Battle of Evesham, 1265: the death of Simon de Montfort

In 1258 a group of barons forced Henry III to accept a program of reform that limited his power. When the king tried to undo it, the leading reformer, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, took up arms. At Lewes in May 1264 he defeated the royal army and took the king captive, and for the next year he was the real ruler of England. To win wider support he summoned not only barons but knights from the shires and representatives of the towns to parliament, a step that, as The National Archives notes, set a pattern for the rest of the Middle Ages.²

Edward escapes and turns the tables

His hold did not last. By the summer of 1265 the king's son, Prince Edward, was at large with an army in the west and held the fortified city of Worcester. De Montfort was in Hereford, beyond the Severn, while his son Simon was bringing a second army to join him by way of Kenilworth.³

Edward moved first. On the night of 1 August he feigned a march north, then rode some 30 miles with his cavalry to Kenilworth and at dawn on 2 August surprised the younger Simon's army camped outside the castle. The son escaped into the castle with part of his men, but Edward captured many of their banners, and he hurried back to Worcester to deal with the father.⁴

A town in a loop of the river

Having heard of his son's defeat, de Montfort marched east to join what was left of his army. He seems to have crossed the Avon at Pershore and reached Evesham on the morning of 4 August, still carrying the captive King Henry with him. The town lies in a deep bend of the Avon, closed on three sides by the river; the only way out by land led north up the slope of Greenhill towards Alcester.⁵

The Battlefields Trust notes that the old view of Edward splitting his army to block every exit, sending Mortimer round to the bridge at Bengeworth, has been challenged. A recently identified account suggests that the whole royal army assembled west of the town and came up onto Greenhill along the Worcester road. Either way, the road north was closed.⁶

The banners on the hill

A lookout on the tower of Evesham Abbey saw the approaching army and at first reported the banners of de Montfort's son. They were the ones Edward had captured at Kenilworth. By the time the truth was clear it was too late to slip away. According to the new account, de Montfort refused advice to defend the abbey church and wait for help, and would not retreat over the bridge. He addressed his men in the town and rode out with his cavalry up the Alcester road, the infantry under Humphrey de Bohun following behind.⁷

On the broad, flat top of Greenhill he found the royal army in three divisions: Edward in the center, Gilbert de Clare on one side and Roger de Mortimer on the other. The Melrose chronicle says de Montfort was outnumbered at least three to one. The Evesham chronicle gives him more than 6,000 Welsh and other foot, which would make the royal army over 18,000, a figure the Battlefields Trust thinks excessive. Historic UK describes some 6,000 rebels facing a royal army at least twice their number.⁸

The murder of Evesham

Some accounts say de Montfort charged in a wedge along the road, aiming between the divisions of Edward and Clare, and that some royal troops at first gave way. Then the wings of the royal army swung round and enclosed his knights. Edward had given Mortimer and a small band of knights one task: reach de Montfort and kill him. The chronicler Thomas Wykes describes the rebels drawn together in a tight ring, and soon de Montfort and about twenty of his knights were dead, his body hacked to pieces. King Henry, still a prisoner on the field, was nearly killed in the melee.⁹

When their leader fell the rebel army broke. Men fled to the river and drowned, or were hunted through the fields and the town, even into the abbey church, and the killing went on into the afternoon. Unusually for the time, no quarter was given: de Montfort's son Henry and most of his main supporters died with him. The Battlefields Trust dismisses the chronicle figures of 7,500 to 10,000 dead as exaggerated and cites the English Heritage estimate of perhaps 4,000. Historic UK gives the same figure of about 4,000. Historic UK says the fighting lasted some hours; the Battlefields Trust doubts that the surrounded knights held out that long.¹⁰

After Evesham

The younger Simon was still marching south from Alcester when he met fugitives from the battle. With his father dead the revolt lost its head. The royal settlement that followed, the Dictum of Kenilworth, sought reconciliation, and The National Archives notes that many of the reforms made since 1258 were reissued in the king's name.¹¹

Evesham made the reputation of Prince Edward, who would become Edward I seven years later. The spring on Greenhill where Simon de Montfort died, later known as Battle Well, was recorded as a place of miracles by 1272. The memorial window in St Lawrence's church, shown above, still remembers him as the father of English representative government.¹²