Sir Roger Mortimer: Who was the "Greatest Traitor?"

Sir Roger Mortimer is known as the "greatest traitor," but why? Sarah and Katie explore the life and times of Sir Mortimer in this episode, from his early conflicts, his successful rebellion against Edward II, and his ignominious end.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy and Katie, here's
a tip in case you're ever trying to seize the

(00:20):
Crown of England or I guess if it's on my
to do list, if you were trying to seize it
several hundred years ago. The Plantagenets are really really not
okay with each other. They fight all the time, and
it's not too hard to set them off well. And
we've seen this so many times. In our Eleanor of
Aquitaine episode, we've got wife against husband, son against father,

(00:42):
and brother against brother. And in our more recent episode
on Eleanor's son, Richard the Lion Heart, there's more brother
against brother followed by some begging and pleading and patronizing forgiveness. Yeah,
I would say that it's definitely a trait of the family,
and it's a useful trait for a would be trader.
And in this episode we're gonna be talking about one

(01:04):
of those traders, in particular, Roger Mortimer and his abuse
of the Plantagenet's greatest weakness, plus his superb battle skills
end up earning him a brief dictatorship in England. And
some people call it the Age of Treason, if that
is an idea, how it's gonna go. Not quite as
good as the Age of Reason. But what makes him

(01:24):
the greatest trader? That's what we're going to talk about today.
So who is Roger Mortimer. He's the descendant of Norman
Knights who came over with William the Conqueror. But he
was born in twelve eighties seven during the reign of
Edward the First of England. I think Edward has possibly
the best king's nickname ever, Edward Longship Love. That's really good.

(01:45):
So the Mortimers are really close to Edward, the first
in the royal family. Roger's grandfather is a good friend
of the kings and a close ally, and Roger's mother
is a relative of the Queen. So so the Mortimers
in the crow Own are pretty tight with each other.
And they're also quite wealthy, which is a nice combination.
At age fourteen, Roger Mary's and that combines his very

(02:08):
extensive lands with those of another rich girl, Joan Genville,
and they formed this super estate on the English Welsh border,
and in thirteen o four, Roger's father is killed in battle,
and even though Roger is seventeen, married and has several children,
he becomes the ward of a royal favorite, Pierce Gaveston,

(02:29):
which I just think that's so strange that you're not
quite of age yet even though you're all fighting, you're married,
you have kids. Yeah. I don't know what the criteria.
I guess it's just a patronage system. But anyways, Roger
goes about building up quite a reputation for a medieval baron,
at least soldiering and adding lands to his already extensive

(02:51):
holdings and fighting, and according to Ian Mortimer, who is
a biographer of Rogers but no relation um, Roger becomes
one of the most experienced soldiers of his age, with
a particular penchant for the joust. So I think we
have a pretty good picture of Roger going into this episode,
but we have some changes at the top. In the meantime,

(03:14):
we've gotten a new king. In thirteen oh seven, Long
Shanks dies and his son Edward the Second takes the throne,
and he looks like a king. According to contemporary accounts,
he's very handsome and very tall, but he's also very
weak and very easy to manipulate. And luckily we have
a manipulator ready in the wings, Pierce Gaveston, who is

(03:34):
a friend of Edward the seconds and possibly now his lover,
and the politics of this relationship get very nasty. Edward
pours favors on Gaveston, land, money, titles, he even gives
him the regency when he travels abroad to marry Isabella
of France. But unsurprisingly, because barons don't like anything, the
baron's don't like this, and in thirteen eleven, a twenty

(03:58):
one member baronial committee draw a document called the Ordinances
demanding that Edward relinquished some of his powers and Gaveston
be banished. Getting throw that in there, Yeah, So Edward
makes like he'll do it. He banishes Gaveston and then
allows him to come back, and the barons aren't going
to play that way there, and they're not gonna have
sort of a half concession to the man, so they

(04:22):
seize Gaveston and they execute him. So that's one possible
lover down for Edward the second already. But Edward just
doesn't take the hint that maybe he at least needs
to play it cool with his favorites a little bit.
He takes a new favorite, this time Hugh Dispenser, and
he has pretty impressive connections of his own too. He's

(04:43):
married to Eleanor Declare and she happens to be edward
The first granddaughter, so more royal connections there. And after
hooking up with the king, Hugh Dispenser starts to add
to his land and influence, of course, getting all sorts
of favors. Meanwhile, Edward is losing his own influence. He's
defeated in thirteen fourteen by Robert the Bruce. And if

(05:04):
you're trying to place this in your mental timeline, this
is around the Brave Heart period, and it looks like
Scotland will be free, but he's got bigger problems than
than just Robert the Bruce. It looks like the barons
are at it again, but not Mortimer, right, because Mortimer
is a good ally to the throne. He's he's got

(05:24):
all these old connections, right. No, no, Sarah, not any
more anymore, because he really doesn't like Hugh Dispenser. And
in fact, the Dispenser's land backs up to the Mortimer's lands.
And of course during this time, as we've seen so
many times, it is all about land. So they're like
the hat Fields and McCoy's of old England. Yeah, just

(05:46):
feuding and not getting along at all. So when Hughes
starts to get a little pushy and trying to move
into South Wales and Mortimer's territory, Roger Mortimer decides that
he would rather defend his own interests, the interests of
his family, the interests of his land, rather than support
his king. So he joins the earls of Hereford, Lancaster

(06:07):
and Pembroke, who are also sort of auntsy with Edward
the Second giving out all his favors and all that.
So they all join in rebellion, and they have another
really good name toys here. They call themselves the Contrariants,
And in August they march to London and make Edward

(06:27):
banish some of the favorites. And that sounds really familiar.
Does sounds familiar because it's exactly what happened just a
few years earlier with Peers. But Edward isn't isn't willing
to just you know, get bossed around by the barons,
so he rounds up an army, uh the Royal Army
plus the dispensers obviously, and marches to confront the contrariants,

(06:49):
but rogers allies leave him, so he's stuck there alone,
and he asked to surrender to Edward. January. Mortimer goes
to the Tow war for two years, and if you
think that's the end of our great rebellion, it is not.
He drugs his jailer's escapes his cell uses a chimney
to shimmy out of the tower and crosses the Thames

(07:11):
in a boat that's waiting for him, and from there
it's off to Dover and France. Because of course the
French King, Charles the fourth is no friend of Edwards.
So welcome enemy of my enemy, I was saying to
Sarah earlier. Red Rover, red rover, Mortimer, come over. So
we have Mortimer at the French court in exile, living

(07:31):
pretty nicely, pretty comfortably. Guess who joins the French court
a year later Isabella, who is Edward's wife, along with
her son and heir, also named Edward. This we can
get kind of confusing. There are three Edwards, Edward the first,
second and third. Edward. The first is already did Edward
the verse is out of this podcast. So Isabella and

(07:53):
her son Edward arrive at the French court, and that's
because Isabella is paying a diplomatic visit to her brother,
who is the King of France, trying to sort of
work out a deal between her brother and her husband
over French Land disputes. And she's successful. She she does
the job, she protects the English interests. But then she

(08:14):
doesn't go home because of course she's scared that Hugh
Dispenser wants her dead. And it's not a far fetched
idea because since marrying Edward the Second at age twelve,
she's been very seriously sidelined, even for a medieval queen.
Sarah was saying earlier, since day one, literally almost since
day one, Pierce Gaveston got all her wedding gifts. So

(08:37):
when her father, the King of France, lavishes presence on
this international marriage, instead of really to Pierce taking those home, yeah,
Pierce gets them all, and um, some of her husband's
other favorites end up taking her English land. So she's
being really majorly neglected by her husband and abused by

(08:57):
his supporters. And when she's with her fourth child, she
even briefly convinces Edward to exile Hugh and his father,
only to have them called back to England a year later.
So she's she certainly knows that Hugh is no longer
a friend of hers, not that he ever was well.
And another reason she doesn't want to go back is
she has a new boyfriend. Perhaps you've heard of him,

(09:19):
the exiled Roger Mortimer, and maybe they've bonded over their
shared hat. But they become lovers and start to plan
a rebellion, and remember that they're in possession of Edwards heir,
who's a young teenager at the time. So in thirteen
twenty six they formed an army Mortimer and Isabella and

(09:40):
they crossed the Channel and surprised the Dispensers in England,
and from there the tides turned pretty quickly for this
long favored family. Dispenser's father, also named Hugh Dispenser, is
hanged and beheaded. Hugh does. It's grizzly, It's very grizzly.
He is dry behind four horses. He is hanged and

(10:03):
cut down. Just before death, he's tied to a ladder
and his genitals are mutilated, and then while he's still alive,
his abdomen is cut open and his end trails are
cut out. Then I mean he's got to be done
point because his heart is cut out next, and then
his head is chopped off and then he's quartered, So
I would call that over killed. They really didn't like him.

(10:28):
Hugh Dispenser was super unpopular. So one month after routing
the Dispensers, the defenseless and abandoned Edward the Second is
captured in South Wales. So what are we gonna do
with the king? Well, Edward the Second is forced to
abdicate in favor of his son, and technically Edward the
Third as he is, is king now, but he's a

(10:50):
young teen and supposedly he can't even hold the crown
up at his own coronation, And in reality it's really
Mortimer ruling with Isabella. He's just Edward the Third ist,
just a puppet. And they last for nearly four years,
giving out titles and lands to friends and favorites because
that went so well all of the other times. Yeah,
and the deposed king is whisked off to a Mortimer

(11:12):
family members castle. It's called the Berkeley Castle, and it's
theory that he's believed to have been murdered and this
is also really grizzly. Sorry to be the gross out
episode here, but chronicles later recount that the murder is
done by a red hot poker up the anus, although
that recent Mortimer book that I mentioned suggests that this

(11:33):
theory is probably wrong. It's probably just been something that's
wrong and passed down through histories and passed down through chronicles.
Maybe it was invented by the supporters of Edward the Second,
people who wanted to to make him out to be
something of, you know, something of a martyr, although I
don't know why you would want your martyr dying such terrible,

(11:54):
terrible death. But another fairly recent theory is that Edward
wasn't killed at all, and that maybe he lived for
decades in obscurity or prison and who knows, but for
our story, he's out of the picture. People always like
to believe that they're deposed kings are somewhere than kingly lives.
But the barons are not pleased with Mortimer's takeover and

(12:16):
his behavior. They think he's very greedy and arrogant. He
has unpopular policies regarding Scotland. Everyone hates him. As Sarah
wrote in her outline, and knowing full well the kind
of stunts that Trader's poll, after all, he had Edward
the Second killed. He keeps a bodyguard at all times
and watches his back. But you would think that he,

(12:37):
because he is so unpopular, would try to make nice
tone things down a little at And in thirteen thirty
he orders the execution of Edmund, Earl of Kent, who
is Edward's uncle and very popular. So a lot of
the barons take this as a sign that he's starting
to neutralize the royal family and that maybe he's about

(12:57):
to go for the crown himself. So the Earl of Lancaster,
who used to be Mortimer's ally, remember, and a few
other barons encourage Edward the Third, who has grown up
in the meantime, of course, from a young teen to
a young man. They encourage him to fight for his
rights as king, and he's seventeen by now. He's ready

(13:19):
to be unshackled, ready to stop being this sort of
embarrassing puppet king, and ready to claim his real crown.
So when the royal household is at residence in Nottingham
Castle in October th thirty, he makes his move. He
gets together a gang of supporters, and they sneak in
to the castle, led by a couple members of household,

(13:40):
and they have a tunnel. They have a tunnel because
of course Mortimer has this bodyguard, so you can't just
face him up front. They go through a tunnel which
is actually still called Mortimer's Hole, and they catch Roger
and Isabella in her bedroom and from there Rogers arrested,
taken to the tower, and quickly sentenced to death without
a rile. He's executed November twenty nine, thirteen thirty in Tyburn,

(14:04):
and he's stripped and hanged, which wasn't a nobleman's death.
Oh gosh, it doesn't sound as bad as few dispenser exactly,
I'd rather have anything but that. And the executioner reads
Psalm fifty two. The tongue devises mischiefs like a sharp razor,
working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, and lies
more than honesty. And his own son, Jeffrey, calls him

(14:26):
the King of Folly. So that's it for our greatest trader.
But we have to catch up with Edward the third
two and and certainly wonder what does he do to
his mother, because she's certainly implicated in all of this.
But on the other hand, maybe he could partially understand
how wrong she had been, So Edward the Third must

(14:47):
have been okay with her to a certain extent. He
allows her to retire into the country, just sort of
politely ignoring the fact that she was lovers with the
trader who killed his father. And she lives in the
country for three deck it. She's got plenty of money,
she's got her titles, She's the Queen Dowager in every sense.

(15:07):
And he comes into his own and works to make
England powerful again. His reign kicks off the Hundred Years
War with France and also indirectly the Wars of the Roses,
as the descendants of his seven sons and five daughters
duke it out for generations starting in the fifteenth century.
So that's it for this brief age of treason. And

(15:31):
I think it's interesting the last rebellion we talked about
the Chung Sisters that lasted about three years too. I
guess that's the going rate for your for your average rebellion,
but this is far gorrier than ours. So while I
was researching this podcast, I actually spent a little time
on the Berkeley Castle's website, which is still existent. It's

(15:53):
nice and six stuff and they host weddings and private events.
But I think it is funny they mentioned pretty early
on in their website literature that it is the death
side of Edward the Second. But it must have been
a nice alternative to reading about all this gross stuff.
To look at a castle. Yeah, just look at some
castles and nice landscaping. But if you'd like to learn

(16:14):
more about castles, we have a great article on it,
how Castles Work. You can search for it on our
homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. We
also have a Twitter feed at missed in History and
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more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com and be sure to check out

(16:36):
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