Wales and the Mortimers - Heirs of Llywelyn?

It's possible that the early death of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, in 1398 was a factor in the Glyn Dwr revolt, because the Welsh had had high hopes of Roger. He became the first English earl to have an ode addressed to him by a Welsh bard, Iolo Goch, who was subsequently Owain's household bard.

From what little is known about Earl Roger, it appears he was both generous and popular. Indeed it was alleged that the reception he received from the common people at the time of the Shrewsbury Parliament was a factor in turning Richard II against him. Whether this is so or not, it is a fact that soon after Richard recalled him from Ireland, substituting Thomas Holland, Duke of Surrey as Lieutenant of Ireland. Mortimer was killed (in somewhat mysterious circumstances) before this decision could be put into effect.

From the point of view of the Welsh, the most significant fact about Mortimer (apart from the trivial detail that he owned around a third of the country!) was his descent from Llywelyn the Great (Llywelyn Fawr) through Llywelyn's daughter, Gwladus Ddu. In the 1390s it was quite reasonable for the Welsh to look forward to the possible crowning of a King of England with this lineage. (As an aside Adam of Usk claimed that Gwladus's mother was Joan, daughter of King John. This has sometimes been questioned, but it seems to me that Usk is as good a source as any other.)

The death of March and the accession of Bolingbroke killed this dream stone dead. However, as many of you will be aware, the descent from Gwladus was eventually transferred to the House of York in the person of Richard, the third Duke, through his mother Anne Mortimer. This blood descent from the House of Gwynedd was not overlooked in early Yorkist propaganda and was used in an attempt to attach Welsh support to Edward IV, with somewhat mixed success. This is rather ironic in the light of later history, and the Tudors making so much of their Welsh origins, which were, when properly examined, rather less impressive than blood succession to the great Llywelyn.

As far as I am aware Richard III made no attempt to highlight his Welsh ancestry, and in that regard at least he may have missed a trick.

Claims to the Throne

On the subject of claims to the throne, it has to be said that in the late 14th century the rules had not been fully worked out. It was fairly clear that a king would normally be succeeded by his eldest son, but what would happen in the event of a king dying without a son was far less clear.

It appears that towards the end of his reign Edward III purported to entail the crown on John of Gaunt in the event of Richard II dying without heirs. Rather illogical, since Edward had been loudly laying claim to France since 1340 on the basis of inheritance through his mother. However, logic is not always a strength of the world of politics, and the reality was that the king was senile and under the thumb of John of Gaunt, so that may have had something to do with it.

Richard II apparently decided that his successor should be Roger Mortimer Earl of March, who was the grandson of Lionel of Clarence, Gaunt's elder brother. This is faithfully recorded by the Westminster Chronicle, but the issue does not appear to have been entirely settled, and one suspects that Gaunt, his son Henry Bolingbroke, and maybe Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the king's youngest uncle, had other ideas.

Towards the end of his reign the question became even more open. Gaunt was dead, Bolingbroke was banished and declared a traitor, and Roger Mortimer, killed in Ireland in 1398, had fallen from favour and been recalled before his death, probably to face the music. Though Roger had a son (the same Earl of March involved in the Southampton Conspiracy) it seems Richard at this point made Edmund of Langley his heir. This is certainly the belief of Ian Mortimer in Fears of Henry IV and if he is correct it the House of York opened the Fetterlock rather more completely than I thought!

More on Mortimer's book, and Henry's rather dodgy claim, at another time. Suffice it to say that Henry IV entailed the succession on his heirs by parliamentary statute, the first sovereign to do so. (The practice later became quite fashionable!) When Edward IV succeeded, however, he did not enact a succession statute, because he believed he was the legitimate heir of Richard II, through his Mortimer grandmother. By modern succession arrangements, at least, he was correct.