This Day in History: 1402-12-13

On 13th December 1402, Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March, who had been captured by Owen Glendower at the Battle of Bryn Glas and had subsequently married Glendower’s daughter, wrote to his tenants in Radnor and Presteigne that ‘he had joined Glendower in his efforts either to restore the Crown to King Richard, should the king prove still to be alive, or, should Richard be dead, to confer the throne on his honoured nephew Edmund Mortimer, who is the right heir to the said Crown.’ This was said in the febrile atmosphere appertaining at the time that Richard II, who had supposedly ‘died’ at Pontefract Castle in February 1400, was possibly still alive.