s towns, advanced westward to Hereford, and was marching at the
end of May along bad roads into the heart of South Wales to attack the
fortresses of Earl Gilbert in Glamorgan when Edward suddenly made his
escape from Hereford and joined Gloucester at Ludlow. The moment had been
skilfully chosen, and Edward showed a rare ability in the movements by
which he took advantage of the Earl's position. Moving rapidly along the
Severn he seized Gloucester and the bridges across the river, destroyed the
ships by which Leicester strove to escape across the Channel to Bristol,
and cut him off altogether from England. By this movement too he placed
himself between the Earl and his son Simon, who was advancing from the east
to his father's relief. Turning rapidly on this second force Edward
surprised it at Kenilworth and drove it with heavy loss within the walls of
the castle. But the success was more than compensated by the opportunity
which his absence gave to the Earl of breaking the line of the Severn.
Taken by surprise and isolated as he was, Simon had been forced to seek for
aid and troops in an avowed alliance with Llewelyn, and it was with Welsh
reinforcements that he turned to the east. But the seizure of his ships and
of the bridges of the Severn held him a prisoner in Edward's grasp, and a
fierce attack drove him back, with broken and starving forces, into the
Welsh hills. In utter despair he struck northward to Hereford; but the
absence of Edward now enabled him on the 2nd of August to throw his troops
in boats across the Severn below Worcester. The news drew Edward quickly
back in a fruitless counter-march to the river, for the Earl had already
reached Evesham by a long night march on the morning of the 4th, while his
son, relieved in turn by Edward's counter-march, had pushed in the same
night to the little town of Alcester. The two armies were now but some ten
miles apart, and their junction seemed secured. But both were spent with
long marching, and while the Earl, listening reluctantly to the request of
the King who accompanied him, halted at Evesham for mass and dinner, the
army of the younger Simon halted for the same purpose at Alcester.

[Sidenote: Battle of Evesham]

"Those two dinners doleful were, alas!" sings Robert of Gloucester; for
through the same memorable night Edward was hurrying back from the Severn
by country cross-lanes to seize the fatal gap that lay between them. As
morning broke his army lay acr