of relief which his son Simon had slowly levied in the south and midlands.  But his quarrel with Gloucester and his alliance with the Welsh had done much to undermine Montfort’s popularity, and the younger Simon had no appreciation of the necessity for decisive action.  Summoned from the long siege of Pevensey by his father’s danger, he wasted time in plundering the lands of the royalists, and only left London on July 8, whence he led his men by slow stages to Kenilworth.  On July 31 young Simon’s troops took up their quarters for the night in the open country round Kenilworth castle.  They had no notion that the enemy was at hand and troubled neither to defend themselves nor to keep watch.  Edward, warned by spies of their approach, abandoned his close guard of the Severn fords, and in the early morning of August 1 fell suddenly upon the sleeping host and scattered it with little difficulty.  The younger Simon and a few of his followers took refuge in the castle.  As a fighting force the army of relief ceased to exist.

Leicester, knowing nothing of his son’s disaster, made his way, on August 3, from Kempsey to Evesham, where he rested for the night.  Next morning, after mass and breakfast, the army was about to continue its march, when scouts descried troops advancing upon the town.  At first it was hoped that they were the followers of young Simon, but their near approach revealed them to be the army of the marchers.  With extraordinary rapidity Edward led his troops back to Worcester as soon as he had won the fight at Kenilworth.  Learning there that Simon had crossed the river in his absence, he at once turned back to meet him, seeking to elude his vigilance by a long night march by circuitous routes.  The result was that for the second time he caught his enemy in a trap.

Evesham, like Lewes, stands on a peninsula.  It is situated on the right bank of a wide curve of the Avon, and approachable only by crossing over the river, or by way of the sort of isthmus between the two bends of the Avon a little to the north of the town.  Edward occupied this isthmus with his best troops, and thus cut off all prospect of escape by land.  The other means of exit from the town was over the bridge which connects it with its south-eastern suburb of Bengeworth, on the left bank of the river.  Edward, however, took the precaution to detach Gloucester with a strong force to hold Bengeworth, and thus prevent Simon’s escape over the bridge.  The weary and war-worn host of Montfort, then, was out-generalled in such fashion that effective resistance to a superior force, flushed by recent victory, was impossible.  Simon himself saw that his last hour was come; yet he could not but admire the skilful plan which had so easily discomfited him.  “By the arm of St. James,” he declared, “they come on cunningly.  Yet they have not taught themselves that order of battle; they have learnt it from me.  God have mercy upon our souls, for our bodies are theirs.”