Titans of History

The Despensers’ lands bordered the Mortimers’, and the families hated each other. When Hugh tried to expand his territories into south Wales, threatening Mortimer’s own interests in the region, loathing for the Despensers finally outweighed his loyalty to the king and he joined the earls of Hereford, Lancaster and Pembroke—equally disenchanted with the king’s behavior—in open rebellion. In August 1321, the Contrariants, as they were known, marched to London, where they forced Edward to banish their hated rivals. The king, however, swiftly mobilized support and a royal army, Hugh Despenser and his father among them, marched west to confront the rebels. In January 1322, abandoned by his allies, Roger surrendered in Shrewsbury.

Mortimer was imprisoned for the next two years in the Tower of London, but after drugging his jailers, he escaped from his cell, climbed out of the Tower through a chimney, crossed the Thames in a waiting boat, and rode to Dover, from where he crossed to France. He was warmly welcomed in Paris by Edward’s enemy and Queen Isabella’s brother the French king, Charles IV. The following year, in a dispute over Edward’s French territories, Edward sent Queen Isabella, accompanied by their son, the heir to the kingdom, Prince Edward, to negotiate a settlement. Isabella despised Hugh Despenser as much as Roger did: Mortimer and Isabella soon became lovers.

In 1326, having moved to Flanders, Isabella and Mortimer gathered an army of 700 men and invaded England, intent on revenge. The Despensers, caught by surprise, were routed, and, within the month, King Edward, deserted by his nobles, was captured by Mortimer’s forces in south Wales. Brutal reprisals followed. Hugh’s father was hanged and beheaded in Bristol in October 1326. The following month, at Hereford, Hugh himself was dragged behind four horses, hanged to the point of suffocation, cut down just before he died, then tied to a ladder where his penis and testicles were sliced off and burned before his eyes. While he was still conscious, his abdomen was cut open and his entrails and heart removed. Afterward, his head was hacked off and mounted on the gates of London, while the four quarters of his body were sent to Bristol, Dover, York and Newcastle.

King Edward, meanwhile, had been forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Edward III, who was “crowned” at a ceremony in January 1327. Though monarch in name, the new king was treated as a puppet by Mortimer, who, though taking no official position, controlled the country with Isabella for the next three years, handing out titles and lands to his family and granting himself the ostentatious title “the earl of March.” Edward II was taken in April to Berkeley Castle, home of Mortimer’s son-in-law Thomas Berkeley, and never seen again. According to a later history by Sir Thomas More, he was killed at Mortimer’s instigation by means of a red-hot poker inserted into his anus (thus leaving no marks).

Mortimer’s despotism and greed provoked fury among the country’s barons, prompting him to keep a body of armed men at court at all times, but he finally overreached himself when, in 1330, he ordered the execution of Edward’s popular uncle, Edmund, earl of Kent. Fearing that Mortimer planned to usurp the throne, prominent barons, led by his former ally the earl of Lancaster, urged Edward III to strike against Roger before it was too late, and the young king, almost come of age and determined to throw off Mortimer’s hated yoke, eagerly took his chance. While the royal household was at Nottingham Castle in October, he and his supporters, guided by two members of the royal household—Richard Bury and William Montagu—bypassed Mortimer’s guards via a subterranean passage (still known as Mortimer’s Hole) and took Mortimer and Isabella by surprise in the queen’s bedroom. Despite Isabella’s plea, “Fair son, have pity on the gentle Mortimer,” Roger was arrested and taken to the Tower of London, where, without trial, he was condemned for treason and sentenced to death. On November 29, 1330, he was taken to Tyburn, stripped naked, and hanged—the fate usually reserved for a commoner—his body being left on the scaffold for two days before being cut down. Notorious as a femme fatale and mariticide, Isabella lived long as an honored queen mother at the court of her son, one of England’s greatest kings.

EDWARD III & THE BLACK PRINCE

1312–1377 & 1330–1376

The greatest soldier of his age

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Jean Froissart, Chronicles (late 14th century) on the Black Prince

Edward III and the Black Prince were the father and son who personified the glory, energy and triumph of English chivalry at its medieval apogee. Edward III was the most successful and heroic of English kings; the Black Prince—formally Edward, Prince of Wales—was the most chivalrous and celebrated knight in Europe. Along with King Henry V, they are the greatest princes in British history.