WIGMORE CASTLE, HEREFORDSHIRE. 245 



and that most powerful, from the conquest to the time of Henry 

 VI. ; and their claim to the throne, notwithstanding the melancholy 

 termination of the male branch, was successfully asserted within 

 forty years after.* 



Richard, who succeeded his father in the titles of Earl of Cam- 

 bridge, March, and Ulster, and Baron of Wigmore, had restored 

 to him the title of Duke of York, forfeited by his uncle, in the year 

 1425 ; and was afterwards created Lord of Clare and Connaught in 

 Ireland. He married Cecilia, daughter of Ralph Neville, Earl of 

 Westmoreland. It seems to have been very ill-judged policy in the 

 guardians of Henry VI. to have so treated the last of the jMorti- 

 raers as to have accelerated his death ; as by that means, and the 

 restoration of family honours to his heir, they raised up a far more 

 formidable rival. Richard, under the patronage of the King and 

 the Duke of Gloucester, grew into esteem with the people, and rose 

 to eminence in the state. 



Yet there were not wanting those who still clung to the name of 

 Mortimer, from a remembrance of its talismanic effect, particularly 

 as the Duke of Gloucester was a persecutor of the followers of 

 WiclifT. Hence a leader of the Lollards at Oxford, one William 

 Perkins, called himself Jack Sharpe, of Wigmore land, in Wales, 

 and in the year 1431 drew seveif^l who cherished an attachment to 

 the late unfortunate owners of that territory. He was captured 

 and executed through the means of William Warbelton, an esquire, 

 who petitioned the Duke of Gloucester and the council for the re- 

 ward, t After the death of that nobleman. Jack Cade, in 1450, 

 when he headed the rebellion of the Commons of Kent, was induced 

 to assume the name of Mortyraer, by which he was called in the 

 prayer of the sheriffs of London, Thomas Conynges and William 

 Hulyn, for remuneration of their expense in disposing of his body 

 and that of other traitors. J Whether the William Minors, esquire, 



* It was a descendant of Roger Mortimer, Lord of Chirk, the third son of 

 Roger, who married Matilda de Breos, that obtained the lordship of Genau'r 

 glyn, in the county of Cardigan, and whose descendant, Owain Mortimer, ex- 

 changed it for Coedmawr, in the same county; and his descendant, Richard, 

 married Catharine, daughter of Rowland Meyrick, Bishop of Bangor, whose 

 son, Sir Gelly Meyrick, as we shall find, became possessed of Wigmore Cas- 

 tle. There were afterwards Mortimers to be found in Herefordshire, as, in 

 1433, we meet with Hugh M., an Esquire, and John M., of Bromyard, a 

 Gentleman. 



f Ellis's Original Letters^ second series, vol. 1., p. 103. 



ij: Ibid, p. 112. When Cade had entered the city, he struck London stone 

 with his sword, and exclaimed, " Now is Mortymer lord of the city." 



