The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (38 page)

It was at Worcester, two days later, that Edward III finally learnt the truth from his mother.
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One can only guess at his shock. The whole country believed his father was dead as a result of his solemn proclamations. He
himself had believed it for the last three months. But now, it turned out, his mother’s lover was secretly holding his father prisoner. And there was nothing he could do. If he issued a proclamation stating that his father was still alive, Roger would have denied it and called him a fool. If he issued such a proclamation and people believed him, he would make an enemy of his mother and risk starting a civil war. At fifteen, Edward was not strong enough to stand up to his mother and Roger, so he did the only thing he could: he demanded proof that his father was alive. Isabella summoned the woman who had performed the embalming of the corpse. Although we cannot know for certain what was said, we may imagine that he was fully informed about the implications of his father’s continued existence: that his throne and his mother’s life – not to mention his father’s – were dependent on his not revealing to anyone that Edward II was still alive, and not doing anything to threaten his mother’s lover. From now on, both he and Isabella were dependent on Roger for their political lives.

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The success of the Berkeley Castle plot changed everything for Roger. He could now afford to exercise authority openly. More than a year had passed since he and Isabella had received the royal seals, but only now did he dare to use them against Henry of Lancaster. On 23 December, three days after the funeral at Gloucester, Robert de Holand, the prime enemy of the entire Lancastrian faction, was restored to his lands.
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The alliance which had toppled the Despensers and Edward II had come to an end.

Roger did not break from the Lancastrians simply out of dislike for Lancaster or revenge for being deserted in 1322. The split was a result of the conciliatory policy which he wished to pursue with regard to Scotland. He wanted a permanent settlement which would guarantee borders and save the expense of further wars. To this end he sent a delegation to Bruce in October offering to recognise Scottish independence. Bruce offered the sum of £20,000 in return for Scottish sovereignty. Most of his terms were acceptable to the English, namely that the borders should be restored, that Bruce’s son David should marry Isabella’s daughter, Joan, that a mutual defence alliance should bind the two countries, and that the English should drop proceedings against Scotland at the papal court.
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But he made one stipulation which would never be acceptable to the northern English lords: Bruce demanded that they should renounce their rights over their Scottish estates. He wanted to make a clear distinction between peers of the realm of Scotland and those of England.

This was a real problem. From the English point of view, an English
lord could have territories in France, and so be both a French lord as well as an English one. Bruce’s opposite point of view was born out of bitter experience. If English lords were also Scottish lords, to whom did they owe their allegiance in time of war? They would side with their more powerful English monarch, naturally. Thus he insisted that Henry of Lancaster, Henry Percy and Thomas Wake, among others, had to give up their claims to lost Scottish estates. The northerners were outraged, but Roger refused to listen to them. Bruce’s agreement was vitally important to the question of peace with Scotland, the northerners’ less so.

After Christmas at Worcester, Roger and Isabella made their way north to York to attend the king’s marriage to Philippa of Hainault. Philippa had been accompanied to England by her father, Count William of Hainault, now struggling with gout, and her uncle, Sir John. On Friday 30 January, the fifteen-year-old king married his sixteen-year-old bride in the minster under the auspices of the Archbishop of York and Bishop Hothum. It was an occasion for celebration by all. Isabella and Roger were happy to cement the tie with Hainault, and the Hainaulters were happy to see their count’s daughter married to the king. For a few days there was feasting, music, dancing and jousting, and the full medieval chivalric ideal was lived out to the full. Then it was back to politics.

Parliament met at York on 7 February with Scotland the only important subject on its agenda. There were a few other items besides, such as why Adam of Orleton had presented himself at the papal court as a candidate for the recently vacated see of Worcester, against Roger’s wishes, and the continued imprisonment of the widow of Hugh Despenser, Eleanor de Clare, who was ordered to be released from the Tower, along with her children and chattels;
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but these were minor issues by comparison. The disinherited northern lords bitterly refused to give up their Scottish claims. Their protests divided the council between supporters of Henry of Lancaster on the one hand and of Roger and Isabella on the other. The debate raged for a whole month, but ultimately there was only going to be one conclusion: the king would support Roger’s policy, and Scottish independence would become reality with or without the agreement of the Lancastrians.
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The shallowness of Henry of Lancaster’s authority was exposed.

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Roger’s newly won power did not tempt him to award himself huge grants of land and authority straightaway. He was still wary of appearing the sole dictator of royal policy. Unlike Despenser, he had no need directly to control manors, towns and men in order to affect government. His grants
to himself were largely made with his family in mind. On 2 September 1327 he requested a small grant to Isabella Mortimer, and on the following day a more significant one, that of the right of marrying the widow of the late Earl of Pembroke to his second son, Roger.
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In the next six months he himself accepted just one administrative office – that of the chief keepership of the peace in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire – one personal gift, of the manor of Church Stretton, at the request of the Earl of Kent, and one wardship: the heir to the earldom of Pembroke.
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Although this last lucrative grant suggests that Roger had designs on the Pembroke estates in the way that Despenser had coveted the earldom of Gloucester, there was no possibility of his becoming earl himself, and his relationship with the family suggests that he sought a future political association rather than personal territorial gain. Evidence of his authority lies not so much in grants to him as an individual but in his exercise of patronage and his appointments to government offices.

In the six months after the king’s death Roger directly requested a number of royal grants be made. There was nothing new in this, and indeed Roger had exercised such a right since 1308. But now the numbers began to increase, modestly at first, and then in greater number and value. In October 1327 he requested that John Wyard, his man-at-arms, be granted a licence to crenellate the manor of Stanton Harcourt, which Roger had given him. In December he requested that the prior and convent of Wormsley be allowed to dispose of certain lands. Having unofficially appointed himself the right to adjudicate who had suffered arrest unfairly under Hugh Despenser, he put forward hundreds of names of less important men whom he requested be pardoned outstanding fines. In the same month he requested that Master Thomas de Chandlos be allowed to receive the manor of Lugwardine. In January he requested that a grant should be made to Richard le Gayte, custodian of the Conway ferryboat, and that Richard de Hawkeslowe should receive the office of Chirographer of the King’s Bench, and that the people of Evesham should be allowed to exact a toll for three years to pave their streets, and that his man John Wyard should be granted the right of free warren on his estates. In February 1328 he requested the same right be granted to Thomas Gurney, that a grant of land be made to John Mauvas, that Hugh Morvill be appointed forester of Inglewood Forest, that William de Ayte be appointed forester of Galtres Forest, that Gerard d’Alspaye be allowed to keep the £40 annual income Roger had granted him for helping him escape from the Tower, and that Richard de Cleobury, the old cook of Edward I and Edward II, who had also helped Roger escape from the Tower, should be given a pension. In March he requested that the townsmen of Montford should
be granted the right to levy a murage toll for five years, and that a grant be made to Thomas de Vere, his distant kinsman, and that a grant be made to the monks of Buildwas Abbey (where he may well have had family or retired household retainers living). This type of patronage, which was always of small amounts, secured for Roger a large number of supporters, and through it he satisfied the claims of existing supporters, and fostered relationships with newcomers.

This behaviour was exactly what was expected of a great magnate, and although Roger was operating on a grander scale than he had done in Edward II’s reign, it was nevertheless calculated not to cause envy or offence. In some acts he jointly requested a gift along with other barons and earls, including the Earl of Surrey, John de Cromwell and Gilbert Talbot, companions of long standing. But these official requests were only a minor aspect of his power. Much more significant were the gifts made to his friends, allies and supporters through his influence over Isabella and, more specifically, his power over the king. It is noticeable that all the grants to Roger’s friends and allies, whether ecclesiastical or secular, were made on the authority of the privy seal (the king’s private seal).
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There is insufficient space here to enumerate all the various people who benefited, but a few examples are particularly worthy of mention. John de Hothum, Bishop of Ely, was forgiven all his debts in Ireland in January 1328. John de Fiennes, Roger’s French cousin who had sheltered him in 1323, was licensed to sell his manorial holdings in England in February. The same month John Wyard, Roger’s man-at-arms, was granted safe passage to go abroad on pilgrimage. And in March the Earl of Kent received a large grant of manors which had belonged to Hugh Despenser. This last grant is interesting in that Roger seems to have appointed himself the sole arbiter of all ex-Despenser lands and rights, and probably established what Kent (his cousin’s husband) was to receive. Some of these privy seal grants were significant and important; others were minor and merely administrative. But since they were all made supposedly by the king, in none of them does Roger’s name appear as patron. In other words, his patronage went right to the heart of the administration, and he was exercising authority not only in his personal capacity as a magnate but also in an executive capacity comparable to that of a monarch.

Roger’s unofficial royal power extended also to the appointments of the great offices of state. In January 1327 John de Hothum was appointed Chancellor, and in the same month Roger’s fellow rebel in 1322, Bishop Orleton, was appointed Treasurer. Hothum’s successor as Chancellor in July 1328 was another close friend of Roger: Henry de Burghersh, Bishop of Lincoln, whose niece had married Roger’s son and heir. When Orleton
was replaced as Treasurer after his departure for Avignon in March 1327, the office was filled first by Henry de Burghersh, and, when Burghersh became Chancellor, by Thomas de Charlton, brother of Roger’s long-time ally John de Charlton, and uncle to Roger’s son-in-law. It is noticeable that all these men were members of the coterie of prelates which Roger had gathered around him in his earlier career, and that he had had personal or official links with all of them since at least 1319, and with de Hothum since at least 1309.

The above appointments are interesting, for they demonstrate that Roger held the upper hand in government appointments even before the Berkeley Castle plot. The only major office which seems not to have been held by Roger’s appointee was that of the Keeper of the Privy Seal. The holder of this office from 26 October 1326, Robert Wyvill (later Bishop of Salisbury), was Isabella’s own clerk. It seems that initially Isabella had a policy of allowing Roger to appoint government ministers while she maintained control of the king’s privy seal. In this way she passed much of the responsibility for government to Roger while maintaining a veto, in her own interests and those of her son. However, this situation did not last. Wyvill was replaced on 1 March 1327 by Richard Ayrmin. The post changed hands again on 24 April 1328, when Adam Lymbergh took the seal. Neither of these two men is known to have had strong personal ties to Isabella.

With regard to the lesser positions of power Roger exercised as much if not more influence over appointments than Isabella. It was probably owing to his early policy of appeasement towards Henry of Lancaster that the appointment of John de Ros as Steward of the Royal Household can be attributed. In March 1328, two months after the successful completion of the Berkeley Castle plot, de Ros was dismissed and John Maltravers was appointed, albeit temporarily. Such a promotion was designed not just to reward Maltravers for his part in the Berkeley Castle plot but to restrict Lancastrian access to Edward III. Another key appointment in the royal household made by Roger was that of Gilbert Talbot, who became King’s Chamberlain in August 1327.
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Additionally Roger controlled keeperships of the peace, the appointment of sheriffs, and custodians of castles. In April 1328 he requested openly that his man be appointed Sheriff of Anglesey. A good example of how he exercised authority anonymously in the appointment of custodians of castles is the appointment in November 1327 of Sir Hugh de Turpington to the keepership of Newcastle Emlyn in Carmarthenshire, a key fortress for the control of South Wales (of which Roger was Justiciar) and the protection of the lands of the earldom of Pembroke (in Roger’s guardianship). From the very top of the hierarchy
of royal service to very nearly the bottom, the majority of government offices were filled by men appointed by Roger.