POLITICAL HISTORY 



17 February 1265 Gloucester arrived at the head of a strong band of marchers 

 and others who agreed with him in his opposition to Earl Simon. But the 

 king's counsellors looked on such meetings as ' nurseries of discord,' and induced 

 him to forbid the combat. Gloucester refused obedience and threatened to 

 fight despite the prohibition, when de Montfort and Hugh Despenser came 

 upon the scene with a strong force and insisted that the tournament should not 

 take place.^*" There was general disappointment and much murmuring: 

 ' It is clearly absurd,' said one, ' that this foreigner presumes to make himself 

 master of the whole kingdom !'^" Gloucester accepted the snub in angry 

 silence, and soon left Dunstable, henceforth to be de Montfort's implacable 

 opponent. As the summer went on de Montfort's position became more and 

 more difficult. Prince Edward escaped from his control at Hereford,"' and 

 organized the royalists of the west. The Earl of Gloucester joined him and 

 they took Gloucester Castle, 29 June."* The younger Simon de Montfort 

 now marched to the west to succour his father, and early in the morning 

 of I August he was surprised by Prince Edward and the Earl of Glou- 

 cester in his quarters in the town of Kenilworth. He himself escaped 

 to the castle, nudus profugiens^^^'- but all the barons and bannerets with 

 him were captured, including Baldwin Wake."* A few days later Prince 

 Edward closed in upon the baronial force at Evesham, and the decisive 

 battle was fought 4 August 1265. Amongst the slain was John de Beau- 

 champ, ' who on that day raised his banner for the first time,' "^ and 

 with him the name of Beauchamp of Bedford passed away. Henry de 

 Hastings was among those captured. The victory was followed by the 

 confiscation of the estates of all who had taken arms for de Montfort, and 

 these were distributed among the royalists."' The younger Simon had 

 taken refuge in the Isle of Axholme with Baldwin Wake, who had escaped 

 from captivity,"^ and others, and in the beginning of November the king 

 passed through Dunstable on his way to Northampton to discuss terms of 

 surrender,"* but does not appear to have inflicted any penalty on the priory 

 for its support of de Montfort. In the middle of January 1266 he was again at 

 Dunstable on his way back to London, accompanied by the queen, Ottobon 

 the papal legate, and their prisoner, the younger Simon de Montfort."' In 

 May there was an alarm in the neighbourhood of Dunstable when Adam 

 Gurdon at the head of a force of eighty knights appeared suddenly at Short- 

 grave ; the band remained there for a day and a night, carried off all it could 

 plunder, and withdrew across the Chiltern woods towards Kimble and so 

 southwards ; it was afterwards broken up by Prince Edward at Alton in 

 Hampshire.^*" 



After the fall of Kenilworth in December 1266, the Isle of Ely was 

 occupied by the last remnants of the baronial party, who made plundering 



13a 



Rishanger, op. cit. 41-2 ; Ann. Dunst. 238. "' Trokelowe, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 15. 



Wykes, Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 163. 



^^ Ibid. 1 64, 1 66. Robert de Ros, lord of Belvoir, was captured there, and with him Richard de Borard, 

 his tenant at Oakeley, Beds. ; See 'Extent, de terr. adversariorum regis,' Cal. Geneal. 116. 



133a Wykes, op. cit. 1 70. 



'" Ann. Mm. Osney (Rolls Ser.), iv, 166. 



'" Rishanger, op. cit. 47. The impression produced by his untimely end is feelingly rendered by Wykes, 

 op. cit. 1 74, who speaks of his elegantia corporis. 



'=' Rishanger, op. cit. 48-51 ; Ann. Dunst. 239. '" Wykes, op. cit. i8o. 



'" Ann. Dunst. 240. "' Ibid. '*• Ibid. 241. 



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