The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (43 page)

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The stakes had been raised in the power struggle between the two men, so the spying and the machinations, the devious plots and the subterfuge increased. John Wyard, Roger’s retainer for a number of years, was now a king’s sergeant-at-arms and a spy. Possibly he informed Roger that the Earl of Kent had visited the Pope at Avignon and had spoken of Edward II’s imprisonment. At Paris, in the Duke of Brabant’s chamber, Kent had discussed the matter with the exiled Henry de Beaumont and Thomas Roscelyn.
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Maybe it was Wyard who learnt that Kent and his wife were going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in northern Spain. Whatever the case, Roger formed a plan to have the earl murdered. But Edward clearly had spies of his own: he learnt of Roger’s plans, and managed to inform Kent in time that his life would be in danger if he went to Santiago. The king and Roger were playing out their private battle like a deadly game of chess across Europe, while politely giving each other formal presents at home.

In late August 1329 Roger decided to hold a Round Table tournament in the style of his famous grandfather.
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The reason for the celebration was another Mortimer double marriage, like the one of the previous summer, but this time with far more powerful men as the bridegrooms. Since the previous family wedding, Roger had become an earl, and thus his daughters could expect to be married to earls and the sons of earls. One daughter, Agnes, was to be married to the young Earl of Pembroke, Laurence de Hastings, whose right of marriage was in Roger’s hands. The other was an even more eminent match, a marriage into the royal family. The Earl of Norfolk, the king’s uncle, was persuaded to let his son and heir marry Roger’s daughter, Beatrice. Normally one would have expected the fourth in line to the throne to make a better marriage than the sixth daughter of the recently created Earl of March, but these were not normal times.

Just before setting out for Wigmore, the possibly pregnant Isabella made her settlement in case of her death. On 2 September she ordered that Roger was to receive Montgomery Castle and the adjacent lordship of the hundred of Chirbury. He was also to keep Builth Castle at a nominal rent. With this sealed and settled, the royal party moved up the Welsh border, reaching Leominster the following evening. From there, on the following day, they made the short journey to Wigmore.

A large crowd had arrived for the tournament. Everything was paid for by Roger out of the treasure which he had taken from the Despensers and with a grant from the king of £1,000.
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Earls and barons had encamped in the valley below the castle and around the small town of Wigmore. Pavilions stretched through the hunting grounds. As at the Kenilworth
Round Table held by Roger’s grandfather, gifts were given, love tokens exchanged, and knights jousted while spectators watched from platforms above the ring. Roger himself took the part of Arthur, and Isabella, seated next to him, played Guinevere, overseeing the events.
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On each day of the tournament the king gave Roger formal presents of jewels and gilt-silver goblets, including, on 5 September, the French royal goblet bearing the arms of France and Navarre mentioned above.

The Wigmore tournament lasted for two or three days. Throughout, Roger himself was the talking point, overshadowing even his daughters on their wedding day. People remarked on his familiarity with the royal family. Roger, crowned as King Arthur, and with his queen beside him, was setting himself very publicly above the real king. If Roger had taken the part of Lancelot, it would have been amusing and ironic, and King Edward (as Arthur) would not have been threatened. But Roger was not just play-acting; he was self-importantly reminding everyone that he, not Edward, was of the line of Arthur. Rumours swept around the crowd that Roger now sought to make himself king. People did not need to have the prophecy of Merlin explained to them to understand the symbolism of Roger wearing a crown.

Herein lay Roger’s mistake. He was not a member of the royal family and his attempts to appear as such seemed perverse. His elaborate and ‘wondrously rich’ clothes, which were strange in style and colour,
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were particularly remarked upon. His jewellery attracted envy. His casual manner with the king offended everyone, for he walked alongside him and sat in his presence. People were shocked at his temerity. It did not help that the size of his personal household was vast – nearly two hundred people – as many armed men as the king himself maintained. And inviting comparisons with King Arthur was more than just faintly ridiculous. His grandfather might have got away with a Round Table tournament fifty years earlier, at the end of his illustrious career, but Roger compared unfavourably with the peerless Arthur of the Round Table myth, a man who had supposedly fought giants, won all his battles, conquered France, saved ravished maidens, and led a glorious band of knights. How could Roger compare with ‘the most worthy lord of renown there was in all the world’?
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Roger’s self-creation of chivalric magnificence and power had become over inflated. He was surrounded by royal people and all the trappings of courtly magnificence, all the ancestry, wealth and power; but he and everyone else knew that he was a mere baron’s son from the Welsh Marches. He had not won glory like his hero William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, he had cheated his way to it. His power had been achieved not through
wisdom but through cunning. Only one person was courageous enough to stand up publicly and tell Roger to his face that he was ridiculous. At Wigmore, Sir Geoffrey Mortimer, Roger’s favourite son, declared him to be ‘the King of Folly’.
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It was a telling phrase. Roger had foolishly come to confuse his proximity to royalty with being royal himself and, equally foolishly, he had lost his ability to gauge and control public opinion. He had grown too mighty.

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In the wake of the Wigmore tournament the conflict at the heart of government became more heated. Edward had not reacted well to Roger’s display, and now he took his first steps towards regaining his royal power. On 12 September he sent abroad his trusted friend Sir William de Montagu. His mission was ostensibly to visit Gascony but he had secret instructions to go to the Pope in Avignon to let him know what was happening in England.
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On hearing that Montagu was going abroad Roger became suspicious and insisted that he be accompanied by Sir Bartholomew de Burghersh, brother of the Bishop of Lincoln. But at Avignon, Montagu managed to evade Burghersh and was granted a private audience with the Pope. He brought back a message that the Pope wished to have some sign by which he could distinguish the king’s own letters from those Roger issued in his name. Edward wrote back early the following year, signing the letter with the words ‘Pater Sancte’ in his own hand, the earliest extant autograph of an English king.
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The court moved on. At Gloucester on 16 September the king was successful in replacing Roger’s appointed Treasurer, Thomas de Charlton, with Robert Wodehouse, formerly Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe. A week later Edward forced the appointment of his personal secretary, Richard de Bury, as Keeper of the Privy Seal. The writing was on the wall: Edward was slowly increasing his influence. Roger and Isabella were having to balance a possible secret pregnancy and the secret existence of the ex-king at Corfe against the growing enmity of the nobility and the powerful ambitions of the seventeen-year-old king. In addition there may have been an attempt to free Edward II in August 1329.
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At the end of September, Roger appointed John Maltravers the official custodian of Corfe Castle, to protect his royal prisoner.
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In early October the court was at Dunstable for a tournament.
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Immediately afterwards it moved north, directed by Roger and Isabella, to Kenilworth. If Isabella was pregnant by Roger, this was where she was going to give birth to their child. Being a castle of the Earl of Lancaster, it might seem an odd place to choose. But there were several good reasons.
One was Roger’s sense of history and individual destiny, linking his family stories of Kenilworth and his grandfather’s victories with the destiny he imagined for his unborn child. Another was more pragmatic. Roger’s estates on the Welsh Marches were not far away. In addition, Henry of Lancaster was in France, acting on the king’s behalf in negotiations with King Philip about the imperfect homage Edward had performed in June for Gascony.
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Thus in that vast castle, surrounded by Roger’s bodyguard of nearly two hundred men-at-arms, they were relatively safe.

If Isabella gave birth in December 1329, it was probably at the very beginning of the month. Roger was still at Kenilworth on 3 December, but then left for a short visit to his estates on the Welsh Marches. On the 5th he was at Ludlow, where he made a grant of land to one of his retainers (Walter le Baily of Leinthall), and to the man’s wife and first heir.
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Three days later he was at Clun. The business which we know he conducted there was very minor – about fishing rights, for which he merely ordered an inquiry to be made – and was probably incidental to the real purpose of his visit, which is not recorded.
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But Clun was close to Montgomery Castle and the hundred of Chirbury, the lands which Isabella had settled on him in case of her death and which thus presumably she intended to be settled on their child. The route also took him through Leintwardine, where he could have explained the intended extension of his grant. By 12 December he was back at Kenilworth, administering royal business.

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For the last couple of months Roger had been relatively cautious and quiet. Now he went back on the offensive. It was only nine months before Edward turned eighteen, and as the young king grew in age and stature, so he grew in authority. Roger realised that it would only be a matter of time before he and the king clashed openly.

In January the court returned to the capital, to stay at Isabella’s palace at Eltham. Roger granted himself all the possessions of Hugh Despenser which had been concealed from the king in Pembrokeshire. At the end of the month he further granted himself custody of lands of the earldom of Kildare, together with the right of the heir’s marriage. In February the court moved to the Tower, to prepare for the coronation of Queen Philippa, now heavily pregnant. This required Isabella to relinquish lands and castles destined to be granted to the new queen, for which, of course, she sought even greater grants in compensation.
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But opposition forces were once more growing. In late January Hamo de Chigwell had been released from custody by the Bishop of London, and the Londoners were beginning to voice openly their support for merchants who had suffered under Roger’s
judges a year earlier.
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The Earl of Kent was also back in the country, and he was scheming.

Two days before Hamo de Chigwell’s release Roger issued summonses in the king’s name for a parliament to be held at Winchester. Kent and his brother, the Earl of Norfolk, played their part at the coronation of Queen Philippa on 18 February, dressed as simple grooms and riding alongside the queen as she made her way to Westminster from the Tower. None of this pageantry was of importance to Roger. His plan was set. He had proof that Kent had hatched a plot to free Edward II, written in the hand of Margaret Wake, his own cousin, the earl’s wife.

As the lords gathered for the parliament, Kent was quietly arrested, along with certain of his followers. A few days later, Roger announced the news to the lords. The charge was treason.

Kent had attempted several times to gain access to Corfe Castle: he had written to two men of the castle garrison, Bogo de Bayeux and John Deveril, seeking access, but had been refused. However, these two men, who were either Roger’s or Maltravers’ agents, agreed to pass a letter to Edward II on the earl’s behalf. Trusting them completely, Kent persuaded his wife, Margaret, to write a letter to the ex-king. Deveril and Bayeux received the letter and, after the earl had returned to his estates, dutifully took it to Roger. Roger read the letter. It showed that the earl had attracted considerable support in his plot to free Edward.

This placed Roger under huge pressure. Secrets that would ensure that he went to the gallows were being passed around among his enemies. He could deny the accusation, of course, but his credibility depended entirely on Edward III’s support. This was exceedingly dangerous, as the king was anxious to oust him from court. Roger had to trust in the protection afforded him by his secret custody of the ex-king.

It was a tense situation for all concerned. Roger was relying on the king to condemn his own uncle rather than admit his father was still alive. No doubt Isabella repeatedly reminded her son of the danger they would all be in if it were widely known that Edward II lived. For his part, Roger once more choreographed proceedings. He convened a court specially for the purpose of trying the earl, presided over by the coroner of the household, Robert Howel.
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Roger himself acted as the prosecutor. The author of the longer
Brut
chronicle seems to have been close to someone there that day, and reports that Roger addressed the accused as follows:

Sir Edmund, Earl of Kent, you should understand that it behoves us to say, and principally unto our liege lord, Sir Edward, King of England – whom Almighty God save and keep – that you are his deadly enemy and his traitor and also a common enemy unto the realm; and that you have been about many a day to make privily deliverance of Sir Edward, sometime King of England, your brother, who was put down out of his royalty by common assent of all the lords of England, and in impairing of our lord the king’s estate, and also of his realm.