This turned out to be the decisive end to the reformist hopes of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, against the incompetent rule of Henry III.
Following the latter's surrender and imprisonment at the battle of Lewes in May 1264, de Montfort had ruled in the king's name. However, almost immediately rifts had begun to appear within the baronial camp, and some key players defected to the royal side.
Henry's son, the future Edward I, had been held hostage in Hereford but escaped. On 2 August 1265, he launched a dawn attack at Kenilworth against de Montfort's son (also called Simon). This caught the latter by surprise and he had to flee in his nightshirt to Kenilworth Castle (where he staved off Edward's forces until starvation forced him to capitulate in December 1266).
Following a march throughout the night of 3/4 August, the prince reached the senior de Montfort at Evesham in Worcestershire. In what is probably an apocryphal story, the earl, realising that his army was trapped by a greatly superior force in a loop of the river Avon, is supposed to have said to his aides: 'Let us commend our souls to God, because our bodies are theirs.'
In the short but unusually savage battle that followed, with all the participants hampered by heavy violent thunderstorms, de Montfort was killed, among many others. Edward then ordered that the earl's body be decapitated and terribly mutilated and refused it a Christian burial. Henry, still a prisoner of de Montfort's, had been in the middle of the action but, only slightly wounded, was rescued.
Evesham battlefield 13 miles south-east of Worcester, on the river Avon The battle took place to the north of the ancient market town, in an area now known as Greenhill. The location is marked by an obelisk. The event is commemorated every year on 4 August at Battle Well. Simon de Montfort's remains were buried in what is now Abbey Park, brought there by the monks of Evesham Abbey (now ruined). There is a modest stone memorial in the park.
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