Burghersh and Isabella’s daughter, Joan, leaving the king in the Welsh Marches with Henry of Lancaster. It appears at first sight that they were taking a risk, placing the king in their enemy’s hands; but they had taken precautions. They had the great seal with them, in Burghersh’s keeping, and, although they
had left the privy seal with the king, Edward knew better than to incur Roger’s anger. Ministers and spies kept watch on the king and what he ordered. As for Lancaster, he was powerless for, most importantly, Edward did not trust him.
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Furious and frustrated, Lancaster declared his enmity towards Roger and Isabella. The author of the
Brut
chronicle dated Roger and Isabella’s tyranny from this time onward.

As Isabella rode north to Berwick in early July, her feelings may be imagined. She was giving away her seven-year-old daughter to the Scots, the mortal enemies of England. For little Joan the journey must have held many terrors. At the age of four she had been separated from her mother when Isabella had gone to France. Now it was happening again, but this time it was for ever. The Scots did not help by calling her ‘Joan Makepeace’, as if that were her sole purpose. At Berwick, on 16 July, she was married to the five-year-old David Bruce and handed over to Thomas Randolph and Black Douglas. The English and Scots appeared to get on well – there was much feasting and celebration – but the emotions must have been burning in the hearts of both bride and bride’s mother.

Roger too had reason to reflect. Although he had learnt by now that his eldest son’s wife was expecting his first grandchild, he had also heard that his second son, Roger, had died. In the summer of his glory, following the wedding of his daughters in the king’s presence, and after the honour of entertaining the king at Ludlow, Roger suffered the most humbling of blows. The aftermath of his triumphant summer was arranging for his son’s corpse to be taken to Wigmore Abbey for burial.

We know nothing of Roger’s emotional life, nor anything of the private lives of any of his family, thus it is very difficult to say what this loss meant to him. It seems he held his family in high esteem. A cynical explanation might be that he valued his children for their potential to make political alliances through marriage; but this would only be partly true, for interfamily marriages tended to be most meaningful when the individuals were close. Furthermore, rather than forging new alliances, marriages tended to cement existing ones. It is significant that Roger and Joan were not like previous generations of their families, marrying off the eldest son and the eldest daughters and putting the younger ones into the church. Instead all their children were given the opportunity of marriage and independence. The younger sons were all knighted and provided with lordships of their own. Edmund and Geoffrey spent time at court, and Geoffrey especially seems to have been favoured by both his parents.
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All the daughters who had been placed in nunneries by Edward II and Despenser were redeemed and allowed the greater luxury, and the relatively greater freedom, of an aristocratic married woman’s lifestyle. Only one daughter, Isabella, did not
marry, but this may indicate merely that she did not live to receive a husband. Just as the number of children Roger and Joan had together indicates a greater than usual propensity to spend time with each other, so too his treatment of their children seems to reflect a loyalty deeper than that normally borne by power-obsessed magnates for their offspring.

As for Roger’s relationship with his wife, he obviously continued to see her, on occasion at least, and she may well have visited court in addition to the visits he made to her at Ludlow. His feelings towards her were respectful, as shown by his sending the present of books in 1327, his occasional small gifts to her sisters’ nunnery, Aconbury Priory, and his inclusion of her name in the list of those whose souls were to be the object of prayers in December 1328. There were no grants made to her which were not also to him, but this was due to the nature of medieval land tenure. In all legal matters touching Ireland and Ludlow her name is usually mentioned with his, but again this is only as one would expect. It is possible that the extended grants to them in Ireland benefited both of them, and certainly Joan was not left penniless. But it is perhaps in the strange arrangements of the solar wings at Ludlow Castle, and the silverware which bore their arms combined – which Roger still had with him in London two years later – that one can perhaps detect elements of their relationship lasting. Because of these hints of closeness with Joan and his children, one suspects that the death of his son Roger was a real blow, and perhaps one of the reasons why he started building the chantry at Leintwardine church.

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Whatever Roger’s and Isabella’s personal feelings must have been on heading south from Berwick, they had to put them to one side and gather their resources for the meeting at the end of July at York. The Earl of Lancaster, disgruntled with Roger’s hold on power, had decided not to attend the York meeting which he himself had demanded, to the king’s ill-concealed disapproval. Thus Edward was at York on the appointed day to meet his mother and Roger, but Henry of Lancaster was not. Lancaster’s supporters, including Thomas Wake, were also absent. Of most concern, however, was the absence of the king’s two uncles, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk.

The court remained in York for most of August. Orders to attend a special parliament at Salisbury were despatched at the end of the month. The Controller of the King’s Wardrobe, Thomas de Garton, was sent on a special mission to Lancaster, presumably to try to persuade him to come to Salisbury.
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But Lancaster remained defiant. On 7 September he met Roger, Isabella and the king at Barlings Abbey near Lincoln. He had an
army with him, and, shouting at Roger and Isabella in the king’s presence, he threatened to use it.

It was a foolish move. The king was genuinely shocked by the earl’s behaviour, and, faced with the reality of an aggressive vassal, Roger had no difficulty in persuading Edward of the merits of taking military precautions. The following week all armed followings were once again forbidden. He began to review positions of authority, removing any sheriffs or constables whom he did not trust, strengthening his hold on the country and the government. On hearing that in London, the Bishop of Winchester and Thomas Wake were negotiating with important London merchants on Lancaster’s behalf, Roger advised the king that a rebellion was underway, and sent Bishop Burghersh and Oliver Ingham to demand an explanation from the Londoners. They replied in the form of a letter sent by Hamo de Chigwell on 27 September which listed the grievances of the Earl of Lancaster.

The accusations were numerous. Lancaster demanded firstly that Isabella give up her huge estates and return to the level of income more traditionally allowed a queen, and secondly that Roger be banished from court and forced to live upon his own lands, since he had disinherited so many people in order to acquire them. Thirdly he demanded an official inquiry into the fiasco of the campaign against the Scots, to establish who had betrayed the king. Fourthly he demanded that an inquiry be held as to why the rule that the king should be controlled by a council of twelve men ordained at the coronation was being neglected. Fifthly he claimed that the deposed king had been

taken out of the castle of Kenilworth, where he was in ward, and through the influence of the Queen Isabella and of the Mortimer, without consent of any parliament, they took him and laid him there that none of his kindred could see him or speak to him again, and afterwards they traitorously took him and murdered him, for whose death a foul scandal arose throughout all Christendom when it was done.

Sixthly he claimed that Edward II’s treasure had been frittered away without the consent of the young king. Seventhly that through the advice of Roger and Isabella the king had given up the land of Scotland for which many men had died, ‘to the disinheritance of himself, his successors and his vassals and great reproof to all Englishmen forever more’. And finally, that Princess Joan had been married to the son of a traitor, on Roger and Isabella’s advice.
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The seriousness of the accusations underscored the seriousness of the
rebellion. Lancaster did not see this as a move to reduce Roger and Isabella’s authority but entirely to destroy it. But he was not a great strategist. What did he offer in place of their rule? Only his own. This was a marked contrast to Roger’s revolution with Isabella at the fore: they had been seen to offer a preferable alternative to the existing government, untainted by corruption. Lancaster offered an alternative which was partisan and every bit as corruptible as Roger and Isabella’s rule. But most of all Lancaster was perceived not to have the subtlety to control public and noble opinion. Evidence of this was to be seen in his armed entourage confronting and challenging the king at Barlings Abbey. Proof of it came a few days later when he heard that the king was by himself in East Anglia, and took his army to capture him. Only a high-speed flight saved Edward. He forced the court to ride or march 120 miles to Salisbury from Cambridge in under four days, and, learning there that Roger and Isabella were at Gloucester, travelled the remaining sixty miles to meet them equally rapidly.

As a result of Lancaster’s aggression, Roger obtained permission on 6 October to travel armed with his men. It was a sensible precaution. Shortly afterwards Lancaster’s retainer, Sir Thomas Wyther, ambushed Sir Robert de Holand in a wood in Hertfordshire, hacked off his head and sent it to the earl. There had been no pretence at a trial. Far from distancing himself from this murder, Lancaster condoned it, and took Wyther and his accomplices into his protection.
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Outright civil war now seemed inevitable. The Salisbury parliament was only five weeks away, and the two sides were bound to come armed. At Gloucester Roger was gathering a large army from Wales and the Marches, ready to put down Lancaster’s revolt and restore order. Lancaster was raising troops in London. The citizens had promised a force of six hundred men to support him. They had ousted Roger’s supporter, Richard de Bethune, from the mayoralty and replaced him with Hamo de Chigwell, one of those who had sentenced Roger to death. They had kidnapped the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds and looted his monastery. Lancaster moved his army to Winchester, ready to attack Roger on Salisbury Plain. Roger advanced to Salisbury, where he ordered that Parliament should sit, with or without the Earl of Lancaster.

Desperately the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had already given some encouragement to Lancaster, tried to intervene. He requested that, as a sign of his impartiality, Roger should swear upon the archbishop’s crozier that he intended no harm to the Earl of Lancaster, nor to his supporters. Roger did as requested. Slightly mollified, the archbishop proposed that the Bishops of London and Winchester should be sent to Lancaster, again asking him to attend Parliament. This was done. But Lancaster refused to
come. He sent his list of grievances once more, stating he was prepared to come if his demands were met, and if he received guarantees of safe passage from those whom he thought were ‘determined to do him harm’.

Roger replied to his demands on the king’s behalf. With regard to the first of these, he said, the king was impoverished not by Isabella’s grants of land but by the present likelihood of war, although, he added with wry humour, ‘if any man knew how to make the king richer he would be made most welcome at court’. Quite simply the earl had no right to determine the level of the queen mother’s dowry. With regard to the fourth complaint, Roger explained that the reason the King’s Council did not more frequently advise the king was that Lancaster himself refused to attend, even when summoned. Lancaster could have letters of safe conduct if he should so require them, but if he took advantage of them he would have to abide by the terms of Magna Carta. This document held that he would be answerable in court if any man accused him of any crime, such as complicity in the murder of Sir Robert de Holand, or treason for riding against the king.
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There was no reference to the other matters raised by the earl and the citizens of London. Accusations such as murder, conspiracy with the Scots and of frittering away Edward II’s and Despenser’s fortune were best left unanswered, being on the one hand beneath contempt, and, on the other, justified.