The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (61 page)

^*
Those dates given in brackets in the period 1317–20 refer to locations at which the Irish government is known to have operated when Roger was the king’s representative in charge, either as King’s Lieutenant or Justiciar. The itinerary is therefore not that of Roger himself but of the administrative system which followed him around. As Edmund Butler continued to act as Justiciar during Roger’s period of Lieutenancy (1317–18), and certainly did exercise royal authority, dates given here need to be treated with great caution.

^**
Those dates given in brackets at the end of 1326 refer to locations at which the queen can be placed; Roger is presumed at this time to have been with her most, if not all, of the first five months after the invasion. Roger’s visit to Pembridge seems to be the one exception.

APPENDIX 2

Children of Sir Roger and Lady Mortimer

IT IS EASY
to list the names of the children of the marriage of Roger and Joan but much harder to establish their order and dates of birth. With twelve children surviving to adulthood, it is quite possible that Joan’s confinements included a multiple birth. There is no evidence of twins, however, except in the tenuous connection that two of the daughters, Agnes and Beatrice, were certainly married at the same time, and Catherine’s and Joan’s marriages were probably also simultaneous.

1.
Edmund
, the son and heir of Roger and Joan, was probably born in late 1302 or early 1303. The earliest likely date is nine months after the marriage of Roger and Joan, who were fourteen and fifteen years old respectively at the time of the marriage. However, the Wigmore Abbey Annals in John Rylands Library does not note his birth, and it is therefore possible that he was born after Margaret, as late as 1305. Since he was married in 1316, at which time he had had his own seal made, he was most probably of sufficient age to inherit, and since Roger himself was married at fourteen, and this was also the age at which the Counts of La Marche (ancestors of Joan de Geneville) came of age, the probability is that he was born in 1302–3. He married the three-year-old Elizabeth, daughter of Bartholomew de Badlesmere, at Ernwood in Kinlet, Shropshire, on 27 July 1316, and had by her two sons, Roger, born in 1327, and John, who died young. Edmund was imprisoned at Windsor Castle during his father’s exile, along with his brother Roger and the sons of the Earl of Hereford, and moved to the Tower on 1 October 1326. According to the Wigmore chronicler, he was a clever young man. He was knighted in 1327 at the coronation, but was arrested along with his father in 1330. He did not inherit his father’s titles, as these were all forfeited by the sentence of treason, but he soon regained the king’s favour, and was summoned to Parliament in his own name. The
Inquisitions Post Mortem
on his estate shows that Wigmore and a number of core Mortimer estates on the Marches were restored to him in 1331. He died in December 1331 or January 1332. His widow later married the Earl of Northampton.

2.
Margaret
was born on 2 May 1304 ( John Rylands Lib., Latin MS 215). According to the marriage agreement in the Black Book of Wigmore (BL Harley MS 1240), she married Thomas de Berkeley, the heir of Maurice, Lord Berkeley, in May 1319. After Roger’s submission in 1322 she was arrested, and in 1324 she was sent to Sholdham Priory. Her marriage to Berkeley was confirmed, and her offspring declared legitimate by the Pope in 1329. According to the
Complete Peerage
, her eldest surviving son was born in 1330. She died in 1337, supposedly under the age of thirty, and was buried in St Austine’s Abbey, Bristol (now Bristol Cathedral).

3.
Roger
, the second son, was born about 1305–6. This date is suggested because it was in 1321 that he was married to Joan, the daughter of Edmund Butler of Ireland, at which time he would have been fifteen. In the same year Roger and Joan decided to settle all their Irish lands on him, and to create a separate Mortimer line through him there. He was arrested and imprisoned at Windsor in 1322, moved to the Tower on 1 October 1326, and released on Roger’s return in 1326. In 1327 he was knighted, and, his wife Joan having died without bearing children, his father proposed that he should marry the young widow of the Earl of Pembroke. The right of the marriage was granted him on 3 September 1327 (
CPR 1327–1330
, p. 166). He seems to have died before 27 August 1328, on which day his Irish inheritance was settled on his youngest brother, John.

4.
Maud
. The reason for suggesting Maud as Roger’s second daughter is that she was the first married, before 13 April 1319 (according to the
Complete Peerage
). Since Roger’s method of betrothing his daughters was to obtain permission for ‘one of his daughters’ to marry, he may simply have chosen the next in line. Either way, on the above date she appears as the wife of John de Charlton the younger. If twelve at the time of marriage, then she was born about 1307. She was not arrested in 1324 as by then John de Charlton the elder had made his peace with the king. Her first surviving son was born in 1334. She was still alive in 1345.

5.
Geoffrey
, the third son, was probably born in 1308 or 1309. He was his mother’s mother’s heir, and thus inherited a number of de Lusignan estates in France, notably the lordships of Couhé (his seat), Peyrat, Pontarion, Salles and Genté on her death in 1323. As he was in France at the time of Roger’s arrest, and yet was able to inherit in 1323 without having to prove his age (and therefore, under the Lusignan rule, at least fourteen) one can suggest that he was serving as a yeoman in the household of a French relation, most probably that of the de Fiennes family in
Picardy, to which Roger went on his escape in 1323. This guaranteed Roger an income in exile. He returned with Roger in 1326, was knighted at the coronation in 1327, and became a firm supporter of his father, taking an active role at court by August 1329, and being trusted with witnessing royal charters in 1330. He was arrested with his father in October 1330, but allowed to go free and enjoy his French inheritance. He there married Joan de Lezay and had a family, and died between 1372 and 1376. See G.W. Watson, ‘Geoffrey de Mortimer and His Descendants’,
Genealogist
, NS 22 (1906), p. 1.

6.
John
, the fourth son. The fact that he was knighted by his father in Ireland in 1317, a full ten years before his three elder brothers, might suggest that John should be placed earlier in the list of Mortimer children. However, the explanation is probably that he was the only one of the Mortimer boys to travel with Roger to Ireland, and the only one available when Roger received the right to make knights as the king’s representative there in 1317–18. The reason he was with Roger and Joan was that he was young enough not to have been placed in another household, and thus no older than about seven. He seems to have come of age in the period during which his father was in exile, as at first only his two eldest brothers were imprisoned at Windsor, but in 1324 he joined them in captivity, being imprisoned in Odiham Castle. On 1 October 1326 he and his brothers were transferred to the Tower. He was probably born in or about 1310. In August 1328 he was granted castles in Ireland, and seems shortly afterwards to have had the Irish estates of his brother Roger settled on him. He did not live to enjoy his inheritance, being killed shortly afterwards in a tournament at Shrewsbury.

7.
Joan
. The reason for placing Joan at this point in the order of children is that she is named as one of the girls arrested in 1324 and imprisoned at Sempringham Priory. At this time only the elder daughters of Roger and Joan were imprisoned, with the exception of Maud, whose husband had been accepted back into the king’s favour. Joan is the second named of the three girls mentioned, the eldest being Margaret, and it is thus suspected she was the second or third eldest, and was born at some point between 1308 and 1313. According to the
Complete Peerage
she was married before June 1330 to James Audley, who was born in January 1313. However their eldest surviving son, Nicholas, was betrothed in the period March 1329–March 1331, so the wedding probably took place before July 1328. Although Murimuth states that the double Mortimer wedding at Hereford in 1328 was between Roger’s daughters and the heirs of the earldoms of
Norfolk and Pembroke, it is more likely that these latter marriages took place after Roger’s elevation to the earldom of March, and after his other, older heirs in wardship had been married to his daughters. In addition, both the Audley and Beauchamp wards received their lands in the first half of 1329. Thus it is suggested that Murimuth (writing in 1337) has confused the Mortimer double wedding at Hereford with another Mortimer wedding, namely that of Joan and Lord Audley, probably at Hereford on or about 31 May 1328, which was possibly also a double wedding with Catherine and Thomas de Beauchamp, a bridegroom of a similar age. Since Roger had been Audley’s guardian since December 1316 (according to the
CPR
), this right being renewed in 1326, the marriage was only delayed by the hiatus in his career which suspended the marriage fortunes of all his unmarried children. In view of her sister Isabella also being old enough to be imprisoned in 1324, Joan was probably slightly older than her husband, being born in 1311 or 1312, when Roger and Joan were in Ireland. She died between 1337 and 1351.

8.
Isabella
. Of the twelve children Isabella is the only one not recorded in the
Complete Peerage
. This is because she was not noticed by Dugdale in his
Baronage
, having been ignored by the fourteenth-century Wigmore chronicler. The reason for her being ignored is that she did not make a noteworthy marriage. She is only certainly known through the entries relating to her imprisonment in the Close Rolls, in which she was ordered to be sent to Chicksands Priory. The fact she was old enough to be imprisoned in 1324, and yet of an age comparable with her sister Joan, suggests that she was born in the period 1310–13, and if born separately from her siblings, probably towards the end of this period. It is doubtful that she was the Isabella de Mortimer who is recorded in the Patent Rolls as holding the manor of Wychbold for life on 2 September 1327, and who was pardoned a £10 fine at Roger’s request. This pardon being made to her in conjunction with Richard Talbot suggests she was Isabella de Mortimer of Richard’s Castle. A similar fine was imposed on Blanche and her husband.

9.
Catherine
. In an early edition of
Notes and Queries
she was described as the eldest daughter, but the fact of her neither being married nor arrested in 1324 suggests she was too young at the time. She was married after October 1326 to Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Roger had sought and received papal permission for one of his daughters to marry the Earl of Warwick’s heir, in 1319. Since her husband was born in 1314, this permission was probably only being sought on account of the consanguinity between the two families, and no actual marriage at this stage was
planned. It is suspected that she was born in about 1314. If there were two Mortimer double weddings at Hereford, one in 1328 and another in 1329, Catherine would have been in the first pair. Like Joan she married a ward of Roger’s, and both prospective bridegrooms were about the same age, born in 1313 and 1314 respectively. However, Roger granted these two wards their lands at different times in the first half of 1329, and this might more closely reflect their wedding dates. Thus there is reason to suppose that Catherine was married before February 1329, possibly as part of a double wedding on 31 May 1328. Catherine’s second surviving son was born before March 1339. She wrote a will on 4 August 1369 and died shortly afterwards, being buried in St Mary’s Warwick in an alabaster tomb, which still bears her effigy and that of her husband.