MORTIMER (Family). The Mortimers of Wigmore, .earls of March and Ulster, were akin to the dukes of Normandy. Their ancestor Hugh, bishop of Coutances in 99o, had three sons, the eldest being Ralph, father of William of Warenne, earl of Surrey, and the second Roger of Mortemer-en-Brai. In the battle at his own village, Roger was a leader of the force which defeated the French, but, releasing an enemy of his duke, he was punished by the loss of his castle. The Mortimers' chief seat in Normandy became St. Victor-en-Caux. Roger's son, Ralph, who became heir to his father's lands, followed his kinsman, William Fitz-Osbern, the earl of Hereford, to the marches of Wales, and the Domesday book for Hereford and Shropshire marks the growth of the Mortimer power in those countries. After the rising of the 2nd earl of Hereford, he was enriched by many of the earl's forfeited estates, among them the castle town of Wigmore, which became the chief seat of Mortimer and Cleobury, thereafter called Cleo bury Mortimer. His Ilomesday lands lie in eleven counties, espe cially in North Hereford and South Shropshire. Ralph rose in 1188 with the other barons of the March, but was reconciled to William II., whom he afterwards supported in Normandy. In 1104 he was a partisan of Henry I., and must have died soon afterwards.
Ralph de Mortimer, the 5th baron of Wigmore (d. 1246), mar ried the daughter of Llewelyn, prince of Wales, and by her was father of Roger, whose bride, Maude de Breuse, brought in a third of the honour of Breuse of Brecknock, and a share of the honour of the earls marshal. So came the lordship of Radnor with other lands, and the history of the Mortimers ceases to be a provincial record. The last-named Roger supported Henry III. in his struggle with the barons. In 1282, he was succeeded by Edmund, the eldest surviving son (d. 1304), Roger, a third son, founding the line of Mortimer of Chirk.
By Margaret de Fiennes, a kinswoman of Queen Eleanor of Castile, Edmund Mortimer was father of Roger (b. 1287), whose great inheritance was increased on his marriage with Joan, daugh ter and heir of Peter de Geneville, her grandmother being a co heir of Lacy. The whole of the Geneville lands, with the half of the Lacy fief in England and Ireland, came through her to the Mortimers, who now added the castle town of Ludlow and half Meath to their estates. During the war with the Despensers, the force of the Mortimers was cast against the king but after Bridg north Castle had been taken, Edmund's son, Roger, was impris oned for two years before he made his famous escape to France. At the court of Charles IV. the exile met Isabel, the queen of England, and early in 1326 the scandal of her close friendship with the lord of Wigmore had reached England. When the queen landed at an English port in September, Mortimer was with her, and he followed the flight of the king to Wales. He was among
the judges of the elder Despenser at Bristol, and of the younger, his chief enemy, at Hereford. After parliament deposed Edward II. and made the young Edward king in his stead, Roger, as the queen's paramour, ruled England. Enriched by the lands of the Despensers, and by those of the earl of Arundel, beheaded at his command, Mortimer, who was created earl of March in 1328, never ceased to add to his possessions. The young king, how ever, worked secretly for his fall. Montague's men-at-arms entered Nottingham Castle by night, and joining the king, seized the favourite in his chamber next the queen's. Mortimer was hurried to London and condemned by the peers; his death followed suddenly.
Roger, who f ought at Crecy in "the king's battle," was restored to a great part of the forfeited inheritance. A founder of the Order of the Garter, he was summoned as a baron and obtained a reversal of his grandfather's attainder. In 1355 he was sum moned as earl of March. But following his king in the invasion of Burgundy, he died suddenly at Rouvray in 1360.
His only son, Edmund, succeeded him as 3rd earl of March (1351-1381). His marriage with Philippa, daughter of Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, by Elizabeth de Burgh, the heir of Ulster, added the earldom of Ulster to his style, and brought his issue into the direct succession of the Crown. Elizabeth, their eldest child, became the wife of the famous Harry Percy, called Hotspur. Their second child was Roger, who succeeded to his father's two earldoms as a boy of seven, and was at once ap pointed lieutenant of Ireland. He married Eleanor Holand, niece of King Richard, and in the parliament of 1385 the king named him heir-presumptive to the throne. In 1398 he was killed at Kells in one of his petty wars with the Leinster men, and once more a child succeeded to the earldoms. Edmund, 5th earl of March, was, for the king's party, the heir-presumptive of the king dom, but by the coming to power of the Lancastrian party in 1399, Henry IV.'s first parliament recognized Henry's son as heir apparent. March served Henry V. in his French wars, and on the accession of Henry VI. the earl was appointed to the lieutenancy of Ireland which had been held by his father and grandfather. He died suddenly of the plague in Ireland on Jan. 19, 1425. With him the illustrious house of the Mortimers, earls of March and Ulster, became extinct. Their lands and earldoms passed to Richard, duke of York, son of Richard of Cambridge, by the last earl's sister.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Victoria History of the Counties of England— Introductions to Domesday book for Hereford and Shropshire; Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire; Dictionary of National Biography; Dug dale's Monasticon; Stapleton's Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae ; G. E. C.'s Complete Peerage; Rymer's Foedera; Journal of the British Archae ological Association, vol. xxiv.