But this quiet town in a peaceful valley was once disturbed by the noise of battle, and witnessed a crisis in English history. Prince Edward, son of Henry III., had contrived by masterly generalship to prevent the junction of the armies of Simon de Montfort and his son. The former was encamped at Evesham. The Prince's army blocked his one outlet by land; a detachment of it had cut off a retreat by the bridges over the river. The fight from the first was hopeless; De Montfort's troops were inferior: "The Welsh fled at the first onset like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in the cornfields and gardens where they had sought refuge. The little group of knights around Simon fought desperately, falling one by one till the Earl was left alone. So terrible were his sword-strokes that he had all but gained the hill-top when a lance-thrust brought his horse to the ground; but Simon still rejected the summons to yield, till a blow from behind felled him, mortally wounded, to the ground. Then with a last cry of 'It is God's grace,' the soul of the great patriot passed away."[7] The beauty and richness of the Vale of Evesham are proverbial; it is a land of corn and orchards, and it widens out as the Avon winds on in rounding the northern extremity of the Cotswolds. After a time the stream makes a great undulating sweep to the northward, as if to avoid the outlying mass of Dundry Hill, and brings us to another country town and another fragment of a grand church of olden time. Pershore was founded in the tenth century, as was Evesham, and only a few years afterwards; it too passed under the rule of the Benedictines, and was richly endowed by a pious Saxon noble, not only with lands, but also with relics. Pershore, however, was less uniformly prosperous than Evesham. Edward the Confessor gave of its lands to his new abbey at Westminster. William the Conqueror took of them for himself or his courtiers. For all that, money was found for rebuilding, and for rearing a glorious structure, resembling those at Gloucester and Tewkesbury, in the latter part of the eleventh century. The choir was again re-built in the thirteenth; the central tower dates from the middle of the fourteenth. The Reformation here, as elsewhere, was a time of plunder and destruction--nave, lady-chapel, and monastic buildings were pulled down; the people of Pershore, to their honour, purchased the rest of the church, and thus saved it from annihilation. The north transept fell down at a later date; but what is left has been carefully repaired and restored, and this fragment has been justly called one of the noblest specimens of Norman and Early English work that our country possesses.