The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  If Edward had had an opportunity to talk through his strategy with his commanders, they would have counselled him to break up the Scottish lines using his archers. But as the overconfident English had not expected the Scots to attack them in the open, their archers were stationed on the ground furthest from the front. Only now did they come to the fore, to unleash a volley of arrows on the Scotsmen. But their ability to break the Scottish line was limited. Moreover, Bruce had a few hundred horsemen in hand for just such a purpose as this, and he ordered this contingent to charge into the archers. The archers broke ranks and fled, leaving the knights on the field to fight out the hand-to-hand battle unaided, while the Scottish archers rained down arrows on the English.

  It was now that the real weakness of the English position became clear. So narrow was the place they had chosen that they blocked themselves from moving forward and encircling the Scots. Men waited at the rear while the knights perished on the Scottish pikes, unable to force their way forward. Thus the English superiority in numbers was rendered meaningless. At one point King Edward’s horse was killed beneath him. Down he went, with a great cry from both sides as the Scots tried to push forward to capture him and the English fought even harder to save him. In the desperate scuffle which followed, the king had his shield struck from his grasp, and looked as if he was lost, but at the critical moment, as the Scots advanced, they were met by Sir Giles d’Argentein, charging furiously to the fore, through the thrusting spears and swinging axes of the Scots infantry, to rescue him.

  The shock of their king being unhorsed was catastrophic to the English; the scent of victory to the Scottish was euphoric. Bruce’s men fought like madmen, raining axe blows on the English shields and helmets with all the justification of men whose families had been hanged and whose houses had been burnt. So hideous were the sounds of weapons on armour, the grunts as spears were thrust forward, and the screams, cries, groans and shouts of men in battle that many ran from the place. Those who continued to fight trampled on dead bodies, their shields so covered in blood that their heraldic devices could not be made out, the horses of the dead galloping in blind panic here and there, colliding with men stumbling with exhaustion from the effort, the heat and the lack of sleep.

  And then the trumpeters in the English vanguard sounded the retreat.

  ‘On them! On them! On them! They fail!’ yelled the Scots triumphantly, pushing forward with their pikes against the few knights still mounted. At the shout the Scottish camp attendants, noncombatants, appeared on the ridge where the wood descended to the battlefield. To the English in their panic, it seemed as if a new, fresh Scottish army was approaching. The English footsoldiers completely lost heart. John Barbour, the Scottish clergyman who so carefully chronicled the events in his long poem, The Bruce, drawing from eyewitness accounts, recorded that some of the English stood firm even now, and would not give way. But all was lost, the army out of control, in flight, in panic. In the River Forth, behind them, men were drowning as they tried to escape. Men were being struck down as they tried to cross back across the Bannockburn towards the wagons. Men too heavily armed for flight were trying to strip off their mail in order to run. Already the Scots were killing the boys watching the packhorses and wagons, helping themselves to whatever they found.

  The Earl of Pembroke, seeing the king uncertain what to do next, grabbed the reins of Edward’s horse and determined to lead a charge towards the castle to the north. It was the only way out. But Sir Giles d’Argentein shouted to the king as he saw the earl drag him away. ‘Sire, seeing that it is so, farewell! I am not accustomed to fleeing a battle, and I choose here to bide and die rather than shamefully flee!’ And with that the king’s most trusted warrior turned his war horse about, levelled his lance for one last time, and charged into the Scots, crying ‘Argentein! Argentein!’ It was only a matter of minutes before the Scottish spears killed his war horse, and an axe blow gave him the final chivalric immortality he craved.

  Now the deepest ties of loyalty came into play, as five hundred mounted knights gathered around their king, with no other purpose than to protect his life like a swarm of bees protecting their queen. None of them had ever been in a situation such as this, and it was behaviour beyond any logical or planned strategy. They rode madly towards the castle, a fast-moving impenetrable wall of steel-clad men, scattering the Scottish foot-soldiers on the periphery of the battle. But not all the mounted knights fled. When he was sure that the king was safe from the pursuing Scots, the Earl of Pembroke and some of his personal knights reined in their horses and turned to stand their ground and hold back the Scots. From what little evidence we have, it seems that Roger Mortimer was among them.12

  This rearguard action was the most dangerous part of the whole battle, save the suicidal attacks of the Earl of Gloucester and Sir Giles d’Argentein. Many of Lord Pembroke’s men were killed as they resisted the Scottish onslaught.13 When the time came the men had to fight as they retreated. The earl himself lost his horse and only just managed to escape from the battlefield on foot. Roger was not so lucky. He was surrounded, disarmed and taken captive.

  We do not know what happened next, but conjecture is possible. Roger was a third cousin of Robert Bruce, through the same connection as the dead Earl of Gloucester.14 He was also a close ally of the Earl of Ulster, to whose daughter Bruce was married. Thus he was taken to the Scottish king and treated with dignity. He was not ransomed. Instead he was given the duty of taking King Edward’s privy seal and the royal shield, both of which had been found on the battlefield, to the king at Berwick, with the corpses of the Earl of Gloucester and Robert Clifford. To him fell not the penury of ransom, nor the pain of death, but rather the embarrassment of bearing the tokens of the Scottish king’s magnanimity to the English king.15

  *

  Bannockburn shocked the English in a most profound way. Never could such a defeat have been envisaged. It had destroyed the last vestiges of English rule in Scotland, and had opened up the north of England to Scottish raids. It had also taken the pressure off the Earls of Lancaster and Warwick. They now had the authority to demand changes in the royal household. They claimed the king had openly disregarded the Ordinances in the two years since Gaveston’s death, that he had appointed men to office who did not deserve high honours, and that he had forgiven debts which were not within his power to forgive. It was feared by some that Edward’s flouting of the Ordinances had in particular incurred divine wrath,16 as the Archbishop of Canterbury had threatened with excommunication all those who did not obey their provisions, resulting in the rout of the English army at Bannockburn. Parliament was summoned to address these matters, meeting at York in early September.

  The fact that Edward did not suffer greatly in this parliament was due to his loyal supporters, like Pembroke and Roger: men who could not simply be disregarded as royal hangers-on, and who wielded considerable political authority. Roger’s retainers represented Herefordshire and Shropshire as knights, and it seems he was flexing whatever political authority he had at every opportunity. The proceedings of the 1314 parliament confirmed this. The Chancellor and the Treasurer were removed from office, but the men who replaced them were no enemies of the king, and one certainly was a friend of Roger.17 It was the same with the lesser officers. While there had been calls for John de Charlton to be exiled from court, the York parliament confirmed him in his position as Chamberlain of the royal household. William de Melton, another man later chosen by the king along with Roger to reform the royal household, was appointed Keeper of the Wardrobe. Despite the renewed calls from Lancaster for his men to be appointed to office, in almost all respects the York parliament saw courtiers favourable to Roger, his uncle, and the Earl of Pembroke reinstated or promoted. There was one notable exception: the continued presence of Sir Hugh Despenser the younger.

  Despenser, who was married to the king’s niece, had been moving into the king’s favour ever since the death of Gaveston. Though the king trusted the advice of men such
as the Earl of Pembroke, and, after he had gone down on his knees to beg forgiveness for his part in the Gaveston affair, the Earl of Hereford, he longed for a special companion to help him in his government. In an age when, among the nobles, friendships were defined by blood ties, marriage ties, political alliances and strategic military considerations, Edward wanted a real friend, a personal friend to support him in the way that Gaveston had. Although the right age, Roger was clearly not a candidate, being too much of a warrior, too interested in Ireland, and quite probably too fond of his wife’s embraces. What was becoming clear by 1314, and what the Mortimers truly feared, was that the right man was Hugh Despenser, the man who had sworn to destroy them by way of revenge for the death of his grandfather at the hands of Roger’s grandfather at the Battle of Evesham, fifty years earlier.

  Roger remained at court for the remainder of 1314, travelling south in late October and November. In all probability he was with the king when, on 2 January, the corpse of Piers Gaveston was finally buried at Edward’s favourite manor of King’s Langley. The Earls of Pembroke and Hereford were present, as were four bishops, an archbishop, thirteen abbots and more than fifty knights.18 No doubt it was a poignant moment for the king. His two closest boyhood companions, the Earls of Cornwall and Gloucester, were both dead, and he himself had only just turned thirty.

  *

  Scottish authority had not simply received a boost at Bannockburn, it had received final confirmation of the independence for which Bruce had fought since 1306. In all that time he had learnt never to rest on his laurels. Accordingly King Robert now planned to send his brother Edward to carve out a kingdom in Ireland. The two brothers would both be kings, one either side of the Irish Sea. In confirmation of his brother’s royal blood, Robert settled the inheritance of the throne of Scotland on his brother if he died leaving no male heir.

  The Scots managed to keep their plans of invasion very quiet. John de Hothum, who was in Ireland from 5 September to the end of November 1314 on official business, did not hear of anything suspicious. But as soon as a rumour of the invasion reached Westminster, Roger acted. Indeed, his sudden decision to go to Ireland is the first indication we have that the English court had heard of the imminent invasion. On 14 March he appointed attorneys to act on his behalf in Ireland for two years, clearly not anticipating a journey there for some while. On 26 April, however, he changed his mind, and appointed attorneys to act on his behalf in England, and obtained royal letters of protection for himself and Robert FitzElys to go to Ireland. After clearing his remaining business in Westminster, which included making a grant of rents to his brother John Mortimer, a yeoman in the king’s household, a grant of £40 per year for life to his faithful retainer Robert de Harley, and a request for his faithful retainer Hugh de Turpington to be given the constableship of the castle of Kildare, he made his way westward through the rain-sodden country, and took ship in Wales for Dublin.19

  How did Roger know about the Scottish invasion so early? This is an interesting question, as clearly the rest of the English court were unaware: even after Bruce had landed, plans were being laid to take Irish troops to fight in Scotland. The explanation must lie in Roger’s intelligence-gathering contacts. We know from later evidence that he used spies, and indeed his accounts for Ireland as governor record that he himself sent clergymen and others to England with secret information for the king which he did not want committed to parchment.20 More specifically, in 1317 Roger accused two of his own vassals of inviting Bruce to Ireland in the first place. We know that Robert Bruce was initially very wary about letting his brother attack Ireland, but if Roger’s accusation was true, it may explain why Roger changed his plans and obtained protection to go to Ireland a full month before the invasion took place. It is possible that a spy in Ireland let him know that such a message had been sent. However, this would beg the question why he allowed men whom he suspected to be traitors to continue to act within his army. It is more likely that Roger heard word from a contact among the native Irish that the Scots were planning to attack, as Bruce wrote to them in advance, asking for their support. It was thus with only the scantiest information that Roger set off to Ireland.

  Edward Bruce landed at Olderfleet, now Larne, in County Antrim, on 26 May 1315. The English lords of the country seem to have been less well-informed than Roger, and were taken wholly by surprise. The native Irish were not much better prepared, despite being sounded out by Bruce in advance. But the change in the weather played into Edward Bruce’s hands. Arriving while the torrential rains of 1315 were threatening to wipe out the harvest, he was able to convince the native lords to adopt a radical solution to their plight. He carried with him copies of a letter from his brother Robert, addressed ‘to all the kings of Ireland, to the prelates and clergy, and to the inhabitants of all Ireland, his friends’:

  … [since] our people and your people, free since ancient times, share the same national ancestry and are urged to come together more eagerly and joyfully in friendship by a common language and by common custom, we have sent over to you our beloved kinsmen, the bearers of this letter, to negotiate with you in our name about permanently strengthening and maintaining inviolate the special friendship between us and you, so that with God’s will our nation may be able to recover her ancient liberty.21

  Robert Bruce hoped the Irish would help his brother win a kingdom but this was not his sole aim, or even his primary one. His real intention was to spread the frontier on which the English had to defend themselves, thus lessening the chances of Edward sending an army to seek revenge for Bannockburn. The native Irish for their part saw the Scots offering themselves as military assistants in their struggles, precisely at a time when many clans were having difficulty finding enough to eat, and several of them gladly gave Edward Bruce their support.

  Edward Bruce had come with no mean force of men. With him were the renowned Sir Thomas Randolph, conqueror of Edinburgh Castle, Sir John de Soulis, Sir John de Stewart, Sir Fergus d’Ardrossan and the shrewd Sir Philip de Mowbray, constable of Stirling, now a fully fledged Scottish patriot. They were joined by Donnell O’Neill, king of Tir Eoghain, and lords O’Cahan, O’Hanlon, MacGilmurry, MacCartan and O’Hagan. The Earl of Ulster was at this time in Connacht, too far away to organise any resistance, and those Ulster lords who decided against immediately joining the Scots made little or no immediate attempt to resist them. A few Irish lords, unhappy with O’Neill’s confederacy, and suspecting that the Scots would impose taxation and tribute of their own, decided to resist. They gathered at the Moyry pass, but were crushed by the Scots army as Edward Bruce and his fellow lords set about their first object: the subjugation of the land nearest Scotland.

  On 29 June 1315 Edward Bruce came to Dundalk. Until now he had wooed and coerced the local Irish into helping him, and had divided them amongst themselves so that he could more easily defeat them in battle. As he and his advisers knew well, the only way the Scots would conquer Ireland completely would be if they gained the support of the Irish lords. But now at Dundalk he employed another tactic: terror. The Anglo-Irish gathered in the town had slept poorly the night before the battle, with Bruce encamped at their gates. The following morning, scouts were sent out to assess the size of Bruce’s army. ‘They are nothing; they’re half-a-dinner,’ they reported, and the townsfolk armed and sent forth their men. The battle, however, was hard, and victory was in doubt until the Scots forced the men of Dundalk back into the town. The Irish lords fighting alongside them fled, leaving the Dundalk men to be slaughtered. The mud of the streets turned red with blood. The Scots started looting and killing indiscriminately. They found large stores of wine, and the soldiers went on a continuous drunken rampage, and their lords let them, until the town was destroyed and most of its men and a great number of its women and children had been hacked to death. It was a message to all other undecided Irishmen: turn to Bruce, or the fate which befell the people of Dundalk will also befall you.

  Roger was probably at Trim when news
of the massacre at Dundalk reached him. It did not spur him to join the army the Justiciar had raised, which met at Greencastle. Nor does it seem that he joined the separate army of the Earl of Ulster, who had summoned the men of Connacht and the vassals of the powerful Irish lord, Felim O’Connor. This is possibly due to a parliament which may have been held at Kilkenny in early July.22 Either way, it seems that it was agreed that Roger’s forces would act as a rearguard, ready to supply reinforcements if necessary. The earl’s army marched through the north of Meath to Athlone, and then north, meeting up with the Justiciar’s army just south of Ardee on 22 July. After a few skirmishes, in which they forced Bruce to withdraw, it was agreed that the earl would proceed alone against the Scots. The Justiciar’s army returned south, as food supplies were short, and apparently a second army was no longer needed. The earl marched north to Coleraine, but Edward Bruce retreated across the deep and fast-flowing River Bann, and destroyed the bridge over it, making a full confrontation between the two armies impossible. Minor skirmishing continued, and the two sides left the country either side of the river devastated. ‘Both armies left neither wood nor plain, nor field nor corn crop, nor residence, nor barn, nor church, without burning and wholly destroying’, as one chronicler put it.23 Together with the rain, the devastation was terrible. All that was not sodden or rotten already was burnt.

  Edward Bruce was not a great strategist, but he did have men with him who were, and he and his advisers saw a way to break up the army massed against them on the other side of the river. To Felim O’Connor Edward Bruce secretly offered the lordship of all Connacht if he would desert the earl. To Felim’s rival, Rory O’Connor, who came to him separately, he promised assistance in his own war over Connacht, as long as he protected Felim’s land. Rory, an old rival of Felim’s, then returned to Connacht and ransacked and burnt all the principal towns in the region, including Felim’s estates. Felim left the earl to return to Connacht to defend his territory, was defeated by Rory, and forced to accept his overlordship. Without having to fight at all Edward Bruce had destroyed most of Connacht, killed hundreds of its men, and had drastically reduced the army at the disposal of the Earl of Ulster on the other side of the Bann.