Are gone above to joy and love
In life that cannot die;
But may our Lord that died on rood
And God send succour yet
To them that lie in misery,
Fast in hard prison set.
Refrain.
The good cause for which Simon had fought might well have seemed lost, when Edward’s knights were hacking the dead body of the great earl to pieces at Evesham. But it was not exactly a “Royalist victory,” for the very men who stood victors over the mangled corpse of Earl Simon were men as resolute as he was to enforce the Great Charter and its results against the king.[58]
In the hour of triumph Henry struck hard, and a mad reaction of terror ensued. But the movement Simon had led could not be turned back, and the very savage extravagance of the royalist party defeated its own ends. A general sentence of disinheritance against all who had fought with Simon drove the disinherited barons to keep up the fight. The siege of Kenilworth, where Sir Henry of Hastings defied the whole royal army, lasted from June to December, 1266, and was only ended by Parliament insisting on the king appointing a board of twelve, who made a just award concerning the disinherited. By this award, called the Ban of Kenilworth:—
The royal obligation to keep the charters was required.