While Earl Edmund was governing across the sea, his little son Roger grew in health and stature under the loving care of his grandmother at Wigmore. The Earls of March had many castles and seats, but Wigmore Castle was the family seat of the Mortimers. The old Countess was extremely anxious that the boy should grow up a good man; the rather because she recognised in him a quality beyond her own energy and activity—that passionate, impetuous nature which belonged to his mother’s blood. She brought him up on a course of philosophy, and above all of Scripture, in the hope of calming it down. The eradication was hopeless enough; but the Scripture sank deep. Young as he was when he lost her, Roger Mortimer never forgot those lessons at his grandmother’s knee. But the quiet years of holy teaching were not long. In the spring of 1381, Earl Edmund sent letters to his mother, requesting that his eldest son might be sent over to him, as he wished him to make acquaintance with the tenants on his Irish lands. The whole province of Ulster would lie one day at the pleasure of its future Earl. Sir Thomas Mortimer, a distant relative of the Earl, brought his noble kinsman’s letters. He was appointed the governor of little Roger, and was to take care of him on his perilous journey. In order to impress the Irish with a sense of the child’s grandeur and importance, he was to have a distinct establishment; and the Earl had suggested that the majority of the new servants had better come from his Welsh estates. Two Celtic races, which centuries ago were one, would, as he thought, be more likely to amalgamate with each other than either with the Saxon. Perhaps he forgot that the meeting of two fires will scarcely extinguish a conflagration. Sir Thomas therefore had come through Usk, where he had imparted the Earl’s commands to the keeper of the Castle, ordering him to have ready by a certain day, to meet him at Holyhead, such and such persons—so many men and boys to fill so many offices—much as he might have ordered as many garments or loaves of bread. The villeins were bound to serve in the menial offices; and for higher places, the neighbouring gentry and their sons would only be too glad to hear of the vacancies.