In the year 1415, whilst Henry V prepared his expedition against France, Edmund Mortimer had but one hour to answer. Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Henry Scrope, and Thomas Grey had just imparted to him a design destined to place him upon the throne. They demanded that he swear never to betray them. Mortimer at first refused. The three confederates pressed him hard; according to the chronicle, he at length consented, upon the sole condition that he be granted one hour for reflection. Once alone, he hastened to the presence of Henry V and laid bare all that he had heard.
George Borrow’s account thus opens upon the treason as framed by the prosecution. He himself observes that we cannot know who first conceived the enterprise, how it took shape, nor by what precise means its authors intended to carry it forward. He proceeds to recite the charges, Cambridge’s confession, and his petition, yet offers no complete record of the judicial hearing. His chapter traces the path from the betrayed secret to the penalty; it does not suffice to reconstruct the full debates of the trial.
The accused was no stranger to the blood royal. Richard of Conisburgh, Earl of Cambridge, had wedded Anne Mortimer, sister and eventual heiress to the Earl of March. His wife was of the line of Clarence, whose title to the crown, in the eyes of their adherents, took precedence over that of the House of Lancaster. The Earl stood at the very nexus of the Yorkist branch through his father and the Mortimers through his marriage. This kinship lent the plot both its pretext and its peril: it was not merely an attempt to seize Henry’s person, but to supplant his authority with a crown worn in the name of Edmund Mortimer. Mortimer, however, had neither set the enterprise on foot nor met it with an immediate pledge. His first instinct, as Borrow relates, was to gain time and free himself from the bond they sought to thrust upon him.
According to Borrow, the conspirators had engaged with the French king, Charles VI, to slay Henry upon his voyage in return for one million in gold, or, should they fail in this, to deliver him captive into his hands. The chronicle records this bargain, though it produces no signed covenant to attest it. To Mortimer, they represented their undertaking as an effort to restore him to his rightful inheritance. A banner bearing the arms of England was to display the Earl’s name as lawful heir. A Spanish crown, lodged in pawn with Cambridge, was likewise counted among the tokens the confederates intended to convey into Wales. Thus did the conspiracy weave together ancestral claims, the lure of French treasure, and the visible regalia of sovereign power.
The projected proclamation went further still. The indictment recites that they intended to bring Mortimer into Wales and cause him to assume the governance of the realm, provided Richard II were truly dead. They proposed thereupon to proclaim Henry a “usurper,” and to fetch out of Scotland a man resembling Richard, in order to revive the belief that the late king still lived. The name of this counterfeit prince and the details of the mission vary among the records preserved by Borrow; the accusations commingle a pretended impersonation, armed bands, and the eventuality of open battle against the King’s host.
Cambridge’s letter disclosed yet another design: emissaries were to seek out this supposedly living Richard in Scotland, alongside Henry Percy and Scottish forces sufficient to offer battle. A certain Davy Howell had likewise promised his aid in seizing castles in Wales should an insurrection erupt in the North. Cambridge affirmed that Grey was privy to this design, yet maintained that Scrope had not learned of it through him. These particulars proceed from his own petition; they do not entirely harmonize with the more compendious charges of the bill of indictment. Yet they reveal the logistics the Earl sought to muster: a dynastic claim was not enough; there must be a visible pretender, levies drawn out of Scotland, and border strongholds ready to unbar their gates.
Mortimer’s disclosure gave Henry the leisure to strike. Borrow relates that the King did not at once publish what he knew. He summoned the accused lords and inquired of them what punishment they deemed fitting for men who should compass so heinous a crime. They answered that such traitors ought to perish amidst the most dreadful torments, as a terror to all others. The King thereupon commanded their arrest. According to the text, they confessed the facts laid to their charge upon their examination before Henry and the assembled peers. This confession was attributed to them by the record; the chronicle does not illuminate under what conditions it was obtained.
The document places an agreement concluded at Southampton upon the twentieth of July, in the third year of the reign of Henry V. It names Cambridge and Grey, and adds Henry Scrope, Lord Masham, as their confederate. The accusation is exact as to the date and the intended acts, yet the judicial procedure remains obscure. Borrow states that Cambridge was adjudged guilty, without specifying by whom or by what legal forms. The King granted a commission unto his brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, to hear the cause and act in the sovereign’s name, together with the peers summoned to take part. The exact authority of this commission within the trial does not dispel the silence shrouding the manner in which their guilt was pronounced.
Cambridge addressed to the King a letter which Borrow transcribes in its archaic orthography, assigning to it the date of the sixth of August. This date, supplied by the compilation, does not of itself suffice to establish with certainty the order of the final events. He acknowledged having consented to the design of conveying Mortimer into Wales and causing him there to be received as sovereign, should Richard II be dead. He admitted likewise that a proclamation was to have denounced Henry as an usurper, that Grey was privy to this purpose, and that a man resembling Richard II was to be brought from Scotland with armed levies. Upon certain matters, he drew a distinction between what Scrope knew and what he himself had revealed. Then he cast the whole cause upon the King’s grace.
This letter was no assertion of innocence. Cambridge pleaded for pardon and confessed his trespass; he insisted, however, that others had drawn him into the snare, and sought to narrow the measure of guilt he imputed to Scrope. The minute particulars of this supplication contrast sharply with the indictment, which casts the conspirators into a single, undivided purpose. He wrote to the monarch whose throne he had conspired to overturn, imploring his mercy by the passion of Christ and the grace that God had placed within the King’s hand. The document preserves this poignant blend of confession, partial accusation, and lingering hope of clemency.
Henry did not spare the Earl. Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey were beheaded at Southampton, whilst the King extended a pardon unto Mortimer on the seventh of August. Borrow does not assign in this chapter a certain day to each execution; Cambridge’s letter bears the date of the sixth, and Mortimer’s pardon that of the seventh. The head and body of the Earl were interred within the chapel of God’s House. His son Richard was later to inherit the claim of Clarence. It was that son’s own child, the grandson of the condemned traitor, who at last ascended the throne as Edward IV.
The conspirator who sought to set his brother-in-law upon the pinnacle of the realm left behind him an infant destined to inherit the very dynastic claim that had furnished the pretext for the plot. He could not foresee that the crown would one day rest upon his grandson’s brow. Borrow’s narrative clothes the conspiracy in heraldic banners, a pawned crown, a Scottish double for Richard II, and the promise of French gold; it leaves far more uncertain the Earl’s secret motives and the exact proceedings of the court that condemned him. The treason stands revealed in the letter he addressed to his sovereign. The dynastic reckoning, for its part, was untangled only long after his death.