The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (31 page)

The king retreated to Neath in early November, and attempted to bargain with Roger and the queen through an embassy headed by the Abbot of Neath. The abbot and his companions were sent back with a stern refusal. No terms were acceptable, only complete surrender: just as Roger had been told in January 1322. He did not need to negotiate further. On 16 November, having been informed of the king’s whereabouts by Rhys ap Howel, the pursuing contingent under Lancaster caught sight of Edward, Baldock and Despenser and their few companions in the open country near Neath. They pursued them for a short distance, and caught them. The king’s men-at-arms were released; Baldock and Despenser were taken to the queen at Hereford. Also taken was Despenser’s vassal, Simon de Reading, who had been so presumptious as to insult the queen and to take the lands of Roger’s follower, John Wyard. Lancaster, gleeful at his
triumph, took the king himself to Kenilworth. On hearing of the king’s capture, the last royalist castle, Caerphilly, surrendered.

Hugh Despenser knew he could expect no mercy, and, anticipating the sentence Roger would pass upon him, he tried to starve himself to death. Even as Henry de Leybourn and Robert Stangrave took him to Hereford to meet his fate, Roger was exacting revenge for a lifetime of enmity on another of the king’s friends. On 17 November the Earl of Arundel and two of his associates, John Daniel and Thomas de Micheldever, were beheaded. In the words of the chronicler Murimuth, Roger hated these men with a ‘perfect hatred’. The earl had been a sworn enemy of Gaveston ever since the tournament at Wallingford. He had moreover taken arms against Roger’s uncle in 1312. He had opposed Roger and his uncle during the Despenser war, had taken the lands of Roger’s uncle and even some of Roger’s own estates. He had been part of the embassy which had persuaded Roger to surrender at Shrewsbury by giving the false guarantee that his life would be saved. His defence of Hugh Despenser was just another reason for him to suffer the full penalty of the law. Roger procured the official order for the deaths from the queen, who followed his advice in this ‘as she did in everything’.
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If revenge was a dish best served cold, the Earl of Arundel was merely the starter. The main course was Hugh Despenser. In order to legalise the process against him the tribunal that had sat in judgement on the elder Despenser was reconvened.
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Roger, the Earls of Lancaster, Kent and Norfolk, and Thomas Wake and William Trussel between them drew up a list of Despenser’s crimes. Their judgement was thorough, extensive and uncompromising. Only the sentence was in doubt. The Lancastrians wanted Despenser to be sentenced and beheaded at one of his own castles, in the same way that the Earl of Lancaster had died at Pontefract in 1322. Roger, on the other hand, wanted to ensure that Despenser suffered a death every bit as horrific as his (Despenser’s) killing of Llywelyn Bren in 1317. Isabella wanted him executed in London.
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The number of aggrieved parties meant that Despenser was certain to be quartered: every lord wanted a piece to show their followers that they had exacted revenge.

On 24 November Hugh Despenser, Robert Baldock and Simon de Reading were brought to Hereford. A huge crowd had gathered with trumpets and drums, ready to pull Despenser apart with their bare hands if need be. As the prisoners neared the city, with crowns of nettles on their heads and their surcoats bearing their coats of arms reversed, the crowd seized Despenser and dragged him from his horse. They stripped him of his clothes and wrote biblical verses denouncing arrogance and evil on his skin. Then they led him into the city, forcing Simon de Reading to march
in front bearing his standard with the arms reversed. In the market square he was presented before Roger, Isabella and the Lancastrian lords. Sir William Trussel read out the list of charges of which Despenser was accused. He had been adjudged a traitor and an enemy of the realm, he declared. In particular, he was guilty of returning to the realm during his period of banishment without the permission of Parliament; of robbing two great ships to the value of £60,000
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‘to the great dishonour of the king and the realm and to the great danger of English merchants in foreign countries’; of taking arms against the peers of the realm ‘to destroy them and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta and the Ordinances’; of aiding Andrew de Harclay
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and other traitors in the ‘murder’ of the Earl of Hereford and others; of falsely imprisoning the Earl of Lancaster and arranging his death in his own castle by illegally assuming royal power; of arranging the executions of seventeen named barons and knights; of putting Roger and his uncle ‘in a harsh prison to murder them without cause except for his coveting of their lands’; of imprisoning Lord Berkeley (Roger’s son-in-law), Hugh Audley the elder (Roger’s brother-in-law) and Hugh Audley the younger (Roger’s nephew), the children of the Earl of Hereford (nephews of the king), and the noblewomen associated with these lords, and even ‘old women such as the lady Baret … whom he had made the butt of ribaldry and whose arms and legs he had had broken spitefully, against his vows of chivalry and against law and reason’; of traitorously assuming royal authority in the war with the Scots and abusing such power, thus endangering the realm; of abandoning the queen at Tynemouth Priory when the Scots were approaching, thus endangering her life; of often dishonouring the queen and damaging her noble state; of cruelty towards the queen; of confiscating illegally the possessions of the Bishops of Ely, Hereford, Lincoln and Norwich and of robbing their churches, and of making war on the Christian Church; of unlawfully procuring for his father the title of Earl of Winchester to the disinheritance of the Crown, and for Andrew de Harclay the title of Earl of Carlisle; of ‘ousting the queen from her lands’; of coming between the king and the queen and hindering their relationship; of persuading the king not to perform his royal duty in going to France to perform homage for Gascony, thereby resulting in the loss of lands to the French; of sending money to France to bribe people to murder the queen and her son the prince, or otherwise to prevent their return to England; of making grants of land to his followers against the law; of putting lords such as Henry de Beaumont unfairly in gaol; and of maliciously counselling the king to leave the realm, and taking with him the treasure of the kingdom and the great seal, contrary to the law. Trussel concluded by describing what
would be done to the wretched man’s body:

Hugh, you have been judged a traitor since you have threatened all the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, and by common assent you are also a thief. As a thief you will hang, and as a traitor you will be drawn and quartered, and your quarters will be sent throughout the realm. And because you prevailed upon our lord the king, and by common assent you returned to the court without warrant, you will be beheaded. And because you were always disloyal and procured discord between our lord the king and our very honourable lady the queen, and between other people of the realm, you will be disembowelled, and then your entrails will be burnt. Go to meet your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade; go to receive your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!
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And with that a huge roar went up and Despenser was roped to four horses – not just the usual two – and dragged through the city to the walls of his own castle, where an enormous gallows had been specially constructed, with a great fire at its foot. Simon de Reading was dragged behind him. Both men had nooses placed around their necks, and were lifted into the air. Simon de Reading was lifted just to the normal height, a few feet off the ground. Despenser was raised a full fifty feet, up above the walls of the castle, high for all to see. Then he was lowered on to a ladder. A man climbed up alongside him and sliced off his penis and testicles, flinging them into the fire at the foot of the gallows.
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Then he plunged his knife into Despenser’s abdomen, and cut out his entrails and heart, throwing them into the fire below, to the huge delight of the revenge-crazed crowd. The corpse was finally lowered to the ground, and the head was cut off, and raised to a chorus of ecstatic cheers. It was later sent to London, and Despenser’s arms, torso and legs were likewise sent to be displayed above the gates of Newcastle, York, Dover and Bristol. Justice was very visibly and viscerally done.

Baldock, who, as a clergyman, had to be handed over to his fellow clergymen for trial, met a similarly brutal fate, albeit an unofficial one. He was taken to London, but there the mob broke into the house in which he was held, beat him almost to death, and threw him into Newgate prison, where he was soon finished off by the inmates.

Roger and Isabella had every reason to be overjoyed at their success. The day of Despenser’s death was a mere two months after their landing in Suffolk, and there had been no innocent casualties except those caught up in the London riots. A year earlier Edward had peremptorily ordered the queen to return and urged the King of France to send Roger back to
England in chains. Now Edward was in chains and both Despensers and Arundel, Baldock, and de Stapeldon were dead. In two months they had achieved what no one had managed since the Conqueror. But, in the wake of their victory, it was clear that life could not return to the way it was before Despenser rose to power. Roger’s uncle was dead. Many other lords, knights and commoners were dead as a result of the Despenser war. Many more innocent people had lost their lands in the subsequent tyranny. On the personal level, Roger and Isabella were no longer lovers in exile; they were in the same country as their spouses, and had at least to appear faithful for the sake of the government. On the political level, they had to decide the fate of the king and how to keep rival and potentially dangerous lords under control. It was clear, as Christmas approached, that victory brought a new set of problems to the fore.

ELEVEN

Revolutionary

WE DO NOT
know when and where Roger came face to face with Joan again. Nor do we know what they said to each other when they did meet. They had last seen each other in the summer of 1321, more than five years earlier. In all that time they had both suffered for Roger’s war against the Despensers, but Roger had found a surrogate wife, had frequented the courts of Europe, and had become the most important man in the country. Joan on the other hand had spent five years in prison. At forty, having borne so many children, she must have been losing her looks and fast approaching (what was in the fourteenth century) old age. Whenever it was that they met, it seems likely that it was a meeting touched with sadness, regret and possibly some bitterness on Joan’s part; not only because Roger had become Isabella’s lover but also for the years of her life she had lost.
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It is possible that the meeting took place in November 1326, either just before or after the execution of Despenser. Roger seems to have visited his manor at Pembridge, near Wigmore, where he and Joan had been married.
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The records do not mention Joan (except in a legal capacity as heiress of the de Geneville lands) until two years later when Roger endowed a chantry at Leintwardine, where priests were to sing masses for the souls of Roger’s family, closest friends and ancestors. It is probable that four books of ‘romances’ which Roger obtained at Westminster early in 1327 were presents for his wife.
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Joan had a taste for romances, as shown by the inventory of her possessions in 1322. Those issued to Roger in 1327 were actually handed over to Walter de Lingaigne, canon of Wigmore, and Walter de Evesham, clerk, on 19 February. Since Roger was at Westminster himself at this time it seems likely that they were given to the two men to take back to Joan, especially as Walter de Evesham was one of Joan’s own clerks.
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This suggests that she was not with Roger at Westminster but back at Wigmore, where she had been staying in 1322, or at Ludlow, where she was living in 1330, and thus perhaps estranged from her husband. There is no evidence that Roger was anything other than regretful that his devoted wife of so many years had suffered for his actions.
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On balance it seems that the couple had decided to live apart by early 1327, a decision forced
upon them by Isabella’s affection for Roger and her need of his guidance, and, most of all, by Roger’s love for Queen Isabella and his craving for power.

Roger spent Christmas 1326 at Isabella’s castle at Wallingford. His stay was not all seasonal frivolity. Several key issues faced him: how to make Isabella’s seizure of power legitimate; how to control lords such as Henry of Lancaster, who had now started referring to himself by his brother’s title of Earl of Lancaster; how long to keep the Hainault army in England; and, by no means least, what to do with the king.

The first and the last of these could be considered a single question. If the king were executed, his son would naturally assume the title after his father’s death. But such a move, while apparently simple, was technically very difficult. It required a state trial on a charge of treason, a guilty verdict and a death sentence. Roger invited various lords and prelates to discuss the matter with him and Isabella. There was little agreement. From the point of view of most of the lords, Edward had repeatedly shown himself to be unconcerned with the country’s welfare and deserved to die. Several of the prelates, however, held that he had been appointed by God, and thus could not legally be deposed or tried. This spiritual argument against a trial had wide political implications: if he were tried and found guilty, many people might believe that God would punish the country. There was also a legal argument against a trial: if Edward was not found guilty of treason – and most people believed that a king could not technically be charged with treason – he would have to be released, and possibly restored. While it would have been easy to rig the trial, this might have raised widespread sympathy for him. The hardest line was taken by the Lancastrians, whose world had been shattered by Edward’s destruction of Thomas of Lancaster. Roger, on the other hand, had been saved from his death sentence in 1322 by the king’s intervention, and indeed had for many years before that been a loyal supporter of the king. Even now he was a royalist, and he wanted to encourage Prince Edward’s respect, a respect which was very unlikely to be forthcoming if he were held responsible for the death of his father. Nor did Isabella want her husband destroyed, partly out of marital affection and partly on account of the dignity of royalty. Since Roger’s wife was still alive, there was no question of her marrying Roger even if Edward were executed. By the end of December those opposed to killing the king had prevailed. Roger and his associates decided not to have the king tried but to imprison him, without trial, for life.