The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  15. All we know on this matter comes from the continuation of the chronicle of Nicholas Trivet. This piece of work was written by a Dominican friar with a penchant for details concerning seals. Roger de Northburgh, the keeper of the king’s privy seal, was killed in the battle, and the seal, like the king’s shield, was found afterwards. The friar records only that Bruce sent the seal with ‘Roger Mortimer’ to the king at Berwick. As is so often the case with the Mortimers, one has to ask: which Roger Mortimer is intended? Although at first one might suppose that it would be more likely that the older knight, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, would be released without ransom, there is good reason to believe it was Roger, because of the situation of some of his lands close to the author’s friary. The writer was probably a friar of Ilchester, as he mentions two churches damaged by storms within four miles of the town in his chronicle. Also within four miles of the town was the manor of Odcombe, a demesne lordship of Roger’s, and thus Roger would have been well known by name to the writer. Also Roger, rather than his uncle, had connections with the Earl of Ulster in Ireland, father of Bruce’s wife. Finally, if the Roger Mortimer referred to by the Trivet continuator was the lord of Wigmore, it would explain how Roger rejoined the court shortly after the battle, and much sooner than most of the other knights who were captured. See Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, ii, p. 9. I am grateful to Paul Dryburgh for pointing out to me the reference in the continuation of the chronicle of Nicholas Trivet.

  16. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 57.

  17. Both the new Chancellor, John Sandall, Bishop of Winchester, and the new Treasurer, Sir Walter de Norwich, were later (in 1318) selected by the king to form a panel with Roger and others to administer the reform of the royal household, and Sir Walter was trusted by Roger so much that, although Walter was forced to sit on the committee which in 1322 would sentence Roger and his uncle to death, Roger later forgave him and allowed him to remain in office.

  18. Philips, Aymer de Valence, p. 83.

  19. CPR 1313–1317, pp. 276, 279, 285.

  20. Connolly (ed.), Irish Exchequer Payments, pp. 242–59.

  21. Barrow, Robert Bruce, p. 314.

  22. Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 226.

  23. Hennessy (ed.), Annals of Loch Cé, p. 567.

  24. Phillips, Documents on the Early Stages of the Bruce Invasion of Ireland, 1315–1316.

  25. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary, Dublin, pp. 407–16.

  26. If this suggestion is correct it may mean the whole ‘Coigneris’ campaign described in Barbour’s The Bruce (pp. 347–61), which refers to the Battle of Connor at great length, has mixed up elements of later battles in one long description of Connor. Orpen, in Ireland Under the Normans, iv, pp. 167–8, suggests as much, and Frame in ‘The Bruces in Ireland’ does not discount the possibility. However, the chronology in The Bruce is not strong enough to warrant a reconstruction of what may have happened at Kells, and we constantly fall back on the annals in the Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, and the 1317 court case (printed as an appendix in the second volume) for guidance, and these give only the slightest details.

  27. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, p. 348.

  28. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, pp. 407–16.

  29. Orpen, Ireland Under the Normans, iv, p. 173.

  5: The King’s Lieutenant

  1. Palgrave (ed.), Parliamentary Writs, iv, p. 1203.

  2. Denhom-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 66.

  3. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 67.

  4. See Griffiths, Conquerors and Conquered in Medieval Wales, pp. 84–91, for a good overview of this campaign.

  5. Wilkinson, ‘Attack on the Despensers, 1321’, p. 25.

  6. CCR 1313–1318, p. 376.

  7. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, pp. 69–70.

  8. An overview of the background to this dispute is given in the first part of the article by Fuller, ‘The Tallage of Edward II and the Bristol Rebellion’, pp. 171–278.

  9. On 21 May 1316 Badlesmere acknowledged a debt of 2,000 marks to Roger, to be levied on his lands in Kent in default of the payment (See CCR 1313–1317, p. 339). On the day of the wedding itself Badlesmere bound himself to pay £20,000 to Roger, in case of default on the marriage. See BL Harley 1240 fol. 114.

  10. Elizabeth de Badlesmere was reportedly twenty-five in 1338. See Complete Peerage, ix, p. 285.

  11. PRO DL 27/93. In addition the Abbot of Wigmore’s seal is appended to the charter.

  12. Some rolls and accounts from the Mortimer family archive, dating from the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, survive in the British Library in the two Egerton series (Egerton Charters 7350–54; Egerton Rolls 8723–60). Egerton Roll 8723 is a list of charters and other muniments confiscated from Roger’s treasury at Wigmore in 1322. Also in the British Library is the Black Book of Wigmore, the principal family cartulary, in the Harleian collection (BL Harley 1240). A contemporary abstract of this is BL Add. MS 6041. These cartularies were drawn up c. 1380 but contain transcripts of deeds extant at that time from much earlier periods. A reference system in the Black Book shows that the originals of the grants mentioned were stored in the treasury at Wigmore. A single receiver’s account for 1384 is in the National Library of Wales (see Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 10 (1932–3)). At least one late fourteenth-century Wigmore court roll is in the custody of the Harley family of Brampton Bryan, one-time vassals of the Mortimers, who owned the castle when it was dismantled in the seventeenth century (HMC: NRA 686 (Harley family papers)). Certain other odd muniments have found their way into the British Library (e.g. BL Add. Roll 58896, Harley 704 f1, etc; these references may be supplemented with others noted on the British Library MSS catalogue) and other repositories (e.g. PRO DL 27/93). The family chronicles in the John Rylands Library (12th century to 1307; Latin MS 215), Trinity College Dublin (1355–77;MS E. 2. 25) and Chicago University Library (eleventh to fifteen centuries MS CS 439 fM82 W6) were almost certainly compiled within Wigmore Abbey and formed part of the abbey’s library, so did not form part of the family’s muniments. At the Dissolution it is quite likely that such chronicles were removed from the abbey separately to the charters and records; in 1574 the abbey’s administrative records were lying in a disused chapel of the castle, as shown by a letter from Dr Dee to Lord Burghley published in T.H. Bound, History of Wigmore (1876), and the likelihood is that the family’s archive was then in the same place. Nothing more is known of it after this date.

  13. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 73. This is also the source for the previous quotation.

  14. The account of the siege of Bristol is taken from Vita, pp. 73–4.

  15. Phillips, Aymer de Valance, p. 103.

  16. The chronology of Edward Bruce’s advance through Leinster is derived from Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 228.

  17. Phillips, Documents on the Early Stages of the Bruce Invasion of Ireland, 1315–1316.

  18. Roger had decided to lead an army by 20 November. The date can be fixed since Hugh de Croft was granted pardon (for a fine waived contrary to the ordinances) on 20 November ‘on the king’s service with Roger Mortimer’. See CCR 1313–1319, p. 563.

  19. CPR 1313–1317, p. 563.

  20. CPR 1313–1317, pp. 563–4.

  21. Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244–1326, p. 455. The Earl of Lancaster, of course, ignored this summons.

  22. The description of Roger as ‘the king’s cousin’, or ‘the king’s kinsman’, appears on several writs at this time and in this context. See CPR 1313–1317, p. 632, for ‘kinsman’, and Calendar of Chancery Warrants, 1244–1326, pp. 455, 461 for ‘cousin’.

  23. Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 232.

  24. Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244–1326, p. 461.

  25. The date of 16 February and those following are from Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 230. Orpen (iv, p. 184) has 13 February for the Scots at Slane.

  26. The
assumption that the Earl of Ulster was a Scottish sympathiser was logical, given his daughter’s marriage to Robert Bruce and his failure to make an impression on the Scots at every stage of their advance. However, the evidence points to the earl being loyal, as his principal objective in this ambush was to kill Robert Bruce, as shown by his allowing Edward Bruce to pass with the vanguard ahead. It was no sham attack either, for the Scots considered this the hardest fought battle of the war. Roger later released him.

  27. These royal letters are calendered in CCR 1313–1318, p. 404. The full Latin texts are in Gilbert (ed.), Hist. & Mun. Docs, pp. 397–403.

  28. Roger’s tendency to pardon killers in order to obtain their services was well known, and was one of the causes for complaint against him in later years; it was also a method followed to extremes by the king himself in 1326.

  29. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, p. 411.

  30. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, p. 356.

  31. The arrest of the Bishop of Ferns was ordered by Edward on 6 August. See CCR 1313–1318, p. 561.

  32. ‘Okinselagh’ appears as ‘Glynsely’ in the original. See Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, p. 356, and Orpen, Ireland Under the Normans, iv, p. 195.

  33. For details of the execution of Llywelyn Bren see Griffiths, ‘Conquerors and Conquered’, p. 90.

  34. Connolly (ed.), Irish Exchequer Payments, Irish Manuscripts Commission (Dublin, 1998).

  35. Calendar of Irish Patent and Close Rolls, p. 21.

  36. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, p. 357. The possibility that it was his brother John may be discounted as when that man died in early 1319 he was described not as a knight but as a ‘king’s yeoman’. See CFR 1307–1319, p. 396. Also when his three other sons were knighted in 1327, John was not, so it is likely that he was previously knighted, this being the only known possible occasion. The knighting of children in the period is not unknown.

  37. The starving to death of John de Lacy was not necessarily a personally chosen punishment but an Irish custom. Instances of a court sentencing someone to starvation are rare in the British Isles, but other examples have cropped up with regard to Ireland. Certain Irish Templar knights were executed in this way in the early fourteenth century. Also Roger’s ancestor, Matilda de Braose, and her son were probably starved to death by King John after the rebellion of her Anglo-Irish husband, William de Braose. John had pursued William to Ireland in 1210 and may well have sentenced the family to such a fate in that country.

  6: The King’s Kinsman

  1. Phillips, ‘The “Middle Party” and the Treaty of Leake, August 1318’, passim.

  2. See Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s, Dublin, ii, p. 358, which states Roger returned to England on the ‘Sunday before the Ascension of the Lord’, i.e. Rogation Sunday, which in 1318 was 28 May.

  3. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 166–70, and Wilkinson, ‘The “Middle Party” and the Treaty of Leake, August 1318’, passim.

  4. Walter de Wogan received a discharge of his debts in respect of his good service in Ireland with Roger on 18 July. See CCR 1318–1323, p. 2.

  5. The Chamberlain of Carnarvon still owed Roger 1,600 marks in 1320. See CCR 1318–1323, pp. 179, 182.

  6. Brakspear, ‘Wigmore Abbey’, p. 42; Haines, Adam of Orleton, p. 218.

  7. Haines, Adam of Orleton, pp. 1–3.

  8. Haines, Adam of Orleton, pp. 218–19.

  9. According to the Complete Peerage, this marriage took place before 13 April 1319. It almost certainly took place on a manor belonging to one of the families. Since Roger was at court until early December in York, at Wigmore after Christmas, and back at court in York by March, the marriage probably took place between late December and early February 1318/1319.

  10. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 31. Badlesmere was able to spend this money since he was the royal envoy to the papal court. The author of Vita Edwardi Secundi certainly thought the appointment illegal. See Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 105.

  11. CCR 1313–1318, p. 229.

  12. See grant of the marriage, CFR 1307–1319, p. 369, and dispensation, Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland 1305–1342, p. 186. Eventually Catherine Mortimer married the earl, although probably not until early 1327.

  13. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 264–6. It should also be noted that Lord Berkeley had served in Roger’s household in 1318.

  14. Annals of Ulster, ii, p. 437.

  15. CFR 1307–1319, p. 393.

  16. CPR 1317–1321, p. 371.

  17. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, p. 159.

  18. The letter, BL Cottonian Charter 26/27, is in a bundle of letters to Edward along with one from Pembroke dating to early 1319. In the context of the first foundation of Dublin University one might also remark that Pembroke College, Oxford, was later founded by the widow of the Earl of Pembroke, to whom Roger betrothed his son, Roger, on whom he settled his Irish estates, suggesting a connection between Roger and a major educational benefactor.

  19. Connolly (ed.), Irish Exchequer Payments, states Roger left on 27 September; Richardson and Sayles have 30 September.

  20. Gilbert (ed.), Hist. & Mun. Docs, p. 392.

  7: Rebel

  1. For the origins of the Despenser wars, see Davies, ‘The Despenser War in Glamorgan’, pp. 21–64.

  2. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, p. 199.

  3. CPR 1317–1321, p. 523.

  4. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 109.

  5. CCR 1318–1323, p. 359. Butler was to pay Roger and Joan £1,000 over three and a half years for the marriage. The payment was to be made at Bristol, not in Ireland, thereby signifying Roger’s break from Irish affairs for the forseeable future. The Pope granted his permission for the marriage on 21 August 1320. See Blom (ed.), Papal Registers, ii, p. 208.

  6. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, p. 201.

  7. CCR 1318–1323, p. 363.

  8. CCR 1318–1323, p. 364.

  9. CCR 1318–1323, p. 366.

  10. Waugh, ‘For King, Country and Patron’, p. 26, n. 10.

  11. Phillips states that the Earl of Hereford attacked Newport and Cardiff, while Roger separately attacked Clun (Phillips, Aymer de Valence, p. 205). However, the Wigmore chronicle he quotes clearly notes that Roger personally led the attack on Newport and Cardiff ‘with his associates, Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Mortimer, lord of Chirk’ and that after Cardiff he took de Gorges to Wigmore and then occupied Clun. See Dugdale, Monasticon, vi, part i, p. 352.

  12. Hereford Cathedral Muniments, calendared in NRA 1955, pp. 825–6.

  13. CCR 1318–1323, pp. 541–3.

  14. CCR 1318–1323, pp. 541–3.

  15. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 111.

  16. The reference to the Marchers attacking the lands of the elder Despenser on the way to London is supported by a line in Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles illustrative of the reigns of Edward I and II, i, p. 293, which records their attacks on the way.

  17. See Wilkinson, ‘The Sherburn Indenture and the Attack on the Despensers, 1321’, appendices. For the references to Roger’s supposed presence there, see Complete Peerage, ix, p. 436 and Phillips, Aymer de Valence, p. 206. The meeting supposedly took place on 28 June.

  18. For example, the Modus Tenendi Parliamentorum – ‘the way of holding Parliaments’ – was written at this time. See Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 46–7.

  19. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 113.

  20. CPR 1321–1324, p. 15; BL Harley 1240, f45r. This was dated 20 August.

  21. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 115.

  22. Childs and Taylor (eds), Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 103.

  23. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 217–18. The quote is from Childs and Taylor (eds), Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 105.

  24. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 115.

  8: The King’s Prisoner

  1. Roger’s goods and chattels were c
onfiscated on 23 January 1322. See CCR 1318–1323, p. 415.

  2. Adam de Charlton’s account was published in 1858. See Lambert B. Larking, ‘Inventory of the Effects of Roger de Mortimer at Wigmore Castle and Abbey, Herefordshire, dated 15 Edward II, AD 1322’. The original is in the Public Record Office.

  3. CPR 1321–1324, p. 77.

  4. CCR 1318–1323, p. 419.

  5. Childs and Taylor (eds), Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 107.

  6. Arnold le Glover of Hereford was fined 20 marks for speaking to Lord Mortimer of Chirk, and Thomas atte Barre of Hereford received the crippling fine of 100 marks (£66) for speaking to Roger. See CPR 1321–24, pp. 64–5.

  7. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, p. 62.

  8. These details have been taken from Childs and Taylor, Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 111. A fuller list is given in Appendix C to the second volume of Complete Peerage (2nd edn).

  9. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, p. 75.

  10. CPR 1327–1330, pp. 141–2.

  11. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 92–4.

  12. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall p. 155; Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 128.

  13. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 96.

  14. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 98–9.

  15. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 94–6, for details of the queen’s movements, and the year-long pilgrimage she was expected to go on, which would have kept her away from Edward until September 1323.

  16. Isabella has been accused of plotting to free Roger, as have various other people, including de Gisors, de Bethune, and Adam of Orleton. In all probability the escape was planned by Roger himself, as suggested by the most detailed chronicle (Riley (ed.) Johannis de Trokelowe, pp. 145–6). There is supporting circumstantial evidence for this. The escape plan involved a route which required an ‘ingenious rope-ladder’, or rather a ladder made of ropes slung together, which must have been brought into the castle by Gerard d’Alspaye. This suggests the route out of the castle was planned by someone who knew the castle well: almost certainly someone who was on the inside who knew where Roger was imprisoned. Then there is the form of the rope ladder itself. One cannot help but recall the excellent use of the rope ladders employed by the Scots in capturing the English castles north of the border. The unsuccessful attempt on Berwick Castle demonstrated that these rope ladders allowed not only very quick entries to castles, they allowed very quick exits too. It is likely that whoever dreamed up its application for an escape from the Tower had some knowledge of the Scottish rope ladders, and knew someone in the city who could make one. Then there is the aspect of the pestiferum potum used to drug the guards. Whoever organised the plot was able to order the poison to be brought to the castle at short notice, and administered to the guards at a certain time and in a certain place. Finally there is the hole in the wall of the cell, which would have required a crowbar to be used to lever out the stones quickly. Thus whoever planned the escape was in the castle, knew it intimately and had knowledge of people who could work to order on the outside of the city. This could have been d’Alspaye, but it is unlikely that, without Roger’s initiative, d’Alspaye could have persuaded his men to be ready for him, or to persuade several high-status merchants to get involved. The most probable explanation is that Roger himself planned his escape, making use of d’Alspaye to smuggle his requests and commands to the many contacts he had made in London over the years. These external collaborators organised the provision of the necessary tools and the means by which Roger could flee.