of confiscation which the mere fact of rebellion was held to have passed on all the adherents of Earl Simon.  To “disinherit” these of their lands was to confiscate half the estates of the landed gentry of England; but the hotter royalists declared them disinherited, and Henry was quick to lavish their lands away on favourites and foreigners.  The very chroniclers of their party recall the pillage with shame.  But all thought of resistance lay hushed in a general terror.  Even the younger Simon “saw no other rede” than to release his prisoners.  His army, after finishing its meal, was again on its march to join the Earl when the news of his defeat met it, heralded by a strange darkness that, rising suddenly in the north-west and following as it were on Edward’s track, served to shroud the mutilations and horrors of the battle-field.  The news was soon fatally confirmed.  Simon himself could see from afar his father’s head borne off on a spear-point to be mocked at Wigmore.  But the pursuit streamed away southward and westward through the streets of Tewkesbury, heaped with corpses of the panic-struck Welshmen whom the townsmen slaughtered without pity; and there was no attack as the little force fell back through the darkness and big thunder-drops in despair upon Kenilworth.  “I may hang up my axe,” are the bitter words which a poet attributes to their leader, “for feebly have I gone”; and once within the castle he gave way to a wild sorrow, day after day tasting neither meat nor drink.

[Sidenote:  Edward]

He was roused into action again by news of the shameful indignities which the Marcher Lords had offered to the body of the great Earl before whom they had trembled so long.  The knights around him broke out at the tidings in a passionate burst of fury, and clamoured for the blood of Richard of Cornwall and his son, who were prisoners in the castle.  But Simon had enough nobleness left to interpose.  “To God and him alone was it owing” Richard owned afterwards, “that I was snatched from death.”  The captives were not only saved, but set free.  A Parliament had been called at Winchester at the opening of September, and its mere assembly promised an end to the reign of utter lawlessness.  A powerful party, too, was known to exist in the royal camp which, hostile as it had shown itself to Earl Simon, shared his love for English liberties, and the liberation of Richard was sure to aid its efforts.  At the head of this party stood the young Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, to whose action above all the Earl’s overthrow was due.  And with Gilbert stood Edward himself.  The passion for law, the instinct of good government, which were to make his reign so memorable in our history, had declared themselves from the first.  He had sided with the barons at the outset of their struggle with Henry; he had striven to keep his father true to the Provisions of Oxford.  It was only when the figure of Earl Simon seemed to tower above that of Henry himself, when the Crown seemed falling