Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Baron Badlesmere

The gatehouse of Leeds Castle, the seat of Bartholomew de Badlesmere, from where Queen Isabella's entourage was shelled in 1321

Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Baron Badlesmere (also Bartholomew Badlesmere ; * around 1275 , † April 14, 1322 near Canterbury ) was an English nobleman, military and rebel.

origin

Bartholomew de Badlesmere was a son of Guncelin de Badlesmere of Badlesmere in Kent , and of Joan FitzBernard. His father was a Knight Banneret and 1274-1281 Justiciar of Chester and a favorite of King Edward I was.

Military career

Badlesmere served in the royal army in Gascony during the Franco-English War in 1294 and in Flanders in 1297 . In the Scottish Wars of Independence he took part in the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 , and also served in Scotland and France in 1303 and 1304. In 1299 he was a knight of the royal household and the following year he was part of the Earl of Lincoln's retinue . After his father's death in 1301, he inherited his estates, including extensive estates in Kent . 1307 he was MP for Kent in the Carlisle Parliament . He had very good connections with Gilbert de Clare, 4th Earl of Gloucester , the liege lord of his Kent possessions. Before June 30, 1308 he married his cousin Margaret de Clare , the widow of Gilbert de Umfraville , a son of the Earl of Angus and youngest daughter of Thomas de Clare, Lord of Thomond and Juliana FitzMaurice. He also had good contacts with Robert de Clifford , with whom he had fought in Scotland.

Ascent from landed gentry to peer

After the accession to the throne of King Edward II , he became Constable of Bristol Castle in August 1307 and received numerous tokens of favor from the young king. On October 26th, 1309 he became Baron Badlesmere as a hereditary baron by writ Member of Parliament . Only during the long-lasting crisis between 1310 and 1312, when a noble opposition demanded the banishment of the royal favorite Piers Gaveston , his loyalty to the king wavered. He was one of the barons who asked the king to reform his rule in March 1310, and in 1312 he was asked by the king to hand over Bristol Castle. After Gaveston's execution in June 1312, however, he rejoined the king and was rewarded with the enfeoffment of Chilham Castle in Kent.

As leader of the Earl of Gloucester's contingent, however, after the defeat of Bannockburn in 1314, he was accused of having shamefully abandoned his liege lord, who had fallen alone in the fight against the Scots despite having led 500 knights and soldiers into battle. Despite these incriminating allegations, Badlesmere did not lose the king's favor and became one of his most important advisors and commanders, who was again given the management of Bristol Castle. After the death of the Earl of Gloucester, he administered his South Welsh rule Glamorgan until 1315 . Together with Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke , he led a campaign to northern England in 1315. In 1316 he played an important role in suppressing the rebellion of the Welsh Llywelyn Bren in Glamorgan. Against Badlesmere himself there was a revolt of the citizens of Bristol , who were dissatisfied with his office as constable of Bristol Castle. In the autumn of 1316, Badlesmere and Pembroke traveled to Avignon on behalf of the king with the aim of getting the Pope to repeal the ordinances , the requirements of the aristocratic opposition.

Mediator between the aristocratic opposition and the king

Around this time, the opposition between the king and the aristocratic opposition led by the Earl of Lancaster , the king's cousin, intensified . The king had surrounded himself with a group of favorites, most notably Hugh le Despenser , Hugh de Audley and Roger Damory , who had a strong influence on him. In this crisis Badlesmere belonged to the moderate courtiers. Together with Pembroke, he tried in 1317 to reject the most greedy of the favorites, Roger Damory, in order to appease Lancaster. In the Leake treaty negotiated by him with Lancaster , he even reached an understanding between Lancaster and Damory in 1318. Badlesmere, however, also came to terms with Despenser, who had married one of the sisters of the Earl of Gloucester and from October 1318 received even greater influence over the king as Chamberlain of the Household . When Badlesmere was made Steward of the Household in November 1318 , Lancaster found this a snub. Lancaster was the Earl of Leicester also hereditary Hereditary Steward of England , he stressed that the right to appoint the Steward of the Household, and Badlesmere had hardly been a supporter of his enemy Despenser his choice.

Badlesmere continued to belong to the king's immediate circle and served him as an advisor and diplomat, especially as a negotiator with the Scots. In March 1320 the king sent him first with Edmund of Woodstock as ambassador to Paris and again to the Pope in Avignon. There he achieved that his nephew Henry Burghersh was appointed Bishop of Lincoln . He then went to Gascony with the older Despenser to oversee the English administration there. In gratitude for his services, the king enfeoffed him with Leeds Castle in 1317 .

From courtier to rebel

When Badlesmere traveled to Sherburn in Yorkshire on behalf of the king in June 1321 for a meeting of the supporters of Lancaster , he joined the rebels despite his opposition to Lancaster. In this drastic step he was probably influenced by his daughter Elizabeth , who had married a son of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore , a member of the aristocratic opposition, in 1316 . Badlesmere probably wrote a partly fictitious indictment against Despenser, with which the rebels wanted to present him to the parliament in August 1321 as an enemy of the king. Although the charges were clearly exaggerated, the king, under pressure from the barons, had to consent to the despensers being banished.

The Siege of Leeds Castle

As a result, in the autumn of 1321, the first royal counterattack was directed against Badlesmeres estates in Kent, which were surrounded by estates of loyal barons and were isolated from the other bases of the rebels. On September 26th, the King ordered Badlesmere to hand over the Tonbridge Castle he had administered . Badlesmere refused to do so and increased the crew of his Leeds Castle headquarters. Then he made a short pilgrimage to Canterbury to the shrine of Thomas Becket , the famous opponent of royal tyranny, and then fled to Oxford, where the rebels had retreated. Edward II now went to Kent himself. He first sent his Queen Isabella to Leeds Castle so that she could enter there and take over the castle without a siege. Badlesmere's wife Margaret locked the castle gate according to her husband's instructions and the castle's garrison killed some of the Queen's followers in a skirmish when they tried to gain access to the castle. The king now had the pretext for the beginning of the civil war, and the second phase of the so-called Despenser War began. On October 17, 1321, the king began the siege of Leeds Castle, which was captured on October 31. The king had Badlesmeres Constable Walter Culpeper and the garrison executed while his family was being taken to the Tower of London . The other possessions of Badlesmere in Kent had also been occupied by royal troops by October 28th.

Escape and death

Badlesmere's attempts to persuade the rebels to relieve Leeds Castle had been unsuccessful, largely because Lancaster refused to support him because of his personal feud with him. This internal dispute and a lack of leadership weakened the aristocratic opposition considerably. In a swift campaign, the king was able to subdue the Mortimers in the Welsh Marches before turning north to defeat Lancaster's troops. As an enemy of the king, Badlesmere had to stay with Lancaster, who was trying to flee to northern England. On March 16, 1322 Lancaster's troops were decisively defeated in the Battle of Boroughbridge . Badlesmere was initially able to escape after the defeat, but was then captured in Stow Park , a home of his nephew, Bishop Burghersh. He was brought to Canterbury, convicted of treason, and cruelly executed. As a traitor he was dragged by a horse far from the city as far as Blean , where he was hanged and then beheaded.

Badlesmeres possessions were confiscated by the king. Over the Irish possessions in Thomond , which Badlesmere had inherited in 1321 after the death of Thomas de Clare , the only son of Richard de Clare , his wife's brother, the king could not enforce his sovereignty. The area came under Irish control and was not reconquered for the English until 1543. Badlesmere's wife and daughters were probably released at the end of 1322, and his wife retired to a Minorite monastery near London. His son Giles remained in captivity until the fall of Edward II and the Despensers, when he was released and was able to regain most of his father's possessions. In 1328 he got back the title of his father as 2nd Baron Badlesmere.

Bartholomew de Badlesmere had risen from country nobleman to peer and had acquired an extensive property in the course of his life. The fact that, despite his skills as an administrator and military man, he ended up as a traitor as an elderly man proves the political failure of King Edward II.

progeny

Badlesmere had five children with his wife Margaret de Clare:

• Margery de Badlesmere (1306-1363)

1. ⚭ William de Ros, 2nd Baron de Ros
2. ⚭ Thomas de Arundel

• Maud de Badlesmere (1310-1366)

1. ⚭ Robert FitzPayn
2. ⚭ John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford

• Elizabeth de Badlesmere (1313-1356)

1. ⚭ Edmund Mortimer, 1st Baron Mortimer
2. ⚭ William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton

• Giles de Badlesmere, 2nd Baron Badlesmere (1314–1338) ⚭ Elizabeth de Grandison
• Margaret de Badlesmere

literature

• JR Maddicott: Badlesmere, Sir Bartholomew (c.1275-1322). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2006

Web links

• Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Lord Badlesmere on thepeerage.com , accessed July 28, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chilham Castle: History - Chilham's Mediaeval Castle. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 6, 2015 ; Retrieved April 29, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Michael Altschul: A baronial family in medieval England. The Clares . The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1965, p. 247.
3. ↑ Ronald H. Fritze; William B. Robison: Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England, 1272-1485 , Greenwood, Wesport (Conn.) 2002. ISBN 0-313-29124-1 , p. 152.
4. ^ Leeds Castle: Castle and History - Six Royal Queens. Retrieved April 29, 2015 . 
5. ^ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003. ISBN 0-521-54806-3 , p. 45.
6. ↑ Alison Weir: Isabella. She-Wolf of France, Queen of England . Pimlico, London 2006, ISBN 0-7126-4194-7 , p. 140.
7. ^ Natalie Fryde: The tyranny and fall of Edward II, 1321-1326. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003. ISBN 0-521-54806-3 , p. 61.
8. ^ Michael Altschul: A baronial family in medieval England. The Clares . The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1965, p. 197.
9. ↑ JR Maddicott: Badlesmere, Sir Bartholomew (c.1275-1322). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2006