When, after much preliminary fighting, the armies of Henry and Simon faced each other in Sussex for a decisive battle, it was found that the king had much the larger army. He drew up his host outside the walls of Lewes, while Simon, who had marched from London, lay on the downs beyond it. When the shock came, the fiery Prince Edward, who led the right wing of the royalists, fell furiously on Simon's left wing, which was mainly composed of the levies of London, and drove them far off the field. But, carried away by his pursuit, he never thought of returning to help his father, and meanwhile Earl Simon had beaten the king's division, and rolled the royalist army back against the town wall of Lewes, where those of them who could not enter the gate at once were taken prisoners. Among the captives were the king himself, his brother Richard of Cornwall, and most of the chiefs of the royalist party. Prince Edward, rather than continue the civil war, gave himself up to the insurgents on the following day, to share his father's fate (May, 1264). The immediate result of the battle was the issue of a document called the _Mise of Lewes_, by which King Henry promised to keep the charter, to dismiss all his foreign relatives and dependents, and to place himself under the control of a privy council, whom Parliament should choose to act as his ministers and guardians. [Sidenote: =Rule of Simon de Montfort.--Captivity of the king and Prince Edward.=] A Parliament was hastily summoned and delegated three electors to nominate this privy council, namely, Earl Simon, the Earl of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester. The electors, naturally but unwisely, appointed none but their own trusted supporters. Thus England came under the rule of a party, and a party whose violent action had been disliked by a great portion of the nation. The king was but a puppet in their hands; he was practically their prisoner, for three of the council always attended his steps and kept him in sight. Now, Henry, irritating and faithless as his conduct had always been, was not personally disliked, and the sight of their monarch led about like a captive and forced to obey every behest of his captors, was very displeasing to many who had formerly felt no sympathy for him. It was felt, too, that his son Edward was being very hardly treated by being kept in honourable captivity and deprived of all share in the government; for the prince had taken the side of reform till the outbreak of the civil war, had only joined his father when Simon took arms, and had behaved with great patriotism and self-denial in refusing to continue the struggle after Lewes.