England of My Heart : Spring

by Edward Hutton

But it is not in the churches we have in Lewes that we shall to-day find the symbol, as it were, of that old town, still so fair a thing, which held the passage of the Ouse through the Downs and in the thirteenth century witnessed the great battle in which Simon de Montfort, mystic and soldier, defeated and took captive his king. For that we must go to the Castle ruin that crowns Lewes as with a battlement.

The Castle is reached from the High Street near St Michael's church by the Castlegate. It was founded, as I have said, by the first De Warenne, but the gate-house by which we enter is later, dating from King Edward's time, the original Norman gate being within. The Castle had two keeps, a rare feature. Only one of these remains, reached by a winding steep way, and of this only two of the fine octagonal towers are left to us. These two are thirteenth century works. From the principal tower, now used as a museum, we may get the best view of the famous battlefield under Mount Harry, one of the most famous sites of the thirteenth century in England, for the battle that was fought there seemed to have decided everything; in fact it decided nothing, for its result was entirely reversed at Evesham by the military genius of Prince Edward.

The cause contested upon these noble hills to the north-west of Lewes is one which continually recurs all through English history; the cause of the Aristocracy against the Crown. The monarchies of western Europe, which slowly emerged from the anarchy of the Dark Ages and helped to make the Middle Age the glorious and noble thing it was, are, if we consider them spiritually at least, democratic weapons, or rather, politically, they seem to sum up the national energy and to express it. In them was vested, and this as of divine right, the executive. Without the Crown nothing could be done, no writ issued, no fortress garrisoned. In the Crown was gathered all the national ends, it was a symbol at once of unity and of power. Against this glorious thing in England we see a constant and unremitting rebellion on the part of the aristocracy. It was so in the time of King John when the rascal barons curbed and broke the central government; it was so in the time of Henry III. when Simon de Montfort led, and for a time successfully, the rebellion. It has been so always and not least in the Great Rebellion of the seventeenth century so falsely represented as a democratic movement, when the parvenu aristocracy founded upon the lands and wealth of the raped Church in the sixteenth century, broke the Crown up and finally established in England a puppet king, a mere Venetian Doge incapable, as we have seen in the last few years, of defending the people against an unscrupulous and treasonous plutocracy led by a lawyer as certainly on the make as Thomas Cromwell. The infamous works of such men as these have most often been done under the hypocritical and lying banner of the rights of the people as though to gain his ends the devil should bear the cross of Christ. It is so to-day; it was so in the time of Simon de Montfort.

I have said that the King was the fountain of all power in the England of Simon; it was therefore his supreme object to get possession of the King's body that he might have control of the executive machinery of the country and thus in fact be king de facto. It was this which he achieved upon the battlefield of Lewes in 1264.

For some ten years before that battle the Barons of England had been restless under the yoke of the central government, the Crown, which stood not for them but for us all. They had already wrung from Henry III. under compulsion, when he was within their power and not a free agent, certain concessions which now he refused to confirm to them. They called him liar and covered him with the same abuse that their successors hurled at Charles I.; but Henry stood firm, he refused what had been dragged from him by force, and Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, raised an army not from the people but from his own feudal adherents and his friends and took the field, striking into the valley of the Severn, where he seized Hereford, Gloucester, Worcester and Bridgnorth with their castles. Then he marched straight upon London where, among the Guilds, he had many adherents and friends. War seemed inevitable, but, as it happened, a truce was called, and the question which Simon had made an excuse for his rising, the question of the King's refusal to confirm the grant of privileges wrung from him by force, was submitted for decision to St Louis of France, undoubtedly the most reverent, famous, and splendid figure of that day. St Louis, unlike an Englishman, decided not with a view to peace as though justice were nothing and right an old wives' tale, but according to law and his conscience, honestly and cleanly before God like an intelligent being. Of two things one, either the King was right or he was wrong. St Louis decided that the King was right, and this upon January 23rd, 1264.

Simon refused to abide by the decision. This man in his own conception was above law and honour and justice, he was the inspired and privileged servant of God. In this hallucination he deceived himself even as Oliver Cromwell did later and equally for his own ends. He, too, would break the Crown and himself govern England. He, too, was brutal beyond bearing, proud and insolent with his inferiors, imperious even to God, a great man, but one impossible to suffer in any state which is to endure, a dangerous tyrant.

This great mystical soldier at once took the field, and when Henry returned from Amiens, where the court of St Louis had sat, he found all England up, the Cinque Ports all hot for Simon, London ponderous in his support, and in all south-eastern England but one principle fortress still in loyal hands, that of Rochester.

North and west of London, however, things were less disastrous, and Henry's first move was to secure all this and to cut off London, the approach to which he held on the south-east in spite of everything, since he commanded Rochester, from the Midlands and the West. Simon's answer was the right one; he struck at Rochester and laid siege to it. Down upon him came King Henry to relieve it and was successful. Simon swept back upon London, there he gathered innumerable levies and again advanced into the south against the King.

Henry having relieved Rochester, marched also into the south, doubtless intent upon the reduction of the Cinque ports; for this, however, Simon gave him no time. He came thundering down, half London weltering behind him, across the Weald, and Henry, wheeling to meet him, came upon the 12th of May up the vale of Glynde and occupied Lewes. On the following day Simon appeared at Fletching in the vale of the Weald, some nine miles north of Lewes; there he encamped. Very early in the morning of the 14th May, Simon arrayed his troops and began his march southward upon the royal army. Dawn was just breaking when his first troopers came over the high Down and saw Lewes in the morning mist, the royal banners floating from the Castle—all still asleep. Slowly and at his ease Simon ordered his men. Upon the north, conspicuously, he set his litter with his standard above it and about it massed the raw levies of London. Upon the south he gathered the knights and men-at-arms led by the young Earl of Gloucester. As for himself he remained with the reserve. Then when all was ready he gave the order and both wings, north and south, began to advance upon the town "hoping to find their enemies still abed."

Simon's plan was a simple one, he hoped to surprise his foes and he intended in any case to throw his main strength southward upon the Priory of St Pancras, while pretending that his main attack was to be upon the Castle. He did not altogether succeed in surprising his foes, but in everything else he was successful. The royalists were aware of his approach only at the last moment, so that when they poured out of the Castle and Priory and town they were in some confusion. Then Prince Edward, observing the standard of Simon over the litter, flung himself upon the Londoners, who broke and fled while he pursued them, nor did he stay his hand till he was far away from Lewes. He returned at last victorious and triumphant to find Simon's banner floating from Lewes Castle, the King of the Romans and the King of England in Simon's hands and the day lost. Weary though he was, he attempted with all the impetuosity of youth to reverse that verdict. Through the streets of Lewes he fought, till at length he was forced to take refuge in the church of the Franciscans, where indeed Simon found him.