inquest large territories in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and more scattered possessions inWorcestershire, Berkshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire (Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, i. 455-6).
On the accession of William Rufus, Ralph, like the other border barons, joined in the great rising of April 1088, of which Roger of Montgomery, then Earl of Shrewsbury, was one of the main leaders. He was among those who attacked the city of Worcester and were repulsed through the action of Bishop Wulfstan (Flok. Wig. ii. 24). But the tide of war soon flowed from the Welsh march to Kent and Sussex, and when the Earl of Shrewsbury reconciled himself with the king, Mortimer probably followed the same course. Next year (1089), as a partisan of Rufus in Normandy, he joined with nearly all the other barons of Caux in fortifying their houses and levying troops to repel French invasion, and received for that purpose large sums of money from the king (Ord. Vit. iii. 319-20). He does not seem to have joined in the subsequent feudal rebellions, and was probably much occupied in extending his English possessions westwards, at the expense of the Welsh. The family historian makes him the conqueror of Melenydd, a Welsh lordship afterwards continually in the hands of the Mortimers (Monasticon, vi. 349). In 1102 the fall of Robert of Belleme [q. v.], the last Montgomery earl of Shrewsbury, by removing the mightiest of his rivals, indirectly increased Ralph's power, and fresh estates fell into his hands. In 1104 his name appears among a long list of barons who upheld the cause of Henry I in Normandy against his brother Robert (Ord. Vit. iv. 199). This is probably the last authentic reference to him, for little trust can be placed in the statement of the Wigmore annalist that in 1106 he took a conspicuous part in the battle of Tenchebrai. The same writer also puts his death on 4 Aug. 1100, six years before (Monasticon, vi. 349). More credence perhaps is due to the story of the same writer, that Ralph in his old age resolved on the foundation of a monastery, a scheme which, under his son Hugh, finally resulted in the foundation of Wigmore Priory. He is also said to have constituted three prebends for secular canons in the parish church of Wigmore, which finally swelled the priory endowments. A late writer, Adam of Usk (p. 21), who had special sources of knowledge, says that Ralph went back to Normandy, and died there, perhaps in 1104, leaving his son Hugh in possession of Wigmore.
Ralph's wife's name was Millicent, or Melisendis, who inherited the town of Mers, in Le Vimeu, in the diocese of Amiens. She died before her husband (Stapleton, Rot. Norm. ii. cxx). Ralph is generally regarded as the father of Hugh Mortimer I [q. v.] His other children were William Mortimer, lord of Chelmarsh and Sidbury, and Ha wise, who married Stephen, earl of Albemarle or Aumale, and received her mother's lands as her marriage portion.
Ordericus Vitalis, ed. Le Prévost (Soc. de l'Histoire de France); Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Domesday Book; Dugdale's Monasticon, vi. 348–9; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 138–9; Eyton's Shropshire, especially iv. 194–200; Stapleton's Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ, especially II. cxix. sq.; Stapleton in Archæological Journal, iii. 1–26; Journal of the British Archæological Association, vol. xxiv.; Wright's Hist. of Ludlow; Freeman's Norman Conquest, iv. 39, 737, v. 78, 84, 754; and William Rufus, i. 34, 231.]
MORTIMER, ROGER (II) de, sixth Baron of Wigmore (1231?–1282), was the eldest son of Ralph de Mortimer II, the fifth baron, and of his Welsh wife Gwladys Ddu, daughter of Llywelyn ab lorwerth [q. v.] His parents were married in 1230 (Worcester Annals in Ann. Mon. iv. 421), and Roger was probably born in the following year. His father died on 6 Aug. 1246, and after his estates had remained in the king's hands for six months, Roger paid the heavy fine of two thousand marks, in return for which he received the livery of his lands on 26 Feb. 1247. This payment may also be regarded as a composition for the remaining rights of wardship vested in the crown, since Roger could not yet have attained his legal majority. Before the end of the same year, 1247, Roger contracted a rich marriage with Matilda de Braose, eldest daughter and coheiress of William de Braose, whom Llywelyn ab lorwerth had hanged in 1230, on a suspicion of adultery with his wife Joan (d. 1237), princess of Wales [q. v.] Matilda, who must have been her husband's senior by several years, brought to Mortimer a third of the great marcher lordship of Brecon, and a share in the still greater inheritance of the Earls Marshal, which came to her through her mother. Roger thus acquired the lordship of Radnor, which, like Brecon, admirably rounded off his Welsh and marcher estates, as well as important land in South Wales, England, and Ireland (Eyton, Shropshire, iv. 217). 'At this point,' Mr. Eyton says very truly, 'the history of the house of Mortimer passes from the scope of a merely provincial record and becomes a feature in the annals of a nation.'
