SEVEN
SIR HUGH DESPENSER the younger, lord of Glamorgan: there is no other way to begin this chapter but with his name, for by the end of 1320 he had become the pivot upon which the balance of Edward’s reign turned. Like Gaveston before him, he had won Edward’s confidence completely, and now he won the king’s devotion too. But whereas Gaveston had been Roger’s friend and jousting companion, Despenser was Roger’s sworn enemy, a man who had vowed to destroy him and his uncle and to take their lands. Slowly Despenser’s influence had grown. He had killed Llywelyn Bren. He had tried to seize the land of Gwennllwg from Hugh Audley in 1317. He had been made King’s Chamberlain in 1318, controlling access to the king. Now he was trying to make himself Earl of Gloucester in place of the dead Gilbert de Clare. If he and Roger had ever shared any feelings of goodwill towards one another – and there is no evidence that they ever did – then those feelings were nothing more than memories, if indeed either man cared to recall them.
Despenser’s desire to become Earl of Gloucester threatened other men besides Roger. When the last earl had died at Bannockburn he had left three sisters as co-heiresses. In 1317 the earldom was divided into three parts between the husbands of these three sisters: Despenser acquired the lordship of Glamorgan, the richest part, and Hugh Audley and Roger Damory acquired the other two thirds. The division only triggered envy and anxiety, especially on the parts of Damory and Audley. The land of Gwennllwg, which had once belonged to Glamorgan, was now legally separated from it, but a technicality like that did not stop Despenser from trying to wrest it from its rightful lord. On his first attempt he failed, but, undeterred, he set about trying to acquire other lands from Audley and Damory by force, intimidation and trickery. In this last aspect he was as wily as Roger himself, convincing the men of Gwennllwg that under his lordship they might enjoy similar privileges to the men of Senghennydd and Misguin and other favoured lordships. The men of Gwennllwg were duped. Despenser also obtained grants in Carmarthen, including the new town of Llandilo, whose constable was one of Roger’s most favoured vassals, Edmund Hakelut. This brought him into confrontation not only with Roger but also the neighbouring lord, John Giffard of Brimpsfield. Slowly an alliance was forming against Despenser: John Giffard, Damory, Audley and, most importantly, Roger and the Earl of Hereford, both of whom had not forgiven Despenser for Llywelyn’s murder.
Such was the cauldron of hatreds and rivalries into which Roger plunged himself at the end of September 1320. The situation quickly worsened. Even before he had returned from Ireland Gwennllwg was granted to Despenser, against all law and right. Despenser had so completely won the king’s heart that the king was more interested in furthering his new favourite’s interests than protecting those of his past infatuations. Once again Edward was ruling England as if it were his personal fief. While this was true in theory, it remained so only in theory; and Edward had no moral or legal justification for taking one lord’s land at whim and giving it to another. Nor did he have any right to overlook the laws of the land in favour of certain men, which is what he did next.
The trouble started in Gower.1 Having riled his fellow Marcher lords, Despenser now compounded his hatreds with an act of such supreme arrogance that he united most of England against himself and the king. The impecunious lord of the Gower peninsula, William de Braose, had supposedly put his lordship up for sale, soliciting offers from both Lords Mortimer, from Despenser, and even receiving a down payment from the Earl of Hereford. The dissolute de Braose, not particularly caring whom he aggravated, then sold his land to his son-in-law John de Mowbray, who had married one of his co-heiresses, and who was entitled to inherit the lordship anyway. Fearing Despenser’s likely response, as Despenser had wanted the lordship in order to round off his lands in South Wales, Mowbray took possession immediately.
Despenser was furious. He spoke to the king. Since Gower had been taken by John de Mowbray without royal licence, he argued, the acquisition was not legal. Had the lands been in England, this would have technically been correct, but even there lords who had a right to a lordship had often received it without royal assent. In the Marches Despenser was entirely wrong. Marcher lords had always enjoyed the right of entering their lands with no need of royal licence. Moreover, if Despenser could persuade the king to overlook this Marcher privilege, what other ones might follow? For Despenser to neglect Marcher law, and moreover to demand possession of Gower himself, was a red rag not just to one bull but the whole herd.
Roger was probably still making his way to Westminster in October 1320, and knew little or nothing of the developments taking place there. On 9 November he had only reached Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire, and therefore would only have reached Westminster two days later, at the earliest. Thus he missed the whole of the parliament, including the most crucial act. On 26 October the king confiscated Gower from John de Mowbray.
In taking Gower into royal hands Edward was declaring that he would defend Despenser to the last, against all law, all reason and all arms. He did this no doubt out of a supreme wish to please Despenser, but in doing so he showed enormous lack of respect for the other Marcher lords. Immediately he was made aware of the outrage he had caused, and he was forced to placate some of his former friends. To Damory he allowed forgiveness of all his debts, and shortly afterwards he was forgiven a fine of 2,300 marks.2 To favour Roger, he accepted his advice to assist the heir of the dead Richard de Clare in Ireland.3 He further confirmed the estates of all three husbands of the co-heiresses of Gloucester – espenser, Damory and Audley – but this was little consolation to the Marcher lords, especially those who saw how intimate he now was with Despenser. To use a phrase employed by tactful contemporaries, ‘Despenser was the king’s right-hand man’. No one could see the king without his permission. Although this was a flagrant abuse of his position as Chamberlain, there was nothing any of the lords could do. In effect Despenser was shielding the king from the political responsibilities which he found tedious, and was taking the administration upon his own shoulders. England was once more plunging headlong towards civil war, on account of the king placing a personal friendship over and above the interests of the kingdom.
It is difficult to account for Edward’s policy without suspecting an emotional reliance upon Despenser as great as that he had felt for Gaveston. True, Edward had had favourites since Gaveston, but his affection for them had not reached the pitch of his love for his brother-in-arms. In fact, at points of crisis, he had let certain favourites, like Damory, be put away from him. Perhaps he did not understand the depth of the crisis in 1320 and imagined it would be smoothed over at a parliament some time in the future. However, by the end of November it was clear that the situation was very serious indeed. When the king’s officer tried to take Gower into his own hands, he was met with armed resistance.
Roger remained at Westminster, his accustomed position at times of crisis. He was still apparently at court on 16 November, two days after the king’s men managed to obtain control of Gower from the infuriated Mowbray. It was clear that each lord had to make a decision between the king in his support of Despenser’s nefarious schemes, or the principle of the Crown’s responsibility to the community of the realm.
A telling gauge of the seriousness of the situation was that the Earl of Pembroke, the arch-moderator of the reign, decided to leave the country. Most of the Marcher lords withdrew from court soon afterwards, before Christmas, and began to arm their castles. Roger stayed for a few weeks longer, until January, trying desperately to reach a compromise, but the king was in no mood to listen to an enemy of Despenser. He had decided to support Despenser no matter what, and the more his enemies criticised him, the more he liked his new favourite.
Herein lies the tragedy of Roger and other men like him. He was forced to choose between supporting corruption and instigating a rebellion. To add to his problems, the man responsible for corrupting the government was his personal enemy, who had declared he would ‘despoil him and revenge the death of his grandfather upon him’.4 Nor was he alone in finding himself forced to oppose the king. Roger de Clifford had seen his mother’s lands taken by Despenser with no attempt at compensation. In May 1320 Despenser had finally managed to obtain Hugh Audley’s rich portion of the Gloucester inheritance, the lordship of Newport, in return for a few English manors of much less value. For men like Roger, Audley and Clifford, there was no solution in law. There was only war.
In January and February 1321 the battle lines of the opposition were drawn up. Roger, with his customary adherence to the king, and his self-grooming as a moderator, was not at first among them. On 30 January the Earls of Hereford, Surrey and Arundel, and a number of northern barons, were among twenty-eight lords ordered not to attend an assembly called to discuss the estates of the Crown. This is the first sign that the Earl of Lancaster and the Earl of Hereford were renewing their league against the king and his favourite, similar to their alliance against Gaveston, but now implying a new and more dangerous common cause between the Marcher lords and the confederacy of northern barons under the Earl of Lancaster. Probably only a day or two before this Roger had finally given up trying to reason with the king, being the last in a long line of refugee lords to leave court. At the end of January he was at Stratfield Mortimer, on his return journey to Wigmore. Edward acknowledged his opposition by removing him from his office of Justiciar of Ireland. In his place, on 1 February, he appointed one of Despenser’s henchmen, Ralph de Gorges.
Roger’s royal pedestal had crumbled. In October 1320 he had been the governor of Ireland, and unswervingly loyal to the king. Now, just a few months later, he had been removed from office, he was aligned with the king’s opposition, and all because he had opposed a man liable to bring disaster and ruin upon the king. Shocked at this treatment, Roger reluctantly began gathering an army. He and Joan settled all their Irish estates on their second son, Roger, aware of the dangers of the conflict ahead.5 In Brecon, the Earl of Hereford was also raising men-at-arms. In the north too, men, armour and castles were being prepared. On 27 February Lancaster held a meeting at which the Marcher lords’ representatives were present, and at which it was decided to attack the Despensers in South Wales.6
The Earl of Pembroke stayed abroad. The king lamented his absence, since he wanted the earl to treat with the Scots, but Pembroke himself secretly sympathised with the Marcher lords, and would not return to serve the king while Despenser was at court. Thus, with no check on his actions, with all his senior advisers in opposition to him, or abroad, the king trusted his own judgement and that of Despenser. Despenser’s advice was selfish and deliberately antagonistic. With clear intelligence that an attack was being planned on his Welsh holdings, he advised the king to take a royal army to defend his lands there.
This mobilisation of royal forces made Despenser’s enemies appear rebels against the king. It was an extremely unfortunate move; the Marcher lords were always reluctant to fight a royal army, not for fear of defeat but precisely because they were fundamentally royalists. It was Despenser against whom they were arraying their forces, not the king himself. The king’s personal identification with Despenser, however, alienated those who would otherwise have remained in his service. There was no better example than Roger’s uncle, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, who was still Justiciar of Wales. He was ordered to inspect all the castles in his authority, and to make sure they were defensible for the king. Thus he was forced to decide between his nephew and his monarch, to choose between his brother’s son and nearly fifty years of unstinting loyalty to the Crown. The elder Mortimer, now sixty-six, could not be expected to betray his nephew, especially when he too was threatened by the favourite. In this way the king managed to alienate both Mortimers, the Justiciars of Ireland and Wales, and found himself even more dependent on Despenser’s support and advice.
On 27 March, the king issued an order to the Earl of Hereford, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, Roger Damory, John de Hastings, and John de Charlton,
to maintain the king’s peace … and not to permit any assemblies to be made … as complaint has reached the king that many of their men … make assemblies and musters in a warlike manner, whereat the king is astonished, as it is unknown why such assemblies are made.7
The king’s pretended astonishment could only grow as the list of rebels grew longer. On the following day, the king ordered those lords whom he still expected to obey him, namely Roger and his uncle, the Earl of Hereford, Lord Hastings, John Giffard and Lord Berkeley, to be at Gloucester on 5 April.8
Roger did not go to Gloucester. Instead he and the Earl of Hereford took it upon themselves to answer for all their fellow Marcher lords. They refused to come into the king’s presence, they said, while Hugh Despenser the younger remained in the king’s company. They put forward a compromise whereby Despenser should be removed safely by the Earl of Hereford to the custody of the Earl of Lancaster, and a parliament summoned at which the earl and Roger could put forward their grievances, and that if this were allowed, they would come to the king at Gloucester as requested.
The king at this point hesitated, and did not reply for some time. It is not difficult to see why. If one takes the list of Marcher lords who were liable to provide fighting men in 1317 for the war against the Scots, there were fifteen major lords in the region besides Roger and the Earl of Hereford; namely Maurice de Berkeley, William de la Zouche, John Giffard, William de Braose, Henry of Lancaster, John de Charlton, John de Hastings, John de Grey, the Earl of Surrey, the Earl of Arundel, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, Lady Mortimer (Roger’s mother), Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and John de Cromwell. Most of these were now openly in opposition to Despenser, and, by making Despenser’s enemies his own, the king had made enemies of nearly all the lords of the March. Lord Mortimer of Chirk was not openly hostile yet, nor were Lady Mortimer, John de Cromwell, the Earl of Arundel or the Earl of Surrey, but both Lord Mortimer of Chirk and Roger’s mother were definitely on the side of the Marchers. Moreover, Despenser’s enemies were joined by several southwestern knights, men such as John Maltravers; and of course they were in league with the northern forces under the Earl of Lancaster. The king had miscalculated badly, and so had Despenser.
Despite the increasing strength of the opposition, Despenser and the king remained firm. On 8 April Audley’s lands were confiscated. On 13 April orders were sent to Roger, Hereford, Hastings, Damory, Charlton, Giffard and both Berkeleys to maintain the peace in their lands, and ‘not to permit assemblies and demonstrations in warlike manner to be made … complaint having reached the king that many men of [their lordships] make such assemblies and demonstrations’.9 A show of equality was maintained by also naming Despenser as one of those preparing for war, but things had gone too far, and there was now no stopping the momentum of the resistance to the favourite.
On 21 April the king finally made up his mind to act, and wrote to more than seventy lords and all seventeen bishops urging them not to attend any musters or to believe ‘false news’ about a rebellion. Two days later he wrote to Roger and the Earl of Hereford regarding their refusal to come to Gloucester. His letter was effectively a declaration of war. He claimed that their reasons for nonappearance were insufficient because Despenser had been appointed to the office of Chamberlain in Parliament, and in their presence, and that no complaint had hitherto been received against him, and that, in any case, a royal summons was a protection for all who should obey it, so fear of Despenser was no excuse for nonattendance. In addition, conveying Despenser to the Earl of Lancaster would be contrary to the terms of Magna Carta, against the law, and in contradiction to the Ordinances. The letter concluded with the new summons for them to be at Oxford by 10 May.
Edward found it difficult to believe that Roger and Lord Hereford would actually take arms against him. But on 1 May he wrote to the two lords again prohibiting them from taking up arms and stating that he wished to change the place to which they should report from Oxford to Westminster. He was unaware that on that very day the two Lords Mortimer, the Earl of Hereford and all the other Marcher lords were taking up military positions, ready to ravage the lands of Hugh Despenser. This was the king’s next great miscalculation: the men he had alienated were the most experienced battle fighters in England. Despenser, by contrast, had very few military knights at his disposal.10 Lord Hereford and Lord Mortimer of Chirk had fought with the old king in Scotland, Wales and Gascony. Roger had learnt how to command an army in Ireland. More importantly, many of Roger’s men were battle-hardened, including Englishmen who had fought with him in Ireland, such as the steadfast Sir Hugh de Turpington and Irish knights who had crossed to help him. Having been dragged to the point of war, they were not going to back down now.
Roger was the prime mover in the attack on the Despensers. He marched south with his uncle from Wigmore on or just before 1 May.11 His army stayed the night at Bromyard, where his men seized property belonging to local inhabitants.12 As he marched further south, through Ledbury, his army seized further property. The Bishop of Hereford, Adam of Orleton, sent his own men to help Roger. Approaching Glamorgan he was joined by the contingents of Damory, Audley, Hastings, Mowbray, Sir Roger de Clifford, John Giffard, Henry le Tyeys, Lord Berkeley, Sir John Maltravers and many others. In total they rode with eight hundred men-at-arms, five hundred other horsemen and ten thousand footsoldiers.13 They rode beneath banners bearing the royal arms, first to Newport, which fell to them after a four-day-long attack on 7 May, and then to Cardiff, which suffered a similar fate five days later. They rode throughout Glamorgan and South Wales, destroying the property of Hugh Despenser in the manner of fourteenth-century war. In the words of Despenser’s clerk, their army
besieged his towns and castles, and took them by force, and slew some of his men, namely Sir John Iweyn, Matthew de Gorges, and others to the number of fifteen Welshmen, and wounded and maimed some of his men, such as Sir Philip Joce, and imprisoned some of them, such as Sir Ralph de Gorges … and took and carried away the chattels of Hugh Despenser found in the said towns and castles, including forty destriers and armour for two hundred men … siege engines, springalds, cross-bows, lances, quarrels … and victuals, such as corn, wine, honey, rye, meat, fish, and divers other necessary victuals amounting to the value of £2,000, and took and burnt all the said charters remembrances and muniments of the said Hugh there found, to the value of £2,000, and burnt part of the gates and houses in the said castles, and took out and carried away the windows, ironwork and lead, and committed many other damages, to the value of £2,000. And with the same power and force they stayed there five days in order to destroy the lands completely, within which time they made by force all the greater part of all the country swear to be of their accord, and they imprisoned and held to ransom those who refused, and burnt their houses and goods. And during the same time they wasted all his manors there, and robbed him of all his movables therein … [including 10,000 sheep, 400 oxen, 500 cows, 160 plough-cattle and other animals from a total of twenty-three manors].14
This account, being rendered by Hugh Despenser’s clerk to the king, is no doubt an exaggeration of their destructiveness, but many elements of it are confirmed by chronicle evidence. The author of Vita Edwardi Secundi, for example, supports the figure of eight hundred men-at-arms, and supports the statement about the looting. He also states that
thirty thousand of the inhabitants of that territory came to the barons saying ‘Remit your displeasure towards us, for we have never liked the lordship of Hugh Despenser, and are all prepared to obey your orders.’ They were accepted on these terms: that they would wholly renounce their homage to Hugh Despenser, that they would never acknowledge him as lord, but remain faithful to the lord king in all things, and would maintain their due services for the true heir at the proper time and place …15
A huge number of people wreaked this damage on Hugh Despenser’s lands and castles. As is plain, the hatred which this destruction represented went beyond any single cause. Protest at certain of his actions had grown into a widespread demonstration, in which personal and collective reasons for attacking Despenser were combined. This was the case for Roger also, for the key prisoner who fell into his hands was his appointed replacement as Justiciar of Ireland, Sir Ralph de Gorges. Roger immediately took him back to Wigmore, where he locked him up, before taking his army on to the Earl of Arundel’s castle of Clun, which they attacked.
If Hugh Despenser’s clerk was more or less accurate in reporting the actions of the Marcher lords, his father’s clerk wildly exaggerated their actions elsewhere in England. Roger and his associates are supposed to have done damage to his property to a value which was roughly comparable with two-thirds of a year’s royal income. But it is not the amount of damage which leads one to suspect exaggeration, rather the locations. Roger is supposed to have entered Vastern Manor in Wootton Bassett on 11 June and subsequently sacked it and sixteen other manors in Wiltshire, six manors in Gloucestershire, four in Dorset, five in Hampshire, two in Berkshire, six in Oxfordshire, three in Buckinghamshire, four in Surrey, one in Cambridgeshire, two in Huntingdonshire, five in Leicestershire, one in Yorkshire, one in Lincolnshire, five in Cheshire, and five in Warwickshire all before arriving in Parliament on 29 July. Allowing five days for the journey to London, the army had just forty-three days to destroy sixty-seven manors and cover the many hundreds of miles between them. Clearly at this stage the destruction was not being done by a single coordinated army but by a series of forces, many of which are likely to have been local peasants and outlaws eager to take advantage of the war against the Despensers to enrich themselves. The author of Vita suggests as much in giving the reasons for the country’s hatred of the elder Despenser:
For the brutal and greedy father had in the past wronged many, and promoted the excommunication of many. As a justice of the forest he had accused many of poaching from royal hunting grounds, many of these he vilely disinherited, some he forced into exile, from many he extorted unjust sums of money, and collected a thousand librates of land by means of threats … By a general judgement he justly lost what he had accumulated from the losses of others.
Hence his own parks and hunting grounds became a free-for-all for every would-be venison-eater in the country. The claim against the Marchers should be seen in this light: as an attempt by the elder Despenser to pass off the anger against him as their work. It also indicates that, as the lands of the elder Despenser were attacked by the Marcher lords and others,16 neither the Despensers’ men nor the royal forces could do anything to stop them.
While Roger, Hereford and the other Marcher lords were ploughing through the elder Despenser’s lands, Lord Lancaster in the north had convened a meeting at Sherburn in Elmet.17 Roger has usually been thought by historians to have attended this meeting, but in view of the heavy destruction systematically being applied to the elder Despenser’s lands in the south, it is likely that the Marchers sent only a representative. This may have been Bartholomew de Badlesmere, who now openly joined Roger’s side. The northern lords declared that they understood and sympathised with the Marcher lords’ reasons for action. Despite the damage the Marcher lords’ forces were wreaking across England, Roger and his coleader Hereford maintained the full support of the majority of the realm, and the crucial support of the northern barons.
On 29 July 1321 Roger led his army from Waltham to London. Each of the Marcher lords stationed himself at a separate point around the city, practically laying siege to the king and the court. As a mark of solidarity, the Marcher lords and their men all wore an identical livery: green tunics, with the right top quarter and right arm yellow, and with the royal arms on their chests. Roger and his forces encamped in the grounds of the priory of St John at Clerkenwell, just to the north of the capital. And there they waited, while the king refused to negotiate.
The waiting game which the king and the rebel lords now embarked on was a microcosm of the entire reign of Edward II. There was only one basic dispute: the king’s right to do whatever he wished. The king and those he happened to favour believed he should have complete liberty. Most other lords, especially those who had lost out to his favourites, believed he had a responsibility to govern the country justly, in accordance with his coronation oath. In the resulting conflicts and resolutions, the whole country suffered, and the only benefit was a careful rethinking of the machinery of government.18 Only a great statesman like the Earl of Pembroke could break such a deadlock. Ambitious men like Roger and Despenser could never be disassociated from their ambitions; warriors like Hereford could not resolve their differences without the context of violence; and overmighty magnates such as Lancaster could only interpret political settlements in terms of what they personally had gained and lost. Thus it was fortunate for all concerned that at this juncture the Earl of Pembroke returned to England. Although he was still at Dover, the king wrote to him on 1 August asking him to come the next day to Westminster. Pembroke did not delay, and, amazingly, managed to cover the seventy miles to be at Westminster the following day.
It was 1312 and Gaveston all over again, except that the third magnate facing the king with Lancaster and Hereford was Roger, in place of the late Earl of Warwick. And their armies were not encamped a few miles outside the city but right next to the walls. And the royal favourite was not dead, as Gaveston had been when England had last teetered on the brink of civil war, but very much alive. Everything came down to Pembroke, as it had in 1312. The question was: could he persuade the king to accept the Despensers’ exile? Or would full-scale civil war break out?
Having discussed matters with the Marcher lords, Pembroke returned to the king. Still he refused to accept the Marchers’ terms. It took all the earl’s powers of persuasion to make him see that he had no choice.
‘Consider, lord king, the power of the barons,’ he implored. ‘Take heed of the danger that threatens; neither brother nor sister should be dearer to thee than thyself. Do not therefore for any living soul lose thy kingdom … Let not the king say, to his own injury, that this business was begun by the barons; but since it is for the common good that the country be freed from wicked men, to which end, lord king, you swore an oath at your coronation, if you listen to the barons you shall reign in power and glory; but if on the other hand you close your ears to their petitions, you may perchance lose the kingdom and all of us. For we are sworn confederates, and we cannot oppose our peers.’19
Faced with this statement from Pembroke, and the rebel lords’ declaration that they would renounce their homage to him and appoint another king in his place if he would not accept, Edward was forced to give in. The Archbishop of Canterbury was sent to summon the rebel lords to Westminster, and on 14 August, in the company of the Earls of Pembroke and Richmond, the king entered Westminster Hall and coldly agreed to the banishment of the Lords Despenser, and that they would be gone by the end of the month. The Marcher lords, it seemed, had won.
Immediately work began on drawing up a formal process against the king’s favourites. The accusations against the Despensers were that, although a royal council had been named, of which two bishops, one earl and one baron would be with the king at all times, Hugh Despenser and his father (neither of whom was on the royal council) had become close to the king and taken that role upon themselves unlawfully. This much was true. The Marchers then ascribed to the Despensers the authorship of the 1308 pronouncement that homage was due more to the Crown than the king: a line they themselves had adopted. This was not reasonable, and somewhat undermines the virtue of their position. But the remainder of their accusations against Despenser were substantially correct. The Despensers had limited lords’ freedom to see the king; they had removed good ministers (such as Roger) and replaced them with their own men; and they had counselled the king to go in arms to Gloucester against the terms of Magna Carta, thereby provoking war. Hugh Despenser in particular had murdered Llywelyn Bren, had stolen the inheritance of Hugh Audley, had attempted to take that of Roger Damory in order to acquire the whole of the earldom of Gloucester, and had illegally taken the revenues of the estates of the late Earl of Warwick which had rightly been granted to the executors for the benefit of the heir (who was betrothed to Roger’s daughter). In addition the Despensers had forced the king to deny hereditary rights in Parliament, so they might acquire them themselves, as in the case of Mowbray. These were the key complaints. There were many more.
For a complete victory, all the Marcher lords now needed was to be acquitted of their own crimes in the conflict. Pardons were granted to the Earls of Hereford and Surrey, Roger, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, Roger Damory, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, John de Mowbray, John Giffard of Brimpsfield, Hugh Audley and his son, Richard de Grey of Codnor, Henry le Tyeys, John Maltravers, Lord Berkeley, Thomas de Berkeley, and a total of 423 of their followers. Their pardon simply stated that they were acquitted of ‘anything done’ against the Despensers between 1 March and 19 August 1321.20
The victory was technically complete.
*
In the fourteenth century the philosophy of the Wheel of Fortune was one with which all people were familiar. It was the cycle of luck which carried men and women to dizzying heights of success and reward, and then tipped over and plunged them into the depths of loss, hardship and humiliation. The Wheel of Fortune now made one of its quickest turns of the fourteenth century, throwing down the Marcher lords who had seemed to sweep all before them, and raising the Despensers from miserable exile to previously undreamed-of heights.
The root of the problem for the Marcher lords lay in the fact that they and their northern allies had been united by their principal enemy, Hugh Despenser, and he was now banished. Furthermore, unlike Gaveston, who had repeatedly attempted to return from exile, Despenser and his father removed themselves completely. Hugh Despenser became a pirate, robbing any vessels that he could catch, earning a new reputation as ‘a sea-monster, lying in wait for merchants as they crossed his path’.21 His father went to Bordeaux, blaming his losses on his son’s greed. Soon the coalition of northern barons, Marcher lords and the Earl of Pembroke, which had brought such pressure to bear on the king over Hugh Despenser, was no longer united.
There was another major factor underlying the Marchers’ change of fortunes: the mood of the king. Edward did not care that Hugh Despenser, as a pirate, was jeopardising international relations and damaging English trade, but he cared very greatly about the humiliation he had suffered in being forced to exile his favourite. His determination to exact revenge on the Marcher lords in particular was extraordinary. He believed wholeheartedly that he had been humbled purely for their advantage. Accordingly he put the resources of the realm towards reversing this personal slight and, in so doing, managed to galvanise the many lords who had remained neutral in the recent hostilities into a strong body of royal support. Many of these new royalists were very eager to help the king, for they hoped to win back some of the favour they had lost during Despenser’s period in power. As a result, the king was in a much stronger position after Despenser’s exile than he was before it. He now had the motive and the means to exact revenge.
Bartholomew de Badlesmere, isolated in Kent, was the first object of his attention.
Less than a month after the departure of the Despensers, Edward went on pilgrimage with Queen Isabella to Canterbury. The king then went on to meet the younger Hugh Despenser alone on the Isle of Thanet, and ordered Queen Isabella to return to London by way of Leeds Castle, which she was to enter if she could by asking for a night’s accommodation. Under medieval rules of hospitality, a housekeeper had an obligation to entertain anyone who should ask for shelter, and Lady Badlesmere, who had been left in charge of the castle during her husband’s absence, normally would have allowed entry to Isabella and entertained her as a royal guest without a second thought. However, Lord Badlesmere, aware of his delicate position and the heightened state of tension throughout the country, had told his wife not to allow anyone at all into the castle, under any circumstances. On 13 October Isabella asked for accommodation. She was refused. Furious, she ordered her men to try to force the gate. Isabella’s company was not equipped to attack a well-defended castle, and nine of her men were killed. Shamed and infuriated, she returned to her husband, and unwittingly provided him with the perfect excuse to raise a royal army to attack Leeds. On 16 October the king announced his intention to make an example of Lord Badlesmere, and the following day he sent the Earls of Pembroke, Richmond and Norfolk to begin the siege.
The garrison of Leeds was under the command of Sir Walter Culpeper. He now saw that overwhelming forces would shortly come against them. Lady Badlesmere nevertheless ordered him to prepare to defend the castle. She sent messages to her husband, who was with Roger and the other Marcher lords at Oxford, to come quickly. Lord Badlesmere asked Roger and the Earl of Hereford to try to relieve the castle. Given his links to Badlesmere, and the marriage bond between their families, Roger could hardly refuse. His uncle and the Earl of Hereford supported him, thinking that everyone who had aided them against Despenser would stand by them now. It was a mistake. By choosing to defend Badlesmere, the Marcher lords were drawn into a new conflict which was not about Hugh Despenser, but about them and their obedience to the king.
Roger and his fellow rebels marched south until they came to Kingston upon Thames. There they halted. Aware of the new trouble, the Earl of Pembroke, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London hurried to meet them. Pembroke urged them not to proceed into Kent. He proposed that if Roger and Lord Hereford retreated, he would mediate with the king on their behalf. They replied that if the siege were raised, and the business discussed in Parliament, they would allow the castle to be surrendered. Pembroke took this message to the embittered king, knowing it would be refused.
At this moment the Earl of Lancaster sent one of the most short-sighted messages of his life. He declared that he did not approve of Roger and Hereford going to Leeds.22 This instruction, which almost certainly arose out of Lancaster’s petty dislike of Badlesmere, put the rebel lords in an awkward position. If the king were to march against them with a significant army, they would need Lancaster’s support. They remained at Kingston. With no relieving army on its way, the garrison at Leeds must have suspected that their lives were about to end. The king arrived to conduct the siege personally, and sent for his hunting dogs so that he could hunt Badlesmere’s game while he waited for the garrison to capitulate. On 31 October they opened the gates and pleaded for mercy.
Edward had made his point, and he should have left it at that. If he had punished Badlesmere for the insult to Isabella by confiscating the castle, or a few manors, a longer-lasting peace might have been established. But he wanted to make an example of the Leeds garrison. As soon as the king’s men-at-arms entered the castle they seized twelve men and hanged them. Sir Walter Culpeper was one of the twelve. His brother Thomas Culpeper was sent to Winchelsea, and publicly killed there. Lady Badlesmere and her children, including her daughter Elizabeth (the eight-year-old wife of Roger’s son), were sent to the Tower of London. Badlesmere’s sister and her son, Bartholomew de Burghersh, were also sent to the Tower. With the imprisonment of women and children, and the needless execution of men on artificial charges, the tyranny of Edward II had begun.
Roger and Hereford could now see the weakness of their coalition. In order to bolster it they headed north to meet Lancaster. In the words of a contemporary, Roger and the Earl of Hereford ‘saw full well that the king was a man without mercy, and thought indeed that he would destroy them as he had done the others, and thus they made their way northwards as far as Pontefract …’23 There, at the end of November, Lancaster reassured them that they had his full support. Edward, however, had heard of their journey, and forbade them to meet Lancaster. In meeting the northern lords and strengthening the coalition against Edward, Roger and Hereford openly declared their opposition to him.
While they were travelling, the news of the shocking executions of the Leeds Castle garrison reached other rebel lords. Some, like the Earl of Surrey, were cowed by the king’s threats. The Earl of Pembroke, who had been so important in securing victory for the Marchers earlier in the year, also sided with the king. But Roger and Hereford remained steadfast in their opposition. They had the Earl of Lancaster’s support, Warwick Castle had fallen to their side, and there were stirrings in London in their favour. On 2 December Lancaster wrote to the Londoners stating that he had recently met Roger and the other lords, enclosing for their information the ‘Doncaster petition’ which Roger and others had sealed. This demanded that the king should stop supporting Despenser in his acts of piracy, and stop pursuing the peers of the realm on Despenser’s behalf. The king dismissed it as a further attempt by Lancaster to limit royal authority. The time had come for the Marcher lords’ confidence to be put to the test.
The royal army was ordered to muster at Cirencester on 13 December. In the few days beforehand the king increased his pressure on Roger. He ordered him to release Ralph de Gorges, who was still imprisoned at Wigmore. In Ireland, Sir John de Bermingham was given authority to remove all the men appointed by Roger and to appoint new officials, and to review all the acts which Roger had undertaken there in his capacity as Justiciar. It was a vindictive, personal act. Edward was prepared to throw Ireland into disarray just to spite Roger.
Now the tension in the Marcher camp increased to a very high level. They started to withdraw towards Wales, lest they be cut off from their castles by the large royal army mustering at Cirencester. Their allies turned against them – with Despenser banished, they had no reason to refuse a royal summons – and blindly obeyed their king against the royal enemies. The Welsh too took up arms against the Marcher lords, their hated neighbours. In fear, Lord Hastings deserted the rebels, throwing himself on the king’s mercy. Then the army left Cirencester and began to advance. At Gloucester the sheriff of the county was accused of supporting Roger. The evidence of his treachery seems to have been his possession of a Marcher tunic of green and yellow. The king’s men-at-arms dressed him in it and hanged him.
With the king’s large army moving towards them, Roger and Lord Hereford withdrew behind the River Severn. They secured the bridge at Worcester, to which the king came on 31 December. The next crossing place the royal army could use was at Bridgnorth. A royal vanguard raced ahead and secured the bridge there, but on the night of 5 January Roger and his uncle unfurled their banners and charged in upon the king’s soldiers. The king’s men were defeated with heavy losses, and Roger burnt the bridge and much of the town in the battle.24 The Mortimers were desperate now. Their forces were being strung out along the river, and their own men were beginning to desert. Remorselessly, the royal army pushed on to the next crossing, at Shrewsbury. Their only hope was that the Earl of Lancaster and the northern barons would come to their aid, as he had promised. But they did not come.
At this point Lord Mortimer of Chirk heard that his own lands in North Wales were being devastated by a Welsh knight, Sir Gruffydd Llwyd, who had remained loyal to the king. Chirk Castle itself had fallen, and the destruction across his lands was great. Clun Castle, held by Roger since the attack on the Despensers, had fallen. John de Charlton’s castle of Welshpool had also fallen, and so had Holt. The Marcher lords were being squeezed between a Welsh force and the royal army. Worst of all, it was becoming clear that the Earl of Lancaster was refusing to do anything to help them.
The situation came to a head at Shrewsbury. Roger and his uncle could have held the bridge there, but now saw little point in continued resistance without the Earl of Lancaster’s support. Hereford had taken his men north to join Lancaster, and Roger and his uncle were isolated. They could not oppose the king much longer. Perhaps with the noble example of Llywelyn Bren in their minds, they agreed that there was no merit in allowing their men to be killed in a fruitless struggle. They wrote to Lancaster asking why he had not come as promised. His reply was that it was because they were protecting Bartholomew de Badlesmere, his enemy. Their cause was doomed, all because of Lancaster’s petty squabble. Betrayed and alone, Roger and his uncle resolved to abandon Lancaster to his fate, and to petition the king for mercy.
On Wednesday 13 January the king agreed to provide safe conduct until Sunday night for Roger and up to twenty of his companions to come to Betton Strange, near Shrewsbury, ‘to treat with the Earls of Richmond, Pembroke, Arundel and Warenne’. The pressure on the king to allow Roger to negotiate is clear from the fact that, in addition to these four earls, Norfolk and Kent also requested that Roger’s safe conduct be granted. But the negotiations were not successful, and Sunday night came around with no agreement. Letters of safe conduct were renewed, to last until Wednesday 20 January. The Mortimers were discussing a situation which could end in their deaths, and resisted being rushed into an agreement which did not guarantee their lives and liberty. Ominously, the king was not prepared to guarantee them anything. On 20 January time was running out. That day Roger received a further extension to submit to the king the following day. But still he did not submit.
The earls were anxious now, being detained against their better judgement while Roger negotiated, demanding his life be guaranteed. Elsewhere, especially in the north, other rebel lords were waiting to see how the Mortimers would be treated. Laying aside the king’s bitterness, the Mortimers had done nothing for which they deserved punishment, except their attack on Bridgnorth. Both men were far too valuable and experienced as royal servants to be imprisoned or executed, surely? But Edward was, by this stage, almost deranged with his lust for revenge, and demanded their total and complete surrender, without terms. Again the Mortimers refused.
The stalemate was only broken when Lord Pembroke lied to the Mortimers. With no authority from the king, he took matters into his own hands, and promised Roger and his uncle that their lives would be spared, and that they would be pardoned. Having acquired this apparent guarantee, there was nothing else to be gained by further negotiation. On Friday 22 January 1322 Roger and his elderly uncle were conducted into the hall of Shrewsbury Castle, to submit to the king. After a short unfriendly audience, they were ordered to be taken away. They were not pardoned, they were clapped in chains. They were to be sent to the most secure prison in the country: the Tower of London.