Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, died on the 4th of August 1265 with a lance through his neck, his head subsequently severed and sent as a trophy to a noblewoman at Wigmore Castle. A relief portrait of this same man now adorns the wall of the United States House of Representatives. That gap between butchered rebel and founding father of democracy is what this documentary explores. Who was the French-born nobleman who toppled a king, convened what many regard as the first modern parliament, and yet also drove Jews from their homes and presided over massacres that killed hundreds? The answers lie in the unstable, violent world of thirteenth-century England, in a king who could not stop making enemies, and in a man whose ambitions and convictions were always at war with each other.

• 2. A Frenchman Claims England

  ›

  Simon arrived in England in 1229 with some education but no knowledge of English. He came from a family that had made its name on crusade. His father, Simon de Montfort the elder, had led the campaign against the Cathars in south-west France and acquired vast domains through that violence, only to be killed at the Siege of Toulouse in 1218 when a stone pitched by a mangonel struck him on the head. The young Simon had been there, at his mother's side, when his father died.

  The elder Simon's English inheritance had been withheld by King John, who placed the earldom of Leicester into the hands of a cousin, Ranulf, the Earl of Chester. When Simon's older brother Amaury failed to reclaim it, the two brothers struck a private deal: Amaury surrendered his rights in England, and Simon gave up all claim to the family's French possessions. Simon then petitioned Henry III directly. Henry, comfortable with French-speaking foreigners at a court where French was the common tongue, received him warmly and did not oppose the claim. Formal recognition as Earl of Leicester came only in February 1239, a full nine years after Simon first arrived, but even before that date he had already issued charters using the title. In 1236 he tried to arrange a marriage with Joan, Countess of Flanders, a match the French crown quickly strangled by persuading Joan to marry Thomas II of Savoy instead.

• 3. The Secret Marriage

  ›

  In January 1238, Montfort married Eleanor of England, daughter of King John and sister of the reigning Henry III. The ceremony was performed secretly, without consulting the great barons, even though a marriage of such consequence plainly required their approval. Eleanor had previously been wed to William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, and on his death, while she was sixteen, she had sworn a vow of perpetual chastity. By marrying Montfort she broke that vow, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Rich, condemned the union on those grounds.

  The English nobility was furious on a second count: the king's sister had been given to a foreigner of modest rank. Henry's own brother, Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, rose in open revolt when he learned of the marriage. Henry eventually bought Richard's peace for 6,000 marks. The couple's first son was born in November 1238, and Henry served as his godfather; the child was baptised Henry in the king's honour. Montfort also stood as one of nine godfathers to Henry's eldest son, Edward Longshanks. The marriage brought the manor of Sutton Valence in Kent into Simon's possession, and for a few years the two men remained close. That cordiality collapsed in August 1239, when Henry discovered that Montfort had named the king as security for a large debt owed to Thomas, Count of Flanders, without his permission. Henry confronted Montfort and threatened to imprison him in the Tower of London. Matthew Paris recorded Henry's furious accusation: "You seduced my sister and when I discovered this, I gave her to you, against my will, to avoid scandal." Simon and Eleanor fled to France.

• 4. Expulsion and Persecution

  ›

  As Earl of Leicester, Montfort expelled the Jewish community from Leicester city in 1231, banishing them, in his own words, "in my time or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world." He framed the act as spiritually meritorious, done "for the good of my soul, and for the souls of my ancestors and successors." The practical effect was the removal of the practice of usury, forbidden to Christians but permitted to Jews, which made the expulsion popular among local landowners who owed money. Leicester's Jews were permitted to relocate to the eastern suburbs, which fell under the jurisdiction of Montfort's great-aunt Margaret, Countess of Winchester.

  This hostility had a family pedigree. His mother had given the Jews of Toulouse a choice of conversion, expulsion, or death during the Albigensian Crusade. Robert Grosseteste, then Archdeacon of Leicester and, according to Matthew Paris, Montfort's confessor, may have encouraged the Leicester expulsion, though Grosseteste separately argued that Jews' lives should be spared. The pattern of local expulsion would escalate into something far bloodier once Montfort held power over all of England. By the time of the Second Barons' War, his followers were not merely banishing Jewish communities but massacring them, seizing the locked chests called archae in which debt records were stored, and destroying the legal and financial infrastructure that gave Jews the right to conduct business at all.

• 5. War, Parliament, and Rule

  ›

  Louis IX of France was expected by nearly everyone to arbitrate fairly between the king and the reforming barons. When Louis completely annulled the Provisions of Oxford in his Mise of Amiens in January 1264, civil war broke out almost immediately. Montfort, prevented from presenting his case to Louis directly because of a broken leg, marched his army out in early May 1264 and won a spectacular triumph at the Battle of Lewes on the 14th of May 1264. He captured King Henry, Prince Edward, and Richard of Cornwall, the titular King of Germany, in a single engagement.

  Montfort used that victory to build a government anchored on the Provisions first established at Oxford in 1258. Henry kept his title and crown, but real authority passed to a council led by Montfort, subject to consultation with parliament. Montfort's Great Parliament of 1265 sent summons, in the king's name, to each county and to a selected list of boroughs, asking each to send two representatives. A parliament of knights elected by their shires had already met in 1254, at the request of the regent Queen Eleanor while Henry was in Gascony seeking money. Montfort extended that precedent by adding elected representatives from the boroughs, ordinary citizens from English towns. From this inclusion the principle of broad parliamentary representation grew. The list of boroughs entitled to elect a member expanded slowly over centuries; the last charter was granted to Newark in 1674. Prince Edward, meanwhile, was not idle. He used patronage and bribes to peel away baron after baron from Montfort's coalition.

• 6. The Murder of Evesham

  ›

  Prince Edward escaped in May 1265, and the baronial coalition began to fracture. The decisive defection was Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester, the most powerful magnate in England and Montfort's own ally at Lewes. Clare had grown resentful of Montfort's growing fame and authority. When he and his brother Thomas quarrelled with Montfort's sons Henry, Simon the Younger, and Guy, Clare and Thomas crossed over to Edward's side.

  On the morning of the 4th of August 1265, an ominous black cloud hung over the field of Evesham as Montfort led his depleted army in a desperate uphill charge. He had crossed the Severn intending to join his son Simon the Younger, but when he saw an army approaching, it was flying captured Montfort banners, a deliberate deception by Edward. Before the battle, Prince Edward had appointed a twelve-man death squad whose sole assignment was to find the earl and cut him down. Roger Mortimer killed Montfort by stabbing him in the neck with a lance. One chronicler called it the "murder of Evesham, for battle it was none." When Montfort heard that his son Henry had been killed during the fighting, he replied, "Then it is time to die." His last recorded words were said to have been "Thank God." Also killed alongside him were Peter de Montfort and Hugh Despenser. His body was mutilated; his head was severed and his testicles cut off and hung on either side of his nose, and the head was sent to Wigmore Castle as a gift to Maud, wife of Roger Mortimer. Such remains as could be gathered were buried before the altar of Evesham Abbey by the canons.

• 7. Legacy and Contradiction

  ›

  After Montfort's death, pilgrims began visiting his grave at Evesham Abbey, treating it as holy ground. An unofficial miracle cult formed around him, documented in the so-called Evesham "miracle book," which records some 200 alleged miracles. King Henry banned the practice and had Montfort's remains moved to a secret location, probably the crypt. The cult was practised in secret for at least two years but lasted until around 1280.

  Napoleon Bonaparte described Montfort as "one of the greatest Englishmen." A relief of his likeness was placed on the wall of the Chamber of the United States House of Representatives. De Montfort University in Leicester, De Montfort Hall, and a statue on the Haymarket Memorial Clock Tower all carry his name in the city from which he expelled its Jewish community. In 2001, Leicester City Council issued a formal statement that rebuked Montfort for his "blatant anti-Semitism." His followers' violence against Jews carried on after his death. King Henry, in the aftermath of the war, was forced to appoint burgesses and citizens to protect Jewish communities from further attack because, in the language of the royal writs, they "feared grave peril" and were in a "deplorable state." Evesham Abbey and Montfort's grave were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century. In 1965, exactly seven hundred years after his death, a memorial of stone from Montfort-l'Amaury was laid on the site of the former altar by Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Harry Hylton-Foster and Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. Montfort's daughter Eleanor later married Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, and died in 1282 giving birth to a daughter, Gwenllian, who was captured by Edward I and spent the rest of her life in a convent.