The Norman Invasion of Ireland #7

Two military men and their exploits

Episode seven of a short series of articles about events surrounding the 12^th century Norman invasion of Ireland and the people involved. Originally published more than a decade ago on my WordPress author website to promote my novel 'Strongbow's Wife'.

Strongbow’s Son-in-Law

If Isabel was being prepared for marriage to someone worthy of inheriting her vast estates, most of which were held only in the king’s name, then the king had the difficult task of finding such a man.

Nothing is known about those, if any, he might have considered before settling on the man he chose only weeks before his death. Subsequent history suggests that it was a good choice. So who was this paragon?

The second son of a minor noble he had at the age of 5 been offered by his father to King Stephen as a hostage at the siege of Newbury. At 12 he was sent to France, to the household of a cousin where he was trained as a knight. It was Henry II’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who spotted his prowess in knightly combat and at the age of 24 he was appointed as head of the military household of their eldest son, the young Prince Henry, who had just been crowned in a ceremony to which Arch-Bishop Becket objected. He spent the next 13 years leading the Prince’s team on the tournament circuits of Europe.

Alex Ferguson or Andy Murray?

It is in this role of manager of one of the most successful teams in the medieval sport that William has been described as “the Alex Ferguson of his day”. I prefer to think of him more as an Andy Murray since a significant element of these contests took the form of single combat, in a series of heats leading up to a final, in which the winner took the prize. On his deathbed William is said to have recalled up to 500 winning contests.

In 1173, encouraged by their mother, Prince Henry and his younger brothers staged a rebellion against his father. Naturally William fought for the Prince. It was for this rebellion that Isabel’s father, Strongbow, and de Lacy were recalled from Ireland. The king forgave his sons and William continued in his position until the prince’s death in 1183. William then sought and received permission to take the young prince’s cross to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage which lasted until 1185. As his reward he was given Cartmel castle.

With the castle came the wardship of Heloise of Lancaster and it can be adduced that the king expected William to marry her. William, it seems, had other ideas and the king then offered him the hand of Dionisia of Chateauroux in return for helping him to put down a rebellion in Berry. It was during this campaign that the king’s heir, Richard, sided with Philip II of France. William, who could have killed Richard, killed his horse instead.

Henry now decided that William was indeed worthy of taking Isabel and her lands in Ireland, Wales and France. When the king died shortly afterwards, Richard confirmed the offer. Isabel and William were married in August 1189. He was 43 and she 17. They went on to have 10 children. One of the daughters married a De Braose and a son married the daughter of the 2^nd Earl of Hereford. Each of the sons died before producing off-spring so the many land-holdings passed to the daughters’ descendants, including the Mortimers, another dynasty with strong Herefordshire connections.

Four men named Roger Mortimer across seven generations played key roles in the history of both Ireland and England. I call them 'the marauding Mortimers' for the way the terrorised the Welsh. It was a reference to one of these men on the information board at a historic site near my Irish home that first alerted me to the connection between Irish history and Herefordshire.

The Marauding Mortimers #1 of 4

Historians have suggested that one of the reasons the men from the Welsh border were so willing to come to Ireland is that they had achieved all they could and that they needed a new frontier to develop.

Whatever their motivation, there was one man who believed there was still work to do at home. Roger Mortimer of Wigmore had been at loggerheads with his Welsh neighbours for years, closely watching two Welsh brothers Cadwallon ap Madog and Einion Clud dispute the ownership of land next to his, waiting for an opportunity to oust both.

In 1175 the brothers met Henry II at Gloucester and accepted a resolution of the dispute with each being granted a portion of the land. A year later Einion died and Cadwallon took possession of it all.

The Mortimer family had been granted possession of Wigmore by Henry I following the death of William FitzOsbern. FitzOsbern was a cousin and close associate of the conqueror and was the first to have been granted Earldoms under the new regime, those of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester.

He was responsible for building several other castles as well as Wigmore, including Striguil (Chepstow). On his death he seems to have been without heirs. His brother Osbern was already in England before the conquest, as the incumbent of a church in Sussex. By the time of William’s death Osbern was Bishop of Exeter.

Wrath of the King

Roger Mortimer’s ancestor Ralph was granted Wigmore whilst Chepstow went to the deClares and thence to Strongbow. In 1174, when Strongbow and deLacy were recalled from Ireland to assist Henry II in putting down the rebellion by his sons, Roger Mortimer joined them.

Five years later he was to incur the wrath of the king when he found his chance to rid himself of the second of the brothers. Cadwallon had appeared at court to answer charges of waging war against the king’s peace. He was acquitted and granted free passage back to his land. A group of Mortimer’s men intercepted his party and Cadwallon was killed in the resultant melee. Whether or not Roger had authorised the attack, he got the blame and was imprisoned in Winchester for two years.

During the reign of the absentee king Richard I, Roger returned to royal favour and in 1196 he was in action again, riding to the support of an army operating on behalf of William and Maud de Braose and routing the Welsh Lord Rhys (Rhys ap Gruffydd) at the battle of Radnor.

This Roger was the first of four men with the same name whose influence on English and Irish history were to be considerable over the next two centuries as the appellation leapfrogged across the generations.

In future posts I shall write about the Roger Mortimer who had an affair with the queen of England, helped her to murder her husband and took the throne as her consort; the Roger Mortimer who ended Simon deMontfort’s rebellion and the Roger Mortimer who was killed in battle near Kells.

Meanwhile I would strongly recommend anyone interested in these men and their activities to peruse the writings of Paul Remfry who has devoted many years to researching the history of Wigmore and the Mortimers.