[7] However, according to R. R. Davies, the story that Richard publicly proclaimed Mortimer as heir presumptive in Parliament in October 1385 is baseless, although contemporary records indicate that his claim was openly discussed at the time.

[5] As Davies points out, Mortimer's "wealth and lineage meant that, sooner or later, he would be caught up in the political turmoil of Richard II's last years."

On 4 September 1397, he was ordered to arrest his uncle, Sir Thomas Mortimer, for treason regarding his actions at the Battle of Radcot Bridge, but made no real attempt to do so.

Even more inauspiciously, when summoned to a Parliament at Shrewsbury in January 1398, he was 'rapturously received', according to Adam Usk and the Wigmore chronicler, by a vast crowd of supporters wearing his colours.

These events excited the king's suspicions, and on Mortimer's return to Ireland after the Parliament in January 1398, 'his enemy, the Duke of Surrey, his brother-in-law, was ordered to follow and capture him'.

The Wigmore chronicler says that he was riding in front of his army, unattended and wearing Irish garb, possibly illegally,[10] and that those who slew him did not know who he was.

The Wigmore chronicler, while criticising Mortimer for lust and remissness in his duty to God, extols him as "of approved honesty, active in knightly exercises, glorious in pleasantry, affable and merry in conversation, excelling his contemporaries in the beauty of appearance, sumptuous in his feasting, and liberal in his gifts".