The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (57 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

21.
Brie (ed.),
The Brut
, p. 264.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29.
CPR 1321–1324
, p. 17.

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

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

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

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

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

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

13: King in all but Name

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13.
Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 229.

14.
CCR 1327–1330
, p. 261.

15.
Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 234.

16.
CPR 1327–1330
, pp. 163, 166.

17.
CPR 1327–1330
, p. 326.

18.
See also Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 244, for a second opinion on the use of the privy seal. He uses evidence from the parliament at Northampton which sought to curb the use of the privy seal.

19.
Tout,
Chapters in English Administrative History
, vi, p. 46. Obviously this appointment was to the king’s satisfaction, as Gilbert kept the post until 1334.

20.
CCR 1327–1330
, p. 262. Roger had been promised 2,000 marks at the English Exchequer, and the same at the exchequers of Dublin and Carnarvon. He had
bought the right of marrying Thomas de Beauchamp for his daughter with 500 marks of the English debt, and had received only 225 marks from Wales and 348 from Dublin.

21.
Thompson (ed.),
Murimuth
, p. 57.

22.
Murimuth (p. 57) states that at this time there was a double wedding at Hereford in which two of Roger’s daughters married two heirs, namely Laurence de Hastings and Edward of Norfolk. This is almost certainly a mistake. It is unlikely that Roger’s daughters, Agnes and Beatrice, could have been so advantageously matched before Roger was himself an earl, which did not occur until October 1328. Also it is unlikely that the Earl of Norfolk would have allowed his son and heir to marry Roger’s daughter when he was considering rebellion against him, as he was in the summer of 1328. The jousting mentioned by Murimuth in the context of the double wedding is probably the same as the jousting mentioned by Knighton and the longer version of the
Brut
as a Round Table tournament. The earliest of these sources, the
Brut
, places this in 1329; Knighton (p. 449) seems to have copied Murimuth in having one Hereford event, a Round Table tournament, in 1328 (his copyists in turn have mistaken ‘Hereford’ for ‘Bedford’ in one manuscript and ‘Hertford’ in another). It is likely therefore that there were in fact two Mortimer double weddings, one at Hereford at the end of May 1328, and one in autumn 1329, possibly also at Hereford. If this is correct, the pair of daughters married on the first occasion were Catherine and Joan, not Agnes and Beatrice, whose husbands were granted their lands in February and June 1329 respectively. Since Murimuth was working from his memoranda book, it seems likely that he copied his entry relating to the wedding in 1328 at Hereford correctly, since the court was indeed at Hereford at the time he mentions, but then in 1337 he added from memory the names of two of the most eminent heirs to have married Mortimer daughters, who were married at the later event. The text only includes the names of the heirs as an afterthought, the original seems merely to have read that Roger’s daughters married ‘quosdam nobiles’. See Appendix 2.

23.
CCR 1327–1330
, p. 293. The association of this lead with Wigmore is an assumption based on the fact that Ludlow was probably completed by June 1328, as indicated by Roger’s invitation to the king to visit, but Wigmore was not fit for royal inspection for another year. It is also possible that Roger rebuilt one of his manor houses which has not survived, and that the lead went there instead.