1. Simon came from a famous French crusading family
Simon de Montfort was born around 1205 at Montfort-l’Amaury. His father, also named Simon, took part in the Fourth Crusade and led the Albigensian Crusade in France against the Cathars. Simon Senior died at the Siege of Toulouse in 1218, and his third son Guy was killed in 1220. Simon Senior is often considered one of the greatest generals in medieval Europe.
2. Simon arrived in England in 1229 seeking his fortune
As a second son, Simon did not receive any of his father’s inheritance. Part of the family’s collection of titles was the earldom of Leicester in England and this caused a problem for his older brother Amaury. England and France were at war, and it proved impossible to give homage to both kings, so Amaury agreed to give the English part of his inheritance to Simon. It took until 1239 before Simon was officially created Earl of Leicester.
3. He expelled Jews from his lands as a propaganda stunt
In 1231, Simon issued a document that expelled all Jews from the half of Leicester in his possession. It prevented their return:
‘in my time or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world’, ‘for the good of my soul, and for the souls of my ancestors and successors’.
There appears to have been very few Jews in the part of Leicester covered by the order. Simon implemented the measure to curry favour as a new lord.
4. Simon married the king’s sister
Simon became a favourite of King Henry III. In 1238, Henry oversaw the marriage of his sister Eleanor to Simon, despite the widowed Eleanor taking a vow of chastity.
By August 1239, Simon was out of favour. According to the chronicler Matthew Paris, Henry ranted that: “You seduced my sister before marriage, and when I found it out, I gave her to you in marriage, although against my will, in order to avoid scandal.”
When Simon defaulted on his debts, it emerged that he had used the king’s name as security.
5. Simon went on crusade while in disgrace
After leaving England, Simon joined the Barons’ Crusade. His brother Amaury was a prisoner and Simon negotiated his release. His participation allowed him to continue the family’s strong crusading tradition. When he returned to France, he was asked to act as regent of France while King Louis IX was on crusade. Simon refused, preferring to return to England to try and patch up his relationship with Henry.
Simon de Montfort (Image Credit: E-Mennechet in Le Plutarque, 1835 / Public Domain).
6. Simon was a problematical Seneschal of Gascony
On 1 May 1247, Simon was appointed Seneschal of Gascony. In January 1249, Henry grumbled that the nobles there complained that Simon was too harsh. Two years later, Simon appeared at Henry’s court in ‘inglorious haste’, with three squires, riding ‘horses worn out with hunger and work’. Gascony was in open rebellion. Henry sent him back to restore order.
In May 1252, Simon was recalled, and Henry threatened to put him on trial for mismanagement, but Simon reminded the king he could not be sacked. When Henry replied that he was not bound by an oath made to a traitor, Simon roared ‘Were thou not my king it would be an ill hour for you’. In August 1253, Henry III took an army to Gascony himself and enjoyed one of his few military victories, restoring his authority in the region.
7. Simon tricked the royal army at the Battle of Lewes
The Second Barons’ War began in 1264, and Simon was the natural leader. Support grew, but there was anti-Semitic violence in London and elsewhere. He led an army south, meeting the king at Lewes on 14 May 1264.
Simon had broken his leg in a riding accident several months earlier and travelled in a covered carriage. When fighting began, Prince Edward charged the carriage. When he reached it and opened the door, Edward was infuriated to find Simon was not there. He assaulted the London contingent until they broke and fled.
Simon was on the other side of the battlefield and attacked Henry’s position. By the time Edward returned from his pursuit, the field was lost. Henry and Edward were taken captive.
8. Simon was not really the father of parliamentary democracy
Simon de Montfort enjoys a reputation as the father of modern parliamentary democracy. He summoned parliament to meet on 20 January 1265 at Westminster. Representatives of towns were to be elected alongside knights, leading to his reputation as the creator of the House of Commons.
The word parliament first appeared in 1236, and knights had been elected to sit in 1254, when burgesses may have attended too. Most towns and cities, such as York and Lincoln, sent two representatives while the Cinque Ports, supporters of Simon, were allowed to send four.
Simon picked up threads of what had been evolving over the previous decades to create a parliament that would support him. The one initiative in his parliament was asking members for opinion and input on political matters rather than merely to approve taxation.
9. Simon’s head became a gruesome trophy
Simon’s ascendancy did not last long. He attracted criticism for excluding others from power and handing castles, money, and offices to his sons. Prince Edward made a daring escape from custody and raised an army to free his father. Edward rode to meet Simon at Evesham.
When the fighting began, Edward appointed a dozen knights to act as a death squad with orders to hunt down Simon. He was quickly killed, Henry III was recovered and freed, but Simon’s body was mutilated. His limbs and genitals were hacked off and his corpse beheaded.
Roger Mortimer claimed the head as a trophy and sent it home to Wigmore Castle as a gift for his wife, Maud. It would have been a conversation piece on the mantle.
Death and mutilation of Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham. (Image Credit: British Library Cotton MS Nero D ii, f. 177 (date: late 13th century) / Public Domain).
10. De Monfort University, Leicester may change its name
When Leicester Polytechnic became a university in 1992, it selected the name De Montfort University to celebrate Simon de Montfort’s links with the city and his pioneering work in parliament.
The Student Union announced in 2020 that it will endeavour to secure the changing of this name. The campaign centres on Simon’s reputation as an anti-Semite, and his expulsion of Jews from Leicester in 1231.
Today, such views are rightly considered unacceptable, but Simon was not out of step with his contemporaries on this issue. Over a hundred Jews were massacred in York in 1190, and in 1290, Edward I would expel all Jews from England. Papal Bulls frequently discriminated against Jews. This is, perhaps, the intrinsic danger of naming an institution after a medieval rebel. He held views that are repulsive today, and he was not all that history has remembered him for.
]]>Less known is the prominence of the de Montfort women.
De Montfort women as warriors and queens
The de Montfort women’s influence reaches back to the 11th century, starting with Isabella. When she fell out with her siblings, she put on armour and led a troop of knights in the field against them. Her sister Bertrade had different ambitions.
She grew tired of her husband’s lecherous ways and ran off with the king of France, who deserted his wife to marry her. Hoping to see her son succeed to the throne over her stepson, Bertrade had the older youth poisoned, but the attempt failed and brought about her disgrace. She died in a nunnery in 1117.
De Montfort women as crusaders and nuns
Two generations later, Simon III de Montfort stood loyally by the English in their fight with the French. He was rewarded with marriages for his children into the Anglo-Norman nobility. His daughter Bertrade II married the earl of Chester and was the mother of the legendary Ranulf de Blondeville, arguably the last of the great Anglo-Norman barons.
Simon IV de Montfort married Amicia of Leicester. Their son Simon V crusaded against the Albigensian heretics and was joined by his wife Alice, who actively participated in his war councils. Their daughter Petronilla was born during the crusade and baptised by Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Dominican order.
After Simon’s death in 1218, Alice de Montfort placed Petronilla in a nunnery, where she became the abbess later in life. Alice’s oldest daughter Amicia II founded the nunnery of Montargis, south of Paris, and died there in 1252.
De Montfort women in England
As the son of Amicia of Leicester, Simon the crusader inherited the earldom of Leicester. It was confiscated by King John in 1207, but his son Simon VI reclaimed the earldom in 1231. Although he was born and raised in France, this Simon de Montfort became an English noble through his English grandmother Amicia.
He rose high in royal favour and married Eleanor, the youngest sister of King Henry III. Together she and Simon had five sons and one daughter. The clash between Eleanor’s husband and brother ended in civil war and Simon’s death in 1265 at the battle of Evesham. Eleanor de Montfort left England to live out the rest of her life in Montargis and took her namesake daughter with her.
De Montfort women in Italy and Wales
Guy de Montfort was the only one of Eleanor’s sons to marry. He found service under the king of Sicily and rapidly advanced to become the count of Nola. He received an heiress as his bride and had two daughters, of whom only the youngest Anastasia survived to adulthood. She became the countess of Nola at her father’s death in 1292 and married into the senatorial Orsini family of Rome.
Eleanor de Montfort died in 1275, living long enough to see her daughter marry Llywelyn of Wales by proxy. Later that year, the boat carrying young Eleanor was captured by the forces of her cousin King Edward I, who had been alerted to her intentions. Eleanor was confined at Windsor Castle and not freed to marry Llywelyn until 1278.
Eleanor de Montfort, 14th century (Image Credit: Genealogical chronicle of the English Kings (1275-1300) – BL Royal MS 14 B V / Public Domain).
She died four years later giving birth to a daughter Gwenllian. When Llywelyn was then killed, the baby girl was placed in a nunnery in Lincolnshire. By the time of her death in 1337, the de Montfort family, once so admired and respected across Europe and the Mediterranean, seemed long extinct.
De Montfort women in Brittany and back to England
But their fortunes were about to be revived under Yolande of Dreux. She was the countess of Montfort through her descent from the senior branch of the family. She married Arthur II of Brittany and their grandson son John defeated his cousins to become the duke of Brittany in 1365, a hundred years after Evesham.
In 1386, this John of Montfort took as his third wife the famous Joan of Navarre. She was the mother of his children and after his death became the queen of England with her marriage to King Henry IV.
Joan of Navarre, queen of England (Image Credit: Public Domain).
Darren Baker is a historian and translator who specialises in 13th century Europe. Crusaders and Revolutionaries of the Thirteenth Century is his second book for Pen & Sword.
From then on, if the king or queen wanted money or men for war or whatever, they had to summon assemblies of barons and clergy and ask them for a tax.
The first king to rule under this new arrangement was Henry III.
Henry III’s grave in Westminster Abbey. Image Credit: Valerie McGlinchey / Commons.
The first meetings of parliament
In January 1236, he summoned such an assembly to Westminster, first to witness his wedding to Eleanor of Provence, and second to discuss the affairs of the realm. Heavy rains flooded out Westminster, so the assembly met at Merton Priory, close to Wimbledon today.
At the top of the agenda was a new codification of the kingdom’s laws.
By discussing and passing new statutes, this assembly became the first parliament in the sense of acting as a legislative body. It was no coincidence that in the same year the word ‘parliament’, meaning ‘to discuss’, was first used to describe these assemblies.
The next year, in 1237, Henry summoned parliament to London to ask for a tax. He needed money to pay for his wedding and various debts he had accumulated. Parliament grudgingly agreed, but tacked on conditions for how the money was to be collected and spent.
It was the last tax Henry got from parliament for decades.
Every time he asked, he found their conditions more intrusive and ebbing away at his authority.
In 1248 he had to remind his barons and clergy that they lived in a feudal state. They could no more expect to tell him what to do while denying the same voice to their own subjects and communities.
Eleanor widens representation
By this point the concerns of ‘the little guy’ – knights, farmers, townsfolk – started resonating in national politics. They wanted protection from their lords and more efficient justice. They believed that Magna Carta should apply to all people in power, not just the king, and Henry agreed.
In 1253, Henry went to Gascony to put down a revolt against the governor he had appointed there, Simon de Montfort.
War seemed imminent, so he asked his regent to summon parliament to ask for a special tax. The regent was the queen, Eleanor of Provence.
Eleanor (far left) and Henry III (right with the crown) shown crossing the Channel to England.
She was pregnant when Henry left and gave birth to a girl. Receiving her husband’s instructions a month later, she convened parliament, the first woman to do so.
Parliament met as summoned and although the barons and clergy said they would like to help, they could not speak for the little guy. So Eleanor decided to reach out to them.
On 14 February 1254, she ordered the sheriffs to have two knights elected in each county and sent to Westminster to discuss the tax and other local matters with her and her advisers.
It was a groundbreaking parliament, the first time the assembly met with a democratic mandate, and not everyone was happy about it. The start was delayed, rather prorogued, because some of the senior lords were late in arriving.
The tax was not approved because Simon de Montfort, who was still angry at the king over his recall as governor, told the assembly he did not know of any war in Gascony.
The origins of democratic rule
In 1258, Henry was massively in debt and gave in to parliament’s demands that the kingdom undergo reforms.
A constitution was devised, the Provisions of Oxford, under which parliament was made an official institution of state. It would meet every year at regular intervals and have a standing committee working together with the king’s council.
Two years later relations broke down between Henry and radical reformers led by de Montfort. The battleground was parliament and whether it was a royal prerogative or instrument of republican government. Henry came out on top, but in 1264 de Montfort led and won a rebellion.
Simon de Montfort, c. 1250.
He turned England into a constitutional monarchy with the king as a figurehead.
In January 1265, de Montfort summoned parliament and, for the first time on record, the towns were invited to send representatives. This was Simon’s acknowledgment of their political support, but because England was in a revolutionary state, governed by an authority other than the monarch.
Eleanor is erased from history
Later historians in the Victorian era decided this was the starting point of democracy. Here was a glimpse at the future House of Commons, they touted. The three decades of parliamentary evolution before that were conveniently ignored, in particular Eleanor of Provence’s contribution.
The reason was clear enough: the Victorians were looking for a distinctly English stamp on the history of democracy to rival the French and their revolution of 1789.
Unlike Simon, Eleanor had no ties to England before her marriage. Since the strength of his rebellion was due in large part to anti-foreigner sentiment, she too was subjected to the violence that helped propel him to power.
The Victorians, who rolled their eyes at the excesses of the French Revolution, decided the less press she got the better.
Darren Baker took his degree in modern and classical languages at the University of Connecticut. He lives today with his wife and children in in the Czech Republic, where he writes and translates. The Two Eleanors of Henry III is his latest book, and will be published by Pen and Sword on 30 October 2019.
Certainly the queen was in on her husband’s decision, in 1238, to allow his sister to marry Simon de Montfort, despite the storm it was sure to cause. That was because Eleanor was a princess and Simon a French parvenu with a weak claim to the earldom of Leicester.
How the two of them met is unclear, although Henry was under the impression they were sleeping together and so it was better to avoid a crossbow wedding.
The husbands feud
Both Eleanors became mothers for the first time within months of each other, but the happiness was ruined when Henry got fed up with Simon taking advantage of his goodwill, especially when it came to money.
Things were patched up, but the relations between the two men went south again when Simon and Eleanor de Montfort literally went south, he to serve as Henry’s governor of Gascony. His rule became so harsh that the king was forced to put him on trial for it. Simon was vindicated but seethed with revenge.
Statue of Montfort on the Haymarket Memorial Clock Tower in Leicester. Image Credit: / Commons.
Reconciling their husbands
What reconciliation there was between Henry and Simon was thanks to their two Eleanors. By that point they were the mothers of four children each, and in 1252 Eleanor de Montfort gave birth to her fifth son after a protracted labour. The queen sent her nurse to care for her and later a gift of jewellery to mark her purification.
The following year the king went to Gascony to fix Simon’s misdoings and named his wife regent in his absence. Queen Eleanor was pregnant before he left and gave birth to a girl, all the while taking care of matters of state, even becoming the first woman to summon parliament.
A later engraving of Queen Eleanor of Provence.
Relations sour
It was the beginning of reforms in 1258 that put the friendship of the Eleanors under strain. Simon used the ascendancy of the council not just to pay Henry back for all his perceived humiliations, but also to obtain a fair amount of money for him and his wife.
It went back to Eleanor’s first widowhood and the lack of a proper dower for her. In the twenty-five years since that time, the Montforts figured they were owed roughly £25,000. In terms of purchasing power, it’s about £18,000,000 in today’s money. Everyone thought they had to be dreaming. Nobody had that kind of money.
But Simon had negotiated the forthcoming peace treaty with France. He knew the French were going to give Henry that much money and more for his lost territories. Simon made sure to condition the treaty on the renunciation of land claims by all of King John’s children, including his youngest daughter Eleanor de Montfort.
When that time came, however, she refused. She told them not to count on her cooperation until her fiscal claims were met.
Sibling extortion
Henry was furious, and it wasn’t only he who thought his sister and brother-in-law were extorting him. Queen Eleanor saw the peace treaty in terms of friendship between England and France and here her sister-in-law was trying to scuttle it for her own personal gain.
Eleanor de Montfort eventually gave way, but the damage was done. After the treaty was ratified at a ceremony in Paris, she left early for Normandy without saying goodbye.
Eleanor, wife of Simon de Montfort, younger sister of Henry III and sister-in-law of Queen Eleanor of Provence.
Simon went to England, also without saying goodbye. He was intent on stirring up trouble, culminating over the next four years in the captive monarchy. It’s unlikely the two Eleanors had any contact with each other in that time.
Darren Baker took his degree in modern and classical languages at the University of Connecticut. He lives today with his wife and children in in the Czech Republic, where he writes and translates. The Two Eleanors of Henry III is his latest book, and will be published by Pen and Sword on 30 October 2019.
He would run the country with a council and parliament while the king remained in the background, a convenient figurehead. The king’s sister Eleanor, who was Simon’s wife, would attend Henry’s needs and those of the rest of the royal family, who were kept in honourable confinement.
The other Eleanor
They did not include Queen Eleanor. Simon’s first bid for power had unleashed a wave of anti-foreigner hysteria throughout the realm.
The queen being from Provence, she was targeted with abuse and physically attacked at London Bridge. She wisely went abroad during these troubles and was at the court of her sister Margaret, the queen of France, when she learned of her husband’s defeat. Her first priority was to find out where Edward was.
All eyes on Wallingford
Part of the ruined remains of Wallingford Castle today.
Edward was Queen Eleanor’s firstborn child, a problematic youth for much of these tense years. Now 25, he was being held at Wallingford with the rest of the royal men.
The queen got word about his location to the loyalist garrison at Bristol and encouraged them to make a rescue attempt. A free Edward could unite the other pockets of resistance and overthrow Simon. But the guards at Wallingford were tipped off and thwarted the attack in time.
Eleanor de Montfort was more or less the warden at Wallingford. Once the insurgents were put to flight, it was decided to move the prisoners to the more secure environs of Kenilworth, which Henry had given her during the sunnier days of their relationship.
The situation wasn’t easy for her. The prisoners included her other brother Richard of Cornwall and his two sons. Richard was then the titular king of Germany and was used to a high standard of comfort. Eleanor went to great lengths to make sure he and the others were groomed, clothed and fed at the level they enjoyed, before the disaster struck.
Eleanor, wife of Simon de Montfort, younger sister of Henry III and sister-in-law of Queen Eleanor of Provence.
Invasion scare
Eleanor knew her sister-in-law the queen well enough to know she wasn’t going to give up without a fight – these two had been close once.
After the failed rescue attempt at Wallingford in mid-summer of 1264, the queen put an invasion force together in Flanders.
Simon countered with an army of peasants to ready to defend England against ‘bloodthirsty aliens’. He skilfully dragged out the negotiations going back and forth across the Channel until she could no longer afford her troops and they drifted away.
Low on money and options, Queen Eleanor went to Gascony to rule as the duchess. Eleanor de Montfort went to Kenilworth for a splendid Christmas with her family, friends and supporters.
Sudden fall from grace
In the winter of 1265, while Simon lorded over his famous parliament, his wife did the entertaining side of their political life and made sure their children were well placed to reap the benefits.
And like that it was over. From her base abroad, Queen Eleanor used her contacts in Poitou and Ireland to launch a mini-invasion of Wales while disaffected loyalists successfully sprung Edward. Within a month, Edward had Simon on the run, and in August 1265 cornered and killed him at Evesham.
Eleanor de Montfort was then at Dover, which she had secured for either bringing in troops or making her escape. Simon’s death meant the latter.
The death of Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham.
She refused to go quickly, which was a problem because Queen Eleanor wanted to come home and Dover was the official point of disembarkation. It would not do for the two Eleanors to have to exchange furtive glances, one leaving the boat while the other got on.
As it was, Eleanor de Montfort departed with her daughter in late October and the next day Eleanor of Provence arrived with her other son.
Darren Baker took his degree in modern and classical languages at the University of Connecticut. He lives today with his wife and children in in the Czech Republic, where he writes and translates. The Two Eleanors of Henry III is his latest book, and will be published by Pen and Sword on 30 October 2019.