The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  13. Valente, ‘Deposition and Abdication’, pp. 880–1.

  14. CCR 1327–1330, p. 1.

  15. Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 41, quoting PRO E101/382/8.

  16. Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 54, quoting PRO E101/382/8.

  17. Some sources state Henry of Lancaster, not John of Hainault, knighted him. The matter remains in doubt.

  18. The description of the medal comes from Barnes, Edward III, p. 4.

  19. CPR 1327–1330, p. 22. Note at this time only the marriage was granted; wardship of the lands was not granted until October.

  20. The wardship of Warwick was granted in 1318; that of Audley in 1316. These should not be regarded as new grants as some writers suggest.

  21. The only known membership of the council appears in The Brut. This lists the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Bishop Stratford and Bishop Orleton, the Earls of Lancaster, Norfolk, Kent and Surrey, and four barons: Thomas Wake, Henry Percy, Oliver Ingham and John de Ros. See Brie (ed.), The Brut, pp. 254–5. However, as Doherty has pointed out, the Rolls of Parliament mention fourteen members of the council, there being six barons. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 199.

  22. Doherty accounts for the queen’s expenses, and points out that she only needed from this vast wealth to pay her mercenaries’ expenses for one month. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 203–4.

  23. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 208–9.

  24. Clarke et al. (eds), Foedera, iii, p. 309.

  25. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 31. For his service with Roger, see CPR 1321–1324, p. 17.

  26. Doherty doubts that Edward was removed by force from Kenilworth, claiming that there is evidence of a peaceful transfer of custody because there was a contract drawn up between Berkeley and Lancaster, and also because Roger would have had to use an army to take the king. One suspects that some trickery was afoot. It is possible that Isabella prevailed upon Lancaster, who was still at court, to draw up the indenture with Berkeley, while Roger at or near Kenilworth prevailed upon the constable to hand over the deposed king. It seems very strange that Lancaster should have accused Roger the following year of taking the king from Kenilworth by force if it was a false accusation, as he was trying to keep the moral high ground. One suspects that, even if the indenture was made in good faith, Roger was nearby with a force of men-at-arms. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 208.

  27. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 214–34, and Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, pp. 203–28, for the basic narrative. To Doherty is due the credit for discovering the dealings between Roger and Isabella in exile and the Scots.

  28. Barbour, The Bruce, ii (1968 reprint of vols ii and iii in one vol.), pp. 473–94. Certain allowances have to be made for Barbour’s glorification of his hero, his being a literary work in praise of Bruce. Numbers of opponents and Englishmen killed are exaggerated. However, so complete was the Scottish success in outwitting the English on this campaign that Barbour did not have to exaggerate very often to make the Scots appear glorious in their retreat.

  29. Our knowledge of Edward’s escape from Berkeley Castle is based on a letter from Thomas de Berkeley dated 27 July. This was addressed to the Chancellor, John de Hothum, and so Roger had probably already been informed several days earlier by express messengers. Thus the release of the deposed king could have been achieved at any time before this. The dating of the receipt of the news to 1 July (Harding revised the calendered date of 11 July) is because on that day Maltravers and Berkeley were granted the position of keepers of the peace for almost all of the region in accordance with the Statute of Winchester. See CPR 1327–1330, p. 154; Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 136; Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 229; Haines, ‘Afterlife’, pp. 69–70.

  30. Complete Peerage, vii, p. 399.

  31. Barbour, The Bruce, ii, p. 479.

  32. Brie (ed.), The Brut, pp. 250–1.

  33. This is touched upon, although not explicitly with reference to Scotland, in the final accusations against him at the end of his life, for which see Rotuli parliamentorum, ii, p. 52; Roger is more specifically referred to in the longer Brut as a traitor for his actions. See Brie (ed.), The Brut, pp. 250–1.

  34. Barbour says this was after eight nights; le Bel, quoted by Froissart, says the first night. Barbour seems more reliable, although not an eyewitness like le Bel, since he states that for eight days nothing happened while the Scots tried to find a way to attack the English from their well-defended position.

  35. CCR 1327–1330, pp. 217–18. This order has possibly been very slightly misunderstood by certain writers. Roger had lieutenants in both North and South Wales, therefore he did not need to go in person to root out the ‘malefactors and disturbers of the peace’, and so the order cannot be seen as the reason for his departure. Significantly it was issued under the privy seal, i.e. probably at Roger’s order, and so was in reality an order to himself. Thus it was probably a cover for Roger’s departure from court at this time, not the reason for it.

  12: The King’s Murderer?

  1. Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 145. Thomas Gurney carried the message from Berkeley, as shown by the sole entry in the Berkeley expenses. See Haines, ‘Afterlife’, p. 85, n. 98. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i, p. 296.

  2. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 228.

  3. Moore, ‘Documents Relating to the Death and Burial of King Edward II’, p. 217. With regard to the date, although Doherty states that the corpse was moved sometime after 10 November, the account states definitely that Maltravers and Berkeley on 21 October ‘liberaverunt corpus dicti defuncti Abbati Sancti Petri Cloucestrie apud Gloucestriam per breve Regis …’ See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 231; Moore, ‘Documents’, p. 223.

  4. Moore, ‘Documents’, p. 226. The text of the account specifies his watching from the day of the death, ‘videlicet xxj Septembris quo die Rex obijt usque xx diem Decembris proximum sequentem’.

  5. Moore, ‘Documents’, pp. 223–6.

  6. CPR 1327–1330, p. 37.

  7. Hope, ‘On the Funeral Effigies of the Kings and Queens of England’, pp. 517–70, especially with reference to the bodies of Edward I, pp. 528–9, and Richard II, p. 533. See also report of the opening of Edward I’s tomb in the first volume of Archaeologia. The embalming process would have been expected to occur immediately after death, as happened with Edward III.

  8. According to PRO C53/114 (no. 20), Roger was at Doncaster with the court on 26 August. He was ordered on 4 September to inquire into conspiracies in South Wales against the government (CCR 1327–1330, pp. 217–18), and probably left the court at Nottingham at about that time. We have no certain information as to his whereabouts apart from the later court case involving William de Shalford in 1331, mentioned in the text, until he was once more back at Nottingham on 4 October (PRO C53/114 (no. 15)). The possibility that he met Berkeley and discussed the fate of Edward II with him is not out of the question. The acknowledgement in March the following year that he owed Thomas de Berkeley £850 might or might not reflect a deal between the two men. See CCR 1327–1330, p. 369.

  9. Tout, ‘Captivity and Death of Edward of Carnarvon’, pp. 109–10. Confirmation that William de Shalford was indeed Roger’s deputy in North Wales at this time is to be found in CPR 1327–1330, p. 194.

  10. Stubbs (ed.) Chronicles illustrative of the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, i, pp. 337–8.

  11. According to the DNB, he travelled to Exeter in June, after the death of the Bishop of Exeter, James Berkeley. He remained in Exeter until the autumn, as John de Grandison was appointed in October.

  12. Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, p. 30. She refers to it as a diary but, as the ‘diary’ genre as we know it did not evolve until the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century, this description is perhaps a little misleading.

  13. Lords travelling on the Continent, of the status of minor earls or bishops, might expect about £2 for themselves. Maltravers and Berkeley, while lesser men, were doing a
very dangerous and unusual job. A combined fee of £3 would not be unreasonable.

  14. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 52–3, 63–4.

  15. The word ‘superficialiter’ has allowed historians all sorts of looseness in interpreting the death. One in particular goes so far as to translate the word as meaning the observers’ view was ‘a very distant one’ and she goes on to use this evidence in conjunction with oak barriers mentioned later in the text to suggest that Edward was kept out of sight. See Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, p. 202. The matter is dealt with more fully in Chapter 12 Revisited.

  16. Brie (ed.), The Brut, pp. 252–3. See also Taylor, ‘The French Brut’, pp. 423–37.

  17. Quoted from the translation of the French in Childs and Taylor (eds), Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 135. This version was finalised after 1337. See Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century, p. 139.

  18. Aungier (ed.) French Chronicle of London, p. 58. The most concentrated writing on the background of the Brut, by Taylor, has suggested that the original shorter Brut was begun in London by a clerk connected with the courts or a government office, and that he moved to York with the shift of the administration in 1332–6. Taylor favours a date for the French Chronicle about ten years after the compilation of the shorter Brut. See Taylor, English Historical Literature, p. 123.

  19. Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, pp. 74–5. On the Lancastrian nature of the longer Brut, Taylor comments that ‘no other chronicle of the period carries Lancastrian partisanship quite so far’. See Taylor, English Historical Writing, p. 124.

  20. The mid-fourteenth-century English translation in the Early English Text Society series has been used. Bried (ed.), The Brut, pp. 252–3.

  21. Brie (ed.), The Brut, p. 264.

  22. See Taylor, ‘French Brut’, p. 435, in which further evidence of this journal-like method of compiling the chronicle is mentioned. The reason for picking 1329 as the most likely date for writing the earlier entry is a suspicion that the war between Roger and Lancaster at the end of 1328 triggered the red-hot poker rumours of the king’s death. It could be as early as 1327 or as late as 1332.

  23. This has been modernised from the mid-fourteenth-century English translation in Brie, The Brut, p. 253.

  24. Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles illustrative of the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ii, p. 97.

  25. Lumby (ed.), Polychronicon, viii, p. 324.

  26. Taylor, Universal Chronicle, passim; Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, pp. 44–5.

  27. This is also known as the continuation of the chronicle of Walter of Hemingburgh. See Hamilton, Hemingburgh, p. 297.

  28. Tait (ed.), Chronica Johannis de Reading and Anonymi Cantuarensis, p. 78.

  29. CPR 1321–1324, p. 17.

  30. See Hunter, ‘Measures Taken for the Apprehension of Thomas Gurney’, p. 283, which shows that as late as 1332 very minor characters were being arrested for complicity in the plot.

  31. Tout, ‘Captivity and Death’, p. 83, quoting Stubbs (ed.), ‘Annales Paulini’ in Chronicles illustrative of the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, i, p. 333.

  32. Haines, Church and Politics, pp. 26–9, 228. In the course of this mission news was received by the Pope that the Bishop of Worcester had just died, and Orleton sought and obtained the see for himself, trusting Roger and Isabella would support him. When he returned to England, he found them less than happy with his new title. However, in September 1327 he was not yet out of favour, as some historians have suggested, just a very long way from Berkeley.

  33. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 224. Gransden points out it is an often used device. See Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, p. 41.

  34. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 33.

  35. See the tomb of Edward in Gloucester for the clearest evidence of Edward’s beard. While it can be argued that this is not in fact a portrait but rather a stylised emblem of a monarch, all the images of Edward in his later years are bearded, and one must presume therefore that, even if all of these were emblematic rather than portraits, the king himself would definitely have tried to look like the emblem. Shaving the beard off therefore might have been an insult to the king. If this was the case, though, the temperature of the water was not the issue.

  13: King in all but Name

  1. Edward II had sought a divorce from Isabella even before the invasion; after the death of the Despensers he would have sought a separation from the Pope and shown her no mercy.

  2. As well as being Berkeley’s retainer, Gurney had served alongside John Maltravers in the household of the Earl of Pembroke and had been a fellow prisoner with Roger in the Tower of London in 1322–3. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 256, 262. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, p. 160.

  3. The first and last of these names are tentatively included from the Fieschi letter. See Chapter 12 Revisited.

  4. Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 145. Haines, ‘Afterlife’, p. 85, n. 98. The accounts of Lord Berkeley mention Gurney being despatched with letters for the king, Mortimer and the queen mother. See Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i, pp. 296–7.

  5. Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 145, quoting PRO DL 10/253.

  6. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys i, p. 297. The most likely reason for this was that the king was being transported in disguise across the south-west.

  7. Isabella was eventually buried with the heart of the real Edward II beneath her tomb, many years later. The correlation of the presentation of a false heart and the burial of the real one suggests that this was her specific request. It is, of course, possible that the removal of the heart was merely customary. Heart burial was not at all uncommon in this period: the heart of a royal kinsman of Roger’s, Henry of Almaine, lay in a silver vase on the altar of Westminster Abbey.

  8. There is no doubt that Gloucester was specifically chosen; Abbot Thoky’s claim that he was merciful in giving the king’s corpse a resting place when others did not dare do so is pure fiction. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 230.

  9. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 231–2; Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, pp. 147–9; Moore, ‘Documents’, passim; Haines, ‘Afterlife’, p. 75; Tout, ‘Captivity and Death’, pp. 92–3.

  10. Roger was drawn to his execution in the same tunic three years later. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 62, n. 11.

  11. The question of whether Isabella was involved equally in the Berkeley Castle plot is a complicated one. The only directly relevant piece of evidence we have is Hugh de Glanville’s account, which states that, having spent four days at Gloucester after the burial of the king, he spent two days travelling to Worcester ‘bringing a certain woman who embalmed the king to the queen by the king’s order, staying there one day, and from there for four days returning to York’. It is interesting that de Glanville states that he took her to Isabella. On the face of it this suggests that it was Isabella who had doubts about the corpse, not the king. However, there are reasons to doubt that Roger deceived her over her husband’s death. If Isabella was of the opinion in September 1327 that, regretfully, her husband had to die, then the plot to keep him secretly alive would not have met with her approval, and the rewards heaped upon Berkeley and Maltravers for their part in the Berkeley Castle plot would not have come from her hands. It is unlikely that Maltravers in particular would have become Steward of the Royal Household if he had jeopardised her position in this way without her approval. Thus we can be relatively confident that Isabella knew and sanctioned the plot to keep her husband secretly alive, even though it placed her in increased danger. From this we may infer that there would have been no advantage to Roger pretending to her that Edward was dead between September and December 1327, and indeed, such a pretence of the man’s death and tricking of Isabella would have been a heavy strain on their relationship. Thus it is highly likely that Isabella knew in September 1327 that her husband was not dead. When the woman who had embalmed the corpse was taken to Worcester, she was probably led to the queen so that Isabella could question her in front of h
er son privately in order to demonstrate to him that his father was, indeed, alive. See Moore, ‘Documents’, p. 226, for Hugh de Glanville’s account and the detail of the woman being summoned. It is interesting that there was an attempt to suppress this piece of information, suggesting that the visit was sensitive and needed to be eradicated from the official account. The text of the account submitted to the Exchequer does not mention the woman. She only appears in Glanville’s own particulars, which read: ‘Et eidem moranti apud Gloucestriam ad computandum cum ministris Regis per iiijor dies post sepulturam corporis dicti Regis et redeundo de ibidem usque Wygorn’ ducendo quandam mulierem que exviceravit Regem ad Reginam precepto Regis per duos dies morando ibidem per unum diem et abinde redeundo usque Eboracum per iiijor dies capienti ut supra xxxv.s ix.d.’ In the submitted account de Glanville simply spent seven days returning to York.

  12. CPR 1327–1330, p. 192. Holand’s lands had been granted back to him on 2 December after his petition to Parliament in September. The Sheriff of Lancashire refused to hand them over. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 238. Holand’s wife had been restored her lands the previous March, and Holand himself had been given a pardon for escaping from gaol during Despenser’s regime in February, so there may have been a deliberate courting of Holand by Roger and Isabella in anticipation of the Earl of Lancaster’s opposition.