r6 HISTORICAL MEMORANDA OP 



Wales, had risen against the king and seized his castles, they might 

 not be pardoned for their offences ; which apparent act of loyalty 

 was, in all probability, dictated by a hope of revenge. He was 

 never summoned to parliament after this period, though, in the first 

 year of Edward III., he and his nephew had restored to them all 

 their forfeited lands : all the proceedings in the sixteenth of Edward 

 II. were reversed. In the fourth year of Edward III. he is styled, 

 in a writ from the king, "his justice of Wales, or his lieutenant 

 and chamberlain in the parts of North Wales ;" by which titles he 

 had been described two years before. " Hence," observes Sir 

 Harris Nicolas, " the assertion of Leland, that he died in the tower 

 of London, to which his nephew, the lord of Mortimer, and himself 

 were committed, by Edward II., is proved to be erroneous ; nor is 

 the statement of other writers, that he died there on the 3rd of 

 August, 1336, much more probable, as it is evident he continued to 

 hold his Welsh offices until 1330. He may have fallen into dis- 

 grace at that time, when all authentic accounts of him cease, and 

 perhaps died in the Tower a few years after, but it is positive that 

 he was living in 1 336, when he was nearly eighty."* The pedigree 

 in the College of Arms says, as has been observed, that he married 

 Lucy, daughter and heiress of Sir William le Wafre, knight, and 

 does not mark any issue ; Sir Harris Nicolas, on the contrary, as- 

 serts that she was " daughter and heiress of Sir Robert de Wasse, 

 knight, by whom he is said to have had issue Roger, who left a 

 son, John de Mortimer ; but neither of them ranked as barons of 

 the realm.'* 



The earliest period at which Roger Lord Mortimer, of Wigmore, 

 makes his appearance on the page of history, is when he was ap- 

 pointed to treat with the Earl of Lancaster, relative to the political 

 dissensions which then agitated the realm ;t the next, when he 

 joined the barons against the king's favorites, the Despensers. In 

 the year 1323, these noblemen, in their violent proceedings against 

 those who had become their enemies, confiscated the property of 

 Adam de Orleton, bishop of Hereford, as an alleged supporter of 

 Mortimer, and he, being described as a man of great worldly saga- 

 city, endeavoured to revive the party of the barons. They found 

 the royal favour still unattainable, except through these favorites, 



* I have given this biography, with very little alteration, on the authority 

 of Sir Harris Nicolas, of whom it is but justice to remark that, in genealogi- 

 cal research, no man has shewn more assiduity, accuracy, and discrimination, 

 as all his publications testify. 



t Nicolas's Siege of Caerluverock, note, p. 2C3. 



