Early life As a younger son, Simon de Montfort attracted little public attention during his youth, and the date of his birth remains unknown. He is first mentioned when his mother made a grant to him in 1217. As a boy, Montfort accompanied his parents during his father's campaigns against the
Cathars. He was with his mother at the
Siege of Toulouse in 1218, where his father died after being struck on the head by a stone pitched by a
mangonel. In addition to
Amaury, Simon had another older brother,
Guy, who was killed at the siege of
Castelnaudary in 1220. As a young man, Montfort probably took part in the Albigensian Crusades of the early 1220s. He and Amaury both took part in the
Barons' Crusade. In 1229 the two surviving brothers (Amaury and Simon) came to an arrangement with King Henry whereby Simon gave up his rights in France and Amaury gave up his rights in England. Thus freed from any allegiance to the king of France, Montfort successfully petitioned for the English inheritance, which he received the next year, although he did not take full possession for several years, and did not win formal recognition as Earl of Leicester until February 1239. Montfort became a favourite of King Henry III and even issued a charter as "Earl of Leicester" in 1236, despite having not yet been granted the title. In that same year, Simon tried to persuade
Joan, Countess of Flanders to marry him. The idea of an alliance between the rich
County of Flanders and a close associate of Henry III of England did not sit well with the French crown. The French Queen Dowager
Blanche of Castile convinced Joan to marry
Thomas II of Savoy instead, who himself became
Count of Flanders.
Royal marriage , who married Montfort in 1238, depicted in the early-fourteenth-century
Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England In January 1238, Montfort married
Eleanor of England, daughter of King John and
Isabella of Angoulême and sister of King Henry III. While this marriage took place with the king's approval, the act itself was performed secretly and without consulting the great barons, as a marriage of such importance warranted. Eleanor had previously been married to
William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, and she had sworn a vow of perpetual
chastity upon his death, when she was sixteen, which she broke by marrying Montfort. The
archbishop of Canterbury,
Edmund Rich, condemned the marriage for this reason. The English nobles protested the marriage of the king's sister to a foreigner of modest rank. Most notably, the king's and Eleanor's brother
Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, rose up in revolt when he learned of the marriage. King Henry eventually bought off Richard with 6,000 marks and peace was restored. The marriage brought the manor of
Sutton Valence in
Kent into Montfort's possession. Relations between King Henry and Montfort were cordial at first. Henry lent him his support when Montfort embarked for Rome in March 1238 to seek papal approval for his marriage. When Simon and Eleanor's first son was born in November 1238 (despite rumours, more than nine months after the wedding), he was baptised Henry in honour of his royal uncle. In February 1239, Montfort was finally invested with the Earldom of Leicester. He also acted as the king's counsellor and was one of the nine godfathers of Henry's eldest son,
Edward Longshanks.
Expulsion of Jews from Leicester As Earl of
Leicester, Montfort expelled the small
Jewish community from Leicester city in 1231, banishing them "in my time or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world". He justified his action as being "for the good of my soul, and for the souls of my ancestors and successors". Expelling the Jews enhanced Montfort's popularity in his new domains because it removed the practice of
usury, which was practised exclusively by Jews (it was forbidden to Christians). Leicester's Jews were allowed to move to the eastern suburbs, which were controlled by Montfort's great-aunt Margaret, Countess of Winchester. His parents had shown a similar hostility to Jews in France, where his father had taken part in the
Albigensian Crusade, during which his mother had given the Jews of
Toulouse a choice of conversion, expulsion or death.
Robert Grosseteste – then
Archdeacon of Leicester and, according to
Matthew Paris, de Montfort's confessor – may have encouraged the expulsion, though he is known to have argued that Jews' lives should be spared.
Crusade and turning against the king in
Leicester Shortly after Prince Edward's birth in 1239, Montfort fell out with his brother-in-law, Henry III. Montfort owed a great sum of money to
Thomas, Count of Flanders,
Queen Eleanor's uncle, and named King Henry as security for his repayment. The king evidently had not approved this, and was enraged when he discovered that Montfort had used his name. On 9 August 1239, he confronted Montfort, called him an
excommunicant and threatened to imprison him in the
Tower of London.
Matthew Paris reported that Henry said "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 to escape Henry's wrath. Having announced his intention to go on
crusade two years before, Simon raised funds and travelled to the
Holy Land during the
Barons' Crusade, but does not seem to have faced combat there. He was part of the crusading host which, under
Richard of Cornwall, negotiated the release of Christian prisoners including Simon's older brother, Amaury. In autumn 1241, he left
Syria and joined King Henry's campaign against King
Louis IX in
Poitou in July 1242. The campaign was a failure, and an exasperated Montfort declared that Henry should be locked up like King
Charles the Simple. Like his father, Simon was a soldier as well as a capable administrator. His dispute with King Henry came about due to the latter's determination to ignore the swelling discontent within the country, caused by a combination of factors, including famine and a sense, among the English Barons, that King Henry was too quick to dispense favour to his
Poitevin relatives and
Savoyard in-laws. In 1248, Montfort again took the cross with the idea of following Louis IX of France to
Egypt. However, at the repeated requests of King Henry, he gave up this project in order to act as the king's
Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine (Gascony). Bitter complaints were excited by the rigour with which Montfort suppressed the excesses of the Seigneurs and of contending factions in the great communes. Henry yielded to the outcry and instituted a formal inquiry into Simon's administration. Simon was formally acquitted on the charges of oppression, but his accounts were disputed by Henry, and Simon retired to France in 1252. The nobles of France offered him the Regency of the kingdom, vacated by the death of Queen
Blanche of Castile. The earl preferred to make his peace with Henry III, which he did in 1253, in obedience to the exhortations of the dying
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. He helped the king deal with disaffection in Gascony, but their reconciliation was a hollow one. In the Parliament of 1254, Simon led the opposition in resisting a royal demand for a subsidy. In 1256–57, when the discontent of all classes was coming to a head, Montfort nominally adhered to the royal cause. He undertook, with
Peter of Savoy, the Queen's uncle, the difficult task of extricating the king from the pledges which he had given to the
Pope with reference to the Crown of
Sicily; and Henry's writs of this date mention Montfort in friendly terms. However, at the "Mad Parliament" of
Oxford (1258) Montfort appeared with the
Earl of Gloucester, At the time, the King was periodically raising punitive taxation on the Jews, causing them to sell their debt bonds cheaply to raise cash to pay their taxes. The bonds were sold to the richest courtiers at cut down prices, leading many indebted middling landowners to lose their lands. This fed into rising anti-Semitic beliefs, fuelled by the church. Measures against the Jews and controls over debts and usury dominated debates about royal power and finances among the classes that were beginning to be involved in Parliament. The debt "cancellations" however involved massacres of Jews by his followers, to obtain their financial records, for instance in
Worcester and
London. In London, one of his key followers
John FitzJohn led the attack, and is said to have killed leading Jewish figures Isaac fil Aaron and Cok fil Abraham with his bare hands. He allegedly shared the loot with Montfort. Five hundred Jews died. His son Simon led a further attack on Jews in
Winchester. Jews in
Canterbury, were murdered or driven out by a force led by
Gilbert de Clare. Each attack was aimed at the seizure of the records of debts, stored in locked chests within each community, called 'archae'. Archae were legally mandated by the king for Jews to be allowed to conduct any business. They were destroyed or gathered for instance at
Ely by the rebels. The
Welsh marcher lords were friends and allies of Prince Edward, and when he escaped in May 1265, they rallied around his opposition. The final nail was the defection of Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester, the most powerful baron and Simon's ally at Lewes. Clare had grown resentful of Simon's fame and growing power. When he and his brother Thomas fell out with Simon's sons Henry,
Simon the Younger, and
Guy, they deserted the reforming cause and joined Edward. Though boosted by Welsh infantry sent by Montfort's ally
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Simon's forces were severely depleted. Prince Edward attacked his cousin, his godfather's son Simon's forces at
Kenilworth, capturing more of Montfort's allies. Montfort himself had crossed the
Severn with his army, intending to rendezvous with his son Simon the Younger. When he saw an army approaching
Evesham, Montfort initially thought it was his son's forces. It was, however, Edward's army flying the Montfort banners they had captured at Kenilworth. At that point, Simon realised he had been out-manoeuvred by Edward. in
Worcestershire in 1265 An ominous black cloud hung over the field of Evesham on 4 August 1265 as Montfort led his army in a desperate uphill charge against superior forces, described by one chronicler as the "murder of Evesham, for battle it was none". On hearing that his son Henry had been killed, Montfort replied, "Then it is time to die." Montfort's last words were said to have been "Thank God". Also slain with Montfort were other leaders of his movement, including
Peter de Montfort and
Hugh Despenser. Montfort's body was mutilated in a frenzy by the royalists. News reached the mayor and sheriffs of London that "the head of the earl of Leicester ... was severed from his body, and his testicles cut off and hung on either side of his nose"; His hands and feet were also cut off and sent to diverse places to enemies of his as a great mark of dishonour to the deceased. Such remains as could be found were buried before the altar of
Evesham Abbey church by the canons. The grave was visited as holy ground by many commoners until King Henry caught wind of it. He declared that Montfort deserved no spot on holy ground, and had his remains reburied in another "secret" location, probably in the crypt. The remains of some of Montfort's soldiers who had fled the battlefield were found in the nearby village of
Cleeve Prior. Montfort's niece,
Margaret of England, later killed one of the soldiers responsible for his death, purposely or inadvertently.
Matthew Paris reports that the
Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, once said to Montfort's eldest son, Henry, "My beloved child, both you and your father will meet your deaths on one day, and by one kind of death, but it will be in the name of justice and truth." == Legacy ==