Although Oman relied principally on Guisborough, this three
directional approach is supported by other Chroniclers, e.g. Trevet who
says that Edward approached the town of Evesham from one side and from two
other sides came the Earl of Gloucester with his division and Roger of
Mortimer with his host, and in particular by the Evesham Chronicle which
says the Count of Leicester was cut off from every side so that he must
either surrender immediately or give battle with his forces. The
assumption on the face of it therefore is that the three royalist
divisions set off from Worcester by different routes.
However, there were objections to this theory. From a
military point of view, it was argued that a capable commander such as
Edward would not have divided his forces until the last possible moment.
It was also pointed out that there was another route to Kenilworth along
the east side of the Avon via Bidford and that Edward would need to block
that too. The chronicler support for this is a line in Trevet "and Edward
, moving from Worcester, the river having been crossed next to the town
which is called Clive, intercepted with his army the route of the father
towards the son who was in Kenilworth Castle and that of the son to the
father." Clive is usually taken to mean Cleeve Prior and for example J.
Ramsay in his "Dawn of the Constitution" argued that Edward had
gone from Worcester across to Cleeve Prior, crossed the Avon there and
then marched along the east bank to Offenham, where he divided his forces,
sending Mortimer on to block the Evesham town bridge so that Simon senior
could not escape that way and with his own division and that of Clare
going back over the Avon via the footbridge at Offenham and taking up the
position on Greenhill.
Ramsay's view is the main basis for the theory that the
battle itself centred on the hillock, where the obelisk is now, over to
the west side of the battlefield. According to Ramsay, Simon senior
realised what was happening, and tried to reach the Greenhill crossroads
before Edward's army but was pushed to the west by the weight of numbers
coming up Blayney's lane from Offenham and was forced to take up his
position around the obelisk area, which was the best he could find in the
circumstances and at least gave him some higher ground. This does not seem
unrealistic to me but of course it depends upon the crossing of the Avon
by Edward at Cleeve Prior.
Other historians have had similars views, albeit with
reservations and variations as to how Edward got his troops together on
Greenhill with Mortimer blocking the Evesham town bridge from the south of
the Avon. I do not want go into these in detail because new evidence shows
that the Cleeve Prior theory is probably wrong, but the reader will find
it in many of the accounts of the battle of Evesham. However, in 1988,
D.C. Cox seriously challenged the Cleeve Prior crossing theory in his book
"The battle of Evesham, a new account". He argued that the logistical
problems involved in crossing at Cleeve Prior and organising a three
directional approach were too complicated for a thirteenth century army.
His view was that" the river having been crossed next to the town which is
called Clive" referred to Simon senior's earlier crossing of the River
Severn at Clevelode and that "Clive" was the hamlet of Clifton on the
east bank of the Severn opposite Clevelode. Edward had simply taken the
old road, north of the Avon from Worcester until he was near Greenhill
just north of Evesham and then divided his army into three divisions. He
interpreted the position of Mortimer "from the west and from behind" as
meaning that Mortimer's division was behind and to the west of Edward's,
when the royalist forces deployed on Greenhill.
