The terrified monks could not see their books as they chanted the Psalms in the darkened choir, and as they sat in the refectory they could not tell what food lay upon their trenchers.
Meanwhile the battle raged on the hill above the town; desperately the barons fought, but, one by one, they fell overpowered by numbers.
Though the earl was sixty-five years of age he fought "stoutly, like a giant, for the liberties of England" to the end.
We will not dwell on the horror of the battle.

Popular tradition still points to the spot where the great leader was slain, and there, beside a spring called Battlewell, was placed a sacred rood.

Two young de Montforts fell by their father's side, and many barons, knights, and common soldiers; but few fled.

The stragglers from the defeated army were, many of them, slaughtered, as they attempted their escape; and by Offenham Ferry, where in those times probably stood a bridge, there is a meadow, once an island, which to this day bears the name of "Deadman's Ait." The chroniclers tell of the shameful mutilation of the earl's corpse, and how the limbs were distributed through the country, but the dismembered body was buried reverently by the monks in the most sacred part of their church, even before the High Altar.
The severed hands were sent by a servant to the wife of Roger Mortimer, at Wigmore Castle in Shropshire.

They arrived, so says the legend, while the Mass was being celebrated, and, at the raising of the Host, they were seen, before the bag containing them was opened, clasped in the attitude of prayer above the head of the messenger.