The Greatest Traitor Read online

  In 1304, when Roger’s wardship was granted to Gaveston, England had yet to make up its mind about the Gascon knight. From Roger’s point of view, Gaveston was a fine tournament fighter, and an admirable companion, but Roger wanted his freedom to enjoy his own property. The ordinary made for him and Warenne gave him some level of distinction – for example, that he could have three valets to serve him, each entitled to three changes of robes each year, and that he could maintain his favourite four horses – but this was still a far cry from his own castles, retinues of men-at-arms and authority.6 Thus it was decided between him and his family that he should buy his way out of his wardship.

  The question was merely one of money. The lands to which Roger was directly heir (just his father’s and grandmother’s estates, since his mother and Joan’s grandfather and mother were all still alive and in possession of their lands) amounted to about £700 per year, less the £120 mortgaged to Geoffrey de Geneville. That left Gaveston with the remaining £580 for at least another three years while Roger was under twenty-one, a staggeringly large income for a man who was not even a knight. Thus Gaveston was unlikely to relinquish the wardship cheaply. He settled for 2,500 marks, or £1,666 13s 8d, probably the equivalent of the family income (excepting the mortgage) over three years.7 The amount is put into perspective by the fact that at this time the daily allowance of a knight on active service was just 1s, a skilled carpenter might earn 4d, and an unskilled labourer earned no more than 2d per day. If we are right in saying that the 2,500 marks was the rough equivalent of three years of Roger’s income, we can assume that it was paid before much of those three years had elapsed. Possibly it was paid before the end of December 1304, when Roger was granted the right to pay back his father’s debts to the Exchequer at the rate of £20 per year.8 Roger would have come of age in March 1308, and so it is likely that the period of approximately three years on which the fine paid to Gaveston was assessed fell at some point in early 1305 at the latest. It must have been paid before 16 May 1305, as Roger’s guardian and the executor of his father’s will, Walter de Thornbury, granted some land in Stratfield Mortimer on his behalf on that date, with no reference to Gaveston.9 It was not until the following year, however, that he was given full control over his estates.

  By the time he bought his freedom to enjoy his inheritance, Roger had been married for about three years. He had a son and heir, Edmund, named after his own father in accordance with the family custom, and a daughter, Margaret, named after his mother.10 More children – in fact at least ten more – followed.11 This fact alone suggests the marriage was a highly satisfactory one: in order to remain regularly pregnant by her husband, Joan would have needed frequently to travel with Roger when he was summoned to attend Parliament, or to attend the king, only remaining behind in times of actual combat. This represents a high level of companionship sustained over many years, a situation by no means universal in the early fourteenth century. It is likely that Joan returned to the family estates as each confinement drew near, but, even so, the fact that they had twelve surviving children in less than twenty years, and that she travelled with her husband at least twice to lawless Ireland, points to a relationship which was much closer than most among the medieval nobility. No previous generation of the family had managed to produce such a brood. It suggests that they are an example of that rarity – a mutually beneficial, secure medieval partnership.12

  We do not know for certain where Roger was at any point in 1305, but given the evidence of the ordinary for his accommodation as a royal ward, he was still probably in the king’s household at the beginning of the year, watched over by Walter de Thornbury. Since over subsequent years Roger would show a greater enthusiasm for being at court than on his own estates, there is every likelihood that he remained with the king throughout the year. Walter de Thornbury showed a similar propensity for remaining at court. Either way, there is one assumption which is safe to make about Roger at this time, and that is that he took part in tournaments. Within a short while he had risen to prominence as a tournament fighter, and this was the one sure way of attracting the king’s attention.13 For the early fourteenth-century tournament was not the mere chivalric parade it came to be in later years; then, it still resembled the original show battles of the thirteenth century, in which men very often died. In 1241 more than eighty knights had been killed in a single tournament. The Round Table tournament which Roger’s grandfather had held at Kenilworth and the king’s Round Table tournament in 1284 were pitched fights in which, although edged weapons were blunted, men fought all the more viciously to conquer their opponents. Several of Roger’s family had been killed tourneying, including one lord of Wigmore in 1227. In addition to the wounds wrought by weapons, men were trampled to death, crushed, suffocated or broke their necks. But champion knights could make themselves famous and comparatively wealthy, paying only a few marks to enter and display their skills to the audience and judges. It was probably in this way that Roger drew attention to himself as a fighter and convinced the king that he deserved to come into his inheritance sooner rather than later.

  Although he was not quite nineteen, on 9 April 1306 Roger was endowed with full possession of all the estates he inherited from his father and which he held directly from the king.14 He thus became Lord Mortimer of Wigmore and inherited the barony of Wigmore, with its castle, manors, towns and estates. He also inherited the castle, town and barony of Radnor, the castle and one third of the town of Bridgewater in Somerset, three castles in the Welsh cantred of Maelienydd, and the town of Presteigne in Wales. He became lord or overlord of hundreds of manors and estates scattered across the counties of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire.15 Added to these lands and titles, he stood to inherit through Joan her estates in Gascony, the barony of Meath and the Liberty of Trim in Ireland, including Trim Castle, and half the lordship of the town of Ludlow. Last but by no means least he stood to gain possession of Ludlow Castle. This was the grandest castle on the Welsh Marches, only a few miles from his own seat at Wigmore. Joan’s Irish estates would in time be added to the Irish lands of his grandmother, who had died in 1301, and which he now also inherited. These included the lordship of the honour of Dunamase. He might not have been an earl, but his ancestry, background and estates placed him in the front rank of the baronage, and his marriage made him as wealthy as several men of higher rank.

  The first purpose of the baronage, however, was not to amass wealth but to fight. On the very day that Roger came into his inheritance he received a summons to serve in the king’s army in Scotland, and for this purpose to assemble his men at Carlisle on 8 July. The time of war, to which he had been bred and trained, had come.

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  Not long after the summons was issued, a second writ from the king was sent out announcing that all those who had not yet received the honour of knighthood, and who were the holders of a knight’s fee (a feudal estate normally worth £40 or more a year), were to come to London to be knighted on Whitsunday, 22 May. For Roger, the opportunity to receive such an honour so early in his career was not to be missed, especially as chivalric displays were relatively uncommon and the number of men actually dubbed was small. Even his warrior uncle, battle-scarred after thirty years’ fighting, had not yet been dubbed. Thus both Roger and his uncle set out for Westminster at the beginning of May 1306.

  A huge number of men had responded to the announcement, of which 267 were accepted. The excitement was great indeed; never in England had so many knights been dubbed at a single occasion. It seemed these new knights would form the basis of a war band, a new court of the Round Table. They were treated with great respect, being allowed to camp in the grounds of the Temple church, the London centre of the Knights Templar. When the precinct of the Templars’ house was full of tents an
d pavilions, the order was given to pull down the precinct wall and to cut down all the fruit trees in the adjacent gardens. Fifty carpenters set up huge canvas pavilions for the lords and ladies to sleep in and other tents to act as bathing and robing chambers. All their provisions were supplied from the prince’s household. The old guard was making way for the new. Roger’s generation of knights was about to come of age.

  On the 22nd a huge crowd gathered along the way from the Temple to Westminster Abbey, cheering and waving, all hoping to see the new knights of England as they passed to the ceremony. So many struggled to get a view that people had to clamber on each other’s shoulders or climb on to garden walls. At the same time the prince, wearing full armour, knelt in the secure silence of the palace chapel. The king, watched solemnly by a few of his oldest and most trusted lords, touched the royal sword to Prince Edward’s shoulders. When he stood up, his father girded him with his sword and belt, and the old Earl of Lincoln and the war-scarred Earl of Hereford knelt down to fasten his spurs. He was thus made a knight, and given the lordship of the Duchy of Aquitaine. It was a solemn moment, but it preceded an occasion of even greater gravity: the prince was now to go to the abbey and convey the honour of knighthood to the new chivalry of England.

  Such was the noise, chaos and crowding in the abbey church that no one could silence the lords and their men. Eventually war horses were brought in to drive a path to the altar. Then the ceremony began. A mass was sung by the abbey monks, and two by two the knights were called forward from the throng. After about thirty names the clerks called for Rogerus de Mortuo Mari de Wigmore and Rogerus de Mortuo Mari de Chirk, as they were called in Latin. They went forward, washed their hands in silver bowls, and were sprinkled with holy water by attendant priests. Solemnly they made their vows of knighthood: to uphold the Church, the Crown and the order of knighthood itself, to spare the life of a vanquished enemy who pleaded for mercy, to respect women and to live chastely. Then each was touched by Prince Edward with the royal sword, was girded with a belt and sword, and received his spurs. Before that moment they had merely served their king; now they were knights with a higher purpose.

  Besides Prince Edward and his intimate friend, Piers Gaveston, there were many men at the May 1306 knighting who would prove important in Roger’s life.16 John Maltravers was there, a man who would not only fight in Ireland and Scotland with Roger but who would become one of his most trusted captains in later years. Lord Berkeley was there with his son Maurice, representatives of the ancient lordship of Berkeley in Gloucestershire and cousins of the Mortimer family. Bartholomew de Badlesmere was present, known as Badlesmere the Rich, lord of Leeds Castle in Kent. He was one of the greatest examples of how dutiful service could raise a man up from the mere fringes of nobility to a position at the very heart of the court. And of course there were many lords of the Welsh Marches knighted, most of them in some way connected to the Mortimer family and together presenting one huge faction of powerful lords and knights. That day Prince Edward knighted men who would serve him and men who would denounce him, men who would betray him and take up arms against him, men whom he would put to death and men who would ultimately overthrow him. In Roger Mortimer he knighted the man who, in more than twenty years’ time, would force him to abdicate. But all that was far off. The present was full of joy, celebration and thoughts of the war in Scotland which lay ahead.

  After the mass knighting the newly created knights and their retainers filed out of the abbey to walk the short distance to the great hall of Westminster Palace. As the feast began, eighty minstrels (many picked specially by the prince and Gaveston) played exciting rhythms and tunes around the hall in small groups on drums or tambourines, English bagpipes, flutes, harps and rebecs. They stamped and danced, sang and laughed. Course after course, each one consisting of many different dishes, was brought for the lords and knights to pick at and savour as they talked and listened. Then, much later, the music died down. The last few murmurs of conversation gave way to astonished gasps as some of the musicians reappeared with a huge silver salver on which there were two motionless white swans apparently swimming in a net of gold. Slowly the swans were paraded around the hall and brought before the king. People waited as the old sovereign, now white-haired and bearded, and dressed in white, rose to his feet.

  The king’s speech was the centre of the whole occasion. He spoke of knighthood’s virtues and purpose, and he spoke of the band of warriors now before him. And he spoke of Scotland.

  No one in the hall needed reminding about Scotland. King Edward had been proclaimed overlord of that country in 1291, in an attempt to pacify rival factions for the Scottish throne, and had eventually chosen John Balliol to be king under him rather than Balliol’s rival, Robert Bruce of Annandale. When Balliol refused to act as Edward’s puppet, Bruce and a number of other Scottish lords successfully sought Edward’s support against Balliol, and forced his removal. When William Wallace raised the question of Scottish independence, and was executed in its cause, the grandson of Bruce, another Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, met with his rival claimant to the throne, John Comyn, in the Greyfriars’ church at Dumfries. These men were supposedly discussing respect for one another’s property after the death of the aged King of England. But what happened next shocked the Christian world. In front of the altar of the church, Robert Bruce drew a knife and stabbed John Comyn. As Comyn lay stricken and shrieking, his uncle Robert Comyn lunged forward and attacked Bruce. Seeing his lord under threat, Bruce’s brother-in-law Christopher Seton threw himself into the line of attack and killed Robert Comyn. Bruce then ordered his esquires to silence John Comyn for ever, which they did. A claimant to the throne of Scotland had been murdered in church, in blessed sanctuary, on holy ground. Nothing as shocking and as abhorrent to the laws of knighthood had happened since the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket before the altar of his own cathedral, over 130 years earlier.

  That had been Robert Bruce’s offence to Christian humanity. His offence to King Edward had been just as extreme. Immediately upon killing Comyn, Bruce had seized control of Dumfries Castle and imprisoned the English judges gathered there. He had then set about obtaining the Kingdom of Scotland for himself. On 25 March he had himself crowned at Scone Abbey in the presence of the Bishop of Glasgow, the Bishop of St Andrews, the Earl of Atholl, the Earl of Lennox, and his mistress, Isabel of Fife, Countess of Buchan. It was a calculated and deliberate challenge to the King of England, a declaration of independence.

  It was with this horror in mind, and the knowledge that the English army must go north to fight Bruce, that the new knights watched the old king step forward. ‘By the God of Heaven and these swans!’ he cried, ‘I will avenge the death of John Comyn and have vengeance on the perfidious Scots!’ Then turning to his son and his chief nobles, still standing at the high table, he demanded, ‘As soon as I have accomplished this task, and revenged the injuries done by Bruce to God and to the Church, I will go to the Holy Land and there end my days fighting the Infidel. But swear to me this: that if I die before the task is finished, you will carry my bones with the army and not bury them until full vengeance has been wrought on the Scots!’17

  Immediately the hall was filled with shouts of assent and wrath against Bruce and his men. The Earl of Lincoln, one of the king’s oldest and most loyal knights, immediately went down on his knee and swore to fight beside the king for the remaining years of his life. The prince, swept up in the fervour of the moment, swore before all that he would not sleep two nights under the same roof until he reached Scotland to help his father fulfil his vow. Many other lords stepped forward and promised to do likewise. The hall was awash with solemn oaths and calls for the destruction of Robert Bruce.

  The king was no doubt satisfied for the time being, but the support, however ecstatic, was merely what he had anticipated. The main force had already been ordered to march north. Aymer de Valence and Henry Percy, each in charge of an army, had already secured the border, and a few days before the
Feast of the Swans the king had given de Valence overall command and ordered him to attack. What Edward was doing back in Westminster Hall was putting in place the army which would not fight Bruce this year, nor necessarily the next, but which would ultimately conquer Scotland, even if it should not happen in his lifetime. He was in effect planning a military conquest to take place after his death.

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  After leaving London in early June, the royal army proceeded north slowly. Roger and the other men knighted at Westminster were still in England when they heard the news that Aymer de Valence had met Robert Bruce in battle on 26 June at Methven and inflicted a heavy defeat on the Scots. On 8 July, when de Valence established his headquarters at Perth, the royal army was at Carlisle. Over the subsequent days the prince’s advisers, such as Lord Mortimer of Chirk and the Earl of Hereford, guided the army up the western side of Scotland and brought them across the lowlands to back up de Valence’s advance. This took them to Lochmaben Castle, the birthplace of Robert Bruce, a target significant much more for its symbolism than its military strength. To the great delight of the prince, the castle garrison surrendered without a struggle on 11 July. The royal army accepted the surrender, and straightaway pushed on north towards Perth, ransacking and burning the villages in its path. They reached Forteviot on 1 August.