FOURTEEN
THE MOMENT THE Earl of Lancaster knelt at the feet of the young king, Roger was able to claim a personal victory far greater than merely that of defeating Lancaster. All England, Wales and Ireland was under his control. The king was in his power, Isabella was more dependent on him than ever, and all the key office-holders in the country were his appointments. If people sought pardons, they sought them from him. If wardships were distributed, it was to men of whom he approved. He had been granted the most prestigious title in the country, and no one dared face him with an army. His only real threat had been the vanquished, humiliated earl, kneeling in the mud before him. This, he may have reflected in his moment of glory, was what it felt like to be a king.
Like a king, but not actually a king. He did not enjoy this power by right but through duplicity and force. He could never be secure. Knowledge that Edward II was still alive was now circulating among the nobility: if he had previously had any doubts about remaining at court, this resolved them. He could never go back now to live on his own estates, as the Earl of Lancaster had demanded. And why should he? He had won the right to dictate his own fate, as well as Lancaster’s. Besides, there was Isabella to consider. She needed him. Henry of Lancaster’s rebellion had demonstrated that no one could be trusted. If Isabella’s second son John, the newly created Earl of Cornwall, were to die, the Earl of Norfolk would be next in line to the throne. Norfolk had initially sided with the rebels, and had only sought peace at the last moment. What if he were to take arms? And how many others were there like him? It was Roger’s duty to stay and show the king how to rule his realm, and how to control his opponents. In this way he justified to himself the necessity of maintaining his grip on power. The result was that he ruled the kingdom for the next two years with less regard for its people than for himself.
Those who had dared oppose him had to pay the penalty, especially the less important men, the Londoners. Only a matter of days after Lancaster’s submission the new mayor of London and twenty-four leading citizens were summoned and ordered to hold an inquiry to root out all those who had supported Lancaster. They held a council at the end of the month. Powerful figures within the city hierarchy tried to protect the Lancastrian sympathisers, but spies ensured that this information found its way to Roger. A few days later the city’s inquiry was replaced by a group favourable to Roger, namely Oliver Ingham, Sir John Maltravers, John de Stonor, Robert Mablethorpe and John de Grantham, the mayor.1 Trials continued throughout the first half of February. It tried even the most powerful merchants, including Hamo de Chigwell, the former mayor, who was sent to the Tower.2
Londoners could be stamped on hard. Peers were a different matter. Obviously all positions of authority were removed from lords who had joined Lancaster. There was an unstated but implied death sentence on those whom Roger felt had betrayed him most of all: Thomas Roscelyn, Henry de Beaumont and William Trussel. To these he added Thomas Wyther, for the murder of Robert de Holand. All four of these men fled to France and lost their lands. But otherwise Roger was lenient. The Earls of Norfolk and Kent were not punished. Thomas Wake, being Roger’s cousin, was bound over for £10,000. Hugh Audley, Roger’s nephew, was also not driven into exile but was allowed to keep his estates on penalty of £10,000. The Earl of Lancaster himself was treated similarly, being bound over for £30,000 and fined £11,000. Many more leaders were allowed to remain and keep their estates on recognition of an impending fine. Roger did not need to exact revenge; he merely consolidated his victory by financial punishments and by forcing all rebel lords to swear to protect the king, Isabella, and all the other members of the king’s council, including, of course, Roger himself.
There are several reasons why Roger showed such leniency to his opponents. The first is that he did not want to provoke the reaction which would surely follow a cold-blooded massacre of the nobility, like the one after the Battle of Boroughbridge. In addition, he had sworn an oath on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s crozier that he meant the Earl of Lancaster no harm. Thomas Wake and Hugh Audley were close relations, and he did not want to alienate them. Similarly he did not want to damage the Earls of Kent and Norfolk; rather he wanted to thank them for turning the tables on Lancaster. Besides, he wanted to draw closer to the royal family, not to distance himself from it. But probably the most important reason was that he was cautious of the weight of the opposition which had dared to face him. Even now, Henry of Lancaster was very popular, especially in the north, for having led the resistance to Roger’s peace treaty with Scotland. To punish him severely would be to incite a popular uprising. Lastly, news of the ex-king’s survival was now spreading among his opponents beyond his control, and becoming common rumour. In the words of the longerBrut chronicle, ‘all the commons almost of England were in sorrow and dread’ whether the king was alive at Corfe or not.3
In addition to the rumours and and the whispers behind closed doors, there was the problem of France. When Philip de Valois ascended the throne, against the claim of Edward III, he dealt a diplomatic as well as a political blow to the English royal family. In the autumn of 1328 the new French king insisted that Edward should come in person to France to do homage for Gascony. Isabella retorted that the son of a king would never do homage to the son of a mere count.4 Philip de Valois responded by confiscating the revenues of Gascony and, in February 1329, sent an ultimatum. Roger and Isabella, still tidying up the legal loose ends of Lancaster’s rebellion, realised they were in no position to go to war with France. Instead they loaded the envoys with gifts for the French king and promised that Edward would perform homage in the near future. In April an apology for the delay was sent. Finally in May the court went into Kent to see the young king off to France. As they said goodbye to one another at Dover, Edward gave Roger a diamond amulet worth £20, a token perhaps of his confidence in him rather than Henry of Lancaster.5
The king was away for sixteen days. He performed homage to Philip at Amiens on 6 June. He did so in an unsatisfactory manner, so far as the French king was concerned, for Philip wanted Edward to swear to serve him in war, knowing there was a high risk of Edward (as a rival for the French throne) attacking him. But the English advisers with Edward, notably Roger’s close friend, Henry de Burghersh, had been instructed not to let this happen, and Edward himself had no wish to serve his mother’s cousin. As soon as the ceremony was over Isabella summoned her son to return to England as quickly as possible, and he obeyed, without even taking formal leave of the King of France.6 On 11 June he was back at Dover. Three days later he was with Roger and Isabella at Canterbury.
We cannot know for certain the reason why Isabella summoned him back so abruptly. Perhaps she did not want him to fall under Philip’s influence; perhaps she did not trust Philip not to detain her son. But there is another possibility, more plausible than her fear of Edward falling under Philip’s influence; and although it cannot be proved it needs to be considered seriously.
She was pregnant.
*
The subject of Isabella’s pregnancy has to be approached with enormous caution. If she was at any time pregnant with Roger’s child, the fact was kept secret for two very good reasons. Firstly, the child was proof of an enormous impropriety on the part of the queen mother, and a public insult to the king. Secondly, a male child would have had a claim to the throne of France, after King Edward and Prince John, and thus his very existence would have constituted an international scandal, very probably affecting Edward’s claim to the French throne. To Edward, who clearly found Roger’s hold on him irksome, the thought of having to acknowledge Roger’s son as his half-brother was unbearable. The irony was that Edward was the one person from whom Roger and Isabella could not hide the truth. Being so close to his mother, and seeing her every day, any protracted period apart would have made him suspicious. But with his help, a pregnancy might be kept secret, especially under the more voluminous dresses to be seen at court now that Philippa was queen.
In these circumstances it is surprising that there is any evidence at all regarding a pregnancy. But there are some details which, taken together, indicate that it may well have happened. Firstly there is the chronicle of Froissart, which states bluntly that Isabella was rumoured to be pregnant in 1330.7 Froissart is somewhat erratic in his chronology of the early years of the reign of Edward III, and regards dates as less important than deeds of valour, but it is unlikely he would have completely fabricated a story which brought no credit to the mother of his hero. He may have heard a rumour and supposed it related to Roger’s arrest in 1330, or he may have picked up on rumours concerning a second pregnancy.
Support for Froissart’s statement that Isabella was pregnant is to be found in less explicit but more official sources for the previous year. In September 1329 Isabella made a form of will: a settlement of some of her estates which in the event of her death were to go to Roger. This was unusual for a thirty-three-year-old woman; most people made bequests only in the last months of life, when they knew they were dying. But it was not the first time Isabella had made such a settlement: she had made a similar one when pregnant with her first child in 1312, facing the uncertainty of giving birth.8 The only credible alternatives to a pregnancy are that Isabella was ill, or feared an attempt on her life. There is no evidence for any illness, and no evidence that anyone was plotting to murder her at that time.
The next piece of evidence that Isabella was pregnant in the summer of 1329 relates directly to Roger. In the grant he had made to Leintwardine church the previous December he had specified nine chaplains to sing masses daily for the souls of King Edward III, Queen Isabella, Queen Philippa, Bishop Burghersh, himself, his countess Joan, and their children, their successors and their ancestors.9 There are nine constituencies here – six individuals and three groups – corresponding with the nine chaplains endowed. On 10 February 1330 Roger added another chaplain and another individual, acknowledging that there was now a further member of his extended family for whose soul prayers had to be offered daily. Roger named him as the ‘Earl of Lincoln’.10
This choice of title is interesting because there was no Earl of Lincoln in 1330.11 The last man to bear this title had been Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who had borne the title by right of his wife, Alice, the last surviving child of Henry, Earl of Lincoln. The Earl of Suffolk had seized the countess and taken her away from Lancaster, to her great delight, and so Henry of Lancaster was unable to inherit the Lincoln title after the overthrow of the Despensers. She was forty-eight years old, and knew she would not bear an heir herself, although she was married to Sir Ebulo Lestrange, a Shropshire baron. Thus the title was bound to become extinct on her death. Moreover, most of the Lincoln estates had already been granted to Isabella, and those which had not were soon to be granted to Roger and his son Geoffrey.12 Thus, although the Leintwardine grant evidence is not conclusive, it is clearly significant. It suggests that there was a son, gives him a highly plausible title which he could have expected to be granted on the death of the countess, and explains how Roger and Isabella might have managed to bring him into the front rank of the nobility, despite his illegitimacy.13
If there was a child born to Isabella at this period one would expect this to be indicated by a prolonged pause in her itinerary. When Queen Philippa was heavily pregnant with Edward’s son in 1330, the court stayed at Woodstock from 29 March until 20 June, a period of about twelve weeks, moving on a few days after the birth took place (on 16 June). Apart from this instance there are only four other periods of five weeks or more when the court stayed in one place in the years 1326–30. All but one of these can be linked to major political developments in 1327, as the government was being more firmly established.14 There are no such prolonged pauses in Isabella’s itinerary in 1328. The only other stay in the whole of Roger’s period of authority was at Kenilworth Castle from 29 October 1329 to 3 January 1330. This is without obvious explanation. Indeed it was the quietest period of Roger and Isabella’s time together. Thus, if Isabella was pregnant by Roger, the most likely time and place for the child to have been born was December 1329 at Kenilworth. This coincides with the evidence of the revised Leintwardine grant, which implies a date not long before 10 February 1330.
If an illegitimate son was born at Kenilworth in December 1329, it would help explain several other events in the summer of that year. For example, it would explain why Edward returned from France so quickly in June. Isabella and Roger realised the necessity of informing Edward at an early opportunity and summoned him back without an explanation. This caused him to hasten, fearing the worst. It would also explain a gift-giving ceremony which took place at Windsor that summer.15 Edward gave Roger a number of valuable jewels and other gifts, including seven silver goblets, four of which were gilt, one patterned with shells, one enamelled, and one encrusted with jewels.16 Such gift-giving between the king and his most important vassal may be accepted as routine, but it is not so easy to explain Edward’s gift of a French goblet later that summer. This was a valuable silver-gilt enamelled goblet bearing the royal arms of France and Navarre.17 These were the arms of Isabella’s parents, and thus this cup had been a possession of the French royal family, and a gift to Edward. Giving it to Roger was perhaps a confirmation, prompted by Isabella, that Roger was now linked to the royal family.
Any part of this evidence by itself would permit only tentative suggestions regarding a pregnancy. Taken as a whole, however, it suggests that Isabella gave birth to Roger’s son in December 1329. Moreover it seems that Edward was told about it. This is highly significant, as it would explain the worsening of Roger’s and Edward’s relationship with one another which took place at this time. Up to late 1329 Roger dominated the king and the court, but he remained deferential to Edward. All the marks of disrespect to the king – remaining seated in his presence, walking by his side, and, eventually, commanding that his own word was to be obeyed, and not the king’s – date from after the late summer of 1329.18
This is the real importance of a pregnancy in 1329: the effect it would have had on Roger and Isabella, and on their relationship with Edward. How did they cope with the pressure of keeping the pregnancy hidden while being seen publicly to be in control of government? What happened to their relationship with each other? Since Isabella was already bound to Roger by her dependency on him to keep Edward II safely concealed, it probably only reinforced the knowledge that they could never leave each other, as this secret could have destroyed both of them. But what did it mean for Roger’s relationship with Edward? It meant that Roger was even more closely tied to the royal family. He not only had possession of the ex-king and the love of the queen, he was biologically linked to the king through a half-brother. Edward could no longer hope that one day Roger would withdraw from court. If Isabella was pregnant, Roger was bound into the royal family by blood. To unbind him, blood would need to be shed.
*
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.19 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.20 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 £1,000.21 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.22 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,23 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’?24
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’.25 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.
*
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.26 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.27
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 1329.28 At the end of September, Roger appointed John Maltravers the official custodian of Corfe Castle, to protect his royal prisoner.29
In early October the court was at Dunstable for a tournament.30 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.31 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.32 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.33 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.
*
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.34 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.35 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.36 Roger himself acted as the prosecutor. The author of the longer Brutchronicle 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.
Kent is supposed to have replied: ‘In truth, Sir, understand well that I never assented to the impairment of the state of our lord the king, nor of his crown, and that I put myself to be tried by my peers.’ But Roger paid no attention to the earl’s plea. Instead he produced the letter which Kent had sent to the deposed king by way of Bogo de Bayeux and John Deveril. He held it up, with its seal, for all to see. ‘Sir Edmund, know ye not the print of this letter that you took unto Sir John Deveril?’ The earl, not knowing which letter it might have been, as he had sent several, agreed on inspecting the seal that it was one of his, but he claimed it was of no consequence. Roger asked him again if the seal was his, and the earl said he would not deny it. And then, in the words of the chronicler, ‘with that word the wily and false Mortimer began to undo the letter and started to read it in the hearing of all the court’.
Worships and reverence, with a brother’s liegeance and subjection. Sir knight, worshipful and dear brother, if you please, I pray heartily that you are of good comfort, for I shall ordain for you that soon you shall come out of prison, and be delivered of that disease in which you find yourself. Your lordship should know that I have the assent of almost all the great lords of England, with all their apparel, that is to say, with armour, and with treasure without number, in order to maintain and help your quarrel so you shall be king again as you were before, and that they all – prelates, earls and barons – have sworn to me upon a book.37
The implications did not need to be spelled out to those in the court. This was proof that a number of lords were plotting against the government, and thus against the king. More importantly, Kent would be forced to name names, and to implicate these lords, great and small, including some lords present. If the king’s own uncle could be charged in this way, no one was safe.
It was Robert Howel who delivered the final judgement:
Sir Edmund, since you have admitted openly in this court that this is your letter ensealed with your seal, and the tenor of the letter is that you were on the point of delivering the body of that worshipful knight Sir Edward, sometime King of England, your brother, and to help him become king again, and to govern his people as he was wont to do beforehand, thus impairing the state of our liege lord the present king, whom God keep from all disease … the will of this court is that you shall lose both life and limb, and that your heirs shall be disinherited forevermore, save the grace of our lord the king.
The court was horrified. The Earl of Kent was to die for the crime of trying to rescue his own brother. And all his family were to be disinherited. It was incredible. Everyone presumed that this was an anomaly, that the earl would appeal to the king, and that the king would spare the earl’s life. Edward II had lost his crown because of such acts of tyranny; surely his son would not uphold the death sentence on his own uncle for a crime fabricated by Roger.
But this extraordinary charade was not yet over. On 16 March a fuller confession was extracted from the earl, and it was read aloud in Parliament. It was declared solemnly that the Earl of Kent had acknowledged that the Pope had charged him to deliver Edward II from prison, and had promised to fund the plot. Many lords and prelates were implicated, including the Archbishop of York, Sir Ingelram de Berengar and Sir William de la Zouche, who had all promised to help rescue Edward II from Corfe. It was confessed that the archbishop had pledged £5,000. Sir Fulk FitzWarin was accused, so too were Sir John Pecche, Sir Henry de Beaumont, Sir Thomas Roscelyn, the Scottish Earl of Mar, Lady Vesci and the Bishop of London. The earl implicated certain Dominican friars, claiming they had informed him his brother was at Corfe. He gave everything away; everything, that is, except the real source of his information. Instead he told the story about the friar who had summoned up the devil. This suited both Roger and the king: if Kent had admitted he had heard of Edward II’s existence from the present king his testimony would confirm to everyone that Edward II was alive.
Having confessed so much, and so wholeheartedly, the earl threw himself on Edward’s mercy. He admitted that he was guilty, and that he had borne himself badly towards the king, and wholly submitted himself to him. He promised, if it was the king’s will, to walk in his shirt through the streets of Winchester or even all the way to London, barefoot, with a rope around his neck, or wherever the king pleased, in atonement for his offence. The picture of the earl is that of a sincerely contrite, terrified human being, begging for forgiveness with all his heart, not fully able to grasp that he was to be executed for trying to free his brother.
He was right to be terrified. Roger was unmoved by his pleading. To the earl’s horror and the astonishment of all present, Roger boldly urged that the death sentence be upheld. Edward, seeing that Kent had betrayed him by trying to restore his father, thereby jeopardising his life, had no choice but reluctantly to assent to the earl’s death.38
It was the most profoundly shocking act of tyranny that anyone could remember. There was no evidence against Kent apart from his confession and his letter. Roger himself had been forgiven far worse in 1322 by Edward II. But Roger knew that his life and Isabella’s life were at risk, and he was ruthless. There could be no half-measures. He ordered the arrest of Kent’s pregnant wife and their children. Like Hugh Despenser before him, he was locking up whole families and confiscating their estates. That Kent and his wife had both once been in exile in France with Roger simply made matters worse: as with Roscelyn, Beaumont and Wake, he had trusted these people implicitly. To be betrayed by them was an act of personal enmity, and he could not bear such betrayal.
The day before Kent’s execution Roger ordered about forty men to be arrested. Every layman mentioned in the earl’s confession was proscribed, as well as many others. He used the moment to take action against everyone whom he wanted behind bars.
The Earl of Kent was led out of his cell to be beheaded on the morning of 19 March 1330. There he waited, in the midst of a crowd. The man appointed to wield the axe refused to do so. Men-at-arms were ordered to cut the earl’s head off, but none dared. Their captains sympathised. And so the earl stood there, for several hours. The crowd grew restless. Furious with the delay, Roger offered a pardon to anyone in the local prison who would cut off the earl’s head. At last a latrine cleaner, facing the death penalty himself, was found and he agreed to kill the earl in return for his life being spared. The axe came down, the blood spurted on to the ground, and the earl’s head was lifted to the traditional shout of ‘behold the head of a traitor’. But the crowd was silent. The earl had not been a popular man but he was undoubtedly a victim of Roger’s tyranny, ensnared in his misguided search for his brother. Roger had taken advantage of his fraternal honour. His judicial execution amounted to murder.
*
There could be no significant parliamentary business after the earl’s death. No one had the stomach for it. Roger had called for a parliament with the intention of impressing everyone with a demonstration of his power, which he had very effectively done. But while the lords were frightened, as he intended, they were also appalled. They were more determined than ever to remove him from power. But as long as the king kept silent, as long as he tolerated Roger, they could do nothing.
For the forty men whose names were on the list which Roger issued the day before the execution, the king’s position was an irrelevance. They were preoccupied with trying to save their own lives. Most fled the country as quickly as they could, before Roger closed the ports. Those who managed to escape joined Roger’s other enemies on the Continent. Many others did not wait for the next list, which was issued at the end of the month, or for the list after that. Thomas Wake, for example, fled long before his arrest warrant was issued. Like most sane men, he realised that Roger was now acting without any limit on his power, and without any regard to the destruction he was causing. Throughout the country commissioners were appointed to arrest political opponents and agitators. Despenser’s brutal tyranny had been reborn.
The increased violence and fear following Kent’s arrest and death were accompanied by Roger’s increased demands for money. At Winchester Roger had asked Parliament to grant a tax to be levied on both the clergy and the ordinary folk of the country, to pay for the defence of Gascony. Not surprisingly, after the execution of Kent, he received assent. Having heard of the unrest in London and the boldness of the Londoners, he berated their representatives and demanded a special tax be levied on the city. At the same time the Pope was prevailed upon to allow an ecclesiastical grant. Huge amounts of cash were needed to prepare to defend England from the risk of invasion by the exiles. There was stiff resistance from the Church, especially when it emerged that the money granted at an earlier date for a Scottish campaign had been spent on other things. But refusal was not an option: Roger and Isabella had already spent the £20,000 that the Scots had paid for the recognition of sovereignty; and the reserve of £60,000 which Edward had left in his treasury at the time of the revolution had also long since gone.
In addition to this urgent drive for public cash, Roger now sought personal grants on an unprecedented scale. On 20 April he ordered that he be pardoned all his own and all his ancestors’ debts at the Exchequer.39 Two days later he arranged that a certain John Galeys, in return for his service to Roger, should be allowed to keep a manor which he held from Queen Philippa, even after her death.40 The royal purse was now publicly rewarding men for service to Roger. On his forty-third birthday, he celebrated with a whole string of grants. To himself he gave the lordship of the manor of Droitwich and custody of the castle of Athlone in Ireland. To himself and Joan he granted palatinate rights in Meath. To his son Sir Geoffrey, who had obviously been forgiven for his earlier outburst, he granted the lordship of Donnington Castle, as well as other lands forfeited by the Earl of Kent in Leicestershire, Gloucestershire, Surrey, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Wiltshire.41 In May he granted himself an extra 500 marks (£333) annually, in addition to his usual salary, for governing Wales. In June he granted himself an extra 500 marks in return for his continued attendance on the king as well as the lordship of the manor of Westhall and the town of Folebrook. At the same time his son Geoffrey received the manor of Miserden, another of the Earl of Kent’s properties. A few days later he extended his control of the Pembroke wardship which he still held. The list goes on and on … In August he received Clifford Castle, the manor of Glasbury, the custody of the manor of Gormanstown, and a grant of all the goods and chattels of the Earls of Arundel and Hugh Despenser in the Marches of Wales which had escheated to the king. This last grant especially was an example of Roger interpreting his earldom of March in the widest possible sense, claiming authority over a vast area, and appropriating the huge wealth of the Despensers, which had supposedly been surrendered to the government, rather than to him personally.
No one was safe from Roger’s rapacity, not even his relations. His judicial murder of his cousin’s husband (the Earl of Kent) and the imprisonment of his thirty-eight-weeks-pregnant cousin (the Countess of Kent) have already been mentioned. Similarly he claimed that John Mortimer, grandson and heir of Lord Mortimer of Chirk, was illegitimate, and therefore could not inherit the Chirk lordship. Roger took it for himself, and thereby disinherited another cousin. Thomas Wake was another cousin whom he disinherited. He let nothing, not even kinship, stand in his way.
There were those who benefited from Roger’s tyranny. The lands of the Earl of Kent did not just go to Sir Geoffrey; they were distributed among men such as Hugh de Turpington, John Maltravers, John Wyard, Thomas de Berkeley, Sir Simon Bereford, Edward de Bohun, Sir Bartholomew de Burghersh, the Earl of Surrey and Oliver Ingham. Many of them had to promise to perform military service in return, ostensibly to the king but in reality to Roger. Orders were issued for the protection of Roger’s favoured merchants. Others benefited from grants made at his request as before, and more of his supporters were appointed to key positions. Maltravers was made Steward of the Royal Household again, and was followed in that office by Sir Hugh de Turpington. But whereas once Roger would have made such appointments out of patronage, now he was acting in self-defence.
Edward had tolerated Roger for nearly five years now, during which time their relationship had been borne with great frustration on the king’s part. The two men had not been enemies the whole time: like Roger, Edward enjoyed jousting and hawking, and was enthusiastic about the whole chivalric world. Nevertheless by 1330 the companionship had worn very thin, and Edward had built up a catalogue of grudges against Roger, such as the Scottish fiasco and the secret custody of his father. With the execution of Kent in March, Edward and Roger became outright enemies. Edward could see that Roger’s domination of the government had to be brought to an end, but he could not find a way to act. Roger had too much power over him. Someone else would have to act on his behalf. But Roger had so many spies about the court. Sir William de Montagu was one of the few men whom the king could trust. Accordingly, in the summer of 1330, Montagu began tactfully and cautiously to prepare a band of supporters who would help the king throw off the yoke of Roger and Isabella.
Taking action against Roger was, however, exceedingly dangerous. In early June Richard FitzAlan, the disinherited Earl of Arundel, plotted to end Roger’s rule through a rising of men in Shropshire and Staffordshire. He was found out and swiftly arrested.42 A larger and more elaborate plot was hatched by the band of exiles from the English court on the Continent. They were now of sufficient strength and financial leverage to attempt an invasion, following Roger’s own example. A contingent in Wales was prepared to strike at Roger’s estates there, and the exiles themselves and their forces planned to attack the English coast, forcing a war on two fronts. But Roger was alert to their plans. In July all the counties and towns were forced to array troops for the defence of the realm, and Roger and his son Edmund themselves inspected many of the men. The Londoners were required to swear loyalty to Edward. With England on the alert, Wales being purged of would-be rebels under Roger’s justiciarship, and the court taking up a defensive position at Gloucester, within striking distance of Roger’s estates, the invasion plans of the exiles were brought to a halt.43
Roger’s unpopularity was now widespread. Several contemporary chroniclers refer to his pride, and reflect suspicions that he was about to seize the crown for himself. The Anonimalle Chronicle states that Roger ‘usurped royal power and great treasure and had thought to overthrow the king’.44The French Chronicle of London says that the huge host of Welsh and English men-at-arms following Roger wrought great destruction wherever they went, so that there was not a woman, wife or girl who had not been ‘played with’ in all the country through which they passed.45 Although both canons of St Paul’s writing in the 1320s and 1330s were distant and objective about the Earl of March, they said nothing in his defence. The author of the longer Brut particularly disliked Roger, stating that he was ‘so proud and high that he held no lord of the realm his equal’. The chronicler also claimed that he was covetous, and let his servants eat at the same table as the king’s servants, and he allowed himself to eat from the same plate as the king, and to share carriages with him.46
The court moved north from Gloucester in July. Roger knew there were plots against him everywhere, and he sought to root out all conspirators. But the principal coordinators of the movement now forming against him were very careful men. By the time the court reached Northampton at the end of July, Montagu had sounded out and recruited several reliable supporters. He was able to tell Edward that he had a body of men who were prepared to act. It seems, however, that the king was still very cautious about removing Roger, and one chronicle states that Montagu had to persuade Edward to agree to action, saying to him that it was ‘better to eat the dog than be eaten by the dog’.47 Edward assented, acknowledged his friend was right, but urged that they bide their time.
Roger’s spies were hard at work. By the time the court arrived at Nottingham Castle, perched on a rock above the town, Roger knew that there was a new plot afoot. Some men were suggesting that he be prosecuted for the murder of the king’s father, and that a legal means be found to remove him. John Wyard and his fellow spies reported back to Roger that some of the king’s friends were holding secret meetings and discussing action against him. All September Roger worked at establishing who was doing what and which plots were being hatched in the town below. But cocooned by his bodyguard, and cut off on his rock, there was little he could do but wait for his spies to bring him news. Little official business was transacted. When Henry of Lancaster arrived in preparation for the parliament that was to be held in mid-October, and sought accommodation in the castle as befitting his rank, Roger angrily demanded to know who had let so dangerous an enemy of Queen Isabella be housed so close to her? To the fury of the earl, who had lost his sight since his rebellion against Roger, he was moved out of the castle and down into the town. Roger told Isabella to take the keys of the castle into her own keeping, and ordered the guards to obey his orders before those of the king. Like Edward, Roger trusted no one but his own close friends.
By 15 October, when Parliament was due to meet, Roger and the court had been in the town for six weeks, and the tension had not abated. Was the forthcoming assembly going to be a show trial like the last? Was the Earl of Lancaster to be the victim this time? Or were Roger’s spies pointing to someone else? Everyone understood that the next few days would be crucial. The king and his close friends had to move fast.
Roger himself precipitated the final confrontation. From his spies he knew that some of the king’s friends, including William de Montagu, were accusing him of the murder of the king’s father in Berkeley Castle. Roger, ‘as a devil for wrath’, summoned each of them to him.48 One by one he interrogated them: Montagu, Edward de Bohun (whom Roger had recently rewarded for his support), Ralph Stafford, Robert Ufford, William Clinton and John Neville.49 All remained silent, except Montagu, who denied strenuously that there was any plot afoot. Without further evidence, Roger let them go, to have them watched and to lure them into providing him with the proof he needed. But this time the men he was dealing with were the cream of the young generation of knights at court. They were quick-witted and active, and had been bred on Roger’s own prescribed diet of loyalty and courage. Most importantly, they were men whom Roger wanted to believe would not betray him, as they were sons of his old comrades in arms. But while Roger might have given them the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, they for their part could not risk being interrogated a second time.
On or just before the third day of the parliament Montagu was approached by a local man, William Eland. He had grown up at the castle, he told Montagu, and he knew all the passages through the rock on which the castle was built. One particular secret tunnel led out of the castle and into the park. Despite Isabella having taken the keys, and despite Roger doubling the guards on the castle gates, and ordering that his commands alone were to be obeyed, it was still possible to get inside the fortress, and even to get into the royal apartments, through these subterranean passages. There was a door, bolted, at the top of the tunnel, but Edward himself could undo the bolt and allow his men in. Montagu was struck by the tremendous opportunity this presented, and sent a message to Edward immediately. No one was to try to enter the castle, he said, without first consulting him.50
On the evening of 19 October, after the gates to the castle had been secured, Edward asked to leave the hall, claiming he was unwell. His physician, Pancio de Controne, agreed that he should go to his chamber, and went with him.51 He and his physician pretended he was ill until Roger and Isabella and their supporters had withdrawn from the hall and retired to Isabella’s chamber to discuss what was to be done about the conspirators who now faced them. Sir Hugh de Turpington was with them. So too were Sir Simon Bereford, Oliver Ingham and Bishop Burghersh. Squires and household officers were about in the candlelit corridor leading to the royal chambers. But the guards were outside, in the bailey, on the walls and at the gates. The castle was on high alert, but not in a state of alarm.
Meanwhile, in the park below the castle, in the pitch dark, two dozen men gathered, led by Sir William de Montagu. They had publicly left Nottingham that afternoon, pretending they were fleeing Roger’s investigation; but they had come back in the moonless dark. They were waiting for more men to join them. As they waited, tense, in the cold, they decided their fellows had got lost. It would be just the few of them who would attack. Montagu gave the order to William Eland, and they moved in the direction of the castle.
Eland led them to the foot of the crag on which the castle was built, and felt his way through the tunnel within. The men moved with caution, and as silently as they could. Up above in the castle itself, Isabella’s old clerk, Robert Wyvill, who had also been recruited by Montagu, came to the king to tell him that Roger and Isabella and their council were in her chamber. Perhaps he also said that the signal at the door to the secret tunnel had been given. Edward stopped feigning illness, got off his bed, and slipped out into the corridor. He pulled back the drawbar on the door to the tunnel and admitted the armed and determined figure of John Neville, mace in hand, followed by William Eland, Montagu and the others.
Suddenly Sir Hugh de Turpington came around the corner and saw them. ‘Traitors!’ he yelled, drawing his sword, and despite the numbers facing him he charged them, shouting, to warn Roger, ‘It is for nought that you enter this castle! All of you shall die an evil death here!’ And with that he hurled himself at the foremost of them, household squires following his voice, terrified in the candlelight. In Isabella’s chamber, Roger hastily drew his sword and hastened out into the corridor. But, before he could do anything, Sir Hugh de Turpington, his lifelong comrade, was struck on the head by Neville’s mace, collapsing under the blow. Richard de Monmouth, the squire who had escaped with Roger from the Tower and who had faithfully served him for the last seven years, was the next to go down defending his lord. There was no hope of holding back the assailants. As Robert de Walkefare struck down an usher, Richard de Crombek, the leading knights pushed past and fell on Roger. Isabella, realising her son had betrayed them, knew that all was lost. ‘Fair son,’ she screamed out into the dark corridor, ‘have pity on the gentle Mortimer! Do not harm him, he is a worthy knight. Our beloved friend, our dear cousin.’52
Roger was overpowered, bound and gagged. Behind him, Isabella was forced back into her chamber and placed under guard. Montagu, or one of his men, made a quick search of the chamber and found Bishop Burghersh trying to climb down the latrine chute. He was told that he was in no danger. Bereford and Ingham, however, were placed under arrest, also bound and gagged, and led down through the passage out of the castle with Roger. Meanwhile a few men had gone to the chamber of Sir Geoffrey Mortimer. They entered and told him his father had been arrested, and that he too was under arrest. He followed them quietly.
In the course of a single night, Roger and several of his key advisers had been apprehended and silenced. Isabella had been isolated, and placed under guard in her chamber. After all the failed, carefully prepared large-scale plots, twenty-four knights had managed to surprise Roger and arrest him in a hastily contrived attack. The difference had been the king’s support. Edward now saw a clear path towards power. He would claim that his father had indeed been murdered in Berkeley Castle, and that Roger had perpetrated the deed. If his father dared to present himself in public, Edward would face the problem squarely, not as a dependant of Roger Mortimer but as a rightful king, who had assumed the throne in good faith and who had the support of his knights and the trust of the realm.
Edward had at last inherited his royal power.
*
Roger was removed from Nottingham that same night and taken by the king to Leicester. There Edward wanted him to be hanged immediately, but the Earl of Lancaster persuaded him that Roger should be judged in Parliament. Writs were hastily despatched requiring that the lords gather in London. Accordingly Roger was sent to the Tower, where six king’s men-at-arms were ordered to watch him.53
Parliament heard the charges against Roger at Westminster on Monday 26 November 1330.54 There was never any doubt about the outcome. This was the show trial of the show trial king, the condemnation of the chief prosecutor of the reign, and the execution of a dictator. The only real question was how he would die: like Despenser on a high gallows, or more mercifully, by an axe, like the Earl of Kent.
Roger was led, bound and gagged, into the same hall in which he had feasted after he had been knighted, which he had known since his youth.55 Unable to speak, he was accused of fourteen crimes:
1. Ignoring the royal council of regency and taking royal power and full government himself, appointing and sacking ministers in the king’s household, and sending John Wyard to spy on the king;
2. Removing Edward II illegally from Kenilworth Castle and having him murdered at Berkeley;
3. Using his royal power to grant himself the title of Earl of March, and to force the king to march against the Earl of Lancaster;
4. Using his royal power to keep the Earl of Lancaster and other advisers away from the king, and banishing others from the realm contrary to Magna Carta;
5. Luring the Earl of Kent into a treasonable plot and procuring his death;
6. Using his royal power to grant himself, his children and his supporters castles, towns, manors, and franchises in England, Ireland and Wales;
7. Raising money for a Gascon war through a Parliamentary grant which he had then spent himself;
8. Using his royal power to take the fines and ransoms paid by individual knights who did not want to serve personally in his fictitious Gascon war;
9. Falsely and maliciously putting discord between Edward II and Isabella, and ‘for saying to her that if she had gone to him (Edward) he would have killed her with a knife or murdered her in some other way’;
10. Using his royal power to enrich himself and his supporters with money and jewels from the royal treasury;
11. Using his royal power to appropriate to himself the twenty thousand marks paid by the Scots for their sovereignty;
12. Gathering many knights and men-at-arms at court, so the king was surrounded by enemies;
13. Using his royal power to grant two hundred pardons to men of Ireland who had killed great men loyal to the Crown; and
14. Acting to destroy the king’s supporters and his closest advisers, and ordering at Nottingham that his word should be obeyed rather than that of the king.56
Roger was then told he had been found guilty of these crimes ‘and many others which are not listed here’ by the earls, barons and peers. These accusations were ‘notorious and known for their truth to you and all the realm’. Having been adjudged guilty he was sentenced ‘as a traitor and enemy of the king and of the realm, to be drawn and hanged’.
Three days later Roger was taken from his cell in the Tower. He was dressed in the same black tunic he had worn at the funeral of Edward II. He was placed on an ox-hide, tied to two horses, and dragged all the way along the uneven roads between the Tower and Tyburn, a distance of nearly two miles. The cuts and grazes must have been numerous; the bone-breaking bumps, ditches and stones in the road must have made him feel that, by the time he heard the crowds at Tyburn, he was half-dead already. But he was still alive, and was able to make a speech to the crowd in which he confessed that the Earl of Kent had been the victim of a conspiracy. What was left of his tunic was then stripped off him, leaving him naked. Psalm 52 was read to him: ‘Why do you boast in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endures for ever. The tongue devises mischiefs, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, and lies more than honesty …’ Then a rope was placed around his neck, and over the beam of the thieves’ gallows, and he was lifted off his feet into the air. Within a few minutes he was dead.
The crowds drifted away. His naked body swung there for the rest of the day, through the night, and through the following day and night. On the second day it was cut down, and handed over to some Franciscan friars for burial.