The Mortimers were among the most influential absentee families in later medieval Ireland. Calculated marriage alliances, military endeavor, and personal service to the crown brought the Mortimer earls of March lordship across broad swathes of Ireland. Earls of Ulster and lords of Clare, Connacht, Kilkenny, and Meath (Mide), they gave frequent personal attention to their Irish lands at a time when English land-holding in Ireland was waning. Such focus was required as the defense of their interests became increasingly problematic, three Mortimer earls, indeed, dying in Ireland, victims of the nature of their estates.
Inheritance
On September 24, 1301, Roger Mortimer (c. 12871330), lord of Wigmore in Herefordshire, married Joan de Geneville (1286-1356), heiress to the Irish liberty of Trim in eastern Meath, giving the Mortimers transmarine estates of real consequence for the first time. Roger had inherited his grandmother’s portion of the Marshal lands at Dunamase in Laois, but his immediate forebears had not maintained them. Widely anglicized, valuable, and imbued with seigniorial privileges enjoyed in no other Irish liberty, including the four royal pleas of arson, forestalling, rape, and treasure trove, Trim was worth fighting for. In mid-November 1308, months after coming of age, Roger received the lordship from Joan’s grandfather, Geoffrey de Geneville (c. 1226-1314). Geoffrey, a former chief governor of Ireland with long experience of Irish political and military affairs and of landholding across frontiers, instilled in Roger the desirability of personal lordship in Ireland. For six of the following twelve years (1308-09, 1310-13, 1315, 1317-18, 1319-20), Roger resided in Ireland, establishing his lordship against his wife’s kin, the Lacys of Rathwire and the Scots under Edward Bruce, and cementing his family’s position among the elite of Irish landholding society. Despite forfeiting his lands in rebellion against Edward II in 1321-22, his notorious subsequent relationship with Queen Isabella and leadership of the invasion that deposed the king gave Roger almost unfettered power. Elevated to the earldom of March in October 1328, he launched a spree of acquisition in Ireland, gaining custody of the western half of Meath, during the minority of the de Verdun heiresses, with liberty status. This reestablished the lordship of Meath, which had been divided after the death of Walter de Lacy in 1241. Roger also obtained custody of the heir to the earldom of Kildare and expanded into Louth, coming close to creating an "empire" on the threshold of Dublin.
This potential evaporated upon Roger’s execution by Edward III on November 29, 1330. But, while his lands were forfeited to the crown, his legacy provided the springboard for his successors’ ambitions. Roger, second earl of March (1329-1360), emulated his proximity to the crown, helping to found the Order of the Garter and becoming one of Edward III’s most trusty generals in his continental wars. Consequently, upon restoration to the earldom of March in 1355, he regained Meath as a liberty. Roger’s prestige, moreover, secured the marriage of his son, Edmund (1352-1381), to Phillippa, daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence, and Elizabeth, granddaughter of William de Burgh, late Earl of Ulster, in May 1368. Edmund thus became earl of March and Ulster, lord of Clare, Connacht, Kilkenny and Meath.
Problems
Despite their wealth, the Mortimers faced intractable problems in Ireland. The importance of their estates made their defense imperative, but the attractions of English court life, prolonged minorities, and the unfortunate brevity of their forays into Ireland made it increasingly difficult to maintain a firm grip against nascent Gaelic Revival. In many ways, the fate of their lands reflected the decay experienced across Ireland in the fourteenth century.
It is noticeable that each Mortimer lord received livery of his inheritance while still a minor, for the value of their estates was only matched by their vulnerability. As early as 1323, reports claimed that the castle and manor of Dunamase were worthless, as no English tenants remained after the onslaught of the Laois Irish. Both the first and second earls became embroiled in disputes with the men of Carbry. In December 1309, the king pardoned men of Trim who had chased a raiding party back into Carbry, killing several of them. In 1355, the steward of Trim was captured and imprisoned at Carbry after levying rents at Rathwire. Inquisitions returned into the English chancery demonstrate that most of the lands pertaining to the earldom of Ulster had been rendered of little value by 1368 thanks to destruction wrought by native armies across Ireland, emboldening Edmund Mortimer to attempt repairs at his fortresses of Greencastle and Carrickfergus and the bridge at Coleraine. By the time of Edmund’s son, Roger (1374-1398), the fourth earl, supremacy in Ulster and Connacht had passed to the Irish, his tenants in Ulster, English and Irish, performing homage to Niall Ua Neill.
One of the Mortimers’ most tangible solutions to the problems caused by absenteeism involved the transmission of retainers from the Welsh marches to their estates in Ireland. In the aftermath of his defeat of the Lacys in 1317, Roger Mortimer granted escheats in counties Meath and Dublin to Herefordshire and Shropshire retainers, giving his English tenants a stake in the maintenance of his Irish lordship. It is noticeable that members of the Hakelut and Harley families, for example, returned to Ireland with successive Mortimer lords. Less tangible are the Mortimers’ relations with native communities. The Wigmore chronicle boasts of the Mortimers’ lineage from both Strongbow and Diarmait Mac Murchada. How and if they played upon this heritage is not known. In Laois, the O’Mores were a constant thorn in their flesh, but they formally recognized their liege status at least once. In 1350, Maurice Sionnach, "king" of Fartullagh and Fergal Mac Eochagain, "duke" of Moycashel, agreed to serve the earl of Kildare against all men save de Geneville’s heir, evidence perhaps of a longer association between the Mortimers and their Irish tenantry. Whether militarily or in a social context, therefore, the Mortimers certainly had experience of native society.
Chief Governors
It was exactly this, combined with their position at court and in Ireland, that brought all but one of the earls to the chief governorship of Ireland, and with some success. On November 23, 1316, around the time of Robert Bruce’s landing in Ulster, Roger Mortimer was named as the king’s lieutenant in Ireland. During the ensuing eighteen months, he set about restoring peace, brokering compromises between disputing Anglo-Irish lineages, particularly in Cork and Water-ford, where large fines were extracted from warring factions, and making war on the lordship’s enemies. Having exiled the Lacys of Rathwire in June 1317, he devastated Irish communities in Connacht and what is now County Wicklow. On his return to Ireland as jus-ticiar in June 1319, in the aftermath of the battle of Faughart, more importantly, he received native Irishmen into English common law, attempting to mitigate one of the grievances expressed in the Irish Remonstrance.
When Edmund Mortimer arrived in Ireland in May 1380 by popular acclaim, the administration was penniless. Nevertheless, if chronicle accounts are accurate, he was able temporarily to regain his lordship in Ulster and northern Connacht, taking the homage of many "nobles of the Gael" and Niall Og Ua Neill, captain of the Irish of Ulster, before sweeping south, crossing the Shannon, and tackling recalcitrant Irish and English kin groups in Thomond.
Pneumonia, however, ended his life on December 27, 1381, and his successes evaporated. Experiments with Thomas Mortimer, Edmund’s brother, as deputy for his infant nephew, Roger, provided no boon against Irish encroachment and forced Richard II into journeying to Ireland himself. He was accompanied in 1394 by Roger Mortimer, fourth earl of March, who had initially been made lieutenant in July 1392, but had been delayed by disputes over his inheritance. During Richard’s stay, the king, who wished to conciliate some of the leading Irish kin groups, forced Roger into accepting the negotiated homage of the O’Neills. Upon Richard’s departure, however, Roger was left as lieutenant in Ulster, Connacht, and Meath. After gathering an army including the earls of Ormond and Desmond and many other prominent members of the settler community under the king’s banner, he ravaged modern counties Longford and Cavan in an attempt to regain control of his lordship of Meath. He then launched an attack on the position of his rivals, the O’Neills, in Armagh, bringing them temporarily to heel. In April 1397, Roger was granted the sole governorship of Ireland, and he appears to have attempted to wrest control of the country back for the king. Such ephemeral successes, however, were curtailed by his murder on a raid into Leinster in August 1398.
Roger would be the second of his name to die in Ireland. He would not be the last. His son, Edmund (1391-1425), fifth earl of March, died at Trim on January 18, 1425, while vainly trying to employ the resources of Ireland as lieutenant in the defense of his familial estates.
Throughout the fourteenth century, the Mortimer earls of March had accumulated the single most important patrimony in Ireland. Far from remaining permanent absentees, unlike many of their contemporaries, they made frequent, if fleeting visits to Ireland, where their skills as warlords, peacemakers, and figures of compromise ensured their place at the zenith of land-holding society and made them essential agents in the maintenance and development of English lordship. Premature deaths and minorities, however, meant that, ultimately, their lands could not be adequately defended, and they too became the unfortunate personal victims of the failure of the English lordship in Ireland to make any temporary successes endure.
