Tag Archives: 1322

1322: John de Mowbray, rebel lord

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On this date in 1322, northern baron John de Mowbray was hanged at York as a traitor.

He numbered among the aristocratic opposition to Edward II and to Edward’s favorite Hugh Despenser.

Mowbray was with said opposition’s chief, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster when the latter was trapped and defeated by Andrew Harclay at the Battle of Boroughbridge.

The surrender of these rebel lords offered the king a chance to clear many of his rivals from the board, and he did not miss it: something like two dozen nobles were put to death in its aftermath, Mowbray among them.

According to The Washingtons: A Family History, Volume 3, which notes Mowbray as a paternal ancestor of the American protopresident,

His body was left to hang and rot for an extended period before the vengeful king and the Despensers finally permitted his family to take it down and bury it in the church of the Dominican friars at York. Well into the nineteenth century, a legend proclaimed that his armor had been hung on an oak tree near Thirsk, and that ‘at midnight it may yet be heard creaking, when the east wind comes soughing up the road from the heights of Black Hambleton.’

Mowbray’s wife and son were locked in the Tower of London and their estates redistributed to more loyal subjects. They’d be restored to both liberty and property after Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer overthrew Edward.

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1322: Bartholomew de Badlesmere

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On this date in 1322, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, the first (of only two) Baron Badlesmere, lost his head.

The barons in the dangerous age of Edward II were marked by where they made their political allegiances between the king and his rival the Earl of Lancaster.

Badlesmere? He … evolved.

The man could tack to the wind with the very best of them, or the very worst; he was reviled as the Benedict Arnold of 14th century England for chickenheartedly failing to protect the Earl of Gloucester when the latter impetuously charged to his death at Bannockburn. As a bard of the time put it,

This is the traitorous man Bartholomew, whom in all victories may God confound, because he has been to his master as changeable as a pharisee. Hence, as the representative of Judas, he shall be condemned to death … because he refused to come to his master’s support this traitor has deserved to be put to the rack … deserved to suffer judgment of decapitation.

As the 1320s began, he was a stalwart of what has been termed the “Middle Party”, whose position vis-a-vis Edward and Lancaster was what you would expect from the name.

Badlesmere badly misplayed a strong hand by defecting in the so-called “Despenser War” to the anti-Edwardian party, even though Lancaster pretty much hated his guts — and now the king did, too,* dissipating any mutual goodwill that might have been earned a few years before when the king’s favorite (and the war’s namesake) Hugh Despenser went and rescued Badlesmere’s wife from an attack.

And unlike at Bannockburn, Badlesmere here stepped into the trap rather than out of it.

Lancaster’s party was decisively defeated on March 16, 1322 at the Battle of Boroughbridge.

Days after the battle, Badlesmere was caught skulking in a glade by the Earl of Mar and shipped to Canterbury for trial. He was condemned to death on this date, and sent directly from court to a hurdle dragged by a horse to Blean three miles away, where he was hanged and beheaded. He was one of 20 or so lords and knights Edward had put to death.

Lancaster himself was another — although a “Contrariant” whom he didn’t execute, Roger Mortimer, would make Edward regret his clemency by overthrowing the king four years later.

* In an affair that Edward II biographer Kathryn Warner thinks was neatly contrived by the king, his Queen Isabella called on Badlesmere’s wife when the latter held Leeds Castle sans husband. Lady Badlesmere refused to admit the queen, giving Edward a welcome excuse for besieging a fortress holding out against its sovereign.

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