The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (23 page)

EIGHT

The King’s Prisoner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two short jackets of green velvet

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

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

A tunic of indigo velvet

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

A tunic, two supertunics, tabard and hood of mulberry brown cloth

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

One black hat furred with high grade lambskin.

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

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

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

One bedcover of knotted work, with four matching hangings

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

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

One hanging of good and subtle work with four matching hangings

One long benchcover striped with yellow and red.

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

Just as interesting as the list of items belonging to Roger is the separate list which was made for Joan’s possessions at the abbey. Not only are such inventories of ladies’ possessions rare at this period (as indeed are those for men), this one may be regarded as perhaps more complete than most as Joan was present at the abbey, and so any valuable effects with which she travelled were included. The list in full is as follows:

One wall-hanging, four carpets, one benchcover of a fashion, with the Mortimer arms

Four carpets of another type

Four carpets of good and subtle work

Three chequered bedcovers

One red bedcover

One mattress covered with fine linen

Two mattresses covered with canvas

Eight blankets

One red cover furred with miniver

One fustian for the bed

One counterpain for the bed

Fifteen pairs of linen sheets

Three pairs of muslin curtains

One pair of striped muslin curtains

One pair of curtains of striped linen

One pair of red linen curtains

One curtain of white pannelled linen

Two tunics of ‘cloth of Thars’, of which one is green and the other brown

Two supertunics of indigo silk without fur

Three supertunics of brown silk without fur

One tunic and two supertunics of red ‘cloth of Thars’

One uncut violet wool cloth

One tunic, two supertunics, one mantel and one hat without fur, of mixed brown cloth

One new fur of miniver for a supertunic, and another for a hood

Two red Irish
fallaings

One old white Irish
fallaing

One piece of cloth for three altar cloths

One table cloth for a dinner table

Two ‘double’ towels

Three small towels

Twenty-two ells of linen cloth

One long towel

Three sanap cloths [table under-cloths]

One small piece of linen cloth of double thickness

Two wool cushions of stitched work

One psalter

Four books of ‘romances’ [stories of chivalry]

Two chests, of which one contains two striped red velvet cloths, one comb, one ivory mirror, one small ivory image of the Virgin Mary, one ivory scourge [whip?], one belt decorated with enamel and precious stones belonging to one of her daughters. The second chest contains one enamelled mirror, and one set of ivory chessmen, one empty strong box, two wash basins.

Lastly, two silver basins, six silver dishes, four silver salt cellars, and two silver cups found with Lady Mortimer.

This list says much about women in a noble household in 1322; for instance, about the provision of washing facilities, and the use of changes of cloth as marks of both wealth and cleanliness. The household Joan controlled was luxurious but not excessively so. She and her husband lived in a style befitting their chivalric and military position. But the list reveals above all that Lady Mortimer was not spared her husband’s fate. Her possessions too were loaded on to carts and sent off to be sold or (in the case of the silverware found with her) presented to the king. Lady Mortimer herself was arrested at the abbey and taken under guard to be imprisoned in Hampshire. With her were sent the six men of her household: a knight, Richard de Burgh;
two men-at-arms, William de Ockley and John de Bullesdon; her strikingly named chaplain, Richard Judas, and her two clerks, John de Eldecote and Walter de Evesham.
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For modern writers as well as contemporaries this is one of the most shocking aspects of government under Edward and Despenser: women were punished along with their husbands for their husbands’ perceived ‘crimes’. A precedent had been set with the imprisonment of Llywelyn Bren’s wife in 1317, and of Lady Badlesmere in the Tower the previous year. Now Joan, heiress of the de Geneville family in her own right, and a kinswoman of the Earl of Pembroke, was stripped of her belongings and incarcerated. Not since Edward I had exposed the female relations of Robert Bruce in wooden cages had women been treated so harshly. One by one the rebels’ wives suffered a similar fate to Joan. With their mothers as well as their fathers in prison, the children of the lords who had dared to oppose Edward II were also incarcerated. Roger’s two eldest sons, Edmund and Roger, were imprisoned with the children of the Earl of Hereford at Windsor. His youngest son John was kept under guard in Hampshire. Geoffrey, Roger’s third son, would also have been imprisoned had he not been in France at the time of the arrest, probably serving in the household of the de Fiennes family. Three of Roger’s eldest four daughters were imprisoned, Maud alone being allowed to remain free owing to her marriage to John de Charlton of Powys, who was pardoned by Edward. In the general enthusiasm to persecute entire families, even aged relatives were not spared. Roger’s mother, Margaret de Fiennes, almost lost Radnor Castle and all her household possessions there. Only some outraged complaints, which reveal her to have been a woman of some spirit, prevented her dower lands being confiscated too. Embarrassed by the mistake, the king returned her rightful inheritance to her.
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