The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  King Edward was not with the army. By the time the prince set off from Carlisle, the appointed mustering place, his father had only reached Nottingham. The old man was ill, and could only travel in a litter, but this did not mean that he played no part in the campaign. At Methven, Aymer de Valence had captured the Abbot of Scone and the Bishops of Glasgow and St Andrews, all of whom had attended Bruce’s coronation. These prisoners – and many others over the subsequent weeks – were sent to King Edward in irons. From his litter Edward provided not only the impetus for the campaign but also the justice to be inflicted on the Scottish rebels.

  At Perth Aymer de Valence rode out to meet the prince, and to welcome the royal army. To young Roger it served further to cement him into the front rank of the nobility. Here he was with the prince, his distant cousin, and de Valence, another relation. His company could hardly be more eminent. De Valence’s career had been one of outstanding service: he had fought with the king from 1297, he was an internationally important aristocrat, known and respected throughout northern Europe, and capable of leading the most important diplomatic missions. Besides this, he was a first cousin of Edward I. Although de Valence knelt at the prince’s feet at their meeting, there was no doubt that it was he, not the prince, who was in charge.

  The command of an experienced warrior like de Valence was an essential element of any campaign, and particularly one which was about to advance deep into Scotland. While the English were still at Perth, John McDougall of Argyll led a locally raised army against Bruce and met him in battle at Dalry, near Tyndrum, on the western border of Perthshire. Bruce was again defeated, and this time his army was scattered. He sent his womenfolk, including his sister and mistress, northward with his brother Sir Neil Bruce, to Kildrummy Castle. The mission for de Valence and the prince was clear: to take Kildrummy and its precious occupants.

  Leading the English army so far into Scotland, however, was a daunting task, especially with Bruce still at large. At any time their supply lines could be cut from behind, and the king would not have known where to send replenishments by sea. Also that summer was hot, and forcing the troops to march in arms over seventy miles of enemy highland was a significant challenge, requiring careful use of water and food supplies. It is to the credit of its commanders that the army entered Aberdeenshire without incident.

  At Kildrummy itself they faced a problem. The castle was situated at the top of a ravine and very strongly defended, with curtain towers and high battlements. Being set on rock, the walls could not be destroyed by mining beneath the foundations, which was normally the most effective way of attacking a castle. Any siege would be dangerously protracted, as the castle was well stocked with provisions. To storm it would require siege engines to be built on-site, a lengthy and complicated process. It was the sort of castle which could well hold up an army at the very limit of its supply lines that little bit too long, until Bruce managed to raise an army and cut them off.

  De Valence was an able strategist, however. First he secured his position by sending miners to undermine the walls of Dunaverty Castle, where Bruce was sheltering, driving him to seek shelter on the island of Rathlin. Simultaneously he sought a quick – if unchivalrous – solution to the siege of Kildrummy. It was found in the person of the castle blacksmith. He was prevailed upon to set light to the castle granary. With his food supply destroyed, Sir Neil Bruce had no option but to surrender. He did so thinking his brother’s womenfolk were safe, for in fact they were no longer at Kildrummy but had escaped north, to the sanctuary of St Duthus at Tain. Soon, however, the English had the women in their custody, despatched to them by the loyal Earl of Ross, in chains.

  By mid-September the campaign in Scotland was effectively over. The king, now at Lanercost Priory, near Carlisle, had every reason to be well pleased. He had not captured Robert Bruce himself but he had in his custody the man’s wife, mistress, brother, sisters and daughter, as well as the major churchmen who had supported the rebellion and other notables such as Christopher Seton, Sir Simon Fraser and the Earl of Atholl. It was more than he had dared to hope for at the outset. Even during the campaign he had been plagued by worry that he would not live to see its conclusion. His health and the war were increasingly becoming one and the same in his mind: his fight was as much against the forces of death as the Scots. But now, the range of prisoners allowed him his choice of punishments. Twelve knights captured at Methven were hanged at Berwick. Sir Simon Fraser and the Earl of Atholl were sent to London to die in the same way that William Wallace had, being drawn to the gallows, hanged and quartered, their parts being distributed around the realm. Christopher Seton, Bruce’s brother-in-law, who had killed Robert Comyn at Dumfries, was sent back there to be hanged and dismembered, along with Neil Bruce. His wife, Christina Seton, Bruce’s sister, was sent to England to be imprisoned, along with another sister, Elizabeth Siward, and his daughter. The three notable clergymen of the rebellion were all sent to England in fetters to begin lengthy terms in separate prisons. The most vindictive punishments of all were reserved for Bruce’s sister, Mary, and his mistress, Isabel, Countess of Buchan. These two women were incarcerated publicly in wooden cages at Roxburgh Castle and Berwick Castle respectively. The only privacy they were afforded was a toilet, a concession to decency which the king only begrudgingly allowed. Both women endured this for more than three years. The only person honourably treated was Bruce’s wife, Elizabeth, who did not approve of her husband’s rebellion. In her words, they had been ‘like children, playing at being kings and queens’.

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  With the end of the campaign, the English army began to break up. Quite unofficially a few of the younger knights decided they would leave the royal command and head off to find some fighting at a tournament in France. Few of those eager young knights who had come north with Edward had seen much close action, and they and their boredom could be contained no longer. Despite the king’s orders to the contrary, twenty-two of the best-connected and most accomplished young tournament fighters deserted the army. Among them were Sir Piers Gaveston and Sir Roger Mortimer of Wigmore.18

  The king was furious. Despite his frailty and age he raged against the deserters, and declared their estates forfeit. He issued orders for the men themselves to be arrested and to be declared traitors. Thus Roger found himself suddenly landless for the second time. Faced with such reproach there was nothing to be done except to make amends, and accordingly he and his fellow knights went to the prince at Wetheral Priory, near Carlisle, to ask him to intercede on their behalf with the king. The prince sought the best intercession he could, through his stepmother, the youthful and kind Queen Margaret, who pleaded with her husband to forgive the young men. For Roger, as for most of the twenty-two, that forgiveness and the restoration of his estates was forthcoming the following January. To Piers Gaveston it was not.

  The prince’s sympathies were entirely with his young friends. In order to try to reduce the outrage, he himself suggested that he should hold a tournament at Wark, but the king would have none of it. The king had learnt of a secret compact between the prince and Gaveston which went far beyond the desertion of a few knights. It turned out that they were sworn together as brothers-in-arms: that they would fight together as brothers and protect each other against all other men, sharing all their possessions!19 It was outrageous. Although an admiration for Gaveston’s excellent knightly qualities was understandable, a liaison which threatened to share the government of the realm with a provincial knight was unthinkable.

  Roger Mortimer had no objection to the prince having a brother-in-arms, and no problem with the chosen man being Gaveston. It was a knightly and courtly thing to do, and besides, Roger liked Piers Gaveston, and respected his skills in the tournament. But nothing could have prepared him and the other lords for the king’s next quarrel with his son. The occasion was a request by the prince. Having decided that, if Gaveston was too low-born to be his companion, he would give him one of his own counties, the prince sent the Trea
surer, Walter Langton, to the king. On his knees, Langton said: ‘My lord king, I am sent on behalf of my lord the prince, your son, though as God lives, unwillingly, to seek in his name your licence to promote his knight Piers Gaveston to the rank of Count of Ponthieu.’ The king could not believe what he was hearing. To Langton he shouted back: ‘Who are you who dares to ask such things? As God lives, if not for fear of the Lord and because you said at the outset that you undertook this business unwillingly, you would not escape my hands! Now, however, I shall see what he who sent you has to say, while you wait here.’ The prince was summoned, and stood before his white-haired father. ‘On what business did you send this man?’ demanded the king. The prince stoically replied: ‘That with your consent I might give the county of Ponthieu to Sir Piers Gaveston.’ On hearing these words, spoken by the prince himself, the king flew into a rage, exclaiming, ‘You wretched son of a whore! Do you want to give away lands now? You who have never gained any? As God lives, if not for fear of breaking up the kingdom, I would never let you enjoy your inheritance!’ As he spoke the king seized hold of the prince’s head by the hair and tore handfuls of hair out, then threw the prince to the floor and kicked him repeatedly until he was exhausted.20

  When the king had recovered he summoned the lords who were gathering for the parliament at Carlisle and before them declared Gaveston banished. It was a punishment upon his son more than on Gaveston, and since Gaveston’s conduct had been irreproachable he gave him a pension to be enjoyed while abroad. He also forced Gaveston and the prince both to swear an oath never to see each other again without his permission. The prince, facing the prospect of life at court without his beloved companion, travelled south with him to Dover, showering him along the way with presents of jewellery, gold and exotic clothes, including two velvet jousting suits, one in red and the other in green, with silver and pearls on the sleeves. Then he was gone.

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  The prince, bereft of his ‘brother Perrot’, must have felt in the spring of 1307 that only one obstacle lay between him and his happiness: his father. Most of those now at court were younger men, and a change of monarch was long overdue. Young noblemen, bred on stories of great deeds, needed a king who offered them opportunities to match their ambitions, not a sixty-seven-year-old man obsessed with the political vicissitudes of Scotland. The king himself knew this, and knew his strength was ebbing. But with all the world against him, he would not give in. He waited in the north, ready for war. The reprisals against his treatment of Bruce’s family would not be long coming, and he wanted to be there to meet them.

  Most men, after more than half a century of military service, might have been content to retire to a monastery and there end their days in quiet contemplation. Not King Edward. Driven by the furies against first the Welsh and then the Scots, he had made war an integral part of his life. It was not that he was a vicious man – although he showed moments of vindictiveness, as in his treatment of the Countess of Buchan – but he had defined his own qualities in terms of military leadership. In his own mind, if he did not carry the fight against England’s enemies, England would be at their mercy. Therefore his country needed him, he believed, and his right to rule depended on his military judgement and leadership in war.

  In March 1307 the king moved to Carlisle in anticipation of the parliament he had called to take place there. Roger and his uncle, together with the rest of the English host, were summoned to attend. The Scots had apparently taken heart with the revival of another old prophecy of Merlin’s: that after the death of the Covetous King, the Scots and Welsh would unite and have everything their own way. Robert Bruce had returned to the mainland and, although his brothers Thomas and Alexander Bruce were captured and executed on their arrival in the west of the country, Bruce himself was stronger than ever before. On 10 May he defeated Aymer de Valence at Loudon Hill, and a few days later he outwitted another English force under Ralph de Monthermer, and drove them back to Ayr Castle. Edward, by contrast, was sicker than ever, and did not appear in public. As the English army assembled at Carlisle, rumours spread that he was already dead.

  No challenge, not even that of death, held any fears for the old king. When he heard that people were saying he was dead he forced himself out of his bed and once more set out towards Scotland. He did not know how much further he could go, but now the English army was with him, and thousands of men behind him. He was riding against all his enemies. On 3 July he managed two miles. Through a supreme force of will he pushed himself to go another two miles the next day. Worn out, on the next day he rested. The following day, however, he pressed on again, and made it to Burgh by Sands, with the waves crashing on the shore in the distance and the estuary between England and Scotland in sight. On 7 July he decided he would rest a little more. That afternoon, at about three o’clock, when his esquires lifted him up in his bed to take a little food, he fell back dead in their arms.

  It was time for Prince Edward and his brother-in-arms to take power.

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  THREE

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  The King’s Friend

  THE DEATH OF a member of the royal family is an unsettling event even in modern times; the death of a medieval monarch was much more so. When that monarch had reigned for most people’s lifetime, and had become, for each and every one, a crucial part of how society operated, in terms of justice, law, security and religious observance, the effect was traumatic. So it was with Edward I. Most people could not remember the death of the previous king, thirty-five years earlier. Of the lords, knights and prelates who could, very few were old enough to have been at court at the time. Thus, as the country struggled to come to terms with the fact that the only king they had ever known or served was dead, they did the only thing which they were sure was right: they welcomed his son to the throne with open arms, and conferred on him all the powers of his father.

  The realisation of his freedom burst on Edward like a ray of light. Immediately he recalled Gaveston from exile, and within a month the two men were again laughing together as they had done in the early days of their friendship. No more, it seemed, could old kings and proud earls challenge their relationship. And neither could they prevent Edward advancing Gaveston to the front rank of power. On 6 August 1306 at Dumfries, still a day short of a month since his father had died, he endowed Gaveston with one of the richest earldoms in the country, that of Cornwall, worth approximately £4,000 a year. The earldom had been intended for the late king’s second son, Thomas of Brotherton, but Edward disregarded his young half-brother’s interest. Even more alarming to the lords, who were just recovering from the shock of losing their old king, Edward proposed making Gaveston a member of the royal family. He planned to do this by allowing him to marry his niece, Margaret de Clare, sister of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and daughter of his own sister, Joan. For the great lords it was like seeing a servant taken up from the kitchen and sat at the king’s high table.

  Gilbert de Clare, the sixteen-year-old Earl of Gloucester, was one of the few who saw no problem in the king’s raising Gaveston to high rank. He had grown up with the king and Gaveston, and understood their friendship. Roger Mortimer, who had been at court for at least the last four years, similarly saw Gaveston’s promotion as breaking new ground for the new generation. Now twenty years old, and firmly at the heart of the new administration, Roger stood to benefit from the change of monarch. Other men, like Hugh Audley, Roger Damory and John de Charlton had no doubt that their interests lay in supporting the king. Only slightly more distant were older royal advisers, such as Bartholomew de Badlesmere, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, and the elder Hugh Despenser, men whom Edward valued for their counsel and their loyalty. For all these lords opportunities beckoned, as long as they remained on the right side of Gaveston.

  This was the sticking point for many of the older men, especially those who were not friends of the prince. Remaining on the right side of Gaveston was very difficult. He was not just an entertainer, he was ambitious and m
anipulative too. He took full advantage of his relationship with Edward, seeking opportunities for preferment for his tenants and dependants, and wilfully controlling the lords’ access to Edward.1 The great earls saw no reason why they should play second fiddle to the wishes of a Gascon commoner, and several of them soon wished they had not been so hasty in confirming his advancement to an earldom. To them and many others it was clear that their ancient lineage and noble titles – so hard won by their ancestors – counted for little when marks of profound dignity and distinction could be showered on Gaveston, who had yet to prove himself of benefit to anyone but the king.

  Roger Mortimer was firmly in the king’s camp, and as one of the king’s young knights he was enjoying his new-found association with power. With the summer of 1307 drifting past aimlessly, the campaign in Scotland was called off, and Roger accompanied the rest of the court back to Westminster. There they spent a month preparing for the burial of Edward I and the marriage of Gaveston to Margaret de Clare. The funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 22 October, fifteen weeks after the king’s death.2 After seeing his father safely into his tomb, Edward set out for Berkhamsted, the manor of his widowed stepmother, Queen Margaret, where Gaveston’s wedding was to take place.

  For Edward and Gaveston and their friends, the gathering of the court was little more than an excuse to drink, feast, joust, hunt and be merry. After a stay at Berkhamsted they moved on to the manor of Kings Langley in Hertfordshire where they spent most of November. The king’s cousin Thomas of Lancaster was with them, by far the most powerful man in the country after the king, with four earldoms and a colossal income.3 The Earl of Pembroke (Aymer de Valence had recently been confirmed in succession to this earldom) and the Earl of Gloucester were also in the royal party, as well as the Mortimers. On 26 November Roger’s name appears next to that of Gaveston’s in a small group of witnesses of a grant to the king by John FitzReginald.4 At the end of the month they set out again, this time for Wallingford.