BATTLE OF EVESHAM.
On hearing of this rising in the west, Montfort hurried to the Welsh border with a small army, taking the king in his train. He bade Simon, the second of his sons, to collect a larger army and follow him. But Edward and Gloucester seized the line of the Severn, and threw themselves between father and son. The earl retraced his steps, slipped back across the Severn, and reached Evesham, while his son had marched as far as Kenilworth, so that a few miles only separated them. But Edward lay between, and was eager for the fight.
Battle of Evesham.—Death of Simon de Montfort.
By a sudden and unexpected attack the prince surprised and scattered young Montfort's army under the walls of Kenilworth; he then hurried off to attack Simon. The earl lay in Evesham town, which is girt round by a deep loop of the river Avon. Edward and Gloucester seized the narrow neck of this loop, while another royalist force, under Mortimer, crossed the river and watched the only bridge which leads southward out of the town. Simon awoke to find himself surrounded. "God have mercy on our souls," he cried, "for our bodies are our enemy's." Gathering his little army in a compact mass, he dashed at the prince's superior force, and tried to cut his way through. But the odds were against him, and after a short sharp fight he was slain, with his eldest son Henry, Hugh Despencer the Justiciar of England, and many of the best knights of the baronial party. King Henry almost shared their fate: he had been compelled to put on his armour and ride in the earl's host, and was wounded and almost slain before he was recognized by his son's victorious soldiery.
Thus died Earl Simon the Righteous, a man much loved by those who knew him well, courteous and kindly, pious and honest, wise and liberal. But it cannot be denied that he was touched by an overweening ambition, and that when England fell beneath his hand, he ruled her more as a king than a regent, and forgot that he was but the deputy and representative of the nation. His rise and success freed England from the thriftless rule of Henry, and set a boundary to the use of the royal prerogative. His short tenure of power gave the realm the valuable gift of the full and representative Parliament. His fall was sad but not disastrous to the English, for his work was done, and he was fast drifting into the position of the autocratic leader of a party, and ceasing to be the true exponent of the will of the whole nation.
Ascendency of Prince Edward.
The best testimony to the benefits that Simon had conferred on England was the fact that Henry III. never fell back into his old ways. He was now an elderly man, and in his captivity had lost much of his self-confidence and restless activity. He had been freed, not by his own power, but by his son and the Earl of Gloucester, both of whom had been friends of reform, though enemies of Simon. Edward had now won an ascendency over his father which he never let slip, and his voice had for the future a preponderant share in the royal council. It is to his influence that we may ascribe the wise moderation with which the relics of Simon's party were treated.
End of the civil war.