As the heat of the day subsided on 1 August 1323, a boozy evening started in the Tower of London. Members of the garrison, including the constable, Sir Stephen de Segrave, settled down to celebrate the feast of St Peter ad Vincula (in Chains), the patron saint of the Tower’s parish church. Unbeknown to them, though, one of their number had slipped something into their drink – a drug so strong that “all of them slept at least two days and two nights”. One of the most daring and ingenious escapes in the long history of the Tower was under way.
Alerted to the potion’s success, Roger Mortimer, formerly Lord of Wigmore in Herefordshire, crept out into the darkness through a breach in his cell “in a very high up and confined place… out of sight and hearing of the world” into the kitchen that adjoined the king’s palace. From there, by means of “ropes ingeniously arranged into a ladder” that had been secretly smuggled into his cell, Mortimer scaled the walls of the inner and outer baileys.
In the colourful retelling of the St Albans monk Henry de Blaneforde, “guided by an angel, [Mortimer] passed over both the first and the second walls, and with the greatest difficulty he came at last to the water of the Thames”. Then he dropped into a boat which conveyed him to a group of accomplices holding horses, which bore him to the south coast. From either Portchester or Portsmouth, Mortimer sailed to northern France before King Edward II, the man on whose orders he had been imprisoned in the Tower, had the merest clue what was going on.
This story is from the August 2023 edition of BBC History UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 2023 edition of BBC History UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
The Aztecs at war
RHIANNON DAVIES discovers why war was so important to the Mesoamerican people - and why they believed a badly cooked meal could prevent a soldier from shooting straight
Towering achievement
NATHEN AMIN explores a 13th-century stronghold that was built to subdue independent-minded Welsh people, yet has since become a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds
Eighteenth-century mushroom ketchup
ELEANOR BARNETT shares her instructions for making a flavourful sauce with roots in south-east Asia
Goodbye to the gilded age
JOHN JACOB WOOLF is won over by an exploration of the Edwardian era, which looks beyond the golden-era cliché to find a nation beset by a sense of unease
The power of the few
Subhadra Das's first book catches two particular waves in current publishing.
The 'badass' icon
One of the problems with biography, if an author is not careful, is that it can quickly become hagiography.
Ghosts of Germany's past
KATJA HOYER is impressed by a study of a nation's attempts to grapple with the crimes it perpetrated during the Second World War
A window onto England's soul
SARAH FOOT has high praise for a book that traces the evolution of English Christianity over the course of 1400 years, through the lives of its greatest thinkers
"There was a general perception that Queen Victoria's mourning was neither normal nor acceptable”
JUDITH FLANDERS talks to Rebecca Franks about her new book, which delves into the customs surrounding dying, death and mourning in Victorian Britain
"Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families"
HIDDEN HISTORIES... KAVITA PURI on the legacy of Canada's residential schools