When I visited Evesham, in 1978, as I left the train station I hurried to catch up with a group of people who were walking ahead of me, intending to ask them directions. I called after them and as they turned toward me I saw that they were all blind.
Eight hundred years later, the site of Simon’s death is still a destination for pilgrims who believe in miracles.
There is an entire book, written in the decade after Simon’s death, cataloging the miracles attributed to Simon. It’s title is ‘The Chronicle of William de Rishanger, of the Barons’ War: The Miracles of Simon de Montfort’. ed. J.O. Halliwell, Camden Society, 1840.
As the suppressing power of the British Crown has faded, Simon might be recognized as a saint at last.
Tags: Halliwell, sainthood, Simon's Miracles, William Rishanger
We seem to have a new miracle. I just checked the Montfort copies for sale on amazon .com and a copy is being offered by a bookseller named pbshopus for $1,165.53. Don’t worry, you can still get it from amazon for $12.99 or less. I’m wondering, does pbshopus just love the book that much?
The process of writing Montfort was actually full of miracles. While traveling in England and France the flow of these ‘happenings’ was so constant that, for example, I simply ceased using train schedules. On that Evesham trip it meant I poked around on Green Hill for hours till I found the spring, then ambled back to the train station. The train was just coming in – three hours behind schedule.
The most striking example of my travel miracles during my researches for Montfort was when I was going from France to England. I was sitting at my friend’s table in Paris having breakfast when I suddenly realized I was supposed to have left the day before! I dashed to the train station as fast as I could get there. The train to Le Havre was sitting empty and there was no one on the platform or in the ticket booth. I had a ticket for the day before, but there seemed no means for me to change it. Some inner impulse told me get on the train and sit down. I am not a person given to doing improper things like getting on a train when I don’t have a proper ticket but I couldn’t see any way of dealing with the ticket issue and the inner urge was becoming quite insistent. So I got on the train and sat where the inner impulse told me to sit. Soon other passengers started getting on. The train filled up. Everyone seemed to have a pre-purchased ticket with a seat number on it, but no one came fore my seat.
The train left with still a couple of empty seats in my car. At the first stop those two seats were claimed — but not mine. I began to think that whatever this inner impulse was it was going to get me evicted from the train at Abbeyville, or some other stop between Paris and Le Havre. What could they do to me in France for riding on a train without a proper ticket? Perhaps there was a reason why this inner impulse wanted me to spend some time at Abbeyville?
A woman conductor was coming through looking at everyone’s tickets. I braced for the inevitable, but she was called away just before she got to me. There was a man in an unimpressive brown knit suit sitting opposite me who seemed to want to pick up a conversation with me but I ignored him — until he said “You don’t have ticket, do you?” I looked at him in utter shock, and nodded. He added to my terror by saying, “You know, these tickets are also for the hydrofoil to cross the Channel, and are completely booked for days ahead.” Then he said, “Don’t worry, I’m an official of the company. I’ll get you on the hydrofoil.” When the conductor came again, he nodded to her to indicate that I was with him, and she skimmed on by with a gracious smile to her company’s executive.
True to his word, when we got to Le Havre, he took me to the head of the line of people waiting to board the hydrofoil, saw that I was safely aboard, and then disappeared.
I went directly to London and at my hotel found a letter from the hotel I had been booked into at Canterbury, where I was supposed to have stayed the previous night if I had left Paris when I ought. The letter said they could not accommodate me and refunded my reservation fee. Clearly I was being looked after, down to the minutest details.