Two months after Evesham, 4 October 1265, the mayor of London, Thomas Fitz-Thomas, knew there was no putting it off any longer and led a party of forty leading citizens to Henry III at Windsor. They were given safe-conduct passes by the king, but his inability to keep his word meant they could end up in irons, and that’s exactly what happened. All were eventually released except Fitz-Thomas, who bore the brunt of Henry’s wrath thanks to his impertinence when he told him earlier that year, “Lord, as long as you will be a good king to us, we will be your faithful and devoted men.” Of all the nerve, qualifying his oath like that! Even though Fitz-Thomas had rescued the queen during her painful encounter with the mob at London Bridge, he was imprisoned for three years, and still fined £500 to get out. He wasn’t forgotten by his people, however. During the next mayoral election, they demanded his reinstatement, creating so much alarm that Henry’s henchman for London, Roger Leybourne, had twenty of them taken away and that’s the last we hear of them. Two years, when London was occupied during Gilbert de Clare’s insurrection, this same Leybourne got it into his head to burn the city to the ground by tossing chickens over the wall with fire lines tied to their feet.
