s going to and from England. At last in March, 1266, Edward
forced Winchelsea to open its gates to him. He next turned his arms
against a valiant freebooter, Adam Gordon, who lurked with his band of
outlaws in the dense beech woods of the Chilterns. With the capture of
Adam Gordon, after a hand-to-hand tussle with Edward in which the
king's son narrowly escaped with his life, the resistance in the south
was at an end.

As one centre of rebellion was pacified other disturbances arose. In
the spring of 1266, Robert Ferrars, Earl of Derby, newly released from
the prison into which Earl Simon had thrown him, raised a revolt in his
own county. On May 15, 1266, Derby was defeated by Henry of Almaine at
Chesterfield. His earldom was transferred to Edmund, the king's son,
already Montfort's successor as Earl of Leicester, and in 1267 also
Earl of Lancaster, a new earldom, deriving its name from the youngest
of the shires.[1] Reduced to the Staffordshire estate of
Chartley, the house of Ferrars fell back into the minor baronage.
Kenilworth was still unconquered. Its walls were impregnable except to
famine, and before his flight to Axholme young Simon had procured
provisions adequate for a long resistance. The garrison harried the
neighbourhood with such energy that the whole levies of the realm were
assembled to subdue it. After a fruitless assault, the royalists
settled down to a blockade which lasted from midsummer to Christmas.
The legate, Ottobon, appearing in the besiegers' camp to excommunicate
the defenders, they in derision dressed up their surgeon in the red
robes of a cardinal, in which disguise he answered Ottobon's curses by
a travesty of the censures of the Church.

[1] For Edmund's estates and whole career, see W.E. Rhodes'
_Edmund, Earl of Lancaster_, in _Engl. Hist. Review_, x.
(1895), 19-40 and 209-37.

The blockade soon tried the patience of the barons. It was hard to keep
any medieval army long together, and the lords, anxious to go back to
their homes, complained of the harsh policy that compelled their long
attendance. The royalist host split up into two parties, led
respectively by Roger Mortimer and Earl Gilbert of Gloucester. The
cruel lord of Wigmore was the type of the extreme reaction. Intent only
on vengeance, booty, and ambition, Mortimer clamoured for violent
measures, and was eager to reject all compromises. Gloucester, on the
other hand, posed as the mediator, and urged the need of