The earl’s son and heir, Edmund Mortimer, had been married to Elizabeth of Badlesmere, heir of her brother Giles. He died the year after his father’s fall, and his young son Roger, as he grew up, was restored to a great part of their forfeited inheritance. This Roger fought at Crécy in “the king’s battle.” A founder of the Order of the Garter, he was summoned as a baron and obtained a reversal of his grandfather’s attainder. In 1355 he was summoned as earl of March. On the death of his grandmother, Ludlow Castle became the chief seat of his house. But following his king in the invasion of Burgundy, he died suddenly at Rouvray in 1360. His wife, a grand-daughter of that William Montague, earl of Salisbury, who had captured his grandfather at Nottingham, survived him two-and-twenty years.
His only son, Edmund, a boy nine years old, succeeded him as 3rd earl of March (1351–1381). A bride was found for him in the royal house. His marriage with Philippa, daughter of Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, by Elizabeth de Burgh, the heir of Ulster, added the earldom of Ulster to his style, and brought his issue into the direct succession of the Crown. Like so many of his race, he died young, of a chill caught in fording a Munster river on a winter’s day, and his countess was dead before him. Elizabeth, their eldest child, became the wife of the famous Harry Percy, called Hotspur. Their second was Roger, who succeeded to his father’s two earldoms as a boy of seven, and was at once appointed lieutenant of Ireland. His marriage was given to the earl of Kent, who married him to his daughter, Eleanor Holand, the niece of King Richard. In the parliament of 1385 the king named him as heir-presumptive to the throne. The panegyrists of his family are loud in their praise of his knightly doings and his great beauty, but they speak also of his lion-like ferocity, of his lasciviousness, and of his neglect of divine things. When in Ireland he defied the statute of Kilkenny, and ordered his garments and horse-harness after the fashion of an Irish chieftain. He wore the Irish mantle on the day in 1398 when, in one of his petty wars with the Leinster men, he was struck down at Kells as he charged far before his horsemen. The body, mangled by Irish skenes and axes, was brought home to be laid by his fathers in their abbey of Wigmore.
Once more a child succeeded to the earldoms. Edmund, 4th earl of March, was six years old at his father’s death, and was, for the king’s party, the heir-presumptive of the kingdom. But in 1399 the boy’s fate was changed by the coming to power of the Lancastrian party, and Henry IV.’s first parliament recognized Henry’s son as heir-apparent. Although Edmund and his brother Roger were brought up honourably with the new king’s younger children, they were in strict custody until the king’s death, broken only by the attempt of their uncle, Sir Edmund Mortimer, and his father-in-law, Owen Glyndwyr, to carry them off from Windsor to Wales, where the young earl would have been proclaimed king. Henry V., however, released the earl and restored his lands, and absolved March from any share in the plot of the earl of Cambridge, who had married Anne, sister of the earl. March served the king in his French wars, although a dysentery caught in the camp at Harfleur seems to have kept him from his share in the glory of Agincourt. On the accession of Henry VI. the earl was appointed to the lieutenancy of Ireland which had been held by his father and grandfather, and in Ireland, on the 19th of January 1425, he died suddenly of the plague. His wife, Anne, daughter of Edmund, earl of Stafford, had borne him no child, and thus, his brother being dead before him, the illustrious house of the Mortimers, earls of March and Ulster, became extinct. Their lands and earldoms passed to Richard, duke of York, son of Richard of Cambridge, by the last earl’s sister, and the great name of Mortimer disappeared from the English baronage.
Authorities.—Victoria History of the Counties of England—Introductions to Domesday book for Hereford and Shropshire; Eyton’s Antiquities of Shropshire; Dictionary of National Biography; Dugdale’s Monasticon; Stapleton’s Rotuli Scaccarii Normannae; G. E. C.’s Complete Peerage; Rymer’s Foedera; Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. xxiv. Inquests, post mortem, close, patent and charter rolls, &c. (O. Ba.)
MORTISE, or Mortice (adapted from the Fr. mortaise;
cf. Ital. mortise and Spanish mortaja; the origin is unknown;
Celtic equivalents, such as Gaelic moirteis, are of French origin),
a term for a socket or cavity cut in a piece of wood, or other
material, into which a corresponding projecting end, a “tenon,”
fits, the two when fitted together forming a “mortise-joint,”
for fastening two beams or other pieces of timber together.
MORTLAKE, a village in the Kingston parliamentary division
of Surrey, England, on the Thames, 612 m. W. of London. Pop.
of parish, which includes East Sheen (1901), 7774. It has been
associated with the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race since 1845,
the race finishing here. The village appears in Domesday, and
the manor belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury until the
time of Henry VIII., when it passed by exchange to the Crown.
From the early part of the 17th century until after the civil
wars Mortlake was celebrated for a manufacture of tapestry.
MORTMAIN (O. Fr. mortemain; med. Lat. mortua manus,
dead hand), the state or condition of lands or tenements when
held by a corporation in perpetual or inalienable tenure. Alienation
in mortmain having the effect of depriving the lord of the
incidents of seignory, which arose through the death or felony
of the tenant or failure of his heirs, many English statutes were passed directed against such alienation. The earliest is that of Henry III. 36 (Magna Carta); others being 7 Edward I. 13 (De Viris Religiosis); 13 Edward I. 32; 15 Richard II. 5; and 23 Henry VIII. 10. The present law is regulated by the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act 1888, as amended by the act of 1891.
MORTON, JAMES DOUGLAS, 4th Earl of (c. 1525–1581),
Scottish statesman, was the second son of Sir George Douglas
of Pittendriech. Before 1543 he married Elizabeth (d. 1574),
daughter of James Douglas, 3rd earl of Morton, a grandson
of James Douglas (d. c. 1500), who was created earl of Morton
in 1458. The 3rd earl’s wife was Catherine, an illegitimate
daughter of James IV. In 1553 James Douglas succeeded to
the title and estates of his father-in-law, and in 1563 he became
lord high chancellor of Scotland. Though his sympathies were
with the reformers, he took no part in the combination of
Protestant barons in 1565, but he headed the armed force
which took possession of Holyrood palace in March 1566 to
effect the assassination of Rizzio, and it was to his house that
the leading conspirators adjourned while a messenger was sent
to obtain Mary’s signature to the “bond of security.” The
queen, before complying with the request, escaped to Dunbar,
and Morton and the other leaders fled to England. Having
been pardoned, Morton returned to Scotland early in 1567, and
with 600 men appeared before Borthwick Castle, where the
queen after her marriage with Bothwell had taken refuge. He
was present at the remarkable, conference at Carberry Hill, and
he also took an active part in obtaining the consent of the
queen at Lochleven to an abdication. He led the army which
defeated the queen’s forces at Langside in 1568, and he was the
most valued counsellor of the earl of Murray during the latter’s
brief term of office as regent. On the death of the earl of Mar
(Oct. 28, 1572), Morton, who had been the most powerful noble
during this regency, and also during that of the earl of Lennox,
at last reached the object of his ambition by being elected regent.
In many respects Morton was an energetic and capable ruler.
He effected at Perth, in February 1573, with the aid of Elizabeth’s
envoy, a pacification with Huntly, the Hamiltons, and the
Catholic nobles who supported Mary. Only the castle of
Edinburgh held out, and this, aided by English artillery, he
succeeded in taking after a brave resistance by Kirkcaldy of
Grange and Maitland of Lethington.
The ensuing execution of these men, the bravest and the ablest Scotsmen of that age, put an end to the last chance of Mary’s restoration by native support. But while all seemed to favour Morton, there were under-currents which combined to procure his fall. The Presbyterian clergy were alienated by his leaning to Episcopacy, and all parties in the divided Church by his seizure of its estates. Andrew Melville, who had succeeded to the leadership of Knox, was more decided than Knox against any departure from the Presbyterian model, and refused to be
