"The Murder of Evesham": Making sense of an unusual battle
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On the morning of 4th August 1265, Simon de Montfort, the sixth earl of Leicester and de facto ruler of England, led his army out of the Worcestershire town of Evesham. Looming on the slopes above was a far superior royalist force commanded by the Lord Edward, the future Edward I.
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The battle that followed was, in the words of one historian, ‘an episode of noble bloodletting unprecedented since the Conquest’. In striking contrast with chivalric tradition, a large number of rebel knights met their end in the fighting. The fate of Montfort himself was particularly barbaric; after being cut down, his hands and feet were hacked off, his head struck away and his testicles torn from his body.
This level of violence against knightly combatants has led historians to identify a cultural shift at Evesham, after which the death of political enemies became more common on and off the battlefield.
Indeed, one intriguing theory suggests that the boundaries between inter-Christian warfare and crusading were being blurred by this period. Thus, when Simon de Montfort associated his struggle with Holy war, as he did before the battle of Lewes in 1264, he removed himself from the chivalric conventions that would normally have applied to men of his stature.
‘Such was the murder of Evesham’
This may well explain why the earl and so many of his followers were killed at Evesham. But there is another possible explanation, which is touched upon by one of the most famous quotes associated with the battle: Robert of Gloucester’s description of ‘the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none.’
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This quote is often used by writers to convey the level of violence displayed during the battle. But Robert is usually a pretty straight-talker who means what he says. To provide context, this famous sentence follows immediately on from Robert’s description of the treatment of Simon de Montfort at the hands of the royalists - including the earl’s dismemberment, his head being despatched to Roger Mortimer’s wife, and the revelation that he was wearing a hair shirt.
Robert, then, is specifically talking about Simon de Montfort here, adding that Jesus Christ was displeased at the barbarity inflicted upon the earl.
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"Old traitor! No way can you live any longer"
Robert’s allusion is supported by other evidence. The remarkable discovery of an eye witness account of the battle found in the College of Arms (described in an EHR article, April 2000), reports that, before the battle, Edward and Gilbert de Clare selected 12 men whose only purpose in the fighting would be to seek Montfort on the field, and kill him.
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‘And they knew that they were to kill the earl of Leicester, and break through the ranks forcibly and rapidly in such a way that they would look at no one nor let anyone come between them until they reached the person of the earl.’
The Osney annalist also describes the royalists barracking Montfort as they advanced, crying: “Old traitor! Old traitor! No way can you live longer!” Clearly, they marched on Evesham with murderous intent. But it was Simon de Montfort with whom they were focused.
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This decision – to kill Simon de Montfort – made the battle a literal fight for survival, and thus the knights who stood with Simon were resolved to fight to the death, or quickly found themselves with no other option.
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It is notable that Henry de Montfort was killed close to Montfort’s banner, while Walter of Guisborough reports that many of the nobles who died – such as Hugh Despencer, Peter de Montfort, Ralph Basset and Guy de Baliol – were slain in close proximity to the earl, ‘on a small piece of land.’ They died because they were defending the earl from the death squad, who would not ‘let anyone come between them’ and their quarry.
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Montfortians were captured at Evesham
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Equally, we also know that many prominent and noble Montfortians, including the earl’s son, Guy de Montfort, and Nicholas de Segrave, were captured in the battle. Humphrey de Bohun, who the College of Arms account says withdrew to the rear before fleeing – and thus was not near the earl – was also captured and confined to Beeston castle, where he later died of his wounds. And of course, days earlier, a raft of Montfortian knights had been taken prisoner, and not killed, at Kenilworth by the Lord Edward. This, I think, lends weight to the idea that the royalists did not have a ‘take no prisoners’ policy at Evesham. Rather, they were determined to kill Simon de Montfort, and those who stood in their way (thus close to the earl) would have to pay with their lives.
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Indeed, the point is almost proven by the sheer brutality expressed towards Simon’s corpse, which was hacked to pieces and mutilated. It was not enough simply to kill him; the earl was to be dishonoured and treated with the utmost contempt. Such was the animosity and frustration that had boiled up in the previous years – a period that had seen the Crown subjected to unprecedented humiliations.
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This still, of course, marked a shift, because executing political enemies was extremely rare. But it was not unprecedented. Noble enemies had been killed during Henry III’s reign. At the siege of Bedford in 1224, for example, the castle’s garrison, which included 11 knights, had been hanged (although three escaped death on condition of joining the Templars).
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'He wanted peace and to end the war'
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The reasons for killing Simon de Montfort were both personal and political. By the time of the battle, the earl was very much the lynchpin of the rebellion, with his principal ally the earl of Gloucester having defected earlier in the year. Montfort's destruction, therefore, would deal a fatal blow to the movement he led.
Furthermore, there is evidence that the earl was contemplating the complete usurpation of the Crown. Just weeks before the battle of Evesham, Montfort had entered into a treaty with the Welsh (the treaty of Pipton) which is revealing in its language. It refers to 'the heir or successor' of the king - suggesting that Montfort was considering the idea of an alternative successor to Henry than the Lord Edward. This truly was treasonous territory.
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Montfort's death, however, was still sufficiently shocking to reverberate across Christendom. An interesting source called the Gestes des Chiprois, written in fourteenth-century Cyprus and heavily associated with the crusades (in which the wider Montfort family was steeped), includes this entry:
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‘The battle was very bitter and many men were killed on each side. In the end Earl Simon de Montfort was defeated, he and his men, and the earl was taken alive. Once he had come from the battle, the Lord Edward sought counsel from his cousin who was named Henry of Almain…The Lord Henry advised him that if he wanted peace and to end the war, he should cut off Earl Simon’s head and have it said that he was killed in battle, since it would have been regarded shameful to have killed him after he had been captured. So that night the Lord Edward, on the advice of the Lord Henry of Almain, had Earl Simon’s head cut off and had him thrown on the field among the other dead bodies’.
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There are many problems with this source, not least the obvious inaccuracies – Henry of Almain was nowhere near the battlefield, being in captivity at this time. But it touches on the likely reason for Edward's murderous approach at Evesham. Montfort's demise was essential if Edward wanted ‘peace and to end the war.’
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Interestingly, the Gestes also shows that, by the fourteenth-century and in a crusading context, noble deaths in battle were indeed becoming acceptable to chivalric sentiment - but the execution of prisoners remained beyond the pale.
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