Montfort, Simon of, Earl of Leicester 1208?-1265

Name: Montfort, Simon of
Title: Earl of Leicester
Dates: 1208?-1265
Active Date: 1248
Gender: Male

Place of
    Death: Evesham
    Burial: Abbey church of Evesham
Spouse: The king's sister Eleanor
Likenesses: 1...,   2...
Sources: Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora, vols. iii-v...
Contributor: K. N. [KATE NORGATE]

Article
Montfort, Simon of, Earl of Leicester 1208?-1265, was son of Simon IV
of Montfort l'Amaury (Normandy) and his wife Alice of Montmorency.
The first lord of Montfort had owned nothing but a little castle on a
‘strong mount,’ halfway between Paris and Chartres, whence the family
took its name. His son, Simon I, married the heiress of Evreux; their
grandson, Simon III, married Amicia, daughter of Robert of Beaumont,
third earl of Leicester. The fourth Earl of Leicester died childless in 1204
or 1205. In the partition of his inheritance between his two sisters the
honour of Leicester fell to Amicia's share, and, her husband and her
eldest son being dead, devolved upon her second son, Simon IV of
Montfort. John recognised him as ‘Earl of Leicester’ in August 1206, but
it does not appear that he was ever formally invested with the earldom,
and in February 1207 John seized all the English estates of ‘Count Simon
of Montfort,’ nominally for a debt which Simon owed him. They were
restored a month later, but confiscated again before the end of the year.
The Count of Montfort had been content to enter upon his patrimony,
and also upon the Norman heritage of the Beaumonts, under the
overlordship of Philip of France, and he had to pay the penalty laid upon
all Norman barons having claims on both sides of the sea who took this
course, the loss of his English inheritance. He now threw in his lot
wholly with France and with the party of ecclesiastical orthodoxy against
which, in the person of Pope Innocent III, John was setting himself in
opposition. In 1208 Simon became captain-general of the French forces in
the crusade against the Albigensians, who were supported by John's
brother-in-law, Raymond of Toulouse. Simon's skill, courage, energy, and
ruthlessness carried all before him, and speedily made him master of all
southern Gaul. He continued to style himself Earl of Leicester, and he
seems to have kept up his communications with England and to have
been an object of deep interest and admiration to his fellow-barons there,
for in 1210 John was scared by a rumour that they were plotting to set up
Simon of Montfort as king in his stead. One of the conditions required by
the pope for reconciliation with John in 1213 was that Simon should be
restored to his rights. This John at first refused, but in July 1215 he
yielded so far as to give the honour of Leicester into the charge of
Simon's nephew Ralf, earl of Chester, ‘for the benefit of the said Simon.’
In May 1216 Simon, having gone to Paris to collect fresh troops for his
war with the Aragonese, and to settle the questions as to the disposal of
the family heritage which had arisen owing to his mother's death, joined
with the legate Gualo in endeavouring to dissuade Louis of France from
his designs upon England (ROBERT OF AUXERRE, Rer. Gall. Scriptt. xviii.
283-4). The Leicester estates seem to have been still in the hands of Ralf
when Simon was killed at the siege of Toulouse, 25 June 1218. After some
changes of custody, they were put under Ralf's charge again in 1220, and
it seems that Henry III afterwards actually granted them to him and his
heirs in fee. In vain did Simon's eldest son, Almeric, appeal against this
exclusion from the heritage of his English grandmother. At last he
proposed to transfer his claim upon it to his only surviving brother Simon,
in exchange for Simon's share in their continental patrimony.
Simon V of Montfort seems to have been the third son of Simon IV
(Bibl. de l'École des Chartes, xxxiv. 49). He was probably born about 1208.
He is first named in a charter of his father's in 1217. In 1229, having
somehow incurred the wrath of the queen-regent of France (W. NANGIS,
Rer. Gall. Scriptt. xx. 584; N. TRIVET, Engl. Hist. Soc., p. 226), he was glad
to accept his brother's suggestion of trying his fortune beyond the sea.
‘Hereupon,’ he says himself, ‘I went to England, and besought my lord
the king that he would restore my father's heritage unto me.’ He carried a
letter from Almeric, entreating the king to restore the lands either to the
writer or to the bearer. ‘But he answered that he could not do so, because
he had given them to the Earl of Chester and his heirs by a charter. So I
returned without finding grace.’ Henry, however, held out hopes of
ultimate restitution, and offered the claimant a yearly pension of four
hundred marks meanwhile, on condition of entering his service in
England or elsewhere. This proposal was accepted by Simon after his
return to Normandy, and ratified by the king on 8 April 1230. In that year
‘the king,’ continues Simon, ‘crossed into Brittany, and the Earl of
Chester with him; and I went to the Earl, and begged him to help me to
get back my heritage. He consented, and next August took me with him
to England, and besought the king to receive my homage for my
patrimony, to which, as he said, I had more right than he; and he
quit-claimed to the king all that the king had given him therein; and the
king received my homage, and gave me back my lands.’ On 13 Aug. 1231
Henry ordered that seisin should be given to Simon of all the lands which
his father had held, ‘and which belong to him by hereditary right.’
The one extant portrait of Simon of Montfort dates from the year of his
adoption as an Englishman. In a window of Chartres Cathedral he is
painted as a young knight, on horseback, with banner and shield, while
from beneath the raised vizor a face with marked features and large
prominent eyes looks out with an expression which makes one feel that
the likeness, though rude, must be genuine. Several years passed before
his position in England was secured. Even after a second renunciation
from Almeric, Simon neither assumed the title of Earl of Leicester, nor was
it given to him in official documents. Not only had a large share of the
Leicester property passed away to Amicia's younger sister, the Countess
of Winchester, but what remained of it had, as Simon declared, suffered
so much ‘destruction of wood and other great damages done by divers
people to whom the king had given it in charge,’ that it was quite
inadequate to support the rank and dignity of an earl. A license granted
by Henry III in June 1232 to ‘our trusty and well-beloved Simon of
Montfort,’ to ‘keep in his own hands or bestow at his will any escheats of
land held by Normans of his fee in England, which may hereafter fall in,
until our lands of England and Normandy shall be one again,’ may have
helped him a little. In April 1234 he seems to have contemplated buying
back from his brother his share of the Montfort patrimony. In a list of
nobles present at a parliament at Westminster, 12 Oct. 1234, ‘Simon of
Montfort’ appears not among the earls, but next after them (Appendix to
BRACTON, ed. Twiss, ii. 608). On 20 Jan. 1236 he officiated as grand
seneschal at the queen's coronation, despite a protest from the Earl of
Norfolk, Roger Bigod, the office of seneschal having long been in
dispute between the Earls of Norfolk and of Leicester. On 28 Jan. 1237,
at Westminster, ‘Simon of Montfort’ again appears, immediately after the
earls, as witness to the king's promise to observe the charters. He was
still with the king at Westminster on 24 March (Munimenta Gildhallæ, ii.
669), and again on 3 Aug. (CHAMPOLLION, Lettres de Rois, i. 52). In
September he witnessed the treaty at York between Henry and the king
of Scots. This time his name, though still without a title, precedes that of
the Earl of Pembroke, who stands last among the English earls. Simon
was now seeking the hand of the widowed Countess of Flanders, but this
project, like an earlier one for his marriage with another middle-aged
widow, the Countess of Boulogne, was frustrated by the king of France,
who looked upon it as part of a dangerous political scheme (ALBERIC of
Trois-Fontaines, Rer. Gall. Scriptt. xxi. 619; cf. Layettes du Trésor des
Chartes, ii. 336-7). A far higher match was in store for Simon. Henry III had
now taken him into his closest confidence. Suspected in France on
account of his relations with England, Simon was no less suspected and
disliked by the English barons, as being one of the three counsellors
who were believed to be instigating Henry's subservience to the pope
and his legate, and whose encouragement of the king's unpatriotic policy
was the more resented because/as Matthew Paris observes in words
which strikingly witness to Simon's early adoption as an
Englishman/‘they drew their origin from the realm itself’ (Chron. Maj. iii.
412). There seems to be no evidence for the charge against Simon beyond
the fact that he was one of the nobles who acted as bodyguard to the
legate on his way to and from a council at St. Paul's in November 1237, a
precaution which, as his enemies were reported to be lying in wait to kill
him, was hardly more than the honour of king and kingdom required. It
was, however, only natural that the barons should greet with a burst of
indignation the discovery that on 7 Jan. 1238 Simon had been privately
married in the royal chapel at Westminster to the king's sister Eleanor, the
king himself giving away the bride.
Eighteen months later, when the brothers-in-law quarrelled, Henry
declared that he had but yielded to the necessity of covering his sister's
shame; but it is impossible to believe that he spoke truth. Eleanor's
marriage was, however, an offence against ecclesiastical discipline, for on
the death of her first husband, William Marshal, second earl of Pembroke
[q.v.], in 1231, she had taken, in the presence of Archbishop Edmund, a
vow of perpetual widowhood. It seems, indeed, that Edmund, before he
left England in December 1237 [see Edmund, Saint, archbishop of
Canterbury], knew of the king's project and protested against it. When
the marriage became known, the king's brother, Earl Richard of Cornwall
[see Richard, king of the Romans], in his own name and that of the other
barons, vehemently reproached Henry for having disposed of the hand
of a royal ward without their consent or knowledge. An actual revolt was
threatening, but on 23 Feb. Simon ‘humbled himself to Earl Richard, and
by means of many intercessors and certain gifts obtained from him the
kiss of peace.’ On 27 March Henry commended to the pope ‘our trusty
and well-beloved brother Simon of Montfort, whom we are sending to
Rome on business touching the honour and welfare of ourself and our
realm.’ The business was to get a dispensation for Eleanor's marriage;
this was granted 10 May. In England, however, the marriage was not yet
wholly forgiven, and Simon gave time for the storm to die down by
lingering on the continent throughout the summer. It was probably now,
rather than, as Matthew Paris says, on his way to Rome, that he engaged
for a while in military service under the emperor. He was well received on
his return to England, 14 Oct. His first child, born in Advent, was joyfully
hailed as a possible heir to the crown; and on 2 Feb. 1239 he was at last
formally invested with the earldom of Leicester.
On 20 June 1239 Simon stood godfather to the king's eldest son [see
Edward I]. In August he and his wife were invited to the queen's
churching at Westminster; on the night before the ceremony, however,
they met with a most insulting reception from the king. A debt which
Simon owed to Count Peter of Brittany, and for non-payment of which,
due in the summer of 1237, he had been threatened with
excommunication, had been somehow transferred to the queen's uncle,
Thomas of Savoy. Thomas had apparently set the king to enforce its
payment. Henry chose to mix up this story with a wholly different one,
and to accuse Simon of having led Eleanor into sin before their marriage,
gained a dispensation by promising large sums to Rome, then incurred
excommunication by failing to pay them, and finally used the king's own
name as security without his permission or knowledge. Simon answered
that he was willing to fulfil his legal obligations, but desired leave to
defend himself according to law. Henry, according to Simon's account,
ordered out ‘the commons of London’ to seize him that night and carry
him to the Tower, but this was prevented by Richard of Cornwall. Next
evening the earl and countess escaped down the Thames. They withdrew
‘first beyond the sea, and then beyond the Alps.’ Simon appears to have
taken the cross immediately after his marriage, but postponed the
fulfilment of his vow at the pope's express desire. He now renewed it, and,
thus protected against the royal wrath, came back to England on 1 April
1240. The quarrel was compromised, Henry taking on himself a part of the
debt, and Simon selling some of his woods to pay the rest. He then
proceeded with the other English crusaders to Marseilles, and thence
overland through Italy to embark at Brindisi for the Holy Land. His
cousin Philip de Montfort, lord of Toron, was one of the leaders of a
party among the nobles of Palestine who were struggling against the
control of Richard Filangieri, the bailiff set over them by the Emperor
Frederic II, whose young son Conrad was heir to the crown of Jerusalem.
On 7 June 1241 this party proposed to Frederic that he should end the
strife by appointing, in Filangieri's stead, Earl Simon of Leicester to be
bailiff and viceroy of Palestine until Conrad should attain his majority
(Archives de l'Orient Latin, i. 402-3; BOTFIELD, p. xix note). Their request
was not granted; but that they should have ever seriously made it to the
emperor is a striking proof of the high repute in which Simon already
stood alike in east and west. Next spring, however, Simon was back in
Europe. In Burgundy he received a command to join the English king in
Poitou, where Henry, having just landed with an army of invasion,
wanted his help, and was glad to purchase it by a very insufficient
indemnity for the forced sale of the Leicester woods. Simon did good
service at the battle of Saintes, 22 July, and was one of the few barons
who stayed with the king, ‘to the great damage of their own fortunes and
interests,’ when the rest went back to England in the autumn. A year later
king and earl alike went home, and the royal appreciation of Simon's
services was shown by liberal grants to him and his wife.
In 1244 Simon appears for the first time as taking part in English
politics. Matthew Paris states that the parliament of that year appointed
twelve commissioners to answer the king's demand for money; that of
these twelve Simon was one; and that their answer took the form of a
remonstrance against the king's wastefulness and his non-observance of
the charters, and a demand for the appointment of responsible ministers
of state. He inserts under the same year a draft scheme of administrative
reform which he says ‘the magnates devised with the king's consent,’
and which in a remarkable way ‘anticipates several of the later points of
the programme of Simon de Montfort’ (STUBBS, ii. 63). Yet he also says that
when Henry refused all concession, and sought to treat with the different
orders singly, Simon was one of the bearers of the royal appeal to the
clergy. From these obscure notices no theory can be formed as to
Simon's actual position or policy. In May 1246 his name follows that of
the Earl of Cornwall at the head of a remonstrance against the demands of
the pope. In 1247 he went to France ‘on secret business’ for the king,
returning 13 Oct. At the close of the year he again took the cross. It
seems to have been contemplated that he should lead the English
contingent in the crusade about to set forth under Louis of France; the
pope desired the English clergy to supply the earl with funds, and in
August 1248 the Bishops of Lincoln and Worcester promised him four
thousand marks from their dioceses whenever he should start for the
Holy Land. By that time, however, his crusade was indefinitely
postponed. In the spring Henry III had asked him to undertake the
government of Gascony, which nobody else had ever been able to
manage. Simon, ‘not wishing,’ as he says, ‘that the king should suffer for
lack of aught that I could do for him,’ accepted the task on condition that
he should be secured in the office of governor for seven years, should
have absolute control over the revenues and feudal services of the land
during that time, and should be entitled to claim the obedience of the
people as if he were the king himself. For the government and internal
pacification of the country he took the whole responsibility on himself;
only in case of attack from the neighbouring sovereigns did he stipulate
for aid from Henry. A commission on these terms was issued to him on 1
May 1248, the king undertaking to give him two thousand marks, and to
supply him with fifty knights for a year.
In the autumn he set out. On 20 Sept. he was at Lorris, making a truce
for two months with the queen-regent of France. At Epiphany 1249 he
reappeared at Westminster to report the success of his first three
months' work in the south. Two of the worst troublers of the land were in
prison; a third, Gaston of Béarn, had been forced to make a truce; a
fourth, the king of Navarre, had in a personal interview been persuaded
to submit to arbitration all his disputes with the English king; the
turbulent robber-knights, the stubborn burghers of the Gascon towns,
had all been made to feel the strength of their new ruler's hand. He was
back again by the end of June, when he suppressed a faction fight at
Bordeaux, and threw the heads of one of the rival factions into prison; he
put down by sheer force a similar tumult at Bazas; he razed the castle of
Fronsac, and seized the estates of its lord, who was accused of traitorous
dealings with France; he captured Gaston of Béarn and sent him over sea
to beg pardon of the king. By the end of the year the whole country
appeared subdued; so ‘manfully and faithfully,’ as Matthew Paris says,
had the earl laboured at his task, ‘striving in all things to follow his
father's steps, or even to outgo them.’
Simon was in truth imitating but too well his father's high-handed
severity and repression of independence among a people whom the
ordinary machinery of civil government was powerless to control, and
who were above all others quick to resent any interference with the local
franchises and the unbridled license which for ages they had regarded as
their birthright. The mutterings of a coming storm reached his ears early
in 1250. In March he went to Paris to negotiate a five years' truce
between Henry and the queen-regent. Thence, on Easter eve (27 March),
was written to King Henry the sole extant letter of Simon of Montfort. He
has heard, he says, that certain Gascon knights whose lands he has
seized for the king, and who know that they have no chance of recovering
them by process of Gascon law, are resolved to regain them by force, and
intend to begin the enterprise directly after Whitsuntide. ‘And forasmuch
as the great folk of the land look upon me with evil eyes, because I
uphold against them your rights and those of the poor people, it would
be peril and shame to me, and great damage to you, if I went back to the
country without having seen you and received your instructions. For
when I am there, and they stir up war against me, I shall have to return to
you, because I cannot get a penny of your revenue/the king of France
holds it all/and I cannot trust the people of the land; nor can they be
checked by an army as in a regular war, for they will only rob and burn,
and take prisoners and ransom them, and ride about at night like thieves
in companies. Therefore, so please you, I must by all means speak with
you first, for those who have hinted to you many sinister things about
me would all tell you that it is I who have given occasion for the war.’ He
went over to England accordingly, early in May. By the end of the month
he was back again, making good use of some money which had been
furnished him, buying here the custody of a castle, there a plot of land
on which to build a new one, here the friendship of one baron, there the
homage of another, and at last, on 27 Nov., dictating to the citizens of
Bordeaux terms which left them wholly at his mercy.
Suddenly, on 6 Jan. 1251, he reappeared in England, weary and
downcast, with a train of only three squires, mounted on horses almost
worn out with the haste of their journey. He went straight to the king with
a passionate appeal for money and men to ‘repress the insolence of
rebellious Gascony.’ His funds, public and private, were exhausted; he
could not, he declared, carry on single-handed such a costly struggle.
Henry, while despatching two commissioners to ‘inquire into, report
upon, and appease the discord’ between governor and subjects, gave him
three thousand marks; Simon collected what he could from his own
estates, hired two hundred soldiers and a few crossbowmen from the
Duke of Brabant, and once more returned to his post. This time all
Gascony was up in arms. The chiefs of the malcontents were assembled
at Castillon; there Simon besieged them in April; they proposed to submit
the quarrel to arbitration; he refused, and took the place. On 25 May they
accepted his terms: submission of all matters in dispute to the judgment
of a tribunal to consist of the king's two commissioners and four other
judges chosen by them. This tribunal seems never to have sat, but one
by one the rebel leaders made their peace with the crown; and in
November Simon could leave Gascony to the care of his lieutenants, go
to England, report that his work was done, and ask the king to accept his
resignation and indemnify him for the expenses incurred in his service.
Henry, however, refused to pay for the maintenance of the castles, and
required Simon to maintain them at his own cost for the rest of his term of
office. The queen arranged a compromise; on 4 Jan. 1252 Henry
appointed arbiters to determine the amount due to the Earl of Leicester
according to the terms of his commission, and on the understanding that
this amount should be paid him, Simon agreed to resume the government.
At that very moment Simon/now at York with the king/received
news of a fresh rising in Gascony. He would have set out at once to
suppress it, but Henry refused to let him go, saying he had been given to
understand that it was caused by the misdoings of the earl himself. Simon
instantly demanded to be confronted with his accusers in the king's
presence in London. On 6 Jan. Henry despatched two envoys into
Gascony, with instructions to the civic communities, the Archbishop of
Bordeaux, the Bishop of Bayonne, and the malcontent barons, to present
their grievances in person or by deputy at Westminster within a week
after Easter. Citizens, prelates, and barons at first declared that they
dared not leave the country to the mercy of Simon's constables; in the
end, however, they obeyed the royal summons. On 23 March Henry
notified to Simon their impending arrival, and forbade his return to
Gascony meanwhile. Simon went nevertheless, gathered troops in France,
and set to work ‘to exterminate his enemies.’ On reaching Bordeaux,
however, he learned that the Gascon deputies were actually on their way
to England, and hurried back thither to meet them. The Gascons arrived
first; according to one account, Henry felt so doubtful of their
truthfulness that he sent another pair of commissioners/the same whom
he had sent in 1251/to make further inquiries, and they returned with a
report that Simon ‘had treated some people rather inhumanly, but they
seemed to have deserved it.’ By that time, however, the Gascons had got
the king's ear; he gave Simon the cold shoulder on his return, and lost no
opportunity of slighting him in public, while showing all possible favour
to his opponents, and delaying the trial for nearly two months. Simon
kept his temper admirably; he knew, indeed, that the English barons were
on his side/‘they would by no means suffer so noble a man, and natural
subject of the crown, to be imprisoned as a traitor at the pleasure of these
aliens.’ At last he obtained a day for the public hearing of the case. The
Gascons had put their complaints in writing; he answered them in the
same way, point by point. He was charged with stirring up factions in the
towns by siding unduly with one party for his own interest; ordering
arbitrary arrests and punishments, and extorting arbitrary fines and
ransoms; refusing trial to prisoners, even when ordered by the king;
seizing and destroying castles, lands, and goods without reason and
without compensation, or on false pretences, and committing sundry acts
of violence, both in person and by his deputies; interfering with the law
and administration of the land, by drawing to his own cognisance as
viceroy suits which ought to have been left to the local courts of towns
or barons, and overawing the courts in general, all over Gascony;
appointing bailiffs, vicars, provosts, &c., on lands which were lawfully
exempt from such interference; exacting tallages from lands which of old
right owed no such impost; overriding the privileges of certain towns as
touching the swearing of fealty to the king or his lieutenant, the amount
of military service due to him, and of purveyance due to his bailiffs, &c.;
selling the office of bailiff to men who oppressed the people to such a
degree that they were driven to leave the country; appointing to posts of
authority persons who were, or had been, in treasonable correspondence
with France. Some of the individual charges Simon utterly denied; in the
majority of cases he acknowledged the fact, but gave it a wholly different
colour. For some of his arbitrary acts he alleged provocations which, if
his allegations were true, went far to justify them; others he asserted to
have been not arbitrary at all, but done after due sentence from the local
courts of justice; and he further pointed out, with perfect truth, that he
had accepted the government not as a mere seneschal, but on the
express understanding that he was to be in all things as the king himself,
without appeal. His prohibition of the forcible seizure of goods for
pledge, and of the maintenance of armed ‘companies,’ and his strict
punishment of its infringement, he defended on the grounds that the
former practice was ‘the beginning of all strife,’ that the ‘companies’ were
‘nothing but packs of thieves,’ and that both regulations had been duly
passed in a parliament at Dax. Against the other charges his defence
practically came to this: that no system short of ‘thorough’ was of any
avail with these contemptuous cities and lawless robber-nobles, and that
the chastisements which he had inflicted on them were less than they
deserved. Orally, indeed, he summed it all up in one burst of scorn: ‘Your
testimony against me is worthless, for you are all liars and traitors.’
Nevertheless, he offered either to settle the matter at once by ordeal of
battle between some of the accusers and the witnesses whom he had
brought over on his side, or to give security for submitting to its
settlement by any method that might be agreed upon either in England or
Gascony. The accusers, however, would agree to nothing; ‘if the king
would not believe what they told him, he had only to send them safe
home again.’ So to answer was virtually to throw up their own case, and
the unanimous verdict of the council forced the king to declare Simon
acquitted. The very next day, however, Henry picked a quarrel with Simon
in open council. Simon reproached him for his ingratitude, and urged the
fulfilment of the terms on which he had undertaken the Gascon
vice-royalty; Henry retorted that he would keep no covenant with a
traitor. ‘That word is a lie,’ burst out Simon, ‘and were you not my
sovereign, an ill hour would it be for you in which you dared to utter it.’
Henry would have arrested him, but the magnates all took Simon's part,
and separated them after a bitter altercation. A few days later Simon
offered the king three alternatives: peace between himself and his
accusers to be made at the king's discretion, and the earl then to return to
Gascony and hold it for the king according to the terms of that
pacification; if peace were refused by the other party, the king to furnish
the earl with troops and arms, and the earl to return to Gascony and go
on as before, fighting down rebellion and holding the land for the king by
force; or the earl to resign his commission as viceroy, provided that the
king indemnified him for his expenses and secured his honour from
reproach, and the persons and lands of his adherents from the
vengeance of the Gascons; and provided also ‘that the prelates, nobles,
and counsellors gave their consent.’ Henry rejected all three
propositions; instead, he proposed to reopen the case in Gascony as
soon as he could go thither himself, and meanwhile to prolong the truce
which had been arranged there till that period should arrive. The king's
parting sarcasm, ‘Go back to Gascony, thou lover and maker of strife, and
reap its reward like thy father before thee,’ was met by the quiet reply:
‘Gladly will I go; nor do I think to return till I have made thine enemies thy
footstool, ungrateful though thou be.’ Ten years later Henry asserted
that he had ordered Simon to follow him to Windsor, and that Simon had
disobeyed the order and gone straight to France without his knowledge;
Simon, however, declared that he had set out ‘from Windsor.’ Landing at
Boulogne on 13 June, he learned that Gaston of Béarn, despite the truce,
was besieging the citadel of La Réole; he collected troops in France and
hurried to the rescue. Meanwhile his accusers had hastened home and
gathered forces to meet him; in the first battle he was victorious; soon
afterwards he was blockaded in Montauban, and escaped with some
difficulty. While revictualling La Réole he was overtaken by two royal
commissioners with letters from the king bidding him respect the truce; he
retorted that he could not keep a truce which the other party had broken.
The commissioners then handed him another letter whereby he was
removed from his office. He answered that the king was acting ‘wilfully,
not in reason,’ and that the office which had been entrusted to him ‘by
the counsel of the wise men’ he would not give up till the seven years
were expired; and therewith he went off to besiege another rebel castle.
The English parliament in October utterly refused to sanction his
deposition; Henry next offered to buy him out with seven thousand
marks down and a promise to pay all his Gascon debts. Simon yielded,
made a formal resignation of his office, 29 Sept. 1252, and withdrew into
France. There the nobles, ‘knowing his constancy and strength of
character,’ pressed him to accept the office of seneschal of the kingdom,
and with it a foremost place in the council of regency, left headless by
the death of the queen-mother. Simon refused; ‘he would not seem a
deserter.’
Gascony had risen more madly than ever as soon as his back was
turned, and when Henry arrived there in August 1253 the first thing he
did was to call Simon to his aid. Simon at first took no notice; but a
second appeal in October brought him back, sick though he was, at the
head of his picked band of knights, ready to forgive and help his
brother-in-law once again. The result was a gradual subsidence of the
revolt; Simon spent Christmas with the king, and at Easter 1254 was back
in London, enlightening the English parliament as to the state of things
in Gascony and the meaning of the royal demands for money.
On 25 Aug. Henry sent Earl Simon into Scotland, ‘entrusting him with
a secret to reveal to the Scottish king.’ On 18 May 1255 Simon was
coupled with Peter of Savoy on a mission to France for a renewal of the
truce, which was obtained in June. On 16 Aug. 1256 he was with the king
at Woodstock; and in the same year he was one of four noble laymen
whom the king appointed as being ëlearned and skilful in the laws of the
land, and mighty men, whom neither fear nor favour could corrupt,í to
inquire into a charge against the sheriff of Northampton which had
baffled the sagacity of the itinerant judges. In February 1257 Henry
proposed to send Simon, with another envoy, to treat for peace with
France. Simon seems to have been there when ordered off in June on a
further errand, to expedite arrangements with the pope for Edmund's
establishment as king of Sicily [see under Richard, Earl of Cornwall]. Of the
four envoys originally named for this mission, however, only one went,
and that one was not the Earl of Leicester. He remained in France, but
met with no success in his negotiations, and returned in February 1258.
Some time in 1257 hot words had passed between Simon and the
king's half-brother, William of Valence. William had encroached on
Simon's land; Simon remonstrated before the council; William met the
remonstrance by calling him traitor; and the strife would have passed
from words to blows had not the king thrown himself between them. The
quarrel broke out again in the Hoketide parliament of 1258. William
repeated his insult; Simon retorted, ëNo, no, William! I am neither traitor
nor traitor's son; my father was not like yours;í and again Henry had to
separate them. Their quarrel was only a part of the great national quarrel
which occupied the whole session (9 April-5 May 1258), the quarrel of
the English people, who were soon to recognise Simon as their champion
against the king and his Poitevin favourites, of whom William was the
chief. On 12 April Simon and six other nobles banded themselves together
in a sworn league ëto help one another, ourselves, and our men against all
folk, doing right and obtaining right, as much as we can, without
wronging any man, and saving our faith to the king.í On 2 May Henry
sanctioned the appointment of twenty-four commissionersætwelve of his
own council and twelve chosen by the baronsæto draw up a scheme of
administrative reform. One of the latter was Simon of Montfort. On 8 May
five nobles, of whom Simon was one, were appointed to prolong the
truce with France, that the work of reform might proceed without external
hindrance. There was a further project, strongly supported if not
originated by Simon, for turning the truce into a definite peace, and on
28 May its terms were virtually agreed upon. Simon was still in France on
1 June. He was back on 11 June, when the parliament reassembled, and
the commissioners' scheme was elaborated into the ëProvisions of
Oxford.í Besides the redress of a number of administrative grievances,
these included the appointment of a permanent council of fifteen, who
were, ëin fact, not only to act as the king's private council, but to have a
constraining power over all his public actsí (STUBBS, ii. 76), and the
election by the barons of twenty-four commissioners to treat of the aid
demanded by the king. Of both these bodies Simon was a member, as well
as of the original committee of twenty-four which was now to undertake
the reform of the church. As soon as the ëProvisionsí were ratified, Simon,
in accordance with a clause requiring all warders of royal castles to
surrender them to the king, resigned the custody of Odiham and
Kenilworth. ëYour castles or your headí was the alternative he offered to
William of Valence, who refused to follow his example. Simon headed the
deputation of barons who obtained the adhesion of the London citizens
to the ëProvisions,í 22 July. He was also one of those who drew up a letter
to the pope giving an account of the proceedings at Oxford, and
protesting against the appointment of Aymer of Valence to the see of
Winchester. About the same time Henry was overtaken by a
thunderstorm one day when in a boat on the Thames. Driven to seek
shelter in the house which Simon then occupied, he answered the earl's
welcome by declaring that he feared his host ëmore than all the thunder
and lightning in the world.í ëFear your enemies, my lord kingæthose who
flatter you to your ruinænot me, your constant and faithful friend,í was
the earl's reply. On 25 Aug. he was accredited on a mission to Scotland;
on 18 Oct. ëSimí of Muntfort, Eorl on Leirchestr',í witnessed, as one of the
king's fifteen ësworn redesmen,í Henry's English proclamation of the
ëProvisions.í In November the barons chose him, with two bishops and
the earl-marshal, to represent England at a conference which was to be
held at Cambray between the kings of France and Germany, and in which
Henry had been invited to take part. The conference, however, never
came to pass.
At the end of January 1259 Simon was still in France, and his absence
was causing great anxiety to the English people, ëwho did not know what
had become of him over sea.í He returned for the meeting of parliament in
London, 9 Feb. On 16 March he was sent back again, with the Earl of
Gloucester and four others, to resume negotiations for peace with France
on the basis of a resignation of the English claims on the heritage of the
Angevin house. The French king, however, required the Countess of
Leicester and her sons to join in her brother's renunciation; and this she
and her husband alike refused without adequate security for at least a
certain portion of the many debts for which Henry was answerable to
them both. The negotiation therefore failed, and the ambassadors went
home, not before Gloucester had flung insulting words at Leicester as the
cause of its failure, and Leicester had retorted with a vehemence that
almost led to bloodshed. At the close of a second meeting of parliament a
quarrel arose between them on higher grounds. Gloucester, who
outwardly ranked with Simon as leader of the reforming party, was
showing signs of lukewarmness in the cause. Simon upbraided him
severely, and at last exclaiming ëI care not to live and act with men so
fickle and so false,í withdrew over sea. There, however, he worked on at
the treaty. It was proclaimed in the October meeting of the parliament,
where also an amended set of ordinances, the ëProvisions of
Westminster,í was issued. Simon was absent in the body, but present in
the spirit. The barons had implored him not to withdraw from their
councils, and he had sent them back a solemn assurance that he would
keep his word, no matter what came of it (PRIMAT, Rer. Gall. Scriptt. xxiii.
17).
On 4 Dec. 1259 the treaty was ratified in Paris by the two kings in
person, Simon and Eleanor making at the same time a complete
renunciation of their claims. On 16 Jan. 1260 Henry forbade the parliament
to assemble in his absence. This step threatened a violation of the
ëProvisions,í which enacted that parliament should always meet thrice a
yearæat Candlemas (2 Feb.), in June, and October. Simon waited for the
king till the eleventh hour, and then, ëto save his oath,í hurried to England
just in time to meet the rest of the royal council in London on
Candlemas-day. Hearing from the justiciar that the king was expected in
three weeks, they adjourned the parliament from day to day during that
time. Henry, however, did not come till 30 April; then he shut Simon out
of London, and laid before the council a string of written charges against
him. Some were connected with the eternal matter of money which always
lay between themæthe dowry of Eleanor. Then Henry accused Simon of
quitting Paris without taking leave of him; coming to the parliament in
defiance of his prohibition, and with horses and arms, which was also
forbidden; procuring the removal of a member of the council without the
king's knowledge; ëdrawing people to him and making new alliances,í
thus disturbing the country and obliging the king to bring over a costly
force of mercenaries; threatening that these mercenaries ëshould be so
lodged that no others would ever care to follow them;í bidding the
justiciar tell the king that the mercenaries should be shut out of the realm,
and undertaking to uphold the justiciar in this defiance; forbidding the
justiciar to send money to the king, and declaring that if it were sent the
justiciar should be forced to refund it. The more frivolous of these
charges Simon passed over with a scornful wordæëIt might be so;í to the
rest he answered that he had done and spoken nothing save for the
public good and the royal honour, and with the knowledge and in the
presence of the whole council. So ëby God's grace,í as the Dunstable
annalist says, the attack ended in failure.
Simon was one of the tenants-in-chief summoned to meet the king at
Chester on 8 Sept. for an expedition into Wales. One chronicler says that,
as ëthe wisest and stoutest warrior in England,í he was put in command of
the host (Flores Histor. ii. 454); but this statement seems to have arisen
out of a confusion between Simon and Peter. He was, however, absent
from the wedding of the king's daughter Beatrice on 13 Oct., when he
appointed his wife's nephew, Henry of Cornwall [q.v.], to act as seneschal
in his stead. On 14 March 1261 he and Eleanor were in London, and
joined with the king in submitting the money matters in dispute between
them to the arbitration of the king and queen of France. On 18 July
Simon, with five other barons, appealed to St. Louis for help in coming to
terms with Henry. A month later Henry proclaimed his intention of
appointing his own ministers, recalling his foreign favourites, and
governing once more as he pleased. Simon, in conjunction with
Gloucester and a few other barons who remained faithful to the
ëProvisions,í answered the royal challenge by summoning three knights
from every shire south of Trent to meet them at St. Albans on 21 Sept., ëto
treat of the common affairs of the realm.í Henry issued a
counter-summons, bidding the knights come not to St. Albans, but to
Windsor, where he purposed to hold, on the same day, a meeting with
the barons to treat for peace. Before the day came Gloucester had
ëapostatized,í and Simon, thinking the cause lost, had again withdrawn
over sea, declaring he would rather die in exile than live in faithlessness.
In his despair he talked of going to the Holy Land, but he only went to
France; and in December his consent was asked to a new scheme of
arbitration between the barons and the king. His reply is unknown; but
when asked to join in ratifying the agreement drawn up by the arbitrators
at Whitsuntide 1262 he refused, and it fell through in consequence. Later
in the year king and earl met at the French court, and Henry took occasion
to mix up with the money question, on which alone Queen Margaret had
to arbitrate, a variety of complaints about Simon's ëingratitude,í and a
recapitulation of the charges as to his proceedings in Gascony and in
England, on which he had been tried and acquitted in 1252 and 1260.
Simon briefly repeated his former defence, and nothing came of the affair.
In December Henry went home; Simon followed at the end of April
(1263). Gloucester was dead, and the barons had secretly recalled their
true leader. At the Whitsuntide parliament, having vainly petitioned for a
new confirmation of the charters, they denounced the king as false to his
oath, and proclaimed war upon all violators of the ëProvisions.í Simon
was at once recognised as their captain, and took the command of a
force which marched upon Hereford, and soon mastered the foreign
interlopers in the west. At midsummer the Londoners were called upon,
by a writ sealed with Simon's seal, to choose a side in the struggle. They
chose that of the earl. About the same time the scholars whom Henry had
recently expelled from Oxford were brought back under Simon's
protection. On 16 June Henry had given the earl a safe-conduct for the
purpose of negotiation; on 29-30 June Simon was at Reading, whence the
king of the Romans invited him to a conference at Lodden Bridge; but he
declined it, and went on to Guildford and thence to Dover. In July the
king accepted his terms, and on the 15th Simon and the barons entered
London. Simon went straight to the king and made him ratify his
concessions, and the first step in their fulfilment, the appointment of a
new treasurer, was taken ëin Earl Simon's presenceí at Westminster on 19
July.
On 26 Sept. king and earl met at Boulogne, by the invitation and in the
presence of St. Louis. Once again the old charges were flung in Simon's
face; once again he answered them, to the French king's entire
satisfaction. He was home again for the meeting of parliament on 13 Oct.
It broke up in confusion, the king's party flew to arms, and Simon,
lodging at Southwark with a very small train, would have been
surrounded and captured had not the Londoners rushed out to rescue
him. Four wealthy citizens who had been in the plot with the king were
punished by imprisonment and by a fine, of which Simon applied the
proceeds to strengthen the defences of the city. Fearing a similar trap, he
disregarded the royal summons to another parliament at Reading. On 13
Dec. he joined with the other barons in an agreement to refer to the
arbitration of St. Louis ëall contentions and discordsí between
themselves and their sovereign respecting the ëProvisions,í and swore to
abide by the French king's decision. That decisionæthe Mise of
Amiensæwas given on 23 Jan. 1264. It quashed the ëProvisionsí
altogether, and restored to the king the privileges which he claimed; but it
reserved ëthe rights which the English people had acquiredí before the
passing of the ëProvisions.í That reservation saved everything. It
justified the barons in setting aside the award; for ëit was easy for Simon
to prove that the arbitrary power it gave to the crown was as contrary to
the Charter as to the Provisions themselvesí (GREEN, Hist. Engl. People, i.
297-8). Before the Mise was agreed upon he had said: ëThough all should
forsake me I will stand firm, with my four sons, in the just cause to which
my faith is pledged; nor will I fear to risk the fortune of war.í But he was
not forsaken; the whole English people was with him now. A broken leg,
caused by a fall from his horse, had prevented him from attending the
Mise of Amiens. He now despatched his eldest son to the western
border, where he had secured the alliance of Llywelyn of Wales; he
himself, as soon as he could move, went to secure London, and thence
marched northward to relieve Northampton, where his second son was
besieged by the king; but on hearing of its capture (5 April) he turned
southward again, and in Holy Week laid siege to Rochester. On Henry's
approach he again withdrew to London (26 April). He was, in fact,
recalled by tidings of a plot for the betrayal of the city to Edward. After
taking measures for its security he again set forth on the track of the
royalists. On 12 May he encamped at Fletching, Sussex; the king was ten
miles off at Lewes. One last appeal to Henry, signed by Simon and his
young colleague, the new Earl of Gloucester, was answered by a formal
defiance of ëSimon of Montfort, Gilbert of Clare, and their fellows.í On 14
May the decisive battle took place, and Simon's anxious night of thought
and prayer, his stirring appeal to his followers, his daring and skilful plan
of attack, were rewarded by the total defeat of the royalists and the
capture of the king himself.
A convention drawn up that night, and known as the Mise of Lewes,
ëfurnished the basis of the new constitution which Simon proposed to
create, and forms the link between it and the earlier one devised in 1258í
(STUBBS, ii. 90). That new constitution, set up at the midsummer parliament,
empowered the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester and the Bishop of
Chichester to elect a council of nine, by whose advice the king was to
govern, while the three electors were to remain as a court of appeal in
case of disagreement among the nine, and were themselves to be
removable at the will of the parliament. From that moment Simon was
virtually governor of king and kingdom. His exceptional importance, and
the exceptional danger to which it exposed him, were marked by his
solitary exemption from a decree forbidding all persons to wear arms (16
July), and by a warning written to the barons by ëa faithful Englishman,í
to bethink them of another leader in case he should die. Dangers indeed
were thickening round him. In September he and his partisans were
excommunicated by a papal legate. In November the lawless doings of the
royalists on the Welsh border forced him to march against them.
Llywelyn's help enabled him to subdue them for the moment, but
Gloucester protected them, the great lords of the north were hostile, and
ëit was the weakness of his party among the baronage at this great crisis
which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of mighty issue in our
historyí (GREEN, i. 300). By writs issued in the king's name on 14 and 24
Dec. he summoned to a parliament in London on 30 Jan. 1265, not only
120 churchmen, twenty-three lay barons, and two knights from every
shire, but also two citizens from every borough in England. The only
recorded event of the session was a quarrel between the Earls of
Leicester and Gloucester. Gilbert accused Simon of illegally keeping
foreign garrisons in the castles of which he had custody. The question
was dropped for a while, but on Shrove Tuesday (17 Feb.). Simon
forcibly prevented a tournament between his sons and Gloucester at
Dunstable, and on 11 April he had to do the like again at Northampton.
Gloucester hereupon joined the marcher lords, who were still in revolt,
and openly welcomed back some of the foreign exiles. Simon, with the
king in his train, followed him to Hereford, where another reconciliation
was patched up on 12 May; but on the 28th Gloucester was joined by
Edward, and hostilities began at once. While the new allies secured the
eastern side of the Severn valley, Simon hurried into Glamorgan, made in
the king's name a treaty with Llywelyn (19 June), marched to Monmouth
(28 June), and thence to Newport, intending to cross over to Bristol; but
his transports were intercepted, and he was forced to return to Hereford.
On Sunday, 2 Aug., he set out again, crossed the Severn, and late on
the Monday night, or early on Tuesday morning, reached Evesham,
where he hoped that his son would meet him. His godson, Edward, met
him instead, with a force so overwhelming that Simon at once exclaimed,
ëLet us commend our souls to God, for our bodies are theirs.í At the
close of a three hours' massacreæëfor battle none it was,í as a chronicler
saysæhe fell, almost the last of his little band, crying ëGod's grace!í as he
passed away.
In the eyes of the king's party Simon was a ëtraitor.í Setting that
charge aside, the only faults of which he could be accused were ambition,
avarice, pride, and a fierce and overbearing temper. Ambitious he
undoubtedly was, especially in his youth. His perpetual wranglings with
the king over money matters seem at times to indicate a grasping
disposition; but Henry's slipperiness in such matters was incalculable;
Simon's expenditure in the royal service must have been enormous; and,
moreover, a considerable part of the claims which he pressed so
persistently were not his own claims, but those of his wife, Henry's
sister, whom he had married without any dowry at all, whose dowry on
her first marriage Henry had never reclaimed for her from the Marshals,
and who was anything but a thrifty housekeeper. The heavy expenses of
Simon's visit to Rome in 1238 were defrayed by forced contributions from
the tenants of the honour of Leicester, claimed apparently as arrears of
dues unpaid since his recognition as their lord; but on his return, moved
by a remonstrance from his friend Robert Grosseteste [see Grosseteste,
Robert, bishop of Lincoln], he made restitution to them all. His will, made
on 1 Jan. 1259, begins with an anxious injunction that his debts shall be
paid, and that all claims made against him shall be satisfied without
question and without delay; ëwhere there is any doubt let it not rest on
my side, cost what it may, so that I be free of it, for I would not remain in
debt or under suspicion of debt to any one.í He was certainly often in
debt during his lifetime; probably the earl was as bad a manager as the
countess; but it was not on self-indulgence that he spent; he was noted
for his temperance, sobriety, and simplicity of life. His private life was in
fact that of a saint; his closest friends were the holiest men of the
dayæGrosseteste, Walter Cantelupe [q.v.], Adam Marsh [see Adam de
Marisco]; and Adam, at least, lectured him about his temper with a
frankness which shows that his pride was of the kind that does not turn
away from deserved rebuke. Though his wife was nearly as fiery as
himself, he, at least, seems to have found her ëgood woman through all.í
They were seldom long apart without necessity; he appointed her sole
executrix of his testamentary dispositions, and bade his sons be guided
by her counsels; he left her in command of Kenilworth during his last
campaign; and she spent her nine years of widowhood at Montargis, in a
convent founded by his sister. For their children see Montfort, Almeric,
Eleanor, Guy, Henry, and Simon the younger.
Piety and culture were the characteristics of Simon's home. He knew all
the morning and night offices of the church by heart, and went through
them almost as regularly as a priest, spending more of the night in
devotion than in sleep. He was a fair Latin scholar, a lover of books, a
pleasant and cheerful talker. Chroniclers and poets called him ëthe flower
of all chivalry.í Like his father, he was counted the finest soldier of his
generation. At the siege of Rochester in 1264 it was remarked that he
ëshowed the English the right way to assault a town, a matter about which
they were at that time wholly ignorant;í while at Lewes his plan of attack
was ëlaid with a care and foresight, and executed with a combination of
resource and decision, which would be sufficient, even if we knew
nothing more of his military prowess, to support his reputation as the
first general of his dayí (PROTHERO, p. 273). As a statesman he has been in
modern times not so much overrated as misunderstood. He was not the
inventor of the representative system, nor the ëcreator of the House of
Commons.í We have no means of ascertaining how much or how little of
the complicated executive machinery set up by the ëProvisions of
Oxfordí was of his devising, nor do we know how far he himself was
conscious that he had ëcreated a new force in English politicsí when he
issued the writ ëthat first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit
beside the knight of the shire, the baron and the bishop, in the parliament
of the realmí (GREEN, i. 301). What Englishmen of his own day saw in him
was not so much a reformer of government as a champion of
righteousness, not so much a statesman as a hero. ëWhile other men
wavered and faltered and fell away, the enthusiastic love of the people
clung to the grave, stern soldier, who stood like a pillar, unshaken by
promise or threat or fear of death, by the oath he had sworn.í The
excommunication issued against him in 1264 avowedly rested on political
grounds alone; one chronicler indeed says that in 1268 Clement IV
absolved the dead earl and all his adherents, declaring that the sentence
against them had been won on false pretences from his predecessor (Cont.
GERV. CANT. ii. 247), but this can hardly be, for in 1275 we find Edward I
trying to prevent Simon's son, Almeric, from getting the excommunication
revoked at Rome (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. p. 396). It had, however,
never been published in England, and was never recognised there. The
tomb which covered the shockingly mutilated corpse in the abbey church
of Evesham at once became a shrine where miracles were wrought. The
Franciscans, in whose schemes of religious revival Simon had shared
heart and soul, drew up in his honour immediately after his death an office
in which he was invoked as the ëguardian of the English people.í In
popular song the martyr of Evesham was coupled with the martyr of
Canterbury. The tomb and the church which contained it have perished;
but under a window in the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey
there still remains a monument to Simon of Montfort: his shield of arms,
sculptured there when he stood high in the favour of Henry III, and left
untouched after his fall. The cause which seemed to have fallen with him
gained in fact more from his death than from his life. In October 1267 ëa
series of demands, strangely neglected by historians, but constituting a
solemn assertion of English libertyí (J. R. GREEN, ArchÊol. Journ. xxi. 297),
were embodied in the Ban of Kenilworth, to which Henry and Edward
gave their assent. In November 1269 king and parliament passed the
statute of Marlborough, ëwhere the very spirit of the great earl and of
freedom is alive againí (ib. p. 277). Nor was the final acceptance of Simon's
greatest constitutional innovation long delayed; ëin the parliament of 1295
that of 1265 found itself at last reproducedí (GREEN, Hist. Engl. People, i.
356). ëThe victor of Evesham was the true pupil of the vanquished; the
statesmanship of De Montfort is interwoven, warp and woof, into the
government of Edward Ií (SHIRLEY, Quarterly Review, cxix. 57).

´bªSources´b0ª
Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora, vols. iii-v., and Historia Anglorum,
vols. ii. iii.; Annales Monastici, vols. i-iv.; Robert of Gloucester, vol. ii.;
John of Oxenedes; Royal Letters, vols. i. ii.; Letters of Adam Marsh
(Monumenta Franciscana, vol. i.) and of Robert Grosseteste (all in Rolls
Ser.); Chronicles of Melrose and of Lanercost (Bannatyne Club);
Rishanger's Chronicle, ed. Halliwell, Political Songs, ed. Wright, and
Chronica Majorum Londoniarum, published with Liber de Antiquis
Legibus (Camden Soc.); documents in Patent and Close Rolls of John
and Henry III; Rymer's Federa, vol. i. pt. i.; Nichols's Hist. of Leicester,
vol. i.; Manners and Household Expenses in XIII Cent., ed. Botfield and
Turner (Roxburghe Club); Layettes du TrÈsor des Chartes, vols. ii. and
iii., ed. Teulet and Laborde. A short account of Simon which occurs in the
so-called Chronicle of the Templar of Tyre (Gestes des Chiprois, ed. G.
Raynaud, Soc. de l'Orient Latin, sÈrie historique, v. 172-176) is interesting
as the work of a writer who had once been page to the wife of John de
Montfort, lord of Tyre, whose father (Philip) was first cousin to the earl,
and is also curious as showing how fully and, on the whole, how
accurately the main principles and features of the struggle in England
were known and appreciated in so distant a land. Simon's first modern
biographer was the Rev. Sambrook Russell, who contributed a fair sketch
of his life to Nichols's History of Leicester. Dr. Pauli's work on Simon of
Montfort, Creator of the House of Commons, may be best consulted in
the English translation by Miss Una M. Goodwin, the text having been so
revised as to be virtually a new edition. As its title implies, it deals with
Simon almost exclusively from the point of view of English constitutional
history. Mr. G. W. Prothero's Simon de Montfort is a more elaborate
study of the earl's character and career as a whole; but no complete
biography of him was possible till the store of documents bearing upon
his government in Gascony, his diplomatic relations with France, and his
personal relations with Henry III, which are preserved in the national
archives of France and among the Additional MSS. in the British
Museum, were unearthed, some by MM. Balasque and Dulaurens
(Etudes sur Bayonne, vol. ii., appendices), more by M. Charles BÈmont,
whose Simon de Montfort has virtually superseded all the earlier lives.
M. BÈmont has also dealt with the Gascon affair in Revue Historique, iv.
241-77. For Simon's place among English statesmen see Bishop Stubbs's
Constitutional History, vol. ii. ch. xiv., and the remarkable contemporary
Song of Lewes, edited by T. Wright among the Political Songs (Camden
Soc.), and separately by Mr. C. L. Kingsford in 1890. See also Blaauw's
Barons' War, ed. Mr. C. H. Pearson; art. by Dr. Shirley in Quarterly
Review, cxix. 26-57; Stubbs's Early Plantagenets; and J. R. Green's Hist. of
the English People.

´bªContributor: ´b0ªK. N.

´bªPUBLISHED´b0ª  1894