Mortimer's end

Today is the anniversary of the execution of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, at Tyburn in 1330. At his trial Mortimer was gagged and thus unable to respond to the various charges of treason laid against him. Tellingly, this included the charge that he had 'accroached the royal power'. In the days before his execution Mortimer and two of his sons were walled up inside a chamber with no doors or windows next to the bedroom of the young Edward III, who had led the coup to overthrow his mother's ally and (possible) lover. 

It is my belief - not necessarily shared by everyone - that Mortimer's failed bid for power was all part of his family's desire to seize the crowns of England and Wales in the past two generations: his father Edmund and uncle Roger had connived to murder Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd of Wales in 1282, an action clouded by the stubborn popular belief that Edward I organised the killing. It is clear from the private correspondence between the king, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor in the immediate aftermath of Llywelyn's death that they knew nothing of the affair, and were themselves threatened by it. Or at least that is what I glean from the surviving letters.

Edmund spent the rest of his days under a cloud of royal displeasure, but his son would murder two of Edward I's children - Edward II and the Earl of Kent - and come within an ace of toppling the grandson. In the event he failed and ended his days with a suitably dramatic flourish, leaping from the high scaffold at Tyburn in the black tunic he had worn at Edward II's funeral: a final 'up yours' to everyone. The snapping of his neck spelled the end of Mortimer power-grabs, at least for a generation or two.