Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Vol. 2 of 3: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets; Together With Some Few of Later Date
A Ballad made by one of the adherents to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, soon after the battle of Lewes, which was fought May 14, 1264,"
- affords a curious specimen of ancient satire, and chews that the liberty, assumed by the good people of title realm, of abusing their kings and princes at pleasure, is a privilege of very long standing.
To render this antique libel intelligible, the reader is to understand that just before the battle of Lewes, which proved so fatal to the interests of Henry III., the barons had offered his brother Richard, King of the Romans, 30,000l, to procure a, peace upon such terms, as would have divested Henry of all his regal power, and therefore the treaty proved abortive. The consequences of that battle are well-known: the king, prince Edward his son, his brother Richard, and many of his friends, fell into the hands of their enemies: while two great barons of the king's party, John, Earl of Warren, and Hugh Bigot, the king's justiciary, had been glad to escape into France.
In the first stanza, the aforesaid sum thirty thousand pounds is alluded to, but with the usual misrepresentation of party malevolence, is asserted to have been the exorbitant demand of the king's brother.
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