Henry de Beaumont - "The Disinherited"

"The Disinherited"

In the November after Bannockburn Beaumont was one of those affected by the sentence of forfeiture passed by the Scottish parliament against all those with land and title in Scotland who continued to fight with the English. Thus was created that class of nobility known as the disinherited. Although this also included men of greater standing like David III Strathbogie, titular Earl of Atholl, Beaumont was to prove by far the most determined in the pursuit of his lost honours.

He fought on the side of Edward II at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. However, when Edward II entered into truce negotiations with the Scots in May 1323, Beaumont, hitherto a close associate of the king, argued against any agreement which disregarded the claims of the disinherited, for whom he had become the leading spokesman. Edward overruled Beaumont and the two quarrelled. Beaumont was briefly imprisoned for contempt and disobedience at the Privy Council (of which he was a member), after which he retired from Court to continue his intrigues in exile, eventually joining forces with Edward's estranged wife, Queen Isabella, and her lover Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. His cause, however, was not furthered by the coup of 1327, in which Isabella and Mortimer deposed the king and replaced him with his under-age son, Edward III.

Anxious to break the deadlock in the north Isabella and Mortimer persuaded Parliament to accept the terms of the Treaty of Northampton, which ignored, once again, the claims of the disinherited. Many of the senior nobility were ashamed of what they considered to be a shameful peace; and when Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster rose in revolt in late 1328 he was joined by Henry Beaumont, Thomas Wake, Henry Ferrers, Thomas Rosselin and David de Strathbogie, the latter now married to Beaumont's daughter, Katherine. This was the nucleus of the party soon to be prominent supporters of Edward Balliol, the son of the former King John Balliol. The rising was short-lived; and when Lancaster submitted in January 1329, Wake and Strathbogie also made their peace. Not so Henry Beaumont, who was specifically excluded from pardon, going in to exile to plot Mortimer's downfall.

When the powerful Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent was arrested in March 1330 and charged with conspiring to restore Edward II, whom he had been deluded into believing was still alive, he alleged at his trial that Beaumont had met him in Paris and told him that his plot would be supported from Scotland by the armed intervention of Donald Earl of Mar, a personal friend of the ex-king. Kent was executed and Beaumont would never be allowed to return to England while Mortimer and Isabella held on to power.