remarkably prudent and cautious, intensely valorous, and he was a knight: on account of this the barons chose him to have charge in their war and their counsels. He was descended from a line of French noblemen who were the most powerful in all France; as their descendant he was not degenerate but was made in the same way as them, a man endowed with god-like wisdom and abounding in excellent stratagems, one of which it is fitting to introduce here. When Simon was preparing to lead the army of Londoners into the aforementioned battle against the king, a few days before they left he ordered a vehicle of deception to be constructed, and had it covered entirely in iron on the outside. He forced two well-known elderly burgesses of the city of London inside it, since they were opposed to him and to the entire city, and frequently argued with the citizens that they should not march with Simon against the king. It was when this had been made known to Simon, and doubtless because of the nature of their hostile, foolish, and stubborn advice, that he forced them inside, as we have said. As the said army was setting out from the city, therefore, Simon led those crafty persuaders out with them, they being inside the wagon, lest they should perhaps return to the city for the king’s advantage while the army of Londoners was on campaign against the king. Now the prisoners’ wagon had a narrow exit through which the aforesaid old men were accustomed, not without a close guard, to get out and back in again in order to answer the call of nature. On the day before the battle was to be contested between the king and the barons, as evening was approaching on that day, Simon had instructed the opening through which the necessary food was passed to the aforementioned burgesses to be closed so firmly that all further opportunity of going out was entirely denied to them. Simon then had his standards, which are called pennants, hung around this wagon so that the king and his army might be fooled by it and think that Simon was in the wagon even though he was not. Simon, however, was lying low in the woods, surrounded by hills and steep cliffs, some distance from the town of Lewes (which is to be found somewhat towards the south west of England), with the earl of Gloucester and a few other earls. With them were the barons of nearly the whole of England and a great number of renowned knights, with many mounted warriors and innumerable foot-soldiers. Among them there were many crossbowmen and catapultiers who worked up great confusion in the king’s army on the day of battle by hurling stones into them like a hail of thunderbolts from their catapults. Among the leading men mentioned above was also the bishop of Worcester. He was afterwards driven into exile because, overturning the order of episcopal behaviour, he put off the peaceable bishop and put on the warlike knight,¹ bearing a sword at his side all the while instead of a crozier, and a helmet on his head instead of a mitre. When the king went out to battle against the barons, therefore, the more powerful men in his army seeing the little pennants (which I mentioned before) hanging all around the wagon, rushed hastily towards it. The Londoners had already declared to the king’s army that Simon, whom they had chosen as their leader in the battle, was inside the wagon. They said, ‘He has decided to remain behind us: he would not go out to fight for us as he had