Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March

Who was Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March?

Roger de Mortimer, 4th Earl of March and 6th Earl of Ulster was considered the heir presumptive to King Richard II.

Roger Mortimer, born 11 April 1374 at Usk in Monmouthshire, was the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March, by his wife Philippa Plantagenet, who as the daughter of Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, and granddaughter of King Edward III, had a claim to the crown which she passed on to her children. He had a younger brother, Edmund Mortimer, and two sisters, Elizabeth, who married Henry 'Hotspur' Percy, and Philippa, who married firstly John Hastings, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, killed in a tournament at Woodstock Palace, secondly Richard de Arundel, 11th Earl of Arundel, beheaded in 1397, and thirdly, Sir Thomas Poynings.

Roger Mortimer's mother, Philippa, died on or before 7 January 1378, and was buried at Wigmore Abbey. His father, said to have caught cold crossing a river in winter, died at the Dominican friary at Cork in Munster on 27 December 1381, leaving his son to succeed to a title and extensive estates at only six years of age.

According to Davies, the wardship of such an important heir was an 'issue of political moment in the years 1382–4'.