1.c.1.f.a.3 Maud and Robert their son Thomas and his wife Alice and their daughter Alianore

Alianore was born in 1373 in Upholland and was the eldest daughter of Thomas and his wife Alice.
 
She is our 2nd cousin, 17 times removed.

Alianore also had a sister called Eleanore, and many researchers have confused the two people.

Like all the ladies of the day, Alianore had a couple of marriages and several children.  But it was her marriage to Roger de Mortimer that is the most interesting.

Alianore Holland, Countess of March (13 October 1370 – October 1405) was the eldest daughter of Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, and the wife of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, heir presumptive to her uncle, King Richard II. Through her daughter, Anne Mortimer, she was the great-grandmother of the Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III. She was Governess to Queen consort Isabella of Valois.

She married Roger in October 1388 when she was 15.  They had 4 children

Eleanor de Mortimer   b  1387   d  1418    She married Sir Edward de Courtenay
Anne de Mortimer       b  1390   d  1411    She married Richard of Conisburgh 3rd Earl of Cambridge
Edmund Mortimer known as 5th Earl of March  b 1391  died 1425
Roger de Mortimer      b   1393   d  1413

By her marriage she could have been Queen of England!

So who was Roger de Mortimer?  


Firstly a story regarding his father:

Edmund de Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March and jure uxoris Earl of Ulster (1 February 1352 – 27 December 1381) was son of Roger Mortimer, 2nd Earl of March, by his wife Philippa, daughter of William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Catherine Grandison.

We have already met the Montacute family and will contnue to do so!  Must have been a shortage of fine upstanding gentlemen Knights to choose from in this period of our history.

An infant at the death of his father, Edmund, as a ward of the crown, was placed by Edward III of England under the care of William of Wykeham and Richard Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel.

The position of the young earl, powerful on account of his possessions and hereditary influence in the Welsh marches, was rendered still more important by his marriage in 1368 at the age of 16 to the 13-year-old Philippa, the only child of Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III.
Lionel's wife, Elizabeth, was daughter and heiress of William Donn de Burgh, 3rd Earl of Ulster, and Lionel had himself been created Earl of Ulster before his marriage. Edmund inherited the title Earl of Ulster on Lionel's death.   Lionel was the brother of King Edward husband of Joan of Kent!

Therefore, the Earl of March not only represented one of the chief Anglo-Norman lordships in Ireland in right of his wife Philippa, but Philippa's line was also the second most senior line of descent in the succession to the crown, after Edward, the Black Prince and his son, King Richard II of England. John of Gaunt, younger brother of Prince Edward, had become the 1st Duke of Lancaster and thus the source of the House of Lancaster's claim to the throne.

This marriage had, therefore, far-reaching consequences in English history, ultimately giving rise to the claim of the House of York to the crown of England contested in the Wars of the Roses between the Yorks and the Lancasters; Edward IV being descended from the second adult son of Edward III as great-great-grandson of Philippa, countess of March, and in the male line from Edmund of Langley, the first Duke of York and the fourth adult son of Edward III.

Edmund Mortimer's son Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March would become heir presumptive to the English crown during the reign of Richard II.

Mortimer, now styled Earl of March and Ulster, became Marshal of England in 1369, and was employed in various diplomatic missions during the next following years. He was a member of the committee appointed by the Peers to confer with the Commons in 1373 —; the first instance of such a joint conference since the institution of representative parliaments on the question of granting supplies for John of Gaunt's war in France.

He participated in the opposition to Edward III and the court party, which grew in strength towards the end of the reign, taking the popular side and being prominent in the Good Parliament of 1376 among the lords who supported the Prince of Wales and opposed the Court Party and John of Gaunt.

The Speaker of the House of Commons in this parliament was March's steward, Peter de la Mare, who firmly withstood John of Gaunt in stating the grievances of the Commons, in supporting the impeachment of several high court officials,  and in procuring the banishment of the king's mistress, Alice Perrers. March was a member of the administrative council appointed by the same parliament after the death of Edward, the Black Prince to attend the king and advise him in all public affairs.

Following the end of the Good Parliament its acts were reversed by John of Gaunt, March's steward was jailed, and March himself was ordered to inspect Calais and other remote royal castles as part of his duty as Marshall of England. March chose instead to resign the post.^[1]

Reign of Richard II

On the accession of Richard II, a minor, in 1377, the Earl became a member of the standing council of government; though as father of the heir-presumptive to the crown he wisely abstained from claiming any actually administrative office. The most powerful person in the realm was, however, the king's uncle John of Gaunt, whose jealousy of March led to the acceptance by the latter of the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1379.

March succeeded in asserting his authority in eastern Ulster, but failed to subdue the O'Neills farther west. Proceeding to Munster to put down the turbulency of the chieftains of the south, March died at Cork on 27 December 1381. He was buried in Wigmore Abbey, of which he had been a benefactor, and where his wife Philippa was also interred.

Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March, had died in 1381, leaving a 6-year-old son, Roger Mortimer, as heir to the vast Mortimer estates. According to Davies, the wardship of such an important heir was an 'issue of political moment in the years 1382–4', and eventually Mortimer's lands were granted to a consortium for £4000 per annum, and the guardianship of his person was initially granted to Richard Fitzalan, 11th Earl of Arundel.

However at the behest of King Richard's mother, Joan of Kent, in August 1384 Mortimer's wardship and marriage were granted, for 6000 marks, to Joan's son, Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, and on or about 7 October 1388

 Kent married Mortimer to his daughter, Alianore.

Her husband, this Roger Mortimer had a claim to the crown through his mother, Philippa Plantagenet, daughter of Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, and granddaughter of King Edward III. Since Richard II had no issue,

Roger Mortimer, as his nephew and a lineal descendant of Edward III, was next in line to the throne. Cokayne states that in October 1385 Mortimer was proclaimed by the King as heir presumptive.

However according to Davies the story that Richard publicly proclaimed Mortimer as heir presumptive in Parliament in October 1385 is baseless, although contemporary records indicate that his claim was openly discussed at the time.


On 20 July 1398, at the age of 24, Roger Mortimer was slain in a skirmish with 'O'Brien's men' at Kells.The Wigmore chronicler says that he was riding in front of his army, unattended and wearing Irish garb, and that those who slew him did not know who he was. He was interred at Wigmore Abbey. The King went to Ireland in the following year to avenge Mortimer's death.

The Wigmore chronicler, while criticising Mortimer for lust and remissness in his duty to God, extols him as 'of approved honesty, active in knightly exercises, glorious in pleasantry, affable and merry in conversation, excelling his contemporaries in beauty of appearance, sumptuous in his feasting, and liberal in his gifts'.

Alianore and Roger Mortimer's young son, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, succeeded his father in the title and claim to the throne, and he and his brother, Roger, were kept in custody by King Henry IV until the end of his reign. However Alianore and Roger Mortimer's two daughters, Anne and Eleanor, were in their mother's care until her death in 1405. According to Griffiths, they were not well treated by the King, and were described as 'destitute' after her death in 1405.

So quite a bit of history for the Roger de Mortimer!                    

So much can be found on the internet the hardest part is having the correct line to follow!

ROGER DE MORTIMER, 4TH EARL OF OF MARCH AND ULSTER, son of Edmund Mortimer, the 3rd Earl, succeeded to the titles and estates of his family when a child of seven, and a month afterwards he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, his uncle Sir Thomas Mortimer acting as his deputy. Being a ward of the Crown, his guardian was the Earl of Kent, half-brother to Richard II; and in 1388 he married Kent's daughter, Eleanor.

The importance which he owed to his hereditary influence and possessions, and especially to his descent from Edward III, was immensely increased when Richard II publicly acknowledged him as heir presumptive to the crown in 1385. In 1394 he accompanied Richard to Ireland, but notwithstanding a commission from the king as lieutenant of the districts over which he exercised nominal authority by hereditary right, he made little headway against the native Irish chieftains.

March enjoyed great popularity in England though he took no active part in opposing the despotic measures of the king; in Ireland he illegally assumed the native Irish costume. In August 1398 he was killed in fight with an Irish clan, and was buried in Wigmore Abbey. March's daughter Anne married Richard Earl of Cambridge, son of Edmund Duke of York, fifth son of Edward III; their son Richard, Duke of York, was father of King Edward IV, who thus derived his title to the crown and acquired the estates of the house of Mortimer.

Before 19 June 1399 Alianore married, as her second husband, the 'Welsh marcher lord', Edward Charleton, 5th Baron Cherleton (1371–1421), by whom she had two daughters:

• Joan, who married John Grey, 1st Earl of Tankerville, brother of Sir Thomas Grey, executed for his part in the Southampton Plot which aimed to replace King Henry V with Alianore's son, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March

. Joan and her sister, Joyce, were co-heiresses in 1425 to their stepbrother, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March.

• Joyce, whom married John Tiptoft, 1st Baron Tiptoft.

The next post will follow the life of their daughter Anne de Mortimer  our 3rd cousin * 16 times removed