The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  At about the age of seven Roger was sent away to be taught the rudiments of knighthood in a fellow nobleman’s household. It is not known to whom he was sent. There are several possibilities, the most probable being the important lords related to the Mortimers, such as the Earls of Surrey and Hereford, or the young Prince of Wales. Another possibility is that he was sent to his more humble but more violent uncle, another Roger Mortimer, most easily distinguished as Lord Mortimer of Chirk.

  It is worth pausing to consider Roger’s uncle here, as in later years the two men were close, and acted almost as a two-headed lord of a single huge lordship in North Wales and the Marches. In 1282, when Edmund Mortimer and his brothers had found Llywelyn dead on the hillside above Orewin Bridge, it had been this Roger Mortimer who had taken Llywelyn’s head to King Edward at Rhuddlan. This was not a random choice of head-bearer: his rise to prominence had begun some years earlier. By far the most soldierly of the Mortimer brothers, he had earned his lordship through bitter and cruel fighting in the king’s army in Wales. When the Lord of North Powys died in 1277 leaving two small boys as his heirs, this Roger Mortimer was appointed their guardian. Then, in mysterious circumstances, he took their inheritance. Some claimed he had drowned the boys in the Dee. Although this now appears doubtful, such a deed would not have been uncharacteristic of the man. In 1282 he was confirmed as lord of their lands, and thus became Lord Mortimer of Chirk, warrior lord of a lawless country. He was something of a throwback to the old members of the family, the warlords who had hacked their neighbours – and especially the Welsh – to pieces in the twelfth century. Children and Welshmen were not his only targets. He was at one point accused of adultery with Margaret, the wife of Roger of Radnor, and ‘with many other women’. Given the misogynism of the time, one should not suppose these were romantic affairs. The priest sent to remonstrate with him in the matter was thrown into a deep cell at Chirk Castle. Those who today see the extant dungeon there might shudder to think of the experience: it is a rock-cut chamber eighteen feet beneath one of the towers of the castle, dank when not flooded, almost totally dark, and very cold.

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  To the north-east of Wigmore, a couple of hours away by horse, is Ludlow Castle and its town. In 1300 the castle and a large portion of the town were in the hands of the family of de Geneville. The head of this family, Sir Geoffrey de Geneville, had come to England in about 1250, and had married Maud de Lacy, a co-heiress of the great family of de Lacy, and thus had acquired not only Ludlow and other lands in England and Wales but also extensive properties in Ireland, including half of the county of Meath, and Trim, the great castle and town at its heart. On the death of their son and heir in 1283, they gave all their estates in England and Wales to their second son, Peter de Geneville. To these lands Peter added extensive lands in Gascony through his marriage with Joan, the daughter of the Count of La Marche and Angoulême. However, when Peter died in 1292 leaving only three daughters, Sir Geoffrey and his wife knew that their line was facing extinction. It was likely that their estates would be divided three ways between the husbands of their three grand-daughters. Rather than let this happen, they agreed to settle all their estates on the eldest, Joan, and to place the other two, Beatrice and Maud, in Aconbury Priory.7 They then offered Joan, their sole heiress, to the Mortimer family as a bride for Roger.

  Roger and Joan were probably betrothed in 1299 or 1300. The reason for suggesting this date is the evidence of a financial arrangement between the houses of Mortimer and Geneville. Maintaining the various Mortimer castles – Wigmore in Herefordshire, Bridgewater in Somerset, and Cefnllys, Radnor, Dinbaud and Knucklas in Radnorshire (then Herefordshire) was a costly business. In May 1300 Edmund Mortimer turned to Geoffrey de Geneville for a loan, and mortgaged several of his English manors to him, promising to repay the debt in eight annual instalments of £120.8 Large financial agreements were often accompanied by a statement of affiliation between two families. If this was the case, Roger and Joan were betrothed to one another for sixteen months. They were married at the Mortimer family manor of Pembridge on the eve of the feast of St Matthew the Apostle 1301 (20 September).9 The night after the feast a comet appeared, which lasted for the following seven nights.

  Most medieval aristocratic marriages were largely statements of intent, rather than of immediate physical bonding, in which the young – sometimes very young – bride and bridegroom lived apart until ready to begin their lives together. Given Roger’s and Joan’s ages – fourteen and a half and fifteen and a half – they probably began to live their lives as a married couple from the time of their marriage. Their union immediately proved fruitful: within three years the couple had had two children.10 From this we can safely say that, although we cannot be sure where Roger was, or in whose household he had been brought up, one of his close companions of his early years was his wife.

  Roger’s other companions of his youth are harder to identify. Most can only be guessed at from later evidence, which is discussed below, but one name must be mentioned here: that of his distant cousin, Prince Edward of Carnarvon, the future King Edward II.

  In all probability Roger had had first-hand knowledge of the prince at least from the time of the siege of Caerlaverock Castle in 1300. In that year Roger’s uncle had been one of the half-dozen knights appointed to watch over the prince and to guide him in military matters.11 The prince was then sixteen years old, a robust, tall young man, with shoulder-length blond hair: the very image of his warrior father in youth. He was spiritually minded – at Bury St Edmunds he had refused to accept more food than the monks received – and he was an excellent horseman, an essential requirement of a warrior. On occasion he had shown he could be courageous, and his friends and companions (including several members of the de Fiennes family, Roger’s relations) showed themselves keen soldiers and altogether good company for a future king.

  In the spring of 1303, when Prince Edward was nearly nineteen and Roger himself nearly sixteen, the prince’s company was becoming more exotic and attractive. His love of jewellery was famous, and the whole country knew about his generous gift of a great ruby and gold ring to his stepmother, the young Queen Margaret of France, of whom he was very fond. He made similar gifts to his friend and companion, Piers Gaveston, a young Gascon knight, of whom he was even fonder. But Piers was only the foremost of a number of esquires who lived life to the full in the prince’s company. Together these young men wanted to liven up the court, to escape its dull seriousness arising from the king’s old age and obsession with politics. They preferred jousting and music to politics and war. The prince, as the centre of this band of youths, delighted them by travelling with a lion, which he kept chained up with its own cart and keeper. He acquired a camel, which he kept at his manor of Kings Langley. Minstrels accompanied him from castle to castle, playing drums, rebecs and viols in all the halls where he and his entourage feasted. Fools amused him and travelled in his company, and he was not averse to engaging with them in playfights. Dicing was another of the prince’s pleasures, and Roger no doubt gambled a game or two with him. Indeed the two men had a lot in common: love of fine jewellery, costumes and ornaments, carpets and metalwork, exotic animals (peacocks in Roger’s case), and even books.12 There is no direct evidence which indicates the level of friendship between Roger and the prince from the last years of the reign of King Edward I, but if later evidence may be taken as an indication of their relationship, it is probable that Roger was one of the prince’s group of young men who brightened up the somewhat stuffy court.

  There was a more serious side to the prince, which was apparent in his religious zeal. He attended masses with great frequency, was often in the company of his personal priests, and was assiduous in his alms-giving. This apparent double-faced character, of simultaneous religiosity and frivolity, was certainly contradictory but nevertheless is not in doubt. The prince was a complex, thoughtful individual. Strange forces moved the consciences of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century monarchs. S
eeing his father haunted by death, and living out a sort of existential life, in which the king was defined by his martial exploits, the young prince could not help but be affected. His mother had died when he was only six, depriving him of the affection enjoyed by many of his contemporaries: an affection which even his closeness with his stepmother could not replace. And then there was the legacy of his birth. His father had made him Prince of Wales in an attempt to forestall the prophecy of Merlin; but this had a double edge, for such an obviously contrived political solution to a prophecy might fail to appease the forces that worked it. On top of all this there was the matter of his birthday. Edward was haunted by the date: 25 April. This day – the feast of St Mark – was a day of bad omen, for on this day people dressed in black and, with their crosses also veiled in black, prayed in processions that the year ahead would be one of abundance. One prophecy, noted by the writer Jean de Joinville, stated that the birth of King Louis of France on 25 April had been a sign that many would die in the forthcoming crusades.13 Similar things were said about Prince Edward, and, even if he did not believe such prophecies, they cannot have eased the sense of foreboding.

  Roger Mortimer, three years younger than the prince, no doubt heard these poor omens of Edward’s birth and considered them carefully. For his birthday was also 25 April. He was only too aware of the evil portents of the day, and the prophecy of the deaths of King Louis’s subjects in particular, for Jean de Joinville was the elder brother of Geoffrey de Geneville, or de Joinville, his wife’s grandfather.

  These then were the shadows and lights which filled Roger Mortimer’s mind as he passed his seventeenth birthday in the year 1304. He longed for a life of martial glory, and felt himself bound to serve his king through family tradition, a spiritual sense of knightly service, and the sense of political duty engendered by ruling a border country. Such martial glory would fulfil his dreams of emulating the knights at the court of King Arthur, his ancestor. His family had hereditary allies and enemies: allies in the king, enemies in the family of Hugh Despenser. There were prophecies indicating possible future greatness, and comets predicting personal glory. And finally, his future was bound up with that of the prince. If the date of 25 April had evil forebodings about it, then it would be a fate they shared.

  Before any evil could befall either of them, however, a messenger rode to Wigmore Castle with news which hurled into despair all those who heard it. Edmund Mortimer had been injured in a skirmish near Builth and was being brought back in a litter. A bed was made ready, physicians and surgeons were summoned. But after Edmund had entered the castle, and he had been carried to his chamber, there was nothing more anyone could do. On 17 July 1304 he died,14 and the two great weights of personal ambition and his ancestors’ tradition came to rest on Roger’s shoulders.

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  TWO

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  Youth

  IF AN ANIMAL died in medieval England, its death affected no one but those who were planning to feed off it. If a peasant died, even a rich one, his death affected no one but those whom he supported: his family and his servants. If a nobleman died, however, it affected his family, his retainers, his bailiffs, his servants, the clergy he employed, his manorial and borough officials, monastic communities which held land from him, the rest of the nobility and everyone who knew him, and all those who depended on the authentication of his seal. It caused wrenches in loyalties and allegiances, in reclaiming debts and payments of wages, and it could trigger huge upheavals in local and national administration. With regard to border lordships and the greatest territorial magnates, it could even jeopardise the defence or stability of the realm. In a society almost totally dependent on personal affiliation, a lord’s death could affect the whole country.

  Within days the news of the death of Edmund Mortimer reached Scotland, where the king and court were engaged on a campaign. As with all crises in medieval England, control reverted to the Crown, which now took the income and direction of the estates. It also took responsibility for Roger in person. Although we cannot be sure whether Roger’s education had begun in the king’s household, alongside Prince Edward and Piers Gaveston, we can be sure that, from 1304, that was where it was completed.

  This is probably the most important single aspect of Roger’s early life, and it is crucial to understanding his later political position. Throughout his life Prince Edward surrounded himself with, and favoured, his friends from his youth. These men were well-educated, intelligent and literate, like him.1 Favouring these educated young men caused mistrust amongst his generally illiterate barons, but this inarticulate opposition only served to strengthen the bonds between members of his entourage. Thus the prince’s cherished friends from his youth – such as Piers Gaveston, the Earl of Gloucester, Ingelard de Warley, Guy de Ferre, John de Charlton and Robert de Clifford – were also Roger’s friends. Such bonds meant that, for Roger, opposition to his king would be a harder route to follow than for a man with few connections to the court, and one only to be pursued in the most extreme situation.

  The evidence for Roger being a royal ward is unfortunately only conclusive for the year 1304–5. The principle source is a document, an ‘ordinary’, which makes provision for both Roger Mortimer and John de Warenne as wards in the king’s household, on the respective deaths of their father and grandfather.2 The ordinary mentions four household officials including John Benstead, the Controller of the Household, thus allowing it to be dated to the period from 25 September 1304 (the death of Lord Warenne) to 25 September 1305 (the date of Benstead’s replacement). Because the document mentions the higher ranking John de Warenne before Roger, Roger must have still been entertained as a royal ward after 25 September 1304. It is, of course, entirely possible that Roger was with the court before this. The fact that Prince Edward begged his father to grant custody of the Mortimer lands to his friend Piers Gaveston, when such a grant would normally have been awarded to someone of much higher status, and the fact that the king agreed, suggests Gaveston and Roger were already acquainted.3 Also the presence of some of Roger’s cousins in the prince’s household inclines one to believe that Roger was at court before 1304, and thus one of the prince’s group of established companions along with Gaveston.4

  Gaveston was hardly any older than Roger himself. Chroniclers described him and the prince as contemporaries. Since the prince was born in 1284, it is unlikely that Gaveston was born any earlier than 1281. Thus he was probably no more than twenty-four, and possibly as young as twenty-one, when he became guardian to the seventeen-year-old Roger Mortimer. He was of considerably lower rank than the young heir. He was the son of a knight called Arnaud from Gabaston in Gascony, southern France, who had fought for Edward I and who had been used as a hostage by him on two occasions. On the second of these Arnaud had escaped captivity and had fled to England, bringing with him his son Piers, who had also entered the royal household. So well behaved and virtuous did the young Gaveston appear to the king that he declared him an example for his own son to follow, and made him a member of Prince Edward’s household in 1300.

  As soon as Gaveston and Edward met they became great friends. The prince, overshadowed by his father the king, was yearning to break free and to be his own man. Gaveston was witty, rude and enormously entertaining, with a Gascon accent and moreover a healthy disregard for all things old-fashioned, English and traditional. He delighted the prince, and more importantly gave him confidence, and in his company the prince grew to discover his own character. Hence the lion and the camel, the jewels and the horsemanship. The emergent frivolity of the prince in the last years of his father’s life can be put down to the liberating influence of Gaveston. The prince declared that he loved Gaveston ‘like a brother’. His real half-brothers, Thomas and Edmund, were mere babies at this time, and unable to provide him with the close companionship he craved. Gaveston, having also lost his mother at a young age, was the perfect ‘brother’. Their shared interests gave them further common ground. That Gaveston could
express his disdain for the old-fashioned nobles, insult them, and still ride out in armour and hold his own in the joust with the best of them, made Edward proud to call Gaveston his friend.

  The reason why Gaveston’s name has remained famous to this day is not the extent to which the prince admired him but the nature of their relationship. Were they merely close friends or were they lovers? Did they experience physical desire for one another as well as close friendship? We do not know for certain. We do know that Edward fathered four legitimate children and at least one illegitimate son, and therefore was not repelled by heterosexual coupling. Nor was Gaveston, whose wife bore him a daughter just before he died. In addition, the present-day tendency to define sexuality largely through physical acts makes it harder to assess the erotic degree of emotional relationships in the fourteenth century. The very categorisation of Edward’s and Gaveston’s relationship is a problem, since all the chroniclers agree that theirs was a unique friendship, comparable only with that of Jonathan and David in the Bible. The problem is compounded by the fact that physical homosexual acts were socially unacceptable and thus would not have been mentioned by most chroniclers. Suffice to say that Gaveston was Edward’s best friend, the love of his life, and, in many respects, his hero.5