Battles of English History. George Hereford Brooke
that this animosity led him to pursue them, as in fact he did, several miles, thereby losing the battle: but it is obvious that he had no time to select his opponents, even if the arrangement which committed the right wing to his leadership had allowed it. Gloucester with the centre came down the other part of the slope leading straight to the town, and thus encountered the king: of this there can be no reasonable doubt, or that the king after an obstinate conflict was driven into the priory. But it seems to be generally assumed that Henry and Guy de Montfort led their wing down the ridge which runs southwards, and that Richard of Cornwall met them at the bottom. The slope is extremely steep for a mediæval force of mounted horsemen in order of battle; moreover to do this would have left a very dangerous gap between the right and centre. It seems more probable that Montfort's right descended straight on Lewes in close proximity to the centre. However this may be, the right wing encountered the earl of Cornwall's troops, and could make no impression on them, until Montfort supported his sons with his own division. Then the king of the Romans was routed, and himself took refuge in a wind-mill, doubtless on the spot now known as Kingstone,11 where he eventually surrendered. By this time the king's own division had also been broken, and though part escaped into the priory, most part of them were cut off from both it and the castle, and were slaughtered in the streets of the town. The only hope of retrieving even partially the fortunes of the day lay in the prince, who after pursuing the Londoners to his heart's content, had caught sight on his return of Montfort's carriage, and assuming that the earl was lying helpless in it, made a dash to seize him and the baggage. The carriage however contained three citizens of London who had entered into some plot against Montfort, and had been carried off as prisoners and left there for safety; but in the confusion of the sudden onslaught the poor citizens were killed by their own friends. By the time prince Edward had got back to Lewes it was growing dark; many of his companions, including earl Warrenne himself, seeing that all was lost, fled over the bridge, which soon became a scene of frightful confusion, hundreds being drowned in the river, or forced into the tidal mud and there suffocated.
The foregoing account of the battle of Lewes is partly conjectural: the chroniclers are as usual wanting in precision of language, and not altogether in accord; and there is always room for doubt as to the identification of localities vaguely described. It agrees with the conformation of the ground, and with the ascertained facts: particularly it explains the king being driven into the priory, and the earl of Cornwall into a wind-mill. With the royal right wing gone, after the prince had dashed on the Londoners, Gloucester would have had no real difficulty in pressing the king's right, so as to cut him off from the castle, which would be an obvious advantage. Again Montfort's own troops, whether in the right centre or in the second line, would naturally have come down on Richard of Cornwall's right, and separated him from the king, and unless the story of Richard's barricading himself in a wind-mill is altogether an invention, which there is not the slightest reason to imagine, it could only have been the Kingstone mill. Wind-mills, beyond most things, remain for centuries on the same spot.
The Barons' War is the only occasion in English history, except the great civil war of the seventeenth century, in which a national party in arms against the crown won a great victory in the field, and became dominant in consequence, at least temporarily. It is an interesting coincidence that the blunder which lost Lewes, the eagerness of a youthful prince to pursue his routed opponents, regardless of the general fate of the battle, should have been repeated, not once only, by his descendant four centuries later. The hastiness of Rupert prevented Edgehill from being a victory, and definitely lost Naseby, the final battle of the war. Otherwise Lewes has no great military interest. It exhibits the disastrous results to a defeated army of having a river in its rear, and (possibly) the value of a reserve. But the two armies were alike in equipment, in straightforward hard fighting all along the line, in the preponderance of mailed horsemen. Of missile weapons we hear nothing, except that balistarii assisted in defeating Richard of Cornwall: the word is often used to denote cross-bowmen, and probably has that meaning here. The strange thing is that there should be no trace of the archers, who only thirty years later played an important part at Falkirk.
The battle of Lewes made Montfort master of England, and gave him the opportunity of summoning the famous assembly, to which for the first time the towns sent representatives. His rule was not very successful: hampered as he was by the natural hostility of the king and his adherents, and by the selfish jealousy of some of his own party, he would have been more than human if he had overcome all his difficulties, and laid himself open to no imputations of personal love of power. The fact that he had the king in his hands, virtually a prisoner, made his position especially difficult. So long as the king was in his power, he could not expect the royalists to acquiesce in his new policy: to let him go was to give up his one safeguard. The earl of Gloucester, the most powerful of his supporters, broke away from him, chiefly out of personal jealousy. Earl Warrenne and others of the fugitives from Lewes landed in South Wales with a strong force in the spring of 1265. Montfort was at Hereford, trying to quiet the disordered marches of Wales, the king and prince Edward with him. From Hereford the prince made his escape on May 28, and became naturally the head of the royalist party. Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester fell into the hands of prince Edward; the earl was unable to cross the Severn, and was obliged to wait until his second son Simon could bring an army to his assistance. Simon had been besieging Pevensey, and was a long time in reaching Kenilworth, his father's principal stronghold. The castle was too small to contain his troops, and Simon with incredible carelessness allowed them to remain outside without keeping any guard, apparently for two or three days at least, since Edward at Worcester had time to hear of it, it is said through a female spy. On the night of July 31, Edward marched rapidly from Worcester, and completely surprised young Simon's forces, capturing several important prisoners and all the baggage. Simon himself escaped into the castle, but he and his army were utterly lost to his father's cause.
On the same day the earl of Leicester left Hereford, and crossing the Severn in boats camped some miles to the south of Worcester. He probably had heard that his son had reached Kenilworth, and may either have purposed to attack prince Edward, while, as he might expect, his son was approaching the prince from another quarter, or simply to effect a junction with his son. Edward had taken great pains, apparently with success, to let no fugitives escape from Kenilworth: for the earl never heard of his son's overthrow. The exact times are somewhat differently given by the various authorities, but it is quite certain that Montfort was in Evesham early on August 4, and that Edward knew of his movements and had time to anticipate him. One story is that the king, who was still with him, insisted on stopping at Evesham on the evening of the 3rd, that he might sup in the abbey and hear mass there next morning, a request with which the earl could not decently refuse to comply without a strong motive, which, ignorant as he was of the disaster at Kenilworth, he could not have. The king's love of ease, and of devotion, would account for this well enough: that he did it in concert with his son, in order to delay Montfort, is not credible, for in that case Edward might have saved some miles of a hard march. The prince, on ascertaining that the earl had moved from his camp at Kempsey south of Worcester, in the direction of Kenilworth, formed a plan for cutting him off.
Evesham stands on the north bank of the Avon, at the bottom of a loop some two miles deep and one wide. In the thirteenth century the banks were marshy, and there was no bridge for a long distance, except one at Evesham leading to the hamlet of Bengeworth on the east of the loop. Over the high ground known as Green Hill, rising above the town and filling the north part of the loop, ran the direct road from Worcester, crossing the Avon by a ford12 at Offenham, two miles above Evesham. By this road prince Edward set part of his forces, including probably all his foot-soldiers, to march in the night of August 3, in pursuit of Leicester, entrusting the command to his new supporter the earl of Gloucester. He himself started with a large body of horsemen on the north road, so that his purpose might not be detected, then cutting across country to the eastward reached the ford on the Avon at Prior's Cleeve, some miles above Evesham, early on the 4th. As the road from Evesham to Kenilworth passes near Prior's Cleeve on the left bank, he hoped thus to intercept the earl in front, while Gloucester pressed on his rear. Finding that there was no sign of Montfort's approach, he descended the left bank as far as Offenham: thence he despatched Roger Mortimer with a detachment to hold the bridge at Bengeworth and prevent the earl escaping that way, and himself recrossed
The name itself may very possibly be derived from the event.
There are the remains of an ancient bridge at this spot, where so many of the fugitives from the battle were cut to pieces that the meadow bears the name of Dead Man's Eyot: but there is no mention of a bridge in the authorities, so that probably the bridge was built later.