Although the queen was living in France at this time, she made several secret visits to England, to ascertain the true state of affairs there. After her husband's dreadful defeat at Lewes, she pawned all her jewels, and, with the money thus raised, collected a powerful army that might have subdued the whole kingdom if they had ever reached {158}it. But the Almighty mercifully ordained otherwise, and before Queen Eleanor, with her foreign troops, set sail, the battle of Evesham was fought and won by Prince Edward. [[A.D. 1265.]] At this battle King Henry was wounded in the shoulder and would have been cut down by one of his own soldiers, who mistook him for an enemy, had he not cried out in a feeble voice: "Slay me not, I am Henry of Winchester, your king." An officer who happened to be within hearing, conducted him to Prince Edward, and thus the royal father and son met once more. After tenderly embracing his sire, the prince knelt to receive his blessing. A succession of victories for Edward soon put an end to the barons' wars and reinstated the royal family of England. It is much to the credit of King Henry, that after he was restored to power, not one of his enemies was brought to the scaffold. But he punished them with such heavy fines that many of the rebel barons were reduced to penury. [[A.D. 1269.]] Henry III. lived to witness the completion of St. Edward's chapel at Westminster, which he had begun fifty years before. On St. Edward's day, October 13, 1269, assisted by his two sons and his brother, the King of the Romans, he bore the bier of Edward the Confessor to the chapel and deposited it in the new receptacle. This ceremony was witnessed by the whole court, and Queen Eleanor offered at the shrine a silver image of the Virgin, besides jewels of great value. King Henry reserved the old coffin of the saint for his own use, and was placed in it just three years later, having expired on the 16th of November, 1272. He was buried at Westminster Abbey, near the shrine of Edward the Confessor. His funeral was conducted with {159}great magnificence by the Knights Templars-military monks who, in the middle ages, acted as bankers and money-brokers to all Europe--and they raised a fine monument to his memory, which was afterwards inlaid with precious stones brought from the Holy Land for that purpose, by Edward I., King Henry's heir. Queen Margaret, of Scotland, followed her royal father to the grave within the year, and then, bowed down with suffering and sorrow, Queen Eleanor retired to Ambresbury, where four years later she entered the convent and took the veil.