In Convent Walls Part 44

Edmund De Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, son of Roger de Mortimer and Maud de Braose: _born_ March 25, 1266; _died_ at Wigmore Castle, July 17, 1304; _buried_ in Wigmore Abbey. _Married_ Margaret, daughter of Sir William de Fienles: _married_ September 8, 1285; sided warmly with her son, and gathered various illegal a.s.semblies at Worcester, where she lived, and at Radnor. On December 28, 1325, the King wrote, commanding her to retire to the Abbey of Elstow without delay, and there dwell at her own cost till further order: "and from the hour of your entering you shall not come forth, nor make any a.s.sembly of people without our special leave." She was commanded to write and say whether she intended to obey! The Abbess of Elstow was at the same time ordered to give convenient lodging to her in the Abbey, but not to suffer her to go forth nor make gatherings of persons. (Close Roll, 19 Edward the Second.) Nothing further is known of her except that she was alive in 1332, and was _dead_ on May 7, 1334, when the mandate was issued for her _Inq. Post Mortem_. The latter contains no date of death. Margaret was _buried_ at Wigmore. _Their children_:--1. Roger, _born_ April 25 or May 3, 1287; created Earl of March, 1328; _hanged_ at Tyburn, November 29, 1330: _buried_ in Friars' Minors Church, Coventry, whence leave was granted to his widow and son, in November, 1331, to transport the body to Wigmore Abbey. _Married_ Jeanne de Geneville, daughter and co-heir of Peter de Geneville (son of Geoffroi de Vaucouleur, brother of the Sieur de Joinville, historian of Saint Louis) and Jeanne de Lusignan: _born_ February 2, 1286; _married_ before 1304. On hearing of her husband's escape from the Tower in August 1323, she journeyed to Southampton with her elder children, intending to rejoin him in France: but before she set sail, on April 6, 1324, the King directed the Sheriff of Southampton to capture her without delay, and deliver her to the care of John de Rithre, Constable of Skipton Castle. A damsel, squire, laundress, groom, and page, were allowed to her, and her expenses were reckoned at 13 shillings 4 pence per day while travelling, and after reaching Skipton at 13 shillings 4 pence per week, with ten marks (6 pounds, 13 shillings 4 pence) per annum for clothing. (Close Roll, 17 Edward the Second.) These details appear afterwards to have been slightly altered, since the account of the expenses mentions 37 shillings 6 pence for the keep of two damsels, one laundress, one chamberlain, one cook, and one groom. Robes were supplied to her at Easter and Michaelmas. She remained a prisoner at Skipton from May 17, 1324, on which day she seems to have come there, till August 3, 1326.

(_Rot. de Liberate_, 19 Edward the Second, and 3 Edward the Third.) By mandate of July 22, 1326, she was transferred to Pomfret (Close Roll, 20 Edward the Second), which she reached in two days, the cost of the journey being ten shillings 10 pence, (_Rot. Lib._, 3 Edward the Third.) When her husband was seized in October, 1330, the King sent down John de Melbourne to superintend the affairs of the Countess, with the ladies and children in her company, dwelling at Ludlow Castle, with express instructions that their wardrobes, G.o.ds, and jewels, were not to be touched. (_Rot. Pat._ and _Claus._, 4 Edward the Third.) The lands of her own inheritance were restored to her in the December and January following, with especial mention of Ludlow Castle, (_Rot. Claus., ibidem_). Edward the Third always speaks of her with great respect. In August, 1347, there were suits against her in the Irish Courts (the Mortimers held large estates in Ireland), and it is noted that she was not able to plead in person on account of her great age, which made travelling perilous to her. (_Rot. Claus._, 21 Edward the Third.) She was then 63. On the 19th of October, 1356, she died (_Inq. Post Mortem_, 30 Edward the Third 30)--the very day of her husband's capture, 26 years before--and was _buried_ in the Church of the Friars Minors, Shrewsbury. (Cott. Ms. Cleop., C, 3.)

2. Edmund, Rector of Hodnet.

3. Hugh, Rector of Old Radnor.

4. Walter, Rector of Kingston (Dugdale) Kingsland (Cott. Ms. Cleop. C, 3).

5. Maud, _married_ at Wigmore, July 28, 1302, Theobald de Verdon; _died_ at Alveton Castle, and _buried_ at Croxden, October 8, 1312.

Left issue.

6. Joan, _nun_ at Lyngbroke; living September 17, 1332.

7. Elizabeth, _nun_ at Lyngbroke.

8. John, _born_ 1300, _killed_ in tilting, at Worcester, January 3, 1318, S.P.; _buried_ at Worcester.

_Issue of Roger, first Earl of March, and Jeanne de Geneville_:--1.

Edmund, _born_ 1304, _died_ at Stanton Lacy, December 28, 1331; _buried_ at Wigmore. He is always reckoned as second Earl, but was never formally restored to the t.i.tle, for which he vainly pet.i.tioned, and the refusal is said to have broken his heart. He _married_ Elizabeth, third daughter, and eventually co-heir, of Bartholomew Lord Badlesmere, and Margaret de Clare: _born_ 1313, _married_ in or before 1327; (_remarried_ William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton;) _died_ June 17, 1355.

2. Roger, _died_ 1357. _Married_ Joan, daughter of Edmund de Boteler, Earl of Carrick, and Joan Fitzgerald; contract of _marriage_ February 11, 1321.

3. Geoffrey, Lord of Cowith. He was one of the King's Bannerets in 1328 (_Rot. Magne Gard._, 33/10), was taken with his father and his brother Edmund in 1330, and was kept prisoner in the Tower till January 25, 1331 (Issue Roll, _Michs._, 5 Edward the Third). On the following March 16, he obtained leave to travel abroad. (_Rot. Pat._, 5 Edward the Third, Part 1.) He was living in 1337, but no more is known of him.

4. John, _killed_ in tilting at Shrewsbury, and _buried_ there in the Hospital of Saint John. He _married_ (and left one son).

Alianora (family unknown), _buried_ with husband.

5. Margaret, _married_ Thomas Lord Berkeley; _died_ May 5, 1337; _buried_ at Bristol.

6. Joan, _married_ James Lord Audley of Heleigh.

7. Isabel, _nun_ at Chicksand. These three girls accompanied their mother to Southampton, and were captured with her. By the King's order they were sent to separate convents "to dwell with the nuns there;"

there is no intimation that they were to be made nuns, and as two of them afterwards married, it is evident that this was not intended.

Margaret was sent to Shuldham, her expenses being reckoned at 3 shillings per day while travelling, and 15 pence per week after arrival; Joan to Sempringham, and Isabel to Chicksand, their expenses being charged 2 shillings each per day while travelling, and 12 pence each per week in the convent. One mark per annum was allowed to each for clothing. (_Rot. Claus._, 17 Edward the Second.) Isabel chose to remain at or return to Chicksand, since she is mentioned as being a nun there in February 1326. (Issue Roll, _Michs._, 19 Edward the Second.)

8. Katherine, _married_ about 1338, Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; _died_ August 4, 1369.

9. Maud, _married_ about 1320 John Lord Charleton of Powys; living July 5, 1348.

10. Agnes, _married_ (1) 1327, Lawrence de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke; (2) before June 21, 1353, John de Hakelut; _died_ July 25, 1368; _buried_ in Abbey of Minories.

II. Beatrice, _married_ (1) about 1327, Edward son of Prince Thomas de Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk; (2) 1334 (?) Thomas de Braose (_Rot.

Claus._ 8 E. three.) (who appears to have purchased her for 12,000 marks--8000 pounds): _died_ October 16, 1383 (_Inq. Post Mortem_, 7 Richard the Second, 15).

12. Blanche, _married_, before March 27, 1334, Peter, third Lord de Grandison; _dead_ July 24, 1357. Either she or her husband was _buried_ at Marcle, Herefordshire.

V. CHRONOLOGICAL ERRATA.

The accounts given by the early chroniclers, and followed by modern historians, with respect to the movements of Edward the Second and his Queen, from September, 1326, to the December following, are sadly at variance with fact. The dates of death of the Despensers, as well as various minor matters, depend on the accurate fixing of these points.

The popular account, generally accepted, states that the Queen landed at Orwell in September--the exact day being disputed--that the King, on hearing of it, hastened to the West, and shut himself up in Bristol Castle, with his daughters and the younger Despenser; that the Queen hanged the elder Despenser and the Earl of Arundel before their eyes, on the 8th of October, whereupon the King and the younger Despenser escaped by night in a boat: some add that they were overtaken and brought back, others that they landed in Wales, and were taken in a wood near Llantrissan. Much of this is pure romance. The King's Household Roll, which names his locality for every day, and is extant up to October 19th, the Wardrobe Accounts supplying the subsequent facts, distinctly shows that he never came nearer Bristol on that occasion than the road from Gloucester to Chepstow; that on the 8th of October he was yet at Cirencester; that he left Gloucester on the 10th, reaching Chepstow on the 16th, whence he departed on the 20th "_versus aquam de Weye_" and therefore in the contrary direction from Bristol. On the 27th and 28th he dates mandates from Cardiff; on the 29th and 30th from Caerphilly.

On November 2nd he left Caerphilly (this we are distinctly told in the Wardrobe Accounts), on the 3rd and 4th he was at Margan Abbey, and on the 5th he reached Neath, where he remained up to the 10th. He now appears to have paid a short visit to Swansea, whence he returned to Neath, where, on the 16th, his cousin Lancaster and his party found him, and took him into their custody, with Hugh Le Despenser and Archdeacon Baldok. They took him first to Monmouth, where he was found by the Bishop of Hereford (sent to demand the Great Seal), probably about the 23rd. Thence he was conveyed to Ledbury, which he reached on or about the 30th; and on the 6th of December he was at Kenilworth, where he remained for the rest of his reign.

The Queen landed at Orwell in September: Speed says, on the 19th; Robert of Avesbury, the 26th; most authorities incline to the 22nd, which seems as probable a date as any. The King, at any rate, had heard of her arrival on the 28th, and issued a proclamation offering to all volunteers 1 shilling per day for a man-at-arms, and 2 pence for an archer, to resist the invading force. All past offenders were offered pardon if they joined his standard, the murderers of Sir Roger de Belers alone excepted: and Roger Mortimer, with the King's other enemies, was to be arrested and destroyed. Only three exceptions were made: the Queen, her son (his father omits the usual formula of "our dearest and firstborn son," and even the t.i.tle of Earl of Chester), and the Earl of Kent, "queux nous volons que soent sauuez si auant come home poet."

According to Froissart, the Queen's company could not make the port they intended, and landed on the sands, whence after four days they marched (ignorant of their whereabouts) till they sighted Bury Saint Edmunds, where they remained three days. Miss Strickland tells a rather striking tale of the tempestuous night pa.s.sed by the Queen under a shed of driftwood run up hastily by her knights, whence she marched the next morning at daybreak. (This lady rarely gives an authority, and still more seldom an exact reference.) On the 25th, she adds, the Queen reached Harwich. Robert de Avesbury, Polydore Vergil, and Speed, say that she landed at Orwell, which the Chronicle of Flanders calls Norwell. If Froissart is to be credited, this certainly was not the place; for he says that the tempest prevented the Queen from landing at the port where she intended, and that this was a mercy of Providence, because there her enemies awaited her. The port where her enemies awaited her (meaning thereby the husband whom she was persecuting) was certainly Orwell, for on the second of September the King had ordered all ships of thirty tuns weight to a.s.semble there. Moreover, the Queen could not possibly march from Orwell at once to Bury and Harwich, since to face the one she must have turned her back on the other. The probability seems to be that she came ash.o.r.e somewhere in Orwell Haven, but whether she first visited Harwich or Bury it is difficult to judge.

The natural supposition would be that she remained quiet for a time at Bury until she was satisfied that her allies would be sufficient to effect her object, and then showed herself openly at Harwich were it not that Bury is so distant, and Harwich is so near, that the supposition seems to be negatived by the facts. From Harwich or Bury, whichever it were, she marched towards London, which according to some writers, she reached; but the other account seems to be better authenticated, which states that on hearing that the King had left the capital for the West she altered her course for Oxford. She certainly was not in London when the Tower was captured by the citizens, October 16th (_Compotus Willielmi de Culpho_, Wardrobe Accounts, 20 Edward the Second, 31/8), since she dates a mandate from Wallingford on the 15th, unless Bishop Orleton falsified the date in quoting it in his Apology. Thence she marched to Cirencester and Gloucester, and at last to Bristol, which she entered on or before the 25th. Since Gloucester was considerably out of her way--for we are a.s.sured that her aim was to make a straight and rapid course to Bristol--why did she go there at all if the King were at Bristol? But we know he was not; he had then set sail for Wales. Her object in going to Bristol was probably twofold: to capture Le Despenser and Arundel, and to stop the King's supplies, for Bristol was his commissariat-centre. A cartload of provisions reached that city from London for him on the 14th [Note 2.] (_Rot. Magne Gard._, 20 Edward the Second, 26/3), and his butler, John Pyrie, went thither for wine, even so late as November 1st (_Ibidem_, 26/4). Is it possible that Pyrie, perhaps unconsciously, betrayed to some adherent of the Queen the fact that his master was in Wales? The informer, we are told by the chroniclers, was Sir Thomas le Blount, the King's Seneschal of the Household. But that suspicious emba.s.sage of the Abbot of Neath and several of the King's co-refugees, noted on November 10th in terms which, though ostensibly spoken by the King and dated from Neath, are unmistakably the Queen's diction and not his, cannot be left out of the account in estimating his betrayers. From October 26, when the illegally-a.s.sembled Parliament, in the hall of Bristol Castle, went through the farce of electing the young Prince to the regency "because the King was absent from his kingdom," and October 27th, which is given (probably with truth) by Harl. Ms. 6124 as the day of the judicial murder of Hugh Le Despenser the Elder, our information concerning the Queen's movements is absolutely _nil_ until we find her at Hereford on the 20th of November. She then sent Bishop Orleton of Hereford to the King to request the Great Seal, and he, returning, found her at Marcle on the 26th. It was probably on the 24th that the younger Despenser suffered. On the 27th the Queen was at Newent, on the 28th at Gloucester, on the 29th at Coberley, and on the 30th at Cirencester.

She reached Lechlade on December 1st, Witney on the 2nd, Woodstock on the 3rd. Here she remained till the 22nd, when she went to Osney Abbey, and forward to Wallingford the next day. (Wardrobe Accounts, 20 Edward the Second and 1 Edward the Third, 26/11.) She was joined at Wallingford by her younger son Prince John of Eltham, who had been awaiting her arrival since the 17th, and losing 3 shillings at play by way of amus.e.m.e.nt in the interim (_Ibidem_, 31/18). By Reading, Windsor, Chertsey, and Allerton she reached Westminster on the 4th of January (_Ibidem_, 26/11).

I have examined all the Wardrobe Accounts and Rolls likely to cast light on this period, but I can find no mention of the whereabouts of the two Princesses during this time. Froissart says that they and Prince John were delivered into the Queen's care by the citizens of Bristol; which is certainly a mistake so far as concerns the Prince, whose compotus just quoted distinctly states that he left the Tower on October 16th (which fixes the day of its capture), quitted London on December 21st, and reached Wallingford on the 24th. He, therefore, was no more at Bristol than his father, and only rejoined his mother as she returned thence. The position of the royal sisters remains doubtful, as even Mrs Everett Green--usually a most faithful and accurate writer--has accepted Froissart's narrative, and apparently did not discover its complete discrepancy with the Wardrobe Accounts. If the Princesses were the companions of their royal father in his flight, and were delivered to their mother when she entered Bristol--which may be the fact--the probability is that he sent them there when he left Gloucester, on or about the 10th of October.

VI. THE ORDER OF SEMPRINGHAM.

The Gilbertine Order, also called the Order of Sempringham, was that of the reformed Cistercians. Its founder was Gilbert, son of Sir Josceline de Sempringham; he was Rector of Saint Andrew's Church in that village, and died in 1189. The chief peculiarity of this Order was that monks and nuns dwelt under the same roof, but their apartments were entered by separate doors from without, and had no communication from within. They attended the Priory Church together, but never mixed among each other except on the administration of the Sacrament. The monks followed the rule of Saint Austin; the nuns the Cistercian rule, with Saint Benedict's emendations, to which some special statutes were added by the founder. The habit was, for monks, a black ca.s.sock, white cloak, and hood lined with lambskin; for nuns, a white habit, black mantle, and black hood lined with white fur. There was a Master over the entire Order, who lived at Sempringham, the mother Abbey also a Prior and a Prioress over each community. The Prior of Sempringham was a Baron of Parliament. The site of the Abbey, three miles south-east from Folkingham, Lincolnshire, may still be traced by its moated area. The Abbey Church of Saint Andrew alone now remains entire; it is Norman, with an Early English tower, and a fine Norman north door.

But few houses of the Gilbertine Order existed in England, and those were mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The princ.i.p.al ones--after Sempringham, which was the chief--were Chicksand, Bedfordshire; Cambridge; Fordham, near Newmarket; Hitchin, Hertfordshire; Lincoln, Alvingham, Bolington, Cateley, Haverholme, Ormesby, Newstead (not the Abbey, which was Augustinian), Cotton, s.e.xley, Stikeswold, Sixhill, Lincolnshire; Marmound and Shuldham, Norfolk; Clattercott, Oxfordshire; Marlborough, Wiltshire; Malton, Sempringham Minor, Watton, and Wilberfosse, Yorkshire.

The Gilbertine Order "for some centuries maintained its sanct.i.ty and credit; afterwards it departed greatly from both."

VII. FICt.i.tIOUS PERSONS.

In Part One, these are Cicely's daughters, Alice and Vivien, and her damsels, Margaret and Fina; Meliora, the Queen's sub-damsel; Hilda la Vileyne, and her relatives. Of all others, the name and position at least are historical facts.

The fict.i.tious persons in Part Two are more numerous, being all the household of the Countess of March (except John Inge the Castellan): and Nichola, damsel of the Countess Agnes.

The three Despenser nuns, Mother Alianora, and the Sisters Annora and Margaret, and Lady Joan de Greystoke, are the only characters in Part Three which are not fict.i.tious.

A difference in the diction will be noticed between Part Three and the earlier parts, the last portion being more modern than the rest. Sister Alianora must not be supposed to write her narrative, which she could not do except by order from her superiors; but rather to be uttering her reflections to herself. Since to her the natural language would be French, there was no need to follow the contemporary diction further than, by a quaint expression now and then, to remind the reader of the period in which the scene is laid.

It may be remarked that the diction of Parts One and Two is not strictly correct. This is true: because to make it perfectly accurate, would be to make it also unintelligible to nine out of ten readers, and this not so much on account of obsolete words, which might be explained in a note, as of the entirely different turn of the phraseology. An imaginary diary of the reign of Elizabeth can be written in pure Elizabethan language, and with an occasional explanatory note, it will be understood by modern readers: but a narrative prior to 1400 at the earliest cannot be so treated. The remaining possibilities are either to use as much of the correct diction of the period as is intelligible, employing modern terms where it is not, or else to write in ordinary modern English. Tastes no doubt differ on this point. I prefer the former; since I extremely dislike to read a mediaeval story where modern expressions alone are used in the dialogue. The reader, if himself acquainted with the true language, finds it impossible to realise or enter into the story, being constantly reminded that he is reading a modern fiction. What I object to read, therefore, I object to write for the reading of others. Where circ.u.mstances, as in this case, make perfect accuracy impossible, it seems to me the next best thing is to come as near it as they will permit.

The biographical details given in this Appendix, with few exceptions, have not, I believe, been previously published. For such information as may readily be found in Dugdale's Baronage, extinct peerages, etcetera, I refer my readers to those works.

The End.