And not a word was heard from either side but “kill!”
The father ’gainst the son, the brother ’gainst the brother,
With gleaves, swords, bills, and pikes were murdering one another.
The full luxurious earth seems surfeited with blood,
Whilst in his uncle’s gore th’ unnatural nephew stood;
Whilst with their charged staves the desperate horsemen meet—
They hear their kinsmen groan under their horses’ feet,
Dead men and weapons broke do on the earth abound;
The drums bedash’d with brains do give a dismal sound!
On the fatal 4th of August, 1265, the narrow bridge at Evesham afforded little chance of escape from the slaughter of Edward’s horsemen, and when the storm was over, and the sun had gone down, the pale moon on that warm summer night glittered on the corslet of the gallant Simon de Montfort, whose mangled body was stiffening upon the gory sward, to be sent off on the morrow to the wretched widow as a testimony of the Royalist success; his eldest son, Henry de Montfort, lay stretched by his side, and but for the determined bravery of a few devoted fellows, who bore his wounded form away upon their shields, Guy, the youngest, would have shared their fate. Such was the ghastly end of one of the lords of Beeston—the champion of English liberties and the originator of our representative Parliament.