Royal Tabloid Tales in Evesham

At the Battle of Evesham in August, 1265, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, held the king, Henry III, captive and cruelly forced him into the battle wearing plain armour so no one would recognise him and come to his aid. Henry's son, Edward - later King Edward I - in a brilliant strategic manoeuvre had cut off de Montfort and his army in a loop of the River Avon. What followed, although it secured the rescue of Henry III, became a blood bath. De Montfort and his son were both killed and Simon's body was dismembered and mutilated. What remained of his corpse was taken to the Abbey of Evesham where it was buried by the high altar and became a place of pilgrimage. It was, the chronicler Robert of Gloucester wrote, "the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none."  A plaque, unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Speaker of the Commons in 1965, now marks the spot where the tomb stood until the abbey was pulled down at the dissolution. An obelisk marks the battle site on Greenhill.

De Montfort was the brother-in-law of King Henry III, married to his sister Eleanor. Henry was a weak King, by the standards of his time, and de Montfort, backed by senior churchmen and barons, had forced him to accept the 'Provisions of Oxford' creating an early form of parliamentary government.

Increased signs of weakness by Henry led to de Montfort becoming the rallying point for opposition and at the Battle of Lewes in May of 1264 he captured both the King and his son, Prince Edward, who later made his escape.