But what actual evidence is there of this interpretation of
the battle? I suggest the following.
1. One of the chroniclers, Nicholas Trevet says that both
armies met in a large plain outside the town "in campo extra oppidum
spatioso". This may on the face of it sound like chroniclers' verbiage,
but if you walk out of Evesham via Mill Street and Common Road you will
indeed see before you a spacious plain stretching from Greenhill to the
River Avon. Common Road turns into a footpath which links up with
Blayneys lane, by then also a footpath, at the Evesham bypass. On the
other side of the bypass the footpath continues to the Avon and then
a long its west bank. Did this footpath exist as a road at the time? In
his study of ridgeways, which were the great through roads of the time, Dr
Grundy, (who incidentally took the standard view that de Montfort had
marched up Greenhill, which was the Ridgeway)
also pointed out that there could be "summer ways" where people took a
short cut in the summer which was denied to them by a the wetness of the
ground in the winter. I suggest that the road out of Evesham by the Common
Road was such a summer way and there is some evidence from a study of the
Evesham Civil War defences that a road existed there in the 17th century.
So, if de Montfort did take this route , he would soon find himself in a
great plain outside the town and where he could at least see where the
enemy was attacking from as opposed to marching up the ridgeway to
Greenhill and trying to guess what was over the other side.
2. The wash-house incident in the new account. I quote from
the Norman French. "E quant il vindrent au lavour de la vile de Evesham,
le conte communement dit a touz......" The translation in English
Historical Review translates 'lavour' as conduit with a note that it could
mean washing place in the alternative. I am not an expert in Norman
French but in modern French 'conduit' is exactly the same word. 'Lavoir'
in modern French means wash-house. I would have thought therefore that
the more likely translation was wash-house. In a town with a river, would
you not expect to find the wash-house by the river? I suggest that it was
on the outskirts of the town in the area of what is now Mill Street and
Common Road.
3. According to Wykes, Edward divided his army into two
divisions, the first one under himself, and the second under Clare. It was
only the first division that could initially be seen at a distance by the
de Montfort army; the second division was hidden by a small intervening
hill. It is usually assumed that the small intervening hill was Greenhill
on the basis that there is no other hill, but as Edward's division was on
Greenhill, it is rather difficult to see how Clare's division could be
coming from a different direction and yet hidden by the same hill. But in
fact, there is another hill further back from Greenhill on the road from
the A4538 (recently renumbered A44) to Lenchwick. From a distance, it
looks more like a long ridge than a hill although when you walk up it, it
is steeper than it looks! There is also another hill at Twyford. The
point is that they are directly between Mosham Meadow and the Avon to the
east which is the way that Clare would have been likely to have gone if he
was to block the route along the river which I suggest that de Montfort
took out of Evesham. If he kept his troops just behind these hills then
for much of the time his division would have been out of sight of de
Montfort's army. One of the things which Simon de Montfort supposedly said
before the battle was "by the arm of St James they approach wisely; but
they learnt this method from me, not from themselves". If de Montfort did
say that, I wonder if he was referring to moving troops out of sight of
the enemy. I think he may have done something like this at Lewes, using
the ridges in the Downs to hide his troops while he moved them into the
position which he wanted, and according to John Morris, his father used
the same technique at the battle of Muret. So perhaps Clare is now using
the same trick which he had learned from de Montfort at Lewes.
4. Although the new account says that the royalist army
came up the hill in three divisions, it goes on to say that de Montfort
saw the Earl of Gloucester's banner coming up alongside over towards the
river. This is consistent with Clare blocking de Montfort's escape route
and clashing with him at Siveldeston near the river.
