The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  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.22 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 …’23 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.24 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 fa
ct 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.

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  EIGHT

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  The King’s Prisoner

  THE DAY AFTER Roger surrendered to the king at Shrewsbury, a contingent of men-at-arms approached Wigmore.1 They rode through the main street of the small town and turned to the west, taking the gently rising road to the castle and under the brow of the low hill on which stood the ancient parish church. Further on they came to the outer courtyard, and presented their letters of appointment to the gatekeeper. Here, on the ridge leading to the castle itself, they passed barns and granaries, cow byres, pigsties, hay lofts and cart houses, and heard the lowing cattle and saw the strutting peacocks about the yard. Beyond them stood the high-standing walls and towers of the castle itself. Crossing over the drawbridge, their leader, Alan de Charlton, addressed Roger’s castellan, showed his letters of appointment, and reiterated what King Edward had declared: the castle was forfeit by reason of Roger’s rebellion against the king.

  It was a pattern repeated all across England. Everything Roger owned was forfeited. Every castle and every manor house, every manorial right and every feudal loyalty. The cattle on his farms were confiscated. So too were the buildings and carts his manorial tenants used to farm his land. Everything was taken into the king’s custody. This extended even to his personal possessions: his armour, carpets, wall-hangings, silverware and all his clothes and linen were forfeited; even his wife’s books. In surrendering himself to the king he was also surrendering everything he held by right of his lordship or owned as a matter of inheritance. He was left with nothing but the clothes he wore on the day of his surrender.

  Adam de Charlton’s men inspected the entire castle, from the small chambers in the towers to the keep high up on its mound overlooking the buildings in the bailey. His subsequent inventory of what he found is still extant.2 For a study of Roger it is invaluable, since it gives us a rare glimpse of the things which he and his wife owned, and an insight into their personal tastes.

  There was a large amount of war machinery in the castle. There were six siege engines, called springalds: huge flat crossbow-like wooden machines for flinging rocks and massive bolts. Several similar machines had bombarded Bristol under the co-direction of Roger in 1316. There were twenty-one windlass-operated crossbows, and eighteen foot-operated ones. Although we do not know how large these were, their prominence in the inventory suggests that they were not merely small arms but instruments of strategic warfare. Two hundred and ninety iron crossbow bolts were found, some flighted with brass and some with wood, indicative of a sophisticated, multipurpose nature.

  As one might expect, there was a large quantity of armour. Some of this was specialist jousting equipment, including nine helmets and one ‘jousting coronet’. Other items were specifically for war, such as the unambiguous ‘war helmet’. Among the remainder were two ‘suits of plate armour’, two helmets ‘with visors’ as well as a large quantity of older weaponry and items which might have been used in practice combat, such as leather breastplates, suits of body armour, iron and leather helmets. There were collections of lances and shields, lance-shafts and lance-heads, pavilions and tents, indicating that Roger had stored much of his old tournament armour at Wigmore, and that, while he and his men carried their newest war armour with them to Kent and finally to Shrewsbury, the armoury at Wigmore was full of memorabilia: a Saracen arbalest (steel crossbow) and arrows, and an Irish sparth (axe), being two of the more unusual items.

  Mixed in among the weaponry were a few hunting tools, such as drums for scaring game and snares and nets for catching animals. Luxury items included a chessboard painted with gold, and another ‘gaming board’ made of aromatic nutmeg. But there were few luxuries laid aside at Wigmore. Most of the rest of the inventory records everyday practical items: shackles, hooks for pulling down burning wooden buildings and thatch, chests and coffers, table boards, benches, cauldrons and barrels. Eleven wooden vats or tubs were found in the kitchens. The whole picture was one of a castle furnished with the essential rudiments of life. This was where Roger kept his old armour and a few necessary chattels. It was not where he kept his gold or jewels.

  To Alan de Charlton it was clear that these items were just the vestiges of the lord’s possessions. Where were his spare clothes? Where was his finest armour? Where indeed were his wall-hangings? It was not surprising that they were absent. Medieval lords travelled with a great many of their personal possessions as they journeyed with the court. As it happened, since Roger had never anticipated being imprisoned, de Charlton only had to look as far as Wigmore Abbey. Here he found another huge array of personal arms and armour of very high quality. His men carried it out piece by piece and loaded it on to the wagons to be taken away to be sold. Roger’s personal armour alone included eight chain-mail shirts, an iron corset, a pair of gussets (chainmail between pieces of plate armour), a lined gorger (throat-plate), seven pairs of armoured leggings, five chain-mail head coverings, two iron helmets with visors, one war helmet with a ‘wicket’ (criss-crossed metal face piece), one round iron helmet, one padded tunic covered with brown taffeta, a shirt ‘of Chartres’ (probably a padded shirt for jousting), five pairs of horses’ head-armour, five pairs of iron flank protectors for horses, two pairs of iron covers for horses, two pairs of trappers, a pair of greaves, a pair of shoes of plate armour, a shield, four lances for war, three lances for jousting, a pair of boots topped with iron, and two swords with silver fittings, as well as a small pile of other pieces of plate armour for head, arm, foot, hand, throat and leg protection.

  At Wigmore Abbey, Charlton also found Roger’s wardrobe: his personal possessions other than his armour and weapons. The clothes found there, which, of course, were those Roger had left behind in 1321–2, show that he was a man of fashion. They included:

  Two short jackets of green velvet

  A tunic, two supertunics [topmost garments] and a tabard [sleeveless tunic] of scarlet, without fur or hood

  A tunic, two supertunics, tabard and hood of mixed brown cloth, without fur

  A tunic of indigo velvet

  A supertunic and tabard of scarlet red for summer, without hood

  A tunic, two supertunics, tabard and h
ood of mulberry brown cloth

  A supertunic of green with a quarter yellow or grey, and hood lined with red muslin

  One black hat furred with high grade lambskin.

  The warlord was a man of taste. In addition to fine clothes, and the nutmeg gaming table and gold painted chess set from the castle, his wardrobe keeper also looked after:

  One green bedcover embroidered with owls, with four matching hanging carpets

  One bedcover with a blue background with several coats of arms embroidered, with three matching hangings

  One bedcover of knotted work, with four matching hangings

  One great hanging tapestry for a [great] hall embroidered with popinjays and griffons

  Two yellow hangings, old and made into curtains, embroidered with red roses, with one benchcover of the same work

  One hanging of good and subtle work with four matching hangings

  One long benchcover striped with yellow and red.

  In addition there was an abundance of cloth, including long lengths of ‘good striped cloth’, ‘striped cloth of lower price’, ‘yellow striped cloth of small value’, ‘yellow unstriped cloth’, ‘green unstriped cloth’, and ‘striped dark blue cloth’, some of which may well have gone to furnish Mortimer family retainers with surcoats bearing the family arms, or possibly the yellow and green tunics of the Marcher rebels in 1321. Two final items of interest on the list were ‘a brass horn that, together with a certain falchion [a broad, curved sword] … is the charter of the lands of Wigmore’. The horn (but apparently not the falchion) were also carried off to become just a horn hung around someone’s nect rather than a relic of the family’s ancient lordship.