TRAITOR'S GATE
TO MORTIMER'S HOLE
Ambition and Murder - Tower of London to Nottingham Castle
For
those who have thought of taking “The Davinci Code” Tour"
but were looking for some more medieval intrigue, you can follow your
own trail of “the man who would be king” Lord Roger de Mortimer
who very nearly succeeded in overthrowing the Plantagenet English monarchy.
The trail
can be followed from the “mind the gap” breadth of London’s
underground and the Tower of London on the Thames, to a day trip by
rental
car or Britrail train to Windsor and Kenilworth Castle in Oxford and
on to Nottingham. A rarely told story of illicit love and intrigue,
murder
and betrayal.
Roger
Mortimer was a charismatic Welsh Lord who declared himself to be the
Earl of March, then a no-man's land between England and Wales, was
being held in the Tower of London (see Visiting
Tower of London)
for siding against King Edward II in 1324 and scheduled to lose his head,
when the young and beautiful Queen Isabella
(French, of course), fell in love with Mortimer, almost years older than
she, and helped him escape to France where they raised an army, crossed
the channel and defeated her husband, putting her teenage son Edward
III on the throne. Edward II, who was gay and had lavished too much
power
and position on his "favorite" was imprisoned at Kenilworth
Castle in Warwickshire for a time, (see Kenilworth
Castle)
and then moved to Berkeley Castle (see Berkeley Castle Edward II) where he was murdered by being impaled
with a red-hot poker through a horn in his anus to avoid
detection,
and
the
illicit
couple
jointly
ruled as chancellor. (And you think divorce court is rough today!)
When
the young King Edward was to turn 18, Mortimer planned to murder him
and his young wife, Queen Philippa (see Blenheim
Palace),
and put their infant son on the throne, so he could disband the Parliament
and name himself Lord Protector of England.
But young
king
Edward, locked up as a prisoner inside Nottingham Castle, discovered
the plot and got word to men outside, who crawled through a secret
cave under
the
mountain
into
the castle and arrested Mortimer. The cave is now known as "Mortimer's
Hole". Most of the medieval
Nottingham castle is now gone, destroyed in the English Civil War
and replaced by a later palace, now a museum, but you can
still
see the secret tunnel of “Mortimer’s Hole”.
Mortimer
was returned to the Tower of London through “Traitor’s
Gate” where prisoners were brought in from the Thames and finally
did lose his head, which sat on a pike on London Bridge collecting
flies
for awhile - a warning to others of similar ambition. In London
you can also check out the English coronation throne of the Plantagenets
at
Westminster
Abbey,
which used to contain “The Stone of Scone" a
piece of Scottish sandstone where English kings figuratively - and
literally - sat their royal butt cheeks on Scotland (returned to Scotland
- sort of - in 1996, though rumors of a fake abound), then on to Windsor
Castle where the royals have lived “out of town” for eight
centuries (see Windsor Castle) and
where Mortimer engineered the betrayal of the young king’s
ally the Earl of Lancaster.
© Bargain
Travel Europe
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SEE ALSO:
NEWSTEAD
ABBEY - BYRON IN NOTTINGHAM
ROBIN
HOOD LEGEND OF SHERWOOD FOREST
RIPLEY CASTLE AND BOARSHEAD INN
