Abandoning all intention of reducing Kenilworth Castle Edward and his troops pushed on their way towards Evesham, just over the border, in the neighbouring county of Worcestershire, bearing the captured standards in the van. At Evesham lay the Earl of Leicester, awaiting his son De Montfort, who, at the time of his defeat near Kenilworth by Prince Edward, had been on his way to join the Earl, then in Wales. Deceived by the standards the forces of the Barons prepared not to resist the advancing army, but to welcome it, under the mistaken impression that the force was that of their expected friends. After the fierce engagement, fought on a torrid August day in 1265, on the high ground known as Green Hill, between the roads to Birmingham and Worcester, and about a mile outside the town, in which not only was the Earl of Leicester, Henry de Montfort and many nobles slain, but the power of the Barons finally broken, Simon de Montfort, who had escaped, fled to Kenilworth and afterwards to France. After the conclusion of the Barons’ war, for almost two centuries this most lovely of English counties rested in the tranquillity which during that period marked the years as they passed in central England, whatever happenings fell to dwellers on the coasts. Only the merest echoes of the French wars of Edward III. and the glorious victories of Crecy and Poitiers seem to have reached the peaceful vales of Warwickshire; though old Records and Chronicles bear witness that the country contributed of her money and her sons to uphold the might of England. And the same may be said of the brave doings at Agincourt, Crevant, Verneuil, and Herrings; and the defeat sustained at Patay which counted for so much in the future history of the race. At most the disturbing influence of these wars was represented by the rumours, which travelled not fast in those times, the visits of the recruiting officers of the day, the appeal for followers made by some manorial lord, or the breathless tales told by returned wounded, or veterans from the “stricken fields” of fair France.