#and do you really think york would've stopped trying to control henry vi/usurp the throne because he didn't have a POTENTIALLY more

[une-sanz-pluis]

Despite the strength of his claim, the anti-Lancastrian groundwork laid by his uncle and namesake in Wales, and his close family ties to the rebellious Percys, Edmund remained oddly inconspicious in the broils of the first quarter of the century. To be sure, his name does surface from time to time, as in the treason case of 1402 involving the Welshman John Sperhawk, who had the misfortune to repeat a rumor he had heard from a certain tailor's wife of Baldock to the effect that the present king was not the true son of Duke John but rather was born to a butcher of Ghent and that the earl of March was in fact king by right. That is the year in which Mortimer's uncle and namesake joined in coalition with Owain Glyndwr, explaining to his tenants his support of Richard if he were alive and otherwise of his nephew as "droit heir." In 1405 Edmund and his brother figured in a bizarre kidnapping attempt in which they were to be abducted from Windsor Castle, apparently to become rallying points for anti-Lancastrian activity, probably with their uncle Edmund in Wales. As late as 1415 one of the options supposedly entertained by the Southampton conspirators against Henry V was (according to Richard, earl of Cambridge's undoubtedly coerced confession) to have had the earl of March "into the lond of Walys … . takyng upon hym the sovereynte of thys lond. " Nevertheless, Edmund's uncle and Richard, earl of Cambridge, and most of the other high-echelon conspirators who mentioned his name, tended to treat Edmund, not as a first conspiratorial resort, but at best as a fallback should Richard really turn out to be dead and no good impersonator present himself. This effective neutralization of Edmund's claim was accomplished in part by the brilliant machinations of the Lancastrians. In a move that conveyed multifold practical and psychological advantages, the newly crowned Henry IV promptly took the young Edmund and his brother Roger into his personal custody. Practically speaking, Henry controlled their extensive lands and rents, and the patent rolls for 1399-1413 abound in his awards of sergeanties, stewardships, custodies, and wardships to Henry's loyal followers. At the same time Henry gained psychological advantage by treating Edmund less as a prisoner than as a child de- pendent; Henry was generous in his annuities (ranging from three hundred to five hundred pounds yearly) and, in the years prior to the attempted abduction of 1405, even boarded the two brothers with his own younger children.

Paul Strohm, "The Trouble with Richard: The Reburial of Richard II and Lancastrian Symbolic Strategy", Speculum, Vol. 71, No. 1 (1996)