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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy and Katie, here's

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Speaker 1: a tip in case you're ever trying to seize the

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Speaker 1: Crown of England or I guess if it's on my

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Speaker 1: to do list, if you were trying to seize it

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Speaker 1: several hundred years ago. The Plantagenets are really really not

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Speaker 1: okay with each other. They fight all the time, and

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Speaker 1: it's not too hard to set them off well. And

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Speaker 1: we've seen this so many times. In our Eleanor of

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Speaker 1: Aquitaine episode, we've got wife against husband, son against father,

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Speaker 1: and brother against brother. And in our more recent episode

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Speaker 1: on Eleanor's son, Richard the Lion Heart, there's more brother

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Speaker 1: against brother followed by some begging and pleading and patronizing forgiveness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would say that it's definitely a trait of the family,

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Speaker 1: and it's a useful trait for a would be trader.

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Speaker 1: And in this episode we're gonna be talking about one

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Speaker 1: of those traders, in particular, Roger Mortimer and his abuse

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Speaker 1: of the Plantagenet's greatest weakness, plus his superb battle skills

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Speaker 1: end up earning him a brief dictatorship in England. And

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Speaker 1: some people call it the Age of Treason, if that

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Speaker 1: is an idea, how it's gonna go. Not quite as

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Speaker 1: good as the Age of Reason. But what makes him

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Speaker 1: the greatest trader? That's what we're going to talk about today.

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Speaker 1: So who is Roger Mortimer. He's the descendant of Norman

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Speaker 1: Knights who came over with William the Conqueror. But he

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Speaker 1: was born in twelve eighties seven during the reign of

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Speaker 1: Edward the First of England. I think Edward has possibly

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Speaker 1: the best king's nickname ever, Edward Longship Love. That's really good.

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Speaker 1: So the Mortimers are really close to Edward, the first

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Speaker 1: in the royal family. Roger's grandfather is a good friend

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Speaker 1: of the kings and a close ally, and Roger's mother

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Speaker 1: is a relative of the Queen. So so the Mortimers

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Speaker 1: in the crow Own are pretty tight with each other.

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Speaker 1: And they're also quite wealthy, which is a nice combination.

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Speaker 1: At age fourteen, Roger Mary's and that combines his very

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Speaker 1: extensive lands with those of another rich girl, Joan Genville,

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Speaker 1: and they formed this super estate on the English Welsh border,

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Speaker 1: and in thirteen o four, Roger's father is killed in battle,

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Speaker 1: and even though Roger is seventeen, married and has several children,

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Speaker 1: he becomes the ward of a royal favorite, Pierce Gaveston,

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Speaker 1: which I just think that's so strange that you're not

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Speaker 1: quite of age yet even though you're all fighting, you're married,

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Speaker 1: you have kids. Yeah. I don't know what the criteria.

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Speaker 1: I guess it's just a patronage system. But anyways, Roger

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Speaker 1: goes about building up quite a reputation for a medieval baron,

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Speaker 1: at least soldiering and adding lands to his already extensive

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Speaker 1: holdings and fighting, and according to Ian Mortimer, who is

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Speaker 1: a biographer of Rogers but no relation um, Roger becomes

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Speaker 1: one of the most experienced soldiers of his age, with

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Speaker 1: a particular penchant for the joust. So I think we

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Speaker 1: have a pretty good picture of Roger going into this episode,

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Speaker 1: but we have some changes at the top. In the meantime,

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Speaker 1: we've gotten a new king. In thirteen oh seven, Long

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Speaker 1: Shanks dies and his son Edward the Second takes the throne,

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Speaker 1: and he looks like a king. According to contemporary accounts,

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Speaker 1: he's very handsome and very tall, but he's also very

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Speaker 1: weak and very easy to manipulate. And luckily we have

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Speaker 1: a manipulator ready in the wings, Pierce Gaveston, who is

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Speaker 1: a friend of Edward the seconds and possibly now his lover,

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Speaker 1: and the politics of this relationship get very nasty. Edward

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Speaker 1: pours favors on Gaveston, land, money, titles, he even gives

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Speaker 1: him the regency when he travels abroad to marry Isabella

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Speaker 1: of France. But unsurprisingly, because barons don't like anything, the

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Speaker 1: baron's don't like this, and in thirteen eleven, a twenty

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Speaker 1: one member baronial committee draw a document called the Ordinances

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Speaker 1: demanding that Edward relinquished some of his powers and Gaveston

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Speaker 1: be banished. Getting throw that in there, Yeah, So Edward

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Speaker 1: makes like he'll do it. He banishes Gaveston and then

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Speaker 1: allows him to come back, and the barons aren't going

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Speaker 1: to play that way there, and they're not gonna have

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Speaker 1: sort of a half concession to the man, so they

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Speaker 1: seize Gaveston and they execute him. So that's one possible

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Speaker 1: lover down for Edward the second already. But Edward just

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Speaker 1: doesn't take the hint that maybe he at least needs

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Speaker 1: to play it cool with his favorites a little bit.

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Speaker 1: He takes a new favorite, this time Hugh Dispenser, and

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Speaker 1: he has pretty impressive connections of his own too. He's

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Speaker 1: married to Eleanor Declare and she happens to be edward

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Speaker 1: The first granddaughter, so more royal connections there. And after

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Speaker 1: hooking up with the king, Hugh Dispenser starts to add

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Speaker 1: to his land and influence, of course, getting all sorts

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Speaker 1: of favors. Meanwhile, Edward is losing his own influence. He's

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Speaker 1: defeated in thirteen fourteen by Robert the Bruce. And if

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Speaker 1: you're trying to place this in your mental timeline, this

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Speaker 1: is around the Brave Heart period, and it looks like

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Speaker 1: Scotland will be free, but he's got bigger problems than

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Speaker 1: than just Robert the Bruce. It looks like the barons

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Speaker 1: are at it again, but not Mortimer, right, because Mortimer

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Speaker 1: is a good ally to the throne. He's he's got

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Speaker 1: all these old connections, right. No, no, Sarah, not any

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Speaker 1: more anymore, because he really doesn't like Hugh Dispenser. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, the Dispenser's land backs up to the Mortimer's lands.

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Speaker 1: And of course during this time, as we've seen so

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Speaker 1: many times, it is all about land. So they're like

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Speaker 1: the hat Fields and McCoy's of old England. Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: feuding and not getting along at all. So when Hughes

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Speaker 1: starts to get a little pushy and trying to move

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Speaker 1: into South Wales and Mortimer's territory, Roger Mortimer decides that

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Speaker 1: he would rather defend his own interests, the interests of

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Speaker 1: his family, the interests of his land, rather than support

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Speaker 1: his king. So he joins the earls of Hereford, Lancaster

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Speaker 1: and Pembroke, who are also sort of auntsy with Edward

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Speaker 1: the Second giving out all his favors and all that.

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Speaker 1: So they all join in rebellion, and they have another

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Speaker 1: really good name toys here. They call themselves the Contrariants,

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Speaker 1: And in August they march to London and make Edward

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Speaker 1: banish some of the favorites. And that sounds really familiar.

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Speaker 1: Does sounds familiar because it's exactly what happened just a

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Speaker 1: few years earlier with Peers. But Edward isn't isn't willing

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Speaker 1: to just you know, get bossed around by the barons,

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Speaker 1: so he rounds up an army, uh the Royal Army

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Speaker 1: plus the dispensers obviously, and marches to confront the contrariants,

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Speaker 1: but rogers allies leave him, so he's stuck there alone,

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Speaker 1: and he asked to surrender to Edward. January. Mortimer goes

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Speaker 1: to the Tow war for two years, and if you

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Speaker 1: think that's the end of our great rebellion, it is not.

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Speaker 1: He drugs his jailer's escapes his cell uses a chimney

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Speaker 1: to shimmy out of the tower and crosses the Thames

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Speaker 1: in a boat that's waiting for him, and from there

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Speaker 1: it's off to Dover and France. Because of course the

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Speaker 1: French King, Charles the fourth is no friend of Edwards.

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Speaker 1: So welcome enemy of my enemy, I was saying to

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Speaker 1: Sarah earlier. Red Rover, red rover, Mortimer, come over. So

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Speaker 1: we have Mortimer at the French court in exile, living

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Speaker 1: pretty nicely, pretty comfortably. Guess who joins the French court

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Speaker 1: a year later Isabella, who is Edward's wife, along with

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Speaker 1: her son and heir, also named Edward. This we can

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Speaker 1: get kind of confusing. There are three Edwards, Edward the first,

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Speaker 1: second and third. Edward. The first is already did Edward

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Speaker 1: the verse is out of this podcast. So Isabella and

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Speaker 1: her son Edward arrive at the French court, and that's

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Speaker 1: because Isabella is paying a diplomatic visit to her brother,

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Speaker 1: who is the King of France, trying to sort of

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Speaker 1: work out a deal between her brother and her husband

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Speaker 1: over French Land disputes. And she's successful. She she does

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Speaker 1: the job, she protects the English interests. But then she

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Speaker 1: doesn't go home because of course she's scared that Hugh

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Speaker 1: Dispenser wants her dead. And it's not a far fetched

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Speaker 1: idea because since marrying Edward the Second at age twelve,

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Speaker 1: she's been very seriously sidelined, even for a medieval queen.

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Speaker 1: Sarah was saying earlier, since day one, literally almost since

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Speaker 1: day one, Pierce Gaveston got all her wedding gifts. So

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Speaker 1: when her father, the King of France, lavishes presence on

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Speaker 1: this international marriage, instead of really to Pierce taking those home, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Pierce gets them all, and um, some of her husband's

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Speaker 1: other favorites end up taking her English land. So she's

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Speaker 1: being really majorly neglected by her husband and abused by

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Speaker 1: his supporters. And when she's with her fourth child, she

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Speaker 1: even briefly convinces Edward to exile Hugh and his father,

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Speaker 1: only to have them called back to England a year later.

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Speaker 1: So she's she certainly knows that Hugh is no longer

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Speaker 1: a friend of hers, not that he ever was well.

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Speaker 1: And another reason she doesn't want to go back is

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Speaker 1: she has a new boyfriend. Perhaps you've heard of him,

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Speaker 1: the exiled Roger Mortimer, and maybe they've bonded over their

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Speaker 1: shared hat. But they become lovers and start to plan

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Speaker 1: a rebellion, and remember that they're in possession of Edwards heir,

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Speaker 1: who's a young teenager at the time. So in thirteen

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Speaker 1: twenty six they formed an army Mortimer and Isabella and

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Speaker 1: they crossed the Channel and surprised the Dispensers in England,

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Speaker 1: and from there the tides turned pretty quickly for this

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Speaker 1: long favored family. Dispenser's father, also named Hugh Dispenser, is

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Speaker 1: hanged and beheaded. Hugh does. It's grizzly, It's very grizzly.

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Speaker 1: He is dry behind four horses. He is hanged and

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Speaker 1: cut down. Just before death, he's tied to a ladder

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Speaker 1: and his genitals are mutilated, and then while he's still alive,

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Speaker 1: his abdomen is cut open and his end trails are

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Speaker 1: cut out. Then I mean he's got to be done

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Speaker 1: point because his heart is cut out next, and then

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Speaker 1: his head is chopped off and then he's quartered, So

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Speaker 1: I would call that over killed. They really didn't like him.

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Speaker 1: Hugh Dispenser was super unpopular. So one month after routing

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Speaker 1: the Dispensers, the defenseless and abandoned Edward the Second is

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Speaker 1: captured in South Wales. So what are we gonna do

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Speaker 1: with the king? Well, Edward the Second is forced to

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Speaker 1: abdicate in favor of his son, and technically Edward the

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Speaker 1: Third as he is, is king now, but he's a

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Speaker 1: young teen and supposedly he can't even hold the crown

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Speaker 1: up at his own coronation, And in reality it's really

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Speaker 1: Mortimer ruling with Isabella. He's just Edward the Third ist,

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Speaker 1: just a puppet. And they last for nearly four years,

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Speaker 1: giving out titles and lands to friends and favorites because

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Speaker 1: that went so well all of the other times. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the deposed king is whisked off to a Mortimer

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Speaker 1: family members castle. It's called the Berkeley Castle, and it's

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Speaker 1: theory that he's believed to have been murdered and this

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Speaker 1: is also really grizzly. Sorry to be the gross out

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Speaker 1: episode here, but chronicles later recount that the murder is

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Speaker 1: done by a red hot poker up the anus, although

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Speaker 1: that recent Mortimer book that I mentioned suggests that this

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Speaker 1: theory is probably wrong. It's probably just been something that's

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Speaker 1: wrong and passed down through histories and passed down through chronicles.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it was invented by the supporters of Edward the Second,

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Speaker 1: people who wanted to to make him out to be

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Speaker 1: something of, you know, something of a martyr, although I

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Speaker 1: don't know why you would want your martyr dying such terrible,

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Speaker 1: terrible death. But another fairly recent theory is that Edward

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Speaker 1: wasn't killed at all, and that maybe he lived for

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Speaker 1: decades in obscurity or prison and who knows, but for

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Speaker 1: our story, he's out of the picture. People always like

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Speaker 1: to believe that they're deposed kings are somewhere than kingly lives.

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Speaker 1: But the barons are not pleased with Mortimer's takeover and

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Speaker 1: his behavior. They think he's very greedy and arrogant. He

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Speaker 1: has unpopular policies regarding Scotland. Everyone hates him. As Sarah

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Speaker 1: wrote in her outline, and knowing full well the kind

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Speaker 1: of stunts that Trader's poll, after all, he had Edward

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Speaker 1: the Second killed. He keeps a bodyguard at all times

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Speaker 1: and watches his back. But you would think that he,

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Speaker 1: because he is so unpopular, would try to make nice

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Speaker 1: tone things down a little at And in thirteen thirty

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Speaker 1: he orders the execution of Edmund, Earl of Kent, who

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Speaker 1: is Edward's uncle and very popular. So a lot of

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Speaker 1: the barons take this as a sign that he's starting

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Speaker 1: to neutralize the royal family and that maybe he's about

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Speaker 1: to go for the crown himself. So the Earl of Lancaster,

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Speaker 1: who used to be Mortimer's ally, remember, and a few

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Speaker 1: other barons encourage Edward the Third, who has grown up

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Speaker 1: in the meantime, of course, from a young teen to

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Speaker 1: a young man. They encourage him to fight for his

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Speaker 1: rights as king, and he's seventeen by now. He's ready

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Speaker 1: to be unshackled, ready to stop being this sort of

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Speaker 1: embarrassing puppet king, and ready to claim his real crown.

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Speaker 1: So when the royal household is at residence in Nottingham

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Speaker 1: Castle in October th thirty, he makes his move. He

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Speaker 1: gets together a gang of supporters, and they sneak in

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Speaker 1: to the castle, led by a couple members of household,

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Speaker 1: and they have a tunnel. They have a tunnel because

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Speaker 1: of course Mortimer has this bodyguard, so you can't just

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Speaker 1: face him up front. They go through a tunnel which

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Speaker 1: is actually still called Mortimer's Hole, and they catch Roger

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Speaker 1: and Isabella in her bedroom and from there Rogers arrested,

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Speaker 1: taken to the tower, and quickly sentenced to death without

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Speaker 1: a rile. He's executed November twenty nine, thirteen thirty in Tyburn,

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Speaker 1: and he's stripped and hanged, which wasn't a nobleman's death.

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Speaker 1: Oh gosh, it doesn't sound as bad as few dispenser exactly,

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Speaker 1: I'd rather have anything but that. And the executioner reads

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Speaker 1: Psalm fifty two. The tongue devises mischiefs like a sharp razor,

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Speaker 1: working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, and lies

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Speaker 1: more than honesty. And his own son, Jeffrey, calls him

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Speaker 1: the King of Folly. So that's it for our greatest trader.

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Speaker 1: But we have to catch up with Edward the third

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Speaker 1: two and and certainly wonder what does he do to

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Speaker 1: his mother, because she's certainly implicated in all of this.

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Speaker 1: But on the other hand, maybe he could partially understand

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Speaker 1: how wrong she had been, So Edward the Third must

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Speaker 1: have been okay with her to a certain extent. He

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Speaker 1: allows her to retire into the country, just sort of

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Speaker 1: politely ignoring the fact that she was lovers with the

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Speaker 1: trader who killed his father. And she lives in the

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Speaker 1: country for three deck it. She's got plenty of money,

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Speaker 1: she's got her titles, She's the Queen Dowager in every sense.

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Speaker 1: And he comes into his own and works to make

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Speaker 1: England powerful again. His reign kicks off the Hundred Years

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Speaker 1: War with France and also indirectly the Wars of the Roses,

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Speaker 1: as the descendants of his seven sons and five daughters

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Speaker 1: duke it out for generations starting in the fifteenth century.

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Speaker 1: So that's it for this brief age of treason. And

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Speaker 1: I think it's interesting the last rebellion we talked about

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Speaker 1: the Chung Sisters that lasted about three years too. I

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Speaker 1: guess that's the going rate for your for your average rebellion,

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Speaker 1: but this is far gorrier than ours. So while I

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Speaker 1: was researching this podcast, I actually spent a little time

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Speaker 1: on the Berkeley Castle's website, which is still existent. It's

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Speaker 1: nice and six stuff and they host weddings and private events.

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Speaker 1: But I think it is funny they mentioned pretty early

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Speaker 1: on in their website literature that it is the death

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Speaker 1: side of Edward the Second. But it must have been

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Speaker 1: a nice alternative to reading about all this gross stuff.

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Speaker 1: To look at a castle. Yeah, just look at some

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Speaker 1: castles and nice landscaping. But if you'd like to learn

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Speaker 1: more about castles, we have a great article on it,

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Speaker 1: how Castles Work. You can search for it on our

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Speaker 1: homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. We

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Speaker 1: also have a Twitter feed at missed in History and

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Speaker 1: a Facebook fan page, so come and find us. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and be sure to check out

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Speaker 1: this stuff you missed in History Glass blog on the

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Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com home page