Edmund Mortimer

Sir Edmund Mortimer (1302/1303 – 16 December 1331) was the eldest son of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, and Joan de Geneville, 2nd Baroness Geneville. By his wife Elizabeth de Badlesmere he was the father of Roger Mortimer, 2nd Earl of March. Though Edmund survived his father by one year, he did not inherit his father's lands and titles as they were forfeited to the Crown and his son only reacquired them gradually. Family and early life Edmund's father, Lord Roger, married the great heiress Joan de Geneville on 20 September 1301. Edmund and another sibling were born within three years of the marriage. Ian Mortimer places Edmund's birth in late 1302 or early 1303, with the earliest possible date being nine months after the wedding. As evidence, Mortimer writes that Edmund would probably have married at a similar age to his father, who was fourteen when he married Joan. The Wigmore Abbey Annals, however, did not record his birth, so it is possible that the boy was born nearer to 1305, after the birth of his eldest sister, Margaret. Marriage and issue In the spring of 1316 at Westminster, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Baron Badlesmere, negotiated an alliance with Roger, which took place at the same time that they undertook Edward II's order to attack the town of Bristol and seize eighty men who had been indicted. In mid-May, Roger and his household travelled to Wigmore to celebrate the marriage of his eldest son, fourteen-year-old Edmund, to the three-year-old Elizabeth de Badlesmere. With Bartholomew de Badlesmere agreeing to pay Roger the "substantial sum" of £2,000, the two were married at Kinlet, Shropshire, on 27 July 1316. Edmund and Elizabeth's eldest son, Roger, would be born at Ludlow Castle on 11 November 1328. A short-lived brother, John, soon followed. During the time of Edmund's marriage, his father named him the heir to his mother Margaret's estates in Somerset and Buckinghamshire, which included Bridgwater Castle. During their father's later exile abroad, Edmund and his younger brother Roger were imprisoned at Windsor Castle, along with the sons of the Earl of Hereford. Edmund and his two brothers were moved to the more secure Tower of London on 1 October 1326. Once freed, a triumphant Roger had Edmund and his brothers wear earls' attire as they were knighted by the young king Edward III on 1 February 1327. Roger was made Earl of March in September 1328, and Edmund's eldest son Roger was born eleven days later.