Mount Harry's Christening.

 

" Many faire ladie lese his lord that day,
And many gode bodie slayne at Leaus lay;
The nombre none wrote, for tell tham mot no man
But He that alle wot, and alle thing ses and can."

 

Robert Brune.

 

 

The great fight which decided the fate of England gave its name of Battle to a Sussex town. Another of the great battles of our history, in which, almost for the first time, the liberties of Englishmen boldly resisted oppression and prevailed against an unjust king, gave that king's name to a Sussex hill.

 

Houses and streets have grown up, a vast Abbey has been reared and has fallen to ruin, on the place where the Norman knights charged the ring of desperate Saxons, but the turfy height of Mount Harry lies as bare to the sun and the sea-wind today as when the great De Montfort ranged his armies on its spurs and defied the tyranny of Henry III.

 

The great marshes of the Ouse estuary are drained today, but still the green heights smile down on the little winding stream and the cosy town of Lewes. It seems strange that the golden magic of Shakespeare never wove its spell about the tragedy of Simon de Montfort, one of the big, heroic figures of our land. The men who fought at Lewes fought for the destinies of England. All the obscurities which may becloud the minor motives and interests of the war between King Henry III and his barons cannot hide the outstanding fact that this was a great struggle of principles, the first great fight which Englishmen had waged for liberty against irresponsible despotism.

 

As Mr. Blaauw, the Sussex antiquary says. in his scholarly work which is still a classic on the Barons' War;

"Nothing can evince more strikingly the soundness of the views adopted by the party victorious at Lewes than the fact that during their short year of triumph English freedom rose to so vigorous a manhood, and acquired so firm a development, as to enable the spirit of their principles long to survive the downfall of their promoters, and to this day we are enjoying the full maturity of their effects."

The great forts of Sussex held firm for the King in his struggle against those of his barons who, under Simon de Montfort, stood for the liberties of the people, the ordinances of Magna Carta confirmed by King Henry and again and again disregarded. It was to the loyalty of the Sussex fortresses, and to the importance of keeping open his communications with possible reinforcements from the Continent, that the movement of the king's forces to Sussex was largely due.

We are concerned here only with the Sussex act of this big drama, but it will not perhaps be out of place to sketch briefly the figures of the leading actors.

There was the King—fickle son of the wretched but clever John, with his fatal persistence in favouring foreigners at the expense of his own subjects. He was brave as a king need be: his bearing in the fight at Lewes showed that clearly enough. He was pious after his fashion, and a mighty builder. A remarkable outburst on the part of a Sussex lady against the King for his disregard of private rights is recorded. She was the young Countess of Arundel, widow of Hugh, the last Earl of the Albini family. When Henry refused her redress in connection with some claim about property the Countess exclaimed:

 

" Why do you turn away your face from justice ? You stand guilty of repeated perjury, on which account not only I as a woman, but all your true-born subjects appeal to the tribunal of the Highest for retribution on you!"

 

There was the king's son, Prince Edward, afterwards to become so great a king; a splendid youth of fiery valour, in the flower of his young manhood, his proud heart filled with rage because the London citizens, who stood by Earl Simon, had pelted his royal mother with refuse as her barge passed under London Bridge. And there was the mighty figure of Simon de Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester, brother-in-law to the King, a man of foreign birth, yet the self-constituted champion of the liberties of Englishmen, a man whose character makes one of the most interesting studies in our history.

 

His father was a fierce zealot who had carried out a pitiless campaign against the Albigensian heretics in France. Strong in love as in war, Simon had married his wife, the King's sister Eleanor, despite a vow of perpetual widowhood she had made on the death of her first husband, and had had sufficient influence to "wangle," in the slang of today, a dispensation in his favour from the Pope.

 

The marriage had caused an outcry, which the forceful Earl either ignored or lived down. Like many other fiery spirits of his times, Simon had been on the Crusades. He hated Jews with a bitter hatred, and in his charter to his town of Leicester he laid down that

 

" for the good of his soul and those of his ancestors and successors, no Jew or Jewess should ever reside there, either in his own time or that of his heirs to the end of the world."

 

He had fought for the King, his brother-in-law, in France at the battle of Saintes, and had restored, when no other could do it, order in the King's province of Gascony. As a soldier the Earl was second to none in his day. The citizens of London were strong for the barons' party, and not long before the great fight at Lewes in 1264, an incident had occurred at London which had a curious bearing on the battle. Earl Simon and his friends were quartered in Southwark. By a rapid march, the King's forces tried to take him there unawares, and four of the leading citizens of London tried to help in the capture by shutting the gates of old London Bridge against the Earl, and throwing the keys into the Thames.

 

But in the nick of time the rest of the London citizens within, burst open the barriers of the bridge, and let him in. They would have lynched the four traitors to the city's adopted cause, but De Montfort saved them from the fury of the mob. As events befel, they did not gain much by the rescue. The four were kept close prisoners, to make a strange and dramatic re-appearance on the field of battle.

 

When the royal army marched to the south coast in 1264 after a terrible sacking of Northampton, where a great number of the leaders of the barons had met for a conference, the whole population in Sussex and Surrey was probably well under 100,000. In Chichester, then most likely the largest centre of population in Sussex, only £14 9s 8d. (which, of course, represented much more then than now) was raised from 869 persons, and the total population of the city was probably rather more than double that number.

 

Henry came to Winchelsea, and demanded assistance from the inhabitants to send a fleet up the Thames to attack the Londoners. But the Wardens of the Cinque Ports, who throughout sided with the Barons, refused their ships, so the King, after seizing hostages for the good behaviour of the Ports, left them, and collected all his forces at Lewes, where the strong castle of his brother-in-law, the Earl of Warenne, held the opening through the Downs. Sussex was not an easy place in which to maintain a big army in those days.

 

 

" From the deficiency of victuals in that barren province," we are told, "many persons wasted away from want of food, and the cattle were lowing and falling all round from scarcity of pasture."

 

From their headquarters in London the Barons' army marched south to meet the King. With the feudal lords and their trained fighting men came 13,000 Londoners, an ill-armed, ill-disciplined, but eager crowd. In the sunny May weather they reached the thick forest which in those days covered the country about Fletching, and they pitched their hidden camp amid the wooded glades.

 

Down in Lewes the King had established his court at the great Priory of St. Pancras. Between the spirit of the host in the greenwood and that in the little town there seems to have been something of the same kind of contrast as that which the Norman chroniclers say prevailed at Hastings between the Norman and the Saxon armies.

 

May 12th was the feast day of the patron saint of the Priory, and the royal visitors celebrated it with a merry-making which passed all bounds of moderation and decency. With the King at Lewes, among those who were summoned as vassals of the Crown, were two men who in the next reign were to be in bitter rivalry for the throne of Scotland—Robert the Bruce and John Balliol. Another Scots lord, whose name, immortalised by Sir Walter Scott, has more a romantic than a historical association for most of us today, was Philip de Marmion, the hero of the poem of that name.

 

Of Sussex nobles there were, besides De Warenne, John Fitzalan, who held Arundel Castle, and Henry de Percy, lord of Petworth. Of Earl John de Warenne, the King's stout kinsman, a story is told that when in the early years of Edward I, the royal commissioners came into Sussex and asked by what title he held his lands, he answered boldly :

 

 

" By this sword did my ancestor win them, and by this sword will I keep them! "

 

While the King and his friends were making a night of it in honour of St. Pancras, Earl Simon and his barons in the greenwood were considering in no small anxiety the grave issues of the coming fight. Many of their supporters had been falling away, and De Montfort would very gladly have avoided a conflict. Hoping against hope for a peaceful settlement, he sent the Bishops to London and Worcester to the royal camp, with instructions to offer the large sum of 50,000 marks to the King in compensation for the damage done by the Barons' party, if Henry would once more guarantee the fulfilment of his oft-repeated undertakings.

 

The Bishops must have been sadly scandalised by what they saw at the Priory, for we are told that the revellers had defiled the very altars. They were led into the refectory, and announced the terms of their offer. Immediately there was a great outcry.

 

They shall have no peace,"

 

cried the proud Prince Edward,

 

" unless they put halters round their necks, and render themselves for us to hang them up or drag them down as we please."

 

King Henry's answer was brief and bitter:

 

" We value not your faith and love, and defy you as our enemies ! "

 

So the Bishops rode back to Fletching, and delivered their unwelcome message. Then the great Earl finally set about the final preparations. Through all the forest camp the word went forth, calling men to repent of their sins. To the ranks of kneeling soldiers the Bishop of Worcester pronounced absolution, and promised salvation all who might fall fighting for justice.

 

The army of the barons marked themselves on breast and back with a white cross that had always distinguished the English crusaders, and after this night of solemn preparation the soldiers moved on through the forest towards that battlefield where, for the first time for fifty years, English armies were to meet in battle on their own soil.

 

They set out before the sun rose, filing through the dewy glades in the dim morning twilight. So precise had been their great leader's orders, that though they went by many different paths, their silent march brought them duly together at the appointed rallying-place. Though the lords of the land through which they advanced were with the King's army, no news of their movement was suffered to reach the royal camp. When they came to the ridge of the Downs, their movement was so carefully designed that the shoulder of the hills still concealed them from their enemies.

 

On a hill-top over against the town, the royalists had stationed sentinels. Discipline, however, must have been poor in the King's army, for we are told that the sentries, in fancied security, had left their post in charge of a single man, who had quietly gone to sleep. The Earl's scouts came upon this faithless watchman before he could give the alarm, and forced him to tell the disposition of the royal army. On went the Barons' men.

 

It happened that a party of foragers, seeking hay and corn for the King's army, suddenly ran almost into the arms of the advancing vanguard. Some of them bolted back in time to give the alarm, and the startled royalists sprang to arms.

 

From the hills above, the main army of the Barons had now come in sight of the bell-tower of St. Pancras. The Earl called upon his men to pray

 

" for the sake of the government of the kingdom, to the honour of God,> of the Blessed Mary, of all the saints, and of our mother Church."

 

Following his example, the armoured knights fell prostrate on the turf, making the sign of the Cross with their outstretched arms—a scene, perhaps, without parallel in any battle. Rising from his knees, the experienced Earl turned swiftly from piety to practical politics.

 

From the height of Mount Harry three spurs run towards the town, and Simon, with the flanks of his army protected by a steep declivity, looked down to his front over a gradual slope of more than a mile, to Lewes, ringed on the north-east and partly on the south by the then spreading waters of the Ouse estuary. (The burgesses of Lewes at the time of Domesday supplied 16,000 herrings, and the low hills near the Priory, now surrounded by meadows, were then islands.)

 

And now we come back to the unfortunate citizens of London whose attempts to deliver the Earl of Leicester to his enemies had ended so disastrously for themselves. Some months previously, the Earl had met with a serious accident in a fall from his horse, which had left him with a fractured thigh. His recovery from this accident had been a slow process, and though by the time of the battle of Lewes he had got over it, except for a slight lameness, he had been in the habit during his convalescence of travelling in a kind of cage-like carriage, probably a sort of solid palanquin slung between two horses. The wily Earl seems successfully to have kept the knowledge of his recovery from his enemies, but either by chance or by design he still travelled accompanied by his " cage."

 

In it, however, instead of himself, were carried the prisoners from London, securely shut in the iron framework. It was probably a stroke of genius on the field that caused Earl Simon to station this well-known " cage " of his on a conspicuous point of the hill, with his own standard planted beside it, together with the tents and baggage of many of his principal knights, all under the care of a body of troops commanded by a knight named William de Blund. The natural conclusion to be drawn by the enemy was that here was the Earl's headquarters.

 

Having arranged this neat ruse, the Earl proceeded to line up his battle on the three spurs of the hill sloping away towards the castle and the town, and separated from each other by deep hollows. On the northern spur, which ran down close under the walls of the castle, where the banner of De Warenne floated in the early sunbeams, 15,000 Londoners were drawn up—a motley army, under a knight named Nicholas de Segrave, whose standard showed a black lion with a golden crown, sprawling on a silver field. This Nicholas de Segrave, by the way, was almost the only one among the Barons' leaders who had been at the conference at Northampton, who had succeeded in escaping alive from that terrible sack.

 

On the central slope, which ran straight down into town, the leader's name was De Clare. On the right Earl's two sons, Henry and Guy, commanded, and the reserves were held ready by the Earl himself. Thus arrayed, the Barons' army moved on towards the town.

 

An old poem describes the scene :

 

" Symon cam to the feld, and put up his banere.
The Kyng schewd forth his scheld, his dragon full austere;
The Kynge said 'On hie! Simon, je vous défie!"

 

According to Mr. Blaauw, " the order for the creation of this austere beast," was given in 1244 to the king's goldsmith, Edward Fitz-Odo, who was instructed to make it

 

" in the manner of a standard or ensign, of red samit, to be embroidered with gold, and his tongue to appear as though continually moving, and his eyes of sapphire or other stones agreeable."

 

Poor Fitz-Odo however realistic an artist, must have been sorely puzzled over the perpetual motion of the austere beast's tongue!

 

With the Barons' host so close before their presence was suspected, the formation of the King's line of battle was somewhat hurried. Prince Edward, who had been in the castle with his kinsman, hurried at once to place himself with the best of the royal cavalry, opposite the Londoners, for whom he cherished so fierce a hatred.

 

More to the south the King's brother Richard, king of the Romans, led a division against the young De Monforts. King Henry himself, who whatever his faults a ruler, bore himself like a brave man when it came to hard knocks, placed himself with a bodyguard of knights in charge of his central reserve.

 

The trumpets on either side blared defiance, and suddenly the turf shook to the thundering hoofs as the prince led his mail-clad chivalry in furious charge against the Londoners. With long lances in rest, or swinging their grim maces and battle-axes, the avalanche of horsemen crashed in irresistible strength upon the hapless citizen soldiers. In their van the tall, handsome young prince, a fearful fighter and a consummate rider, carried devastation to his foes. He thirsted for their blood, say the old chronicles,

 

" as the hart pants for coolie streams."

 

Before so terrible an onslaught the half-trained Londoners reeled and gave back. Their blows struck vainly on the painted shields of the knights, and on the coats and caps of ring mail. Yelling their fierce war-cries, the cavalry raged on into the yielding masses. The burghers broke in confusion, and the confusion became a rout, a desperate race for life. In mad panic they fled for safety up the green slopes, or down towards the waters of the Ouse.

 

For four miles the dreadful pursuit went on, a pitiless orgy of slaughter, marked in after ages by a scattered trail of bones and weapons. Many were drowned in trying to cross the river.

 

Meanwhile, the King's brother, Richard, seeing the Londoners running like sheep before Prince Edward, and not realising the effect that long pursuit might have on the rest of the battle, fell into the trap so cunningly set by De Montfort, and led a great attack upon what he supposed to be the Earl's headquarters, where his standard waved above the well-known litter-cage. Poor De Blund and his guard put up a stout defence, and his slingers and bowmen sent from their vantage ground such a hail of stones and arrows as made confusion in the attacking ranks. But by-and-bye Prince Edward and his knights, flushed with victory, came riding back.

 

They in their turn were deceived by Earl Simon's trick. Taking the guard in rear, the Prince launched his terrible cavalry upon the defenders, who went down fighting gamely before the overwhelming rush, De Blund being slain with the rest. The raging Prince pressed on in person to the litter.

 

" Come forth, Simon thou devil! Come out of the cart, thou worst of traitors!"

 

he shouted. There was no hope in the fierce melee for the luckless prisoners. They were killed before the hoax was discovered. And now the wily old Earl, observing the success of his strategem, with swift decision threw the entire weight of his reserve of trained fighters full against the royal centre, reinforced by the shaken forces of the king of the Romans. Charging down the slopes, and aided by a "barrage" of missiles from their slingers, the Barons threw the King's army into disorder.

 

The division under the King of the Romans was shattered and sent flying from the field. King Henry himself, close hemmed by enemies, played the man right royally. Astride his best war-horse, he shouted encouragement to his friends and defiance to his foes. His favourite horse was killed under him as he gave back blow for blow. A second mount was brought him, and that too was killed. Bleeding from a severe wound, and desperately rallying his faithful lords, he sounded the retreat, and fighting fiercely, the royal body guard fell back.

 

They were too far from the castle to hope to gain the shelter of its walls, so they fought a cruel rear-guard fight back to the Priory, behind the defences of which the King set himself to hold out till the return of his triumphant son should restore the fortunes of the day. His less fortunate brother Richard meantime had been hotly pursued by the victorious men of the Barons to a distant windmill on the Downs. Getting there in the nick of time, the fugitive and a few followers made fast the door against their enemies, who jeered at them mightily, shouting out;

 

"Come forth, thou bad miller!"

 

A popular ballad of the day said:

 

"The Kyng of Alemaine gederode ys host,
Makede him a castel of a mulne post;
Wende with is prude and is muchele bost,
Brohte from Alemayne mony sori gost
To store Windesor,
Richard, thah thou be ever trichard,
Trichen shalt thou never more!"

 

(The king of Germany gathered his men, made him a castle of a mill; turned with proud and mighty boast, brought from Germany many evil folk, to succour Windsor. Richard, though thou be ever trickster, trick shalt thou never more!)

 

When evening drew on without bringing him relief, the " bad miller" saw nothing for it but to surrender at discretion, and was led away, we are told, loaded with chains. The summer twilight was falling as Prince Edward and his riders returned with weary horses from the slaughter on the hills.

 

Over the high castle keeps the De Warenne banners floated still, but of the battle that had been raging when he rode away the Prince could see nothing but hundreds of dead and dying men and horses littering the ground. At the foot of the castle walls, when he reached them, there was more evidence of the fighting, for here a fierce attack by Earl Simon's men had been bloodily repelled.

 

Learning of the King's whereabouts, the Prince succeeded in fighting his way through he enemy, and entered the Priory, only to find that the day was lost indeed. And now a great despair spread among the survivors of the King's supporters. With one accord they began to desert him, slipping away as best they could in the
darkness and confusion. His remaining brothers, and even the proud Earl de Warenne (though his castle was still untaken) were among the fugitives. With hundreds of others they made their dangerous way through the dark, narrow streets of the little town, and a dense crowd of pursued and pursuers pressed towards the bridge across the Ouse.

 

There was not room for all on the bridge. Many sprang into the water to try and make their way across. Many others fled into the marshes of the estuary, disturbing the wild sea-fowl at their roosting places. In the deep mud they sank and were suffocated, and long after the battle the bodies of knights in full armour, still sitting their horses and grasping rusted swords in their dead hands, were found.

 

Those of note who did succeed in crossing the stream pressed on in desperate haste to Pevensey Castle, from which temporary refuge they crossed next day to France, bearing to the queen, who was over the water, the bitter news of the total overthrow of their party. Earl Simon is said to have been very angry at the escape of so many of the prominent men of the King's party. Another of the many popular ditties of those days describes his wrath at the escape of one after another of his chief enemies:

 

" Sir Simond de Mountford hath swore bi ys chin,
Havede he nou here the Erl of Waryn,
Shulde he never more come to his yn (own),
Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gyn (weapon)
To help of Wyndesore,

Sire Simond de Montfort hath swore bi his cop (head),
Havede he nou here Sire Hue le Bigot,
Al he shulde quite here a twelf-moneth scot (though he should pay a year's ransom)
Shulde he never more with his fot pot (trudge)
To helpe Wyndesore."

 

In all the long history of Lewes town, it has had no such awful night as that which followed the battle. Men and horses struggled and swayed this way and that in the pent streets between the timbered houses, their dark shapes silhouetted against a lurid glare that filled the sky. For the horror of fire was added to the horror of the sword. From the castle walls, within which De Warenne's men, ignorant of their master's flight, kept up a fierce resistance, pellets of tow dipped in Greek fire were hurled, and these, falling among the nearest wooden houses, sent them roaring up in flames.

 

Away on the other side of the town the forces of the barons had succeeded in setting fire to a portion of the Priory. In the glare of this double conflagration, flying royalists and their pursuers made a grim confusion in the streets, where wounded men lay groaning and crying in the gloom, trampled on by friend and foe alike, and riderless horses ran panic-struck amid the dancing shadows.

At last there came a pause in the slaughter and the terrible disorder. The King's party, seeing no help for it, accepted the terms of armistice proposed by Earl Simon. The Earl, however, leaving nothing to chance, spent the rest of the night in drawing so close the blockade of both the Priory and the castle that none could either enter or leave them.

 

At last the May sun rose again upon the scenes of carnage, and on that day the Mise, or temporary treaty of Lewes, was drawn up. Its exact terms are unknown, for the treaty itself is no longer in existence, but from the accounts of its contents which have come down to us, two of its principal conditions seem to have provided for a reference of the matters at issue to the arbitration of the King- of France—not a very promising expedient, for the French king had already been consulted with no very beneficial results - and the surrender to the Barons as hostages of the eldest son of the King and the son of Richard king of the Romans, his brother.

 

It is said that the surrender of the princes was due to the chivalrous insistence of Prince Edward himself, to prevent his royal father from being kept prisoner. Nine councillors were also to be appointed to carry on the government of the kingdom until the full terms of the treaty had been carried out, and it is of interest to note that the then Bishop of Chichester, Stephen of Bersted, was one of the three persons (" our beloved and faithful Simon de Montfort " and the Earl of Gloucester being the others) who were authorised by King Henry to make these appointments.

This is not the place to pursue further the great tragedy of Earl Simon's further struggle with the Crown. The love in which he was held by the common people of England is evidenced by the songs and sayings which have come down to us about " Simon the Righteous." High and low united in praising the goodness of his work for the liberties of Englishmen.

 

" May the Lord bless Simon de Montfort, his sons and comrades! "

 

exclaims the writer of a long Latin poem written in his own day,

 

" who have so nobly and boldly fought in compassion on the sad fate of the English, when they were so unspeakably 'trampled under foot and nearly deprived of their liberties, and even of life, languishing under their hard princes."

 

A French historian, named Nangis, living in his own day, was at pains to claim the great Earl as a Frenchman, and calls him "noble, chivalrous, and the ablest man of the age." When, after falling like a hero in his last great fight at Evesham, the body of the great Earl was shamefully cut up and distributed among his enemies, the love of Englishmen gave to his memory the honours of a saint, and many miracles were attributed to the virtue of his scattered remains.

 

Hymns were addressed to him. One of them begins thus:

 

" Salve, Symon Montis Fortis,
Totius flor militiae!
Duras poenas passus mortis,
Protector gentis Angliae!"

 

(" Hail, Simon of the Strong Mount, flower of all chivalry !
Thou hast passed the cruel pangs of death, 0 protector of . the English race!")

 

The green slopes of Mount Harry might well be a place of pilgrimage for Sussex men and women to-day, who have entered into the full heritage of that freedom which the great Earl of Leicester fought and died to win.

 

 

 

This extract taken from 'The Story of Sussex' by W. Victor Cook - printed 1920

 

 

 

 

 

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