Campaign 285 - Lewes and Evesham 1264-65. Simon de Montfort and the Barons’ War (2015).pdf

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CAMPAIGN 285

LEWES AND EVESHAM

1264–65

Simon de Montfort and the Barons' War

RICHARD BROOKS

ILLUSTRATED BY GRAHAM TURNER

Series editor Marcus Cowper

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY

OPPOSING COMMANDERS

Royalist commanders

Baronial commanders

OPPOSING FORCES

Royalist forces

Baronial forces

OPPOSING PLANS

Royalist plans

Baronial plans

THE LEWES CAMPAIGN

The capture of Northampton

The siege of Rochester

The King’s march to Lewes

Lewes and its

surroundings

Prelude to battle

The battlefield

Numbers and dispositions

The Wretched Battle

of Lewes

THE CAMPAIGN OF EVESHAM

Renewed hostilities

The Younger Simon’s campaign

The Kenilworth raid

The field of battle

The

Royalist approach

Earl Simon’s death ride

The Mordre of Evesham

AFTER THE BATTLE

THE BATTLEFIELDS TODAY

FURTHER READING

GLOSSARY

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

The battles of Lewes and Evesham, fought in May 1264 and August 1265,

were a shocking departure from the political norms of the day. The reign of

Henry III (1216–72) was generally peaceful. English wars occurred in Wales

or overseas, in England’s last Continental possession, Gascony. The last time

English knights met in pitched battle on English soil was at Lincoln in 1217,

when Henry was a boy of ten.

If Henry’s reign was peaceful, it was hardly satisfactory. The conflict

known as the Second Barons’ War of 1264–65, to distinguish it from the

events of 1215–17, arose from longstanding political grievances. A pious and

cultured man, Henry III was a feckless and divisive king. He obstinately

defended his right to govern, while failing to do so effectively, or to engage

the support of his natural counsellors, the baronial elite which controlled the

country’s landed wealth. Instead, he favoured a succession of foreign

adventurers, first the relatives of his wife, Eleanor of Provence, then his

Lusignan half-brothers from Poitou, born of Henry’s mother’s second marriage.

Knightly battle depicted in

estoire de St Aedward le rei:

contrary to received images of

the Middle Ages, such extremes

of violence were rare in 13th-

century England. (MS Ee.3.59

f.32v by kind permission of the

Syndics of Cambridge

University Library)

The English crown was not rich, and these aliens were resented as

intruders, who absorbed rents, lands and ecclesiastical benefices that rightly

belonged to native-born Englishmen. The Lusignans’ greedy and violent

behaviour outraged a burgeoning sense of English identity. All classes shared

a distrust of foreigners bordering on xenophobia. New ideas were developing

about a community of the realm, no longer limited to the nobility, which

distinguished between kings who ruled for the good of their people, and

tyrants who did not.

Henry’s personal rule might have been more popular had it been more

successful. The Poitou campaign of 1242 was a fiasco, amply justifying the

English belief that ‘Poitevin’ meant ‘traitor’. Henry’s efforts to restrain the

unconquered Welsh were hesitant and sometimes disastrous. In 1257 the men

of Ystrad Tywi destroyed an English army near Carmarthen leaving several

thousand dead, including its commander. A wild scheme to place Henry’s

second son Edmund on the throne of Sicily was an expensive and embarrassing

failure. Royal justices and sheriffs responsible for local administration were

considered venal and oppressive,

seeking to extract taxes from a

countryside racked by famine simply

to sustain pointless foreign adventures.

Baronial dissatisfaction with royal

misgovernment overflowed in 1258. A

parliament of barons and senior

churchmen held at Oxford subjected

Henry to a counsel nominated by a

panel of lay and ecclesiastical

magnates. They reduced the king to a

cypher, unable to issue writs or charters

without their consent. The

revolutionary Provisions of Oxford

were followed by the Provisions of

Westminster addressing judicial

abuses. The Lusignans were expelled,

and offices such as the custodianship

of royal castles were restricted

to Englishmen.

Henry’s subjection to baronial

oversight was unsustainable. The

magnates split between reformers and

conservatives, and in 1261 Henry

reasserted his freedom with support

from the Pope and 500 knights paid by

Henry’s brother-in-law, Louis IX of

France. The only magnate left to

defend the Provisions was Simon de

Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Rather

than break his oath he left England,

but returned two years later after

further dissension. Simon reimposed

the Provisions, but his faction was too

weak to dominate an unwilling king.

Henry III’s main interests were

artistic. His greatest

achievement was rebuilding

Westminster Abbey, where he

is commemorated by this early

14th-century painting in the

Sedilia. (Copyright Dean and

Chapter Westminster)

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