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00:00Out of the chaos, darkness, and violence of the Middle Ages, one family rose to seize
00:20control of England.
00:26Generation after generation, they ruled the country for more than 300 years, ruthlessly
00:34crushing all competition to become the greatest English dynasty of all time, the Plantagenets.
00:49What I love about the Plantagenets story is that it's more shocking, more brutal, and
00:54more astonishing than anything you'll find in fiction.
00:58I want to show you the Plantagenets as I see them, real, living, breathing people, driven
01:04by ambition, jealousy, hatred, and revenge.
01:09These kings murdered, betrayed, and tyrannized their way to spectacular success.
01:14For better and for worse, the Plantagenets forged England as a nation.
01:20This time, a friendship that turns to hatred, plunging England into civil war, and changing
01:36the monarchy forever.
01:43value, and change the world.
01:44I don't know.
01:46I don't know.
01:47It's going to be really a big one to do it.
01:48I know.
01:49I want to see it, my god, I know that you are the only one of the ones who are
01:51in here right now, and the gods who make it all for me.
01:52I know I know, for this guy, I will even have to do it.
01:53You've been using so much money for me, but I know, for now.
01:54I'm not building a Specialist.
01:56There's no idea, as a couple of years of the Plantagenets,
01:58there's a major name for me before you are sitting in the middleman,
02:01and it's a great one, and I know I know I know.
02:04I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know.
02:06I don't know.
02:36Henry III is the fourth Plantagenet king.
02:43His grandfather, Henry II, ruled over more of France than the French king.
02:50But thanks to the incompetence of Henry III's dad, King John, most of those lands are gone.
02:57Henry dreams of getting them back.
03:00He's going to be a great Plantagenet king.
03:03To be a king in the Middle Ages, you've got to be tough and politically savvy.
03:10You need to fight wars and win, and the winning part's important.
03:14You need to dispense justice fairly and evenly, and above everything else, you need a boundless energy, the appetite, to get up in the morning and rule.
03:23Unfortunately for England, Henry III lacks pretty much every one of those qualities.
03:29Henry's already had two goes at retaking his lost French lands.
03:33But Henry messed it up big time.
03:40Both times it ended in expensive defeat.
03:44The barons lost all confidence in the king.
03:46Now they've turned off the money supply.
03:49Which, of course, they can.
03:51Henry's completely hamstrung by Magna Carta.
03:56Today we think of it as a charter of human rights and the foundation of liberty.
04:01But to Henry, it's just a list of things he can't do.
04:03And top of that list is that he can't raise any new taxes without the barons' say-so.
04:09Winning back his Plantagenet empire is going to cost Henry a bomb.
04:14But Magna Carta means the barons don't have to cough up.
04:16They think Henry can talk the talk, but he can't walk the walk.
04:25And that's the truth about Henry.
04:27He's a total dreamer.
04:33They give him his due.
04:36He dreams big.
04:42This is Westminster Abbey.
04:46Henry builds it to restore some lost Plantagenet pride.
04:55You can imagine Henry wandering through this incredible building thinking,
04:59sends off all the right signals for a great king.
05:03But as far as the barons are concerned, that's exactly what he's not.
05:08And Henry just isn't strong enough to take them on alone.
05:16But in autumn 1230, a man turns up at court who changes the course of Henry's reign.
05:23A minor French knight with big ambitions.
05:30Simon de Montfort.
05:34De Montfort doesn't do anything by halves.
05:37He wears a hair shirt under his clothes 24-7.
05:41It rakes his skin.
05:43A perpetual reminder to stay focused on God.
05:46Basically, he's a fanatic.
05:56And he backs his belief with action.
05:59He spent his youth chasing heretics around the south of France with a sword.
06:03Henry sees a man with the muscular, no-nonsense, single-mindedness that he needs to achieve his big dreams.
06:15Henry was so young when he came to the throne that he's grown up with other people making all the important decisions for him.
06:22So when he meets Simon, charismatic, decisive, he's looking at him and thinking,
06:26I could use a man like that.
06:32Henry's drawn to de Montfort like a moth to a flame.
06:38But it's not just one-sided.
06:41Because Simon may be pious, but he's also very ambitious.
06:44And he's come to England looking for the lucrative title of Earl of Leicester,
06:48which he thinks belongs to his family.
06:50So he's looking at Henry and thinking exactly the same thing.
06:54I could use a man like that.
06:59Unsurprisingly, Henry and Simon quickly become best mates.
07:04Simon's soon on the king's council, basically his right-hand man.
07:09He's even steward at the king's wedding.
07:14Simon de Montfort is on the way up.
07:16Stored at the National Archives is an amazing document that has survived for eight centuries.
07:31It reveals just how ambitious Simon is.
07:34This is the king's official copy of a charter made by Simon de Montfort in 1236.
07:41His contents aren't really that important.
07:43What is important is the way Simon's referred to himself.
07:46It says here,
07:48Simon de Montfort,
07:49Comes, that's Earl,
07:51Earl of Leicester.
07:53And that's interesting,
07:53because Simon had lots of the lands that went with the title of Earl,
07:57but he didn't have the title itself.
07:59And that tells us quite a lot about Simon.
08:02Firstly, it tells us he's ambitious.
08:05Secondly,
08:06it tells us he rates his relationship with the king high enough to go about using a title he doesn't really have the right to.
08:13But thirdly,
08:14it tells us he's right,
08:15because this is the king's official copy.
08:17Henry's given it his sign-off.
08:19So Simon might be cocky,
08:21but it's with very good reason.
08:22Henry can't get enough of Simon.
08:26He propels his new best friend into the medieval stratosphere.
08:36Simon marries Henry's sister, Eleanor, the greatest catch in the kingdom.
08:43Henry should have married her off to one of the great European rulers to secure a political alliance.
08:48But he's convinced Simon can help him become the great king of his dreams.
08:55So he gives Eleanor to his best mate instead.
09:01You'd imagine Simon's feeling pretty pleased with himself.
09:04He's married to the king's sister.
09:06He's an insider at court.
09:07He's the king's favourite.
09:09Considering where he came from,
09:11he hasn't done too badly.
09:14But Simon's deal is not all it seems.
09:16But Eleanor should have come with a massive dowry.
09:20Instead of giving it to his friend,
09:22Henry hangs on to the money and land for himself.
09:27This decision sows the seeds of catastrophe.
09:30He's a murderer.
09:48In 1239, Henry makes de Montfort Earl of Leicester.
10:14Simon's now the king's brother-in-law, his chief advisor, and an English baron.
10:23But at precisely this moment of triumph, Simon goes too far.
10:32He takes out a big fat loan using Henry as guarantor.
10:37As far as he's concerned, Henry owes him for his wife's dowry, so he doesn't ask Henry
10:43first.
10:46Big mistake.
10:55When Simon tries to play it down, Henry threatens to throw Simon and his own sister into the
11:03Tower of London.
11:05And he's not kidding.
11:11For Henry, this is an outrageous liberty.
11:15Giving things to Simon, well, that's one thing.
11:17But you can't just stand around while Simon takes what he wants.
11:21Henry doesn't like it, but Simon has to go.
11:26Simon and Eleanor are forced to flee to France.
11:30It seems like the end of a beautiful friendship.
11:37But Henry's going to need Simon again, sooner than he thinks.
11:46Just three years later, the king gets himself into big trouble.
11:52Henry's launched an attack here at Poitou in western France.
11:57It was once his ancestor's territory.
12:00Henry thought he could take it back.
12:03But he couldn't.
12:06Just like last time, the barons used Magna Carta to deny him the taxes he needed.
12:12But just like last time, Henry went ahead anyway.
12:19Sacking Poitou was spectacularly stupid.
12:23Because the count of Poitou's brother is the French king.
12:27Henry's forces quickly find themselves chased down by the whole French army.
12:36In desperation, Henry has called on the one man he believes can help him.
12:42His estranged and banished best friend, Simon de Montfort.
12:47Simon was just back from a year-on crusade in the Holy Land,
12:50so his military expertise was greater than ever.
12:53And Henry had eaten humble pie to get him back.
12:56Now, this is quite a climb down.
12:58Henry was the one who banished Simon in the first place,
13:01and now he's stuffed without him.
13:07But even Simon can't salvage this disaster.
13:13Henry flees the field.
13:17He leaves Simon fighting a desperate rearguard action with the king's men.
13:23They retreat towards the town of Sant.
13:27Henry is cowering inside the town,
13:31and it's not just the French army that comes storming after him.
13:35Simon is not used to losing.
13:44Now it's his turn to explode at the king.
13:48The king himself reported what Simon says.
13:53I am the king.
13:55Ah, yes.
13:56Ah, yes.
13:57You are the king.
13:58You should be locked up.
13:59You should be locked up.
14:00You should be locked up.
14:01You should be locked up.
14:02Now, Charles the Simple was a notoriously useless French king,
14:06whose subjects put him in jail because he was such a bad general.
14:10Thinking about locking up your king is one thing,
14:12but actually saying it to his face is flirting with treason.
14:18But Henry can't call Simon on it.
14:22This is the king's third failure in France.
14:26There's now zero chance the English barons will support his ambitions.
14:31He desperately needs an ally in the aristocracy.
14:36And Simon is still the Earl of Leicester.
14:46So when they return to England, Henry eats more humble pie.
14:50He gives Simon this whacking great castle at Kenilworth.
14:56For five years, their friendship holds up.
15:00So when a foreign crisis pops up in 1247,
15:04the king turns to his best friend again.
15:09All Henry has left of the Plantagenet Empire in France is Gascony.
15:15But it's in chaos, with feuding nobles,
15:18a French king itching to invade,
15:20and its southern borders under attack.
15:24As ever, the barons won't let Henry raise taxes to sort it out.
15:30They think he'll just cock it up again.
15:34So Henry asks Simon to fix it for him.
15:39And he'll pay him later.
15:42Henry admires the fact that Simon will take the tough decisions he can't.
15:46That's why he sends him.
15:48Simon's a zero-tolerance sort of guy.
15:50And true to form, he launches a vicious crackdown on the Gascon rebels,
15:55even cutting their vines, which in wine country is a terrible punishment.
16:04But while Simon's in Gascony, Henry finds himself drawn in by another powerful figure.
16:10William de Valence, the king's half-brother, leader of a French family called the Lucinians.
16:20Henry starts giving them land and titles.
16:23In exchange, they supplant the English lords and begin to take control of the government for him.
16:29Finally, the king has some allies at home.
16:32Seems great, doesn't it?
16:34But it's not.
16:35The Lucinians were actually booted out of France because they're dangerous, ruthless and pretty nasty.
16:43Henry's decision to give them so much power will tear the country apart.
16:49But right now, all he can see is that they make him feel like a powerful king.
16:59Now he doesn't need Simon de Montfort like he used to.
17:06When the Gascons complain about Simon's brutality, Henry hangs his old mate out to dry.
17:18Even though de Montfort has run up huge debts doing the king's dirty work, Henry puts him on trial for his treatment of the Gascons.
17:31The trial takes place here, right in the shadow of Henry's greatest building project, Westminster Abbey.
17:37And it's held in what used to be the monk's dining room.
17:40You can still see part of the original wall.
17:42Now, if you'd been sitting on the other side of that in 1252, you'd have witnessed the end of the friendship of Simon de Montfort and Henry III.
17:53The case is held before the king and Simon's fellow barons.
18:00Simon is reeling that his friend has put him on trial.
18:06An all-out row kicks off between them.
18:10But who could believe that you are even a Christian?
18:14And that you never went to the confession?
18:16Yes, of course.
18:17But what does confession do without repentance and redemption?
18:22It sounds like Simon's having a dig at Henry's piety, but I think there's more to it than that.
18:29He certainly picked an analogy designed to hurt the king's feelings.
18:33But what he's really saying is, what's the point in confessing, admitting your mistakes, if you're going to do the same stupid things again afterwards?
18:42It's like, you're useless, you know you're useless, but you don't want to do anything about it.
18:47And that sounds like Simon's really overstepping the mark again.
18:51But he's about to give Henry a brutal lesson in kingship.
18:55Simon has taken the political temperature in the room.
19:06The king hasn't.
19:08When Henry puts the charges to a vote, Simon walks.
19:26The other barons are as fed up with the king and his Lucianians as Simon is.
19:38Henry and Simon now hate each other with a passion.
19:42Yes!
19:43And England will pay a terrible price.
19:53Henry sulks.
19:56And he lets the Lucianians off the leash.
19:59They start grabbing land and property in total violation of Magna Carta.
20:15Their supporters even ransack the Archbishop of Canterbury's London palace.
20:20Henry simply stands by and lets them get away with it.
20:24It just confirms the barons' view that he's a spineless excuse for a king.
20:30And then in 1256, Henry does something quite extraordinary.
20:41It's spelt out in an astonishing 700-year-old book here in the British Library.
20:48This is the chronicle of Matthew Paris, who was writing at the time of Henry III and had better access than anyone else to Henry and his court.
20:57And he writes that the king gave an order under the regio sigilo, the royal seal, that no brief, that's any official government document, could be used to cause injury aliqui fratri sui to any of his brothers.
21:13Henry's not in a very good place, which includes the Lucianians.
21:16So Henry's saying the Lucianians can't be prosecuted.
21:20Effectively, they're above the law.
21:22And this is political dynamite.
21:28The barons are furious.
21:30In retaliation, they squeeze Henry's finances further.
21:36Henry's not in a very good place.
21:38He's lost the war with France.
21:39He's made a mess of Gascony.
21:41He's upset most of his barons and he's broke.
21:43It's time to sort things out.
21:45So what does he do?
21:46Does he kick out the Lucianians?
21:48Does he reassure his barons?
21:50Does he sort out Gascony?
21:52No, he decides to do something bold, something radical, something no-one will expect.
21:58He decides to invade Sicily.
22:01It was actually the Pope's idea.
22:05He asked Henry to do it.
22:08But Henry jumps at the opportunity to take control of a wealthy country.
22:14This could help free him from the control of the English barons.
22:18But Sicily is a thousand miles away.
22:25It would cost an absolute fortune to take.
22:29Henry can't even hang on to his lands in France.
22:32So invading Sicily is a bonkers idea.
22:36And everyone can see it.
22:39Except the king.
22:41Henry demands taxes from the English barons to fund the invasion.
22:46He thinks he can get away with it because de Valence's violent Lucianians support him.
22:51A group of barons come to London to put Henry back in his box.
22:56And it's his old friend Simon de Montfort leading the charge.
23:01The End
23:24He uses the completion of the repentance or redemption.
23:28Simon de Montfort comes to London to bring King Henry III to heel.
23:43The king stitched him up over Gascony.
23:46Simon will never forgive him.
23:53This is Westminster Hall.
23:55More than 900 years old,
23:56it's all that's left of the medieval palace.
23:59And it's here that Simon and the barons march up to meet Henry III.
24:04He's sitting up there on his throne,
24:05and he thinks they've come to give him money for his Sicilian invasion.
24:09But as soon as they arrive, he realises something's very wrong.
24:14Simon and the others might not have swords in their hands,
24:16but they're still done up in their battle armour.
24:20And Henry knows the tables are turned.
24:26Simon and his allies aren't here to take Henry captive.
24:40What they're demanding is almost worse.
24:42First, they want the Lusignans stripped of all their English property and kicked out of the country.
24:53Second, they want a permanent council of barons to manage the affairs of the king.
24:57However they want to phrase it, the reality is they're taking over.
25:06This is a nightmare for Henry.
25:08Simon and his mates are saying,
25:10not only are we not going to help you with Sicily,
25:13but you're such a disaster.
25:15We're going to take away pretty much all your power.
25:18They come armed because they're telling Henry,
25:20Henry, we're stronger than you.
25:22And they are.
25:26Henry's forced to agree to all their demands just to get out of the room.
25:30Très bien, mon frère.
25:39But as soon as he does, he backtracks on everything he's promised.
25:42Eight weeks later, at a parliament in Oxford,
25:48Henry faces off against Simon and the barons,
25:51and he takes his half-brother William and his Lusignan thugs with him.
25:57The town's full of knights from both sides, armed to the teeth.
26:01The atmosphere's electric.
26:02You can feel the tension.
26:04The country's teetering on the verge of civil war.
26:07The hated Lusignans have no intention of giving up their castles and land.
26:17They think they can take on Simon de Montfort.
26:22The explosive meeting becomes known as the Mad Parliament.
26:29Simon directly threatens the king's half-brother.
26:33Make no mistake, you will either give up your castles,
26:36or you will lose your head.
26:39Is he bluffing, or is Simon serious?
26:42Frankly, I wouldn't put it past him.
26:44This isn't some soft, wealthy English baron.
26:47This is a hard man, a crusader,
26:50a guy who's used to spilling blood.
26:55The Lusignans are no match for de Montfort,
26:57and they know it.
27:02They flee for their lives.
27:04Henry's resistance collapses.
27:07He has to accept all the baron's demands.
27:16The new rules that he's forced to sign up to
27:19are legally recorded in a document called the Provisions of Oxford.
27:23This is one of the most important documents in British history.
27:31Everyone thinks of Magna Carta as the great bill that limited King's power,
27:35but the provisions of Oxford are actually far more extreme.
27:40Henry spent his whole life railing against the restrictions of Magna Carta.
27:44The provisions of Oxford really give him something to complain about.
27:47And we have them here copied in French into a chronicle from the time.
27:52And you can see a council of Cairns, that's 15 barons,
27:57will meet to manage the affairs of the kingdom.
28:00A parliament will meet, tres, three times a year,
28:04whether or not the king summoned it.
28:06Simon and the barons, essentially a parliament,
28:11can now make decisions on pretty much anything that happens in the kingdom.
28:17Whether or not Henry likes it.
28:20He's become a rubber stamp.
28:22And if he breaks the provisions, the penalty is war.
28:28It's a seismic shift in political power away from the king.
28:33And it's the basis of our modern parliamentary system.
28:39This must be devastating for Henry.
28:41He's already lost most of his ancestral lands in France.
28:45And now in England, where his authority is supposed to be supreme,
28:48he's virtually powerless as well.
28:49His whole vision of what it is to be a king is being shattered.
28:59The barons demand that everyone swears an oath before God
29:03to abide by the provisions.
29:08Problem is, Henry and Simon's attitudes to the oath are poles apart.
29:13Everyone knows Plantagenet kings and their barons
29:19have a long history of breaking their oaths.
29:22But for Simon, once he's made a sacred oath with God,
29:26he's really boxed himself into a corner.
29:29Remember, this guy is a religious zealot.
29:32The oath is sworn at Blackfriars Church in Oxford
29:41by Henry, the barons, and by Simon.
29:46So after he makes the oath, he stays up half the night in prayer,
29:58he abstains from sex,
29:59and he's still wearing his hair shirt under his clothes.
30:02This is his treaty with God,
30:04and he's never going to break it.
30:08But he knows Henry will.
30:10Within four years, de Montfort's worst fears come true.
30:23Because Henry has sworn the oath, knowing he'll break it.
30:28He brings back the Lucinians,
30:31and just like before, they do pretty much whatever they want.
30:36Henry's gambling the barons will turn a blind eye,
30:40because the alternative is civil war.
30:44And no-one wants that, do they?
30:49It's a massive miscalculation by the king.
30:55One man is committed.
30:58Almost alone amongst those who've sworn it,
31:01Simon will keep the oath, whatever the cost.
31:06Simon raises an army from those barons
31:09who still believe in the provisions of Oxford.
31:14In 1264, England is plunged into a civil war.
31:19This is the town of Lewes, close to the south coast.
31:26And it's here that Simon de Montfort and Henry III
31:28face off against each other in battle for the first time.
31:34Simon may have the law on his side,
31:36but however you dress it up,
31:38he's still taking on God's anointed king.
31:41He is now a traitor.
31:43And when it comes to traitors,
31:46Henry can still call on plenty of support.
31:50By the time they confront each other,
31:52Simon's on the back foot.
31:55Simon's experienced enough to know
31:57that as he approaches the town of Lewes,
31:59here on the Sussex Downs,
32:00things don't look very good for him.
32:02He's injured with a broken leg.
32:04His army is massively outnumbered, two to one,
32:07and Henry is holed up down there behind strong town walls.
32:12Simon knows the king will be feeling pretty confident,
32:15but then again, that's what he's banking on.
32:17He's planning to force the king
32:21into a winner-takes-all battle on his terms
32:24by drawing the king out into the open.
32:29It's a massive gamble, but that's Simon all over.
32:34Under cover of darkness,
32:36Simon's army takes this ridge overlooking the town.
32:40Now he has the high ground.
32:44He's done. Amen.
32:47Early next morning,
32:52Simon's army prostrate themselves on the ground
32:55to be blessed by the bishops.
32:57Simon and his men are on a crusade for liberty.
33:05He and his men truly believe that God is on their side.
33:08They're radicalised,
33:10driven by the dream of a different kind of England,
33:12in which the king no longer calls the shots.
33:15Henry is fighting for the absolute supremacy of the king.
33:21Simon de Montfort is fighting to crush it.
33:25De Montfort may have God on his side,
33:28but the king's got far more men.
33:31He also has a secret weapon.
33:34Edward, his eldest son and heir,
33:37he's utterly fearless and champing at the bit
33:39to hack up de Montfort and his mates.
33:42Henry finally sees a chance
33:44to win his great Plantagenet victory.
33:47How can he lose?
33:49Just as Simon hoped,
33:51the king comes out fighting.
33:52The battle's a complete disaster for the king.
34:12Henry's still a terrible general.
34:14His son Edward goes charging off over the hill
34:22after a rabble of civilians.
34:24His brother Richard gets himself besieged in a windmill.
34:27And Henry ends up forced back here
34:29to the Priory of St Pancras,
34:31just outside the town walls.
34:33Simon dares, and he wins.
34:37The king and his son Edward are captured.
34:39The king's sword is surrendered to Simon.
34:45Not exactly the Plantagenet glory Henry was aiming for.
34:55Simon de Montfort,
34:56once a minor French nobleman,
34:59now holds ultimate power in England.
35:01This is a revolution.
35:06Simon's taken an army to the field
35:08to seize the power of an anointed king.
35:10It's treason,
35:11and it's also an unforgivable betrayal of friendship.
35:15The king's dreams of glory have been crushed.
35:20But there is still one Plantagenet
35:23who could save the dynasty.
35:26And it's not Henry.
35:27In the aftermath of Lewis,
35:56Henry's in a desperate state.
35:58He's been humiliated in battle, again.
36:01His nemesis, Simon de Montfort,
36:03is running the country.
36:04And to top it all off,
36:05Henry's Simon's prisoner.
36:08The king's dreams of Plantagenet glory
36:11have been comprehensively trashed.
36:15For more than a year,
36:16Simon de Montfort dominates the government of England
36:19from his castle at Kenilworth.
36:22Henry's still king in theory.
36:24In reality, he's just Simon's puppet.
36:28To maintain his hold on the country,
36:30Simon keeps the king with him.
36:33Everything in the government
36:34is decided under the direction of de Montfort.
36:38For the first time in the history of England,
36:41a political movement has succeeded
36:43in crushing a tyrannical king.
36:46Sounds very noble, doesn't it?
36:49But the reality is
36:51that this is at least as much about greed as liberty.
36:55Simon may have set himself up as a man
36:57selflessly doing what's right for England,
36:59but actually, there's a lot more going on.
37:02Even though he has this vast castle at Kenilworth,
37:06Simon's been brooding that the king short-changed him
37:09on money and land.
37:10But now he has Henry just rubber-stamping his decisions.
37:14It's an opportunity too good to miss.
37:17Simon decides to take what he believes he's owed.
37:21De Montfort takes money and land for himself and his family.
37:26And by keeping the king close to him,
37:28Simon thinks he's got everything under control.
37:31It's a fatal error of judgment.
37:39It's not Henry who threatens Simon's hold on England.
37:43The man he should be watching
37:44is the 25-year-old heir to the throne, Edward.
37:48But Simon's taken his eye off the ball
37:50and left the prince in Hereford under house arrest.
37:54With things going so well,
37:56Simon's relaxed the guard on Prince Edward.
37:59He even allows him out riding.
38:01So Edward plays a game with his captors,
38:06swapping horses to find the fastest.
38:24They think it's all great fun
38:26until he finds the fastest horse.
38:29Prince Edward finds plenty of nobles increasingly nervous
38:48that Simon will snatch the crown.
38:50And that scares the barons more than Henry's abysmal reputation.
38:54Edward promises to let them keep the reforms
38:58and that persuades many of them to defect back to the Plantagenet cause.
39:04The Plantagenet army is back on the march.
39:08The end game in the 25-year grudge match between the former best friends,
39:20Henry III and Simon de Montfort,
39:22takes place here in Worcestershire.
39:24Simon's got the king with him for insurance.
39:29He's trying to get back to Kenilworth to gather reinforcements.
39:33But Edward is moving too fast.
39:35At the beginning of August, he catches up with Simon here at Evesham.
39:40From the top of the old Abbey Tower,
39:44Simon sees the Plantagenet army approaching in the distance.
39:50He's pinned down and outnumbered.
39:54De Montfort realises that if Edward's men free Henry, the game is up.
39:59So Simon disguises the king in one of his own uniforms.
40:06If he goes down, he's taking Henry with him.
40:11He doesn't wait for the Plantagenets to come for him.
40:15Simon attacks first.
40:18This is Simon the Crusader.
40:20Last time the odds were stacked against him, he dared and won.
40:24So this time he dares again.
40:26He can't help it. It's what he's good at.
40:28Simon's army charges out in a single wedge,
40:32hoping to punch through enemy ranks.
40:34They race up through the centre of Evesham
40:37to the fields overlooking the town
40:39where the Plantagenet soldiers are lined up.
40:43Simon gambles that because he's got the king with him,
40:47the Plantagenet army will be too cautious to attack.
40:50But Simon's as wrong as you get.
40:53This time, the army's rallied behind the king's son, Edward,
40:56and they're out for bloody revenge.
41:01The two armies meet here in the fields outside Evesham.
41:09As the Plantagenet army piles in,
41:12the battle descends into an orgy of violence.
41:15The Royalists cut down 4,000 of the rebels.
41:26The battlefield and streets of Evesham
41:29are piled high with their corpses.
41:31More than 30 of Simon's knights are slaughtered.
41:34But there is only one way to end the rebellion for good.
41:40Edward sends a 12-night hit squad onto the battlefield
41:43with one mission.
41:46Find and kill Simon de Montfort.
41:49King Henry, still dressed as one of de Montfort's men,
41:58is almost taken out by his own hit squad.
42:11Simon, already badly wounded by a lance,
42:14is not so lucky.
42:26Simon's killed somewhere on these fields outside Evesham.
42:30And some of the chroniclers go so far as to call it murder.
42:33This might be a battlefield,
42:35but 12 knights ganging up against one
42:37is hardly playing by the rules.
42:39But even then, just killing Simon
42:41isn't enough for Henry's men.
42:44This is an upstart, an outsider,
42:47someone who's taken on a king
42:48and undermined what being a king means.
42:52Simon de Montfort, traitor to the crown,
42:55once the most powerful man in England, dies.
42:59The message to everyone must be crystal clear.
43:03No-one defies the king and lives.
43:05The body of the king's once best friend
43:09is butchered.
43:11His testicles are cut off
43:13and then rammed into his mouth
43:15before his head is cut from his body
43:19and paraded on a spear.
43:29Henry finally has his moment of Plantagenet glory.
43:32Henry, but in truth,
43:34it's his son Edward who delivers it.
43:38Henry is just a bystander.
43:41But the price of victory over Simon
43:43is accepting the reforms that Simon was fighting for
43:47because that's the deal Edward sealed
43:50to raise an army.
43:54Henry's won the battle,
43:56but he's lost the war.
43:57The king's dream of absolute power
44:03has died with Simon.
44:09Dismal as Henry's reign was,
44:11he's still left behind him
44:13two of the greatest legacies
44:14of the whole Plantagenet dynasty
44:16and they're both right here.
44:19Westminster Abbey,
44:20Henry's extraordinary palace to God
44:22and over there,
44:24Parliament,
44:25seat of the democracy
44:26that still governs our country today.
44:29It was born not out of wisdom
44:31and smart politics,
44:32but out of the passion
44:33and fury
44:34of a brutal, bloody feud
44:36between two best friends.
44:38Next time,
44:43Edward II.
44:45His short-sighted obsessions
44:48plunged England
44:49into a nightmare
44:50of political violence,
44:52bloodlust
44:53and most of all,
44:54revenge.
44:55The end of the world
45:25You