tacute's company." He was, nevertheless, seized in his bed-room and secured, notwithstanding "he had ix score knightes at his retinew," and sent, with Sir Simon Bereford, to the tower.* It was in the year 1330 that he was arraigned before the peers in parliament, convicted, and executed. The Earl of March had issue by his Countess four sons and sever daughters, viz.: Edmund, who succceded to his titles of Earls of March and Lord of Wigmore; Sir Roger de Mortimer, knight; Geffry, Earl of Jubinensis or Juyllenensis and Lord of Cowyke, bestowed on him by Joan, wife of Peter de Geneville, daughter and heiress of the Count de la March; John, killed in a tournament at Shrewsbury; Margaret, wife of Thomas Fitzmaurice, Lord of Berkeley; Catherine,† wife of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; Johanna, married to the Lord James de Audeley; Agnes, who espoused Laurence (or John)‡ de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke; Matilda, wife of John, son and heir of John de Charleton, lord of Pool, or Powys, Castle; Blanch, the spouse of the Lord Peter de Grandison; and Beatrice, the wife of Edward, son and heir of Thomas de Brotherton, Earl Marshall, and, after his death, of the Lord Thomas de Breose. On the claim of Edward III. to the crown of France, the Earl of March obtained a reversal of the sentence against his father, and was one of the nobles who attended immediately on the person of the king at the memorable battle of Crecy, in 1346. He died at Rover, in Burgundy, in the year 1359. By his wife Elizabeth, one of the daughters and heiresses of Bartholemew, Lord De Badlesmere, the rich lord of Leeds and other lordships, he had Roger de Mortimer, third Earl of March, K. G., and John, who died in his childhood. This Roger espoused Philippa, daughter of William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, K. G. She died in the year 1381. By her will, dated 21st of November, three years antecedent, she bequeaths to the Abbey of Wigmore her best vestment with three copes, which belonged to her chapel; and to her son Edmond a * Ibid, p. 477. + She died in the year 1369. So says the pedigree in the College of Arms, but most authorities prefer Laurence. He died in 1348, and soon after she married John de Hakclut, a Herefordshire gentleman, who, in the twenty-ninth of Edward III., obtained from the king a grant of the custody of the town and castle of Pembroke and other lands, to himself and his wife Agnes, during the minority of John de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, her son by her first husband. She died 25th of July, 1368.-Dugdale, vol. i., p. 577. bed and a gold ring, with a piece of the true cross with this legend -In nomine Patris et Filio et Spiritûs Sancti: Amen ; and "which I charge him, on my blessing, to keep." Likewise, a cup of silver with an escutcheon of the arms of Mortimer.* Roger left a son, Edmond, who became fourth Earl of March, and, having married Philippa, the only daughter and heiress of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of king Edward III., became, in her right, Earl of Ulster. He was born on Candlemas eve, February 1st, 1351, and was much distinguished in his time. In the third year of Richard II., A. D. 1380, he was appointed the king's lieutenant in Ireland, but died, at Cork, on Friday, the feast of St. John the Evangelist, on the 27th of December, in the following year. The introduction of some portion of his will may be allowed, on account of its historical tendency. Edmond, Earl of March and Ulster, Lord of Wigmore, at Denbigh, May 1, 1380. My body to be buried with the body of my wife,—on whom God have mercy!—in the church of the abbey of Wigmore, on the left of the high altar; and we charge our executors that they allow no excessive expense at our funeral, but only five tapers of wax, which, after our funeral, we will, be distributed to the parish churches in the neighbourhood of the said abbey, for the use of the Holy Sacrament. We will, after the payment of our debts, first, that Roger, son of John de Mortimer, be paid £500, for which we are bound by Statute Merchant. To the church of the abbey of Wigmore £1000, to be employed according to the directions of my most honoured lady and mother, and of my executors, and under the superintendence of the Bishop of Hereford for the time being, and of Sir John de Byshopeston, Mons. Peter de la Mars, Sir William Ford, Sir Walter de Colmpton, and Hugh de Boraston. To the said abbey of Wigmore, a large cross of gold set with stones, with a relique of the cross of our Lord, a bone of St. Richard the Confessor, bishop of Chichester, and the finger of St. Thomas de Cantelowe,§ bishop of Hereford, and the reliques of St. Thomas, bishop of Canterbury. To our most honoured lady and mother -. To Roger, our son and heir, the cup of gold, with a cover called bênesonne, and our sword garnished with gold, * Testamenta Vetusta, vol. i. + Dugdale, vol. i., p. 149. Richard de la Wich, bishop of Chichester from 1245 to 1253, and was canonized. § Cantelupe, bishop of Hereford from 1275 to 1282, afterwards canonized. St. Thomas á Becket; murdered in the time of Henry II. which belonged to the good king Edward, with God's blessing and ours; and we will, that after the decease of our said son, the aforesaid cup, sword, and a large horn of gold, remain to his next heir, and after him to his heirs for ever. Also, our large bed of black satin, embroidered with white lions and gold roses, with escutcheons of the arms of Mortimer and Ulster; also, a silver salt-cellar, in the shape of a dog, and our best gold horn, with the belt; and if our said son die before he is of full age, and without heirs of his body, then we will, that the said things remain to our son Edmond, with the like conditions. To our said son Edmond, three hundred marks of land. To our daughter Elizabeth, a salt-cellar, in the shape of a dog, a gold cup, and two hundred pearls. To our daughter Philippa, a coronet of gold, with stones, and two hundred pearls," &c. The issue of Edmond was, Roger, fifth Earl of March and second Earl of Ulster; Sir Edmond de Mortimer; Elizabeth, wife of Henry, eldest son and heir of Henry de Percy, Earl of Northumberland; and Philippa, married first to John de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke; next, to Richard, Earl of Arundel; and thirdly, to the Lord John de St. John; all of whom are spoken of in his will. Of this Roger, an historian attached to the family has furnished some particulars in a MS. entitled Prioratûs de Wygmore fundationis et fundatorum historia.* He was born at Usk, in Monmouthshire, 11th of April, 1374, and baptised, on the following Sunday, by William Courtney, Bishop of Hereford; his sponsors being Roger Cradock, Bishop of Llandaff, Thomas Horton, Abbot of Gloucester, and the Prioress of Usk. His father dying at Cork, during his government of Ireland, in 1381, left him a minor, under the legal guardianship of Richard II. The minions of the court immediately applied to be admitted into the profits of his estates during his minority, and the king too readily consented to the request, and angrily dismissed his honest chancellor, Sir Richard Scroope, who had opposed them. The trust was afterwards, for a pecuniary consideration, vested in more responsible persons; and those into whose hands it fell do not appear to have abused it. When Roger Mortimer came of age, he found that his rights had been duly respected, according to the provisions of the * Quoted by Dugdale in his Monasticon, vol. i., p. 228. + Walsingham. The joint farmers who held his estates were, the Earls of Arundel, Warwick, and Northumberland.-Cot. Lib., MS., Titus, B. xi., f. 7. great charter of the land; his castles and mansions were in good repair; his manors and farms were well stocked with cattle and all the requisites of husbandry, and he had 20,000 marks in his treasury. Such was his hereditary rank and consequence that, in case Richard should die without issue, he was nearest to the throne ; and, in provision for an occurrence of that nature, the parliament of 1385 nominated him heir presumptive to the crown.* Six months after his father's decease, fifth of Richard II., he was appointed lieutenant of Ireland. He had been originally betrothed to the daughter of the Earl of Arundel, but the king, at the interposition of his own mother, the princess Joan,† set aside the match in favour of her grand-daughter Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Holand, Earl of Kent. The character of Roger Mortimer, as given by the aforesaid historian, forms an ample comment upon the epithet "courtois," applied to him, in the French metrical poem, by Creton, respecting the deposition of Richard II. "He was distinguished for the qualities held in estimation at that time—a stout tourneyer, a famous speaker, a costly feaster, a bounteous giver, in conversation affable and jocose, in beauty and form surpassing his fellows." His splendid mode of living, his liberal and cheerful disposition, were sure passports to the regard of his sovereign, and had been, probably, modelled from his own example. In the seventeenth of Richard II. Mortimer, then in his twentieth year, accompanied the first expedition into Ireland, having in his retinue one hundred men át arms, of which two were bannerets and eight knights, two hundred archers on horseback, and four hundred archers on foot. Richard, hastily returning to England, left the inexperienced youth to govern that turbulent island. He had, however, competent advisers under him, if he would have listened to their councils-as Lord Lovel, Sir John Stanley, Sir John Sandes, Sir Ralph Cheyney, and others. In the nineteenth of Richard II., he had an especial commission and lieutenancy for the province of Ulster, Connaught, and Meath: and, in the next year, he was instituted, once more, lieutenant of that whole realm. He was summoned to attend the parliament at Shrewsbury, at which he appeared at the head of a crowd of retainers, clad chiefly, at his own expense, in white and crimson, with great pomp and pagean Leland, Collect., vol. ii., p. 481. + Called the fair maid of Kent. See a translation of this, with inost learned notes, by my worthy friend the Rev. John Webb, of Tretire, one of which is copied verbatim in the text above.-Archeol., vol. xx. try.* He had a cause, at that time, pending with the Earl of Salisbury, respecting the right to the town and castle of Denbigh ; and when he had succeeded in his suit he returned to his government. It was a post of as much trouble as dignity, and demanded a steadier hand. "For," adds the same chronicler, Roger, warlike and renowned as he was, and fortunate in his undertakings, and fair, was yet most dissolute and remiss in matters of religion." Like his sovereign, he neglected the prudential representations of older persons; and his rash and resolute spirit brought him to an untimely end. In a conflict, at Kinles, with the sept of O'Brien, his ungovernable impetuosity hurried him foremost upon the enemy; and, as he had advanced beyond the succour of his own soldiers, and was disguised in the habit of an Irish horseman, he was slain and torn in pieces by the savage natives, whose behaviour towards a fallen enemy, says Froissart,† was excessively ferocious. Leland‡ says—“ and ther, at a castel of his, he lay at that tyme, and there cam on hym a greate multitude of wild Irisch men, to assault hym; and he, issuyng out, fought manfully, and ther was hewen to peaces." The disguise before-mentioned would but ill accord with the sally thus described, but rather with Otterbourne's account, that he was riding unarmed and unattended. Yet to that we can scarce give credence. Perhaps the truth lies in the account of another MS.,§ which affirms that he went to the rescue of some lands that had been left to him by his mother, which his father had been obliged to reconquer before. The Irish costume might be deemed useful on such an occasion, and it is much more likely that the ravages of the natives would be directed against unprotected lands than a fortified castle. His limbs were gathered together, sent to Wales, and thence carried to his castle of Wigmore, whence they were taken to the abbey founded by his ancestors, and, with due solemnity, interred. This Earl of March married, as has been said, Eleanor, eldest daughter and heiress of Thomas de Holand, Earl of Kent, and his wife Philippa, daughter of Richard, Earl of Arundel, who after This is one proof, among several, that the colours of the livery were not always those of the blazon in the armorial bearings, as generally imagined. + xi., c. 24, and the Vita Regis Ricardi, ii., p. 127. Collect., vol. ii., p. 481. I p. 197. § In the library of the Society of Antiquarians, 87-21. See also Dugdale's Baronage, p. 149. The MS. Titus xi., f. 5-6, in the Cotton Library at the British Museum. |