of Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Lords success seemed to be crowning this bold stroke of the peace party when the Earl of Gloucester interposed.  Desirous as he was of peace, the blood of De Montfort lay between him and the Earl’s sons, and the safety of the one lay in the ruin of the other.  In the face of this danger Earl Gilbert threw his weight into the scale of the ultra-royalists, and peace became impossible.  The question of restitution was shelved by a reference to arbitrators; and Simon, detained in spite of a safe-conduct, moved in Henry’s train at Christmas to witness the surrender of Kenilworth which had been stipulated as the price of his full reconciliation with the king.  But hot blood was now stirred again on both sides.  The garrison replied to the royal summons by a refusal to surrender.  They had received ward of the castle, they said, not from Simon but from the Countess, and to none but her would they give it up.  The refusal was not likely to make Simon’s position an easier one.  On his return to London the award of the arbitrators bound him to quit the realm and not to return save with the assent of king and baronage when all were at peace.  He remained for a while in free custody at London; but warnings that he was doomed to lifelong imprisonment drove him to flight, and he finally sought a refuge over sea.

[Sidenote:  Ban of Kenilworth]

His escape set England again on fire.  Llewelyn wasted the border; the Cinque Ports held the sea; the garrison of Kenilworth pushed their raids as far as Oxford; Baldewin Wake with a band of the Disinherited threw himself into the woods and harried the eastern counties; Sir Adam Gurdon, a knight of gigantic size and renowned prowess, wasted with a smaller party the shires of the south.  In almost every county bands of outlaws were seeking a livelihood in rapine and devastation, while the royal treasury stood empty and the enormous fine imposed upon London had been swept into the coffers of French usurers.  But a stronger hand than the king’s was now at the head of affairs, and Edward met his assailants with untiring energy.  King Richard’s son, Henry of Almaine, was sent with a large force to the north; Mortimer hurried to hold the Welsh border; Edmund was despatched to Warwick to hold Kenilworth in check; while Edward himself marched at the opening of March to the south.  The Berkshire woods were soon cleared, and at Whitsuntide Edward succeeded in dispersing Adam Gurdon’s band and in capturing its renowned leader in single combat.  The last blow was already given to the rising in the north, where Henry of Almaine surprised the Disinherited at Chesterfield and took their leader, the Earl of Derby, in his bed.  Though Edmund had done little but hold the Kenilworth knights in check, the submission of the rest of the country now enabled the royal army to besiege it in force.  But the king was penniless, and the Parliament which he called to replenish his treasury in August