The Greatest Traitor

by Ian Mortimer

  Despite the increasing strength of the opposition, Despenser and the king remained firm. On 8 April Audley’s lands were confiscated. On 13 April orders were sent to Roger, Hereford, Hastings, Damory, Charlton, Giffard and both Berkeleys to maintain the peace in their lands, and ‘not to permit assemblies and demonstrations in warlike manner to be made … complaint having reached the king that many men of [their lordships] make such assemblies and demonstrations’.9 A show of equality was maintained by also naming Despenser as one of those preparing for war, but things had gone too far, and there was now no stopping the momentum of the resistance to the favourite.

  On 21 April the king finally made up his mind to act, and wrote to more than seventy lords and all seventeen bishops urging them not to attend any musters or to believe ‘false news’ about a rebellion. Two days later he wrote to Roger and the Earl of Hereford regarding their refusal to come to Gloucester. His letter was effectively a declaration of war. He claimed that their reasons for nonappearance were insufficient because Despenser had been appointed to the office of Chamberlain in Parliament, and in their presence, and that no complaint had hitherto been received against him, and that, in any case, a royal summons was a protection for all who should obey it, so fear of Despenser was no excuse for nonattendance. In addition, conveying Despenser to the Earl of Lancaster would be contrary to the terms of Magna Carta, against the law, and in contradiction to the Ordinances. The letter concluded with the new summons for them to be at Oxford by 10 May.

  Edward found it difficult to believe that Roger and Lord Hereford would actually take arms against him. But on 1 May he wrote to the two lords again prohibiting them from taking up arms and stating that he wished to change the place to which they should report from Oxford to Westminster. He was unaware that on that very day the two Lords Mortimer, the Earl of Hereford and all the other Marcher lords were taking up military positions, ready to ravage the lands of Hugh Despenser. This was the king’s next great miscalculation: the men he had alienated were the most experienced battle fighters in England. Despenser, by contrast, had very few military knights at his disposal.10 Lord Hereford and Lord Mortimer of Chirk had fought with the old king in Scotland, Wales and Gascony. Roger had learnt how to command an army in Ireland. More importantly, many of Roger’s men were battle-hardened, including Englishmen who had fought with him in Ireland, such as the steadfast Sir Hugh de Turpington and Irish knights who had crossed to help him. Having been dragged to the point of war, they were not going to back down now.

  Roger was the prime mover in the attack on the Despensers. He marched south with his uncle from Wigmore on or just before 1 May.11 His army stayed the night at Bromyard, where his men seized property belonging to local inhabitants.12 As he marched further south, through Ledbury, his army seized further property. The Bishop of Hereford, Adam of Orleton, sent his own men to help Roger. Approaching Glamorgan he was joined by the contingents of Damory, Audley, Hastings, Mowbray, Sir Roger de Clifford, John Giffard, Henry le Tyeys, Lord Berkeley, Sir John Maltravers and many others. In total they rode with eight hundred men-at-arms, five hundred other horsemen and ten thousand footsoldiers.13 They rode beneath banners bearing the royal arms, first to Newport, which fell to them after a four-day-long attack on 7 May, and then to Cardiff, which suffered a similar fate five days later. They rode throughout Glamorgan and South Wales, destroying the property of Hugh Despenser in the manner of fourteenth-century war. In the words of Despenser’s clerk, their army

  besieged his towns and castles, and took them by force, and slew some of his men, namely Sir John Iweyn, Matthew de Gorges, and others to the number of fifteen Welshmen, and wounded and maimed some of his men, such as Sir Philip Joce, and imprisoned some of them, such as Sir Ralph de Gorges … and took and carried away the chattels of Hugh Despenser found in the said towns and castles, including forty destriers and armour for two hundred men … siege engines, springalds, cross-bows, lances, quarrels … and victuals, such as corn, wine, honey, rye, meat, fish, and divers other necessary victuals amounting to the value of £2,000, and took and burnt all the said charters remembrances and muniments of the said Hugh there found, to the value of £2,000, and burnt part of the gates and houses in the said castles, and took out and carried away the windows, ironwork and lead, and committed many other damages, to the value of £2,000. And with the same power and force they stayed there five days in order to destroy the lands completely, within which time they made by force all the greater part of all the country swear to be of their accord, and they imprisoned and held to ransom those who refused, and burnt their houses and goods. And during the same time they wasted all his manors there, and robbed him of all his movables therein … [including 10,000 sheep, 400 oxen, 500 cows, 160 plough-cattle and other animals from a total of twenty-three manors].14

  This account, being rendered by Hugh Despenser’s clerk to the king, is no doubt an exaggeration of their destructiveness, but many elements of it are confirmed by chronicle evidence. The author of Vita Edwardi Secundi, for example, supports the figure of eight hundred men-at-arms, and supports the statement about the looting. He also states that

  thirty thousand of the inhabitants of that territory came to the barons saying ‘Remit your displeasure towards us, for we have never liked the lordship of Hugh Despenser, and are all prepared to obey your orders.’ They were accepted on these terms: that they would wholly renounce their homage to Hugh Despenser, that they would never acknowledge him as lord, but remain faithful to the lord king in all things, and would maintain their due services for the true heir at the proper time and place …15

  A huge number of people wreaked this damage on Hugh Despenser’s lands and castles. As is plain, the hatred which this destruction represented went beyond any single cause. Protest at certain of his actions had grown into a widespread demonstration, in which personal and collective reasons for attacking Despenser were combined. This was the case for Roger also, for the key prisoner who fell into his hands was his appointed replacement as Justiciar of Ireland, Sir Ralph de Gorges. Roger immediately took him back to Wigmore, where he locked him up, before taking his army on to the Earl of Arundel’s castle of Clun, which they attacked.

  If Hugh Despenser’s clerk was more or less accurate in reporting the actions of the Marcher lords, his father’s clerk wildly exaggerated their actions elsewhere in England. Roger and his associates are supposed to have done damage to his property to a value which was roughly comparable with two-thirds of a year’s royal income. But it is not the amount of damage which leads one to suspect exaggeration, rather the locations. Roger is supposed to have entered Vastern Manor in Wootton Bassett on 11 June and subsequently sacked it and sixteen other manors in Wiltshire, six manors in Gloucestershire, four in Dorset, five in Hampshire, two in Berkshire, six in Oxfordshire, three in Buckinghamshire, four in Surrey, one in Cambridgeshire, two in Huntingdonshire, five in Leicestershire, one in Yorkshire, one in Lincolnshire, five in Cheshire, and five in Warwickshire all before arriving in Parliament on 29 July. Allowing five days for the journey to London, the army had just forty-three days to destroy sixty-seven manors and cover the many hundreds of miles between them. Clearly at this stage the destruction was not being done by a single coordinated army but by a series of forces, many of which are likely to have been local peasants and outlaws eager to take advantage of the war against the Despensers to enrich themselves. The author of Vita suggests as much in giving the reasons for the country’s hatred of the elder Despenser:

  For the brutal and greedy father had in the past wronged many, and promoted the excommunication of many. As a justice of the forest he had accused many of poaching from royal hunting grounds, many of these he vilely disinherited, some he forced into exile, from many he extorted unjust sums of money, and collected a thousand librates of land by means of threats … By a general judgement he justly lost what he had accumulated from the losses of others.

  Hence his own parks and hunting grounds became a free-for-all for
every would-be venison-eater in the country. The claim against the Marchers should be seen in this light: as an attempt by the elder Despenser to pass off the anger against him as their work. It also indicates that, as the lands of the elder Despenser were attacked by the Marcher lords and others,16 neither the Despensers’ men nor the royal forces could do anything to stop them.

  While Roger, Hereford and the other Marcher lords were ploughing through the elder Despenser’s lands, Lord Lancaster in the north had convened a meeting at Sherburn in Elmet.17 Roger has usually been thought by historians to have attended this meeting, but in view of the heavy destruction systematically being applied to the elder Despenser’s lands in the south, it is likely that the Marchers sent only a representative. This may have been Bartholomew de Badlesmere, who now openly joined Roger’s side. The northern lords declared that they understood and sympathised with the Marcher lords’ reasons for action. Despite the damage the Marcher lords’ forces were wreaking across England, Roger and his coleader Hereford maintained the full support of the majority of the realm, and the crucial support of the northern barons.

  On 29 July 1321 Roger led his army from Waltham to London. Each of the Marcher lords stationed himself at a separate point around the city, practically laying siege to the king and the court. As a mark of solidarity, the Marcher lords and their men all wore an identical livery: green tunics, with the right top quarter and right arm yellow, and with the royal arms on their chests. Roger and his forces encamped in the grounds of the priory of St John at Clerkenwell, just to the north of the capital. And there they waited, while the king refused to negotiate.

  The waiting game which the king and the rebel lords now embarked on was a microcosm of the entire reign of Edward II. There was only one basic dispute: the king’s right to do whatever he wished. The king and those he happened to favour believed he should have complete liberty. Most other lords, especially those who had lost out to his favourites, believed he had a responsibility to govern the country justly, in accordance with his coronation oath. In the resulting conflicts and resolutions, the whole country suffered, and the only benefit was a careful rethinking of the machinery of government.18 Only a great statesman like the Earl of Pembroke could break such a deadlock. Ambitious men like Roger and Despenser could never be disassociated from their ambitions; warriors like Hereford could not resolve their differences without the context of violence; and overmighty magnates such as Lancaster could only interpret political settlements in terms of what they personally had gained and lost. Thus it was fortunate for all concerned that at this juncture the Earl of Pembroke returned to England. Although he was still at Dover, the king wrote to him on 1 August asking him to come the next day to Westminster. Pembroke did not delay, and, amazingly, managed to cover the seventy miles to be at Westminster the following day.

  It was 1312 and Gaveston all over again, except that the third magnate facing the king with Lancaster and Hereford was Roger, in place of the late Earl of Warwick. And their armies were not encamped a few miles outside the city but right next to the walls. And the royal favourite was not dead, as Gaveston had been when England had last teetered on the brink of civil war, but very much alive. Everything came down to Pembroke, as it had in 1312. The question was: could he persuade the king to accept the Despensers’ exile? Or would full-scale civil war break out?

  Having discussed matters with the Marcher lords, Pembroke returned to the king. Still he refused to accept the Marchers’ terms. It took all the earl’s powers of persuasion to make him see that he had no choice.

  ‘Consider, lord king, the power of the barons,’ he implored. ‘Take heed of the danger that threatens; neither brother nor sister should be dearer to thee than thyself. Do not therefore for any living soul lose thy kingdom … Let not the king say, to his own injury, that this business was begun by the barons; but since it is for the common good that the country be freed from wicked men, to which end, lord king, you swore an oath at your coronation, if you listen to the barons you shall reign in power and glory; but if on the other hand you close your ears to their petitions, you may perchance lose the kingdom and all of us. For we are sworn confederates, and we cannot oppose our peers.’19

  Faced with this statement from Pembroke, and the rebel lords’ declaration that they would renounce their homage to him and appoint another king in his place if he would not accept, Edward was forced to give in. The Archbishop of Canterbury was sent to summon the rebel lords to Westminster, and on 14 August, in the company of the Earls of Pembroke and Richmond, the king entered Westminster Hall and coldly agreed to the banishment of the Lords Despenser, and that they would be gone by the end of the month. The Marcher lords, it seemed, had won.

  Immediately work began on drawing up a formal process against the king’s favourites. The accusations against the Despensers were that, although a royal council had been named, of which two bishops, one earl and one baron would be with the king at all times, Hugh Despenser and his father (neither of whom was on the royal council) had become close to the king and taken that role upon themselves unlawfully. This much was true. The Marchers then ascribed to the Despensers the authorship of the 1308 pronouncement that homage was due more to the Crown than the king: a line they themselves had adopted. This was not reasonable, and somewhat undermines the virtue of their position. But the remainder of their accusations against Despenser were substantially correct. The Despensers had limited lords’ freedom to see the king; they had removed good ministers (such as Roger) and replaced them with their own men; and they had counselled the king to go in arms to Gloucester against the terms of Magna Carta, thereby provoking war. Hugh Despenser in particular had murdered Llywelyn Bren, had stolen the inheritance of Hugh Audley, had attempted to take that of Roger Damory in order to acquire the whole of the earldom of Gloucester, and had illegally taken the revenues of the estates of the late Earl of Warwick which had rightly been granted to the executors for the benefit of the heir (who was betrothed to Roger’s daughter). In addition the Despensers had forced the king to deny hereditary rights in Parliament, so they might acquire them themselves, as in the case of Mowbray. These were the key complaints. There were many more.

  For a complete victory, all the Marcher lords now needed was to be acquitted of their own crimes in the conflict. Pardons were granted to the Earls of Hereford and Surrey, Roger, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, Roger Damory, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, John de Mowbray, John Giffard of Brimpsfield, Hugh Audley and his son, Richard de Grey of Codnor, Henry le Tyeys, John Maltravers, Lord Berkeley, Thomas de Berkeley, and a total of 423 of their followers. Their pardon simply stated that they were acquitted of ‘anything done’ against the Despensers between 1 March and 19 August 1321.20

  The victory was technically complete.

  *

  In the fourteenth century the philosophy of the Wheel of Fortune was one with which all people were familiar. It was the cycle of luck which carried men and women to dizzying heights of success and reward, and then tipped over and plunged them into the depths of loss, hardship and humiliation. The Wheel of Fortune now made one of its quickest turns of the fourteenth century, throwing down the Marcher lords who had seemed to sweep all before them, and raising the Despensers from miserable exile to previously undreamed-of heights.

  The root of the problem for the Marcher lords lay in the fact that they and their northern allies had been united by their principal enemy, Hugh Despenser, and he was now banished. Furthermore, unlike Gaveston, who had repeatedly attempted to return from exile, Despenser and his father removed themselves completely. Hugh Despenser became a pirate, robbing any vessels that he could catch, earning a new reputation as ‘a sea-monster, lying in wait for merchants as they crossed his path’.21 His father went to Bordeaux, blaming his losses on his son’s greed. Soon the coalition of northern barons, Marcher lords and the Earl of Pembroke, which had brought such pressure to bear on the king over Hugh Despenser, was no longer united.

  There was another major fac
tor underlying the Marchers’ change of fortunes: the mood of the king. Edward did not care that Hugh Despenser, as a pirate, was jeopardising international relations and damaging English trade, but he cared very greatly about the humiliation he had suffered in being forced to exile his favourite. His determination to exact revenge on the Marcher lords in particular was extraordinary. He believed wholeheartedly that he had been humbled purely for their advantage. Accordingly he put the resources of the realm towards reversing this personal slight and, in so doing, managed to galvanise the many lords who had remained neutral in the recent hostilities into a strong body of royal support. Many of these new royalists were very eager to help the king, for they hoped to win back some of the favour they had lost during Despenser’s period in power. As a result, the king was in a much stronger position after Despenser’s exile than he was before it. He now had the motive and the means to exact revenge.

  Bartholomew de Badlesmere, isolated in Kent, was the first object of his attention.

  Less than a month after the departure of the Despensers, Edward went on pilgrimage with Queen Isabella to Canterbury. The king then went on to meet the younger Hugh Despenser alone on the Isle of Thanet, and ordered Queen Isabella to return to London by way of Leeds Castle, which she was to enter if she could by asking for a night’s accommodation. Under medieval rules of hospitality, a housekeeper had an obligation to entertain anyone who should ask for shelter, and Lady Badlesmere, who had been left in charge of the castle during her husband’s absence, normally would have allowed entry to Isabella and entertained her as a royal guest without a second thought. However, Lord Badlesmere, aware of his delicate position and the heightened state of tension throughout the country, had told his wife not to allow anyone at all into the castle, under any circumstances. On 13 October Isabella asked for accommodation. She was refused. Furious, she ordered her men to try to force the gate. Isabella’s company was not equipped to attack a well-defended castle, and nine of her men were killed. Shamed and infuriated, she returned to her husband, and unwittingly provided him with the perfect excuse to raise a royal army to attack Leeds. On 16 October the king announced his intention to make an example of Lord Badlesmere, and the following day he sent the Earls of Pembroke, Richmond and Norfolk to begin the siege.