‘Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none’ – so wrote the 13th-century chronicler Robert of Gloucester of the defining moment of the Barons’ War. The battle, or ‘murder’, was fought out on 4 August 1265 between those loyal to the increasingly unpopular King Henry III, and rebels, led by Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester, who favoured a more representative form of government.
When I first wrote about Evesham for MHM (‘Lewes and Evesham’, July 2012), I had preconceived notions as to what had taken place. My alma mater was nearby, so I had studied the ‘field’ as a boy, and felt I knew it intimately: as an eight-year-old, I had even attended commemorations in Evesham’s Abbey Park that marked the 700th anniversary of de Montfort’s death, a stone being placed on the site of the former abbey’s high altar, once the burial place of what remained of the rebel leader.
Much has changed in the intervening years, however. In 2015, a festival was held to mark the battle’s 750th anniversary, with a re-enactment taking place, not on the battlefield site, much of which remains in private hands, but on the Crown Meadow, a public open space where tooled-up 21st-century ‘knights’ could bash ten bells out of one another. As a public speaker, I was invited to talk about the battle and its place in history on four occasions during that festival year, including in a yurt on the meadow when soaring temperatures threatened further battlefield casualties.
