Edward knew the voice, and, springing to the rescue, drew out a wounded warrior, whom he bore away to a place of safety. In his absence, Leicester’s voice asked if quarter was given.
“No quarter for traitors,” said some revengeful Royalist; and at the same moment Henry de Montfort fell, slain, at his father’s feet.
“By the arm of St. James, it is time for me to die!” cried the Earl; and, grasping his sword in both hands, he rushed into the thickest of the foe, and, after doing wonders, was struck down and slain. Terrible slaughter was done on the “desperate ring;” one hundred and sixty knights, with all their followers, were slain, and scarcely twelve gentlemen survived. The savage followers of Mortimer cut off the head and hands of Leicester, and carried the former as a present to their lady; but this was beyond the bounds of the orders of Prince Edward, who caused the corpses of his godfather and cousin to be brought into the abbey church of Evesham, wept over the playfellow of his childhood, and honored the burial with his presence.
The battle of Evesham was fought on the 4th of August, 1265, fourteen months after the misused victory of Lewes.
So died the Earl of Leicester, termed, by the loving people of England, “Sir Simon the Righteous”—a man of high endowments and principles of rectitude unusual in his age. His devotion was sincere, his charities extensive, his conduct always merciful—no slight merit in one bred up among the savage devastators of Provence—and his household accounts prove the order and religious principle that he enforced. His friends were among the staunch supporters of the English Church, and, unlike his father, who thought to merit salvation as the instrument of the iniquities of Rome, he disregarded such injunctions and threats of hers as disagreed with the plain dictates of conscience. Thinking for himself at length led to contempt of lawful authority; but it was an age when the shepherds were fouling the springs, and making their own profit of the flock; and what marvel was it if the sheep went astray?
He was enthusiastically loved by the English, especially the commonalty, who, excommunicate as he was, believed him a saint, imputed many miracles to his remains, and murmured greatly that he was not canonized. After-times may judge him as a noble character, wrecked upon great temptations, and dying as befitted a brave and resigned man drawn into fatal error.
“If ever, in temptation strong,
Thou left’st the right path for the wrong,
If every devious step thus trode
Still led thee further from the road,
Dread thou to speak presumptuous doom
On noble ‘Montfort’s’ lowly tomb;
But say, ‘he died a gallant knight,
With sword in hand, for England’s right.’”
For, though the rebellion cannot be justified, it was by the efforts and strife of this reign that Magna Charta was fixed, not as the concession wrung for a time by force from a reluctant monarch, but as the basis of English law.
Prince Edward, in the plenitude of his victory, did not attempt to repeal it; but, at a parliament held at Marlborough, 1267, led his father to accept not this only, but such of the regulations of the Barons as were reasonable, and consistent with the rigid maintenance of the authority of the Crown.
Evesham was the overthrow of the Montfort family. Henry was there slain with his father—though, according to ballad lore, he had another fate—the blow only depriving him of sight, and he being found on the field by a “baron’s faire daughter,” she conveyed him to a place of safety, tended him, and finally became his wife, and made him “glad father of pretty Bessee.” For years he lived and throve (as it appears) as the blind beggar of Bethnal Green, till his daughter, who had been brought up as a noble lady, was courted by various suitors. On her making known, however, that she was a beggar’s daughter,