“Those two dinners doleful were, alas!” sings Robert of Gloucester; for through the same memorable night Edward was hurrying back from the Severn by country cross-lanes to seize the fatal gap that lay between them.  As morning broke his army lay across the road that led northward from Evesham to Alcester.  Evesham lies in a loop of the river Avon where it bends to the south; and a height on which Edward ranged his troops closed the one outlet from it save across the river.  But a force had been thrown over the river under Mortimer to seize the bridges, and all retreat was thus finally cut off.  The approach of Edward’s army called Simon to the front, and for the moment he took it for his son’s.  Though the hope soon died away a touch of soldierly pride moved him as he recognised in the orderly advance of his enemies a proof of his own training.  “By the arm of St. James,” he cried, “they come on in wise fashion, but it was from me that they learnt it.”  A glance however satisfied him of the hopelessness of a struggle; it was impossible for a handful of horsemen with a mob of half-armed Welshmen to resist the disciplined knighthood of the royal army.  “Let us commend our souls to God,” Simon said to the little group around him, “for our bodies are the foe’s.”  He bade Hugh Despenser and the rest of his comrades fly from the field.  “If he died,” was the noble answer, “they had no will to live.”  In three hours the butchery was over.  The Welsh fled at the first onset like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in the cornfields and gardens where they sought refuge.  The little group of knights around Simon fought desperately, falling one by one till the Earl was left alone.  So terrible were his sword-strokes that he had all but gained the hill-top when a lance-thrust brought his horse to the ground, but Simon still rejected the summons to yield till a blow from behind felled him mortally wounded to the ground.  Then with a last cry of “It is God’s grace,” the soul of the great patriot passed away.

[Sidenote:  The Royalist reaction]

The triumphant blare of trumpets which welcomed the rescued king into Evesham, “his men weeping for joy,” rang out in bitter contrast to the mourning of the realm.  It sounded like the announcement of a reign of terror.  The rights and laws for which men had toiled and fought so long seemed to have been swept away in an hour.  Every town which had supported Earl Simon was held to be at the king’s mercy, its franchises to be forfeited.  The Charter of Lynn was annulled; London was marked out as the special object of Henry’s vengeance, and the farms and merchandise of its citizens were seized as first-fruits of its plunder.  The darkness which on that fatal morning hid their books from the monks of Evesham as they sang in choir was but a presage of the gloom which fell on the religious houses.  From Ramsey, from Evesham, from St. Alban’s rose the same cry of havoc and rapine.  But the plunder of monk and burgess was little to the vast sentence