The leaves are greenest

In August 1265 Earl Simon de Montfort and his exhausted, dysentery-riddled army were wiped out by the forces of Lord Edward and Gilbert de Clare at Evesham. The 'murder of Evesham', as one chronicler termed it, was supposed to put an end to the civil war. In fact, despite the unusually high number of noble casualties, it was merely a staging-point.

A few weeks afterwards, the restored Henry III ordered the seizure of all lands belonging to surviving Montfortians. These would be parcelled out among his own followers, who wanted some reward for their loyalty. The king's policy left Simon's followers - hence known as the Disinherited - with no option except to take up arms again. England was plunged into a fresh round of civil war.

The rebels found a new leader in the shape of Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby. Ferrers was a wild card: he had initially supported Earl Simon, only to break away after the Montfortians bungled the siege of Gloucester in 1264. He was then lured to London on trumped-up charges of treason and thrown in the Tower. 

In the wake of Evesham, King Henry and his heir, Edward, tried to reconcile Ferrers. The wayward earl was released, forgiven all trespasses and presented with a gift of a golden cup and additional sweetener of 1500 marks. Ferrers' response was to throw the royal pardon in Henry's face and gallop off north to join the Montfortians.

Ferrers took command of a rebel army that concentrated at Chesterfield near Derbyshire. The occupation of this manor was probably a jab at Edward: it had once belonged to Ferrers, but had since been re-granted to the prince's consort, Eleanor of Castile. Here the rebellious earl was joined by the likes of Baldwin Wake, Henry Hastings and Sir John de Eyvill, an aggressive northerner who had served as Simon's viceroy at York. The chronicler Thomas Wykes describes the rebel muster:

'At the time of year when the leaves are greenest in the forest, the barons, along with their great retinues, were furiously impatient and refused to be quiet'.

From their camp at Chesterfield, the rebels rode out to pillage and depopulate the north country, burning and looting and putting hundreds of innocents to the sword. Afterwards, sated with plunder, they withdrew to the great forest of Duffield. 

Unknown to them, a royal army was racing north under the command of the king's nephew, Henry of Almaine. His troops arrived at Chesterfield on the Vigil of Pentecost (15th May). They found the rebels totally unprepared. Ferrers, who suffered from gout, was in his tent having his blood let. His ally, John de Eyvill, had gone off hunting in the greenwood. Neither had apparently thought to post guards.

Almaine, who must have thought it was Christmas, launched an immediate assault on the rebel camp. After a short, sharp fight, Ferrers' men scattered in all directions. Some were chased into the woods, others fled into the town. Among the latter was Ferrers himself: trailing blood and bandages, he took refuge under a pile of woolsacks in a church. Not very heroic.

John de Eyvill and his men then came rushing back from the forest. They put up a fight, but it was no use. De Eyvill himself was knocked off his horse by a royalist knight, Sir Gilbert Haunsard. He managed to scramble aboard a spare and escape back into the forest, from where he made his way to the Isle of Axholme, a waterlogged refuge in the Lincolnshire fens.

As for Ferrers, his hiding place was betrayed by a local woman whose lover he had hanged on a tree outside Chesterfield. Henry of Almaine had the distressed earl put into a cage on the back of a wagon, and then trundled off to prison at Windsor, where he stayed at His Majesty's Pleasure for the next three years.  

Baldwin Wake and Henry Hastings also escaped the disaster, although other rebel barons were not so lucky. Robert Wollerton, described as 'a valiant rider', was taken and hanged. Henry Ireton, a direct ancestor of the famous Parliamentary general, was slain in the fighting.

Otherwise the names of the dead are not recorded. From a royalist perspective, the most important outcome was the capture of Ferrers, which deprived the rebels of their most important leader. However, plenty of Montfortians remained on the loose, and the bitter war would continue.