CHAPTER III.

SIMON DE MONTFORT.

"Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom carries an imposing and majestic aspect: it has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors; it has its bearings and its ensigns armorial; it has its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, and titles."

BURKE.

2

THE ablest and most active chiefs among the barons opposed to the court at the time of the Oxford Parliament were Richard de Clare', the Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, each allied by marriage to the royal family, but exasperated into opposition by personal affronts, as well as by public motives, and each too powerful and ambitious not to be jealous of the other.

De Clare had, as a minor, espoused the daughter of Hubert de Burgh, whose ward he was, but the King anxious himself to dispose of so wealthy an heir, had compelled a divorce, and constrained him to marry another lady. He had distinguished himself in the Crusade and the Welsh

1 Arms in north aisle Westm. Abbey, "Or, 3 chevrons gules."

2 De Clare's widowed mother had married Earl Richard; de Montfort was the husband of Princess Eleanor. Isabella Marshal, the Countess of Gloucester, died at Berkhamstead, 1239; and, though she had wished to be buried at Tewksbury, near her first husband, Earl Richard, her second, who married her 1230, did not permit this, but buried

her at Beaulieu, and founded a chaplain to pray for her soul. She had done the same for her first husband's soul, when a widow-she bequeathed to Tewksbury monastery, besides some silver cups, and some church vestments, a phial sent her by the Pope with relics of various saints, some hairs of S. Elizabeth the virgin, some linen of S. Agnes, de tribus pueris, de sanctis 40 martyribus, &c. -Dugd. Monast. ii. 55.

wars, and was beloved and trusted by all the English nobles on account of his eloquence, prudence, and acquaintance with the laws. The persuasions, however, of the King, and the proffered dower of 5000 marcs (£3333. 6s. 8d.), induced him, in 1253, to yield his eldest son, Gilbert, then about 15, in marriage to Alicia, the daughter of Guy, the King's halfbrother, an alliance very distasteful to his friends. De Clare had ever been an active party in upholding the liberties of the subject, and having personally witnessed the King's solemn oaths to maintain them, he considered himself in a manner pledged to insist upon their fulfilment.

The most remarkable person, however, of his party, and the one who has most identified his name with the history of the times, was his compeer, Simon de Montfort, a man of so much energy and talent in war and council, that although allied to the King and born abroad, his acknowledged capacity and honour overcame these disadvantages; and at a time when foreigners were universally odious and the court distrusted, the barons and people of England with one accord ranged themselves under this foreign courtier, as their leader for the recovery of their national liberties. There must obviously have been no common ascendancy of character to produce such a result.

His grandfather, Simon the Bald, the third Count de Montfort, was descended from a King of France, and by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitzparnel1 Earl of Leicester, transmitted to his son the claim of large English estates, and of the dignity of High Steward. This alliance in 1165 with the daughter of Blanchemains, as the earl was called, formed the only tie of connexion between England

1 Petronilla, his widow, furnished the church of Leicester with a curious piece of fancy work, a rope made of her own hair, to suspend the lamp in the choir. Chr. Knight. She was the heiress of Hugh de Grante menill, Baron of Hinckley, and by that tenure Hereditary Grand Steward

of England. In the Exchequer Roll of Normandy (Ducarel, Ant. Ang. Norm.) the Earl of Leicester is named as owing 10 soldiers and 40 servants for the honour of Grantemenill, and 81 soldiers for the honour of Britolio. -See Pedigree of de Montfort, at page 45.

and the great Simon de Montfort, which enabled him successfully to establish his claim to a place among the nobles of England, in 1232, after a long interval of foreign absence of all the family. On the death of Fitzparnel, accordingly, Simon, the fourth Count de Montfort, became Earl of Leicester, and the estates were, in 1206, divided between Simon and Saiher de Quincy', Earl of Winchester. Simon's rebellion soon afterwards caused a forfeiture of his estates, and his own banishment; but he must have had bold and powerful adherents, for King John was some time afterwards startled by a report, a false one indeed, of the barons having elected Simon as their King'. Being a good soldier, and remarkable for his stature and strength, he had an opportunity, while an exile from England, of making his "name very precious to all the bigots of that age" (as Hume remarks) by his barbarous crusades against the Albigenses. The cruelties practised are well known, but the fanaticism of the period was widely spread, and the merit of extinguishing heretics so blinded his contemporary historian, that even after relating

1 Arms in s. aisle Westm. Ab. "gules, 7 mascles conj. 3, 3, and 1

or."

2 Chr. Dunst. For an account of Simon de Montfort's incised slab at Carcassonne, see Archæol. Journ. 1855, p. 280.

3 It is curious to mark the feeling of modern Roman Catholics on this point. Comte de Montalembert, pair de France, in his "Histoire de Ste Elisabeth de Hongrie (1231)," thus expresses himself: Il est reconnu aujourd'hui que ces cruautés contre les Albigeois, &c., étoient du moins réciproques, et l'on n'a pas encore, que nous sachions, trouvé le moyen de faire la guerre, et surtout une guerre de religion, avec aménité et douceur. Celui qui fut dans cette lutte de champion de Catholicisme, Simon de Montfort, a sans doute terni une partie de sa gloire par une trop grande ambition, et par une rigueur que la bonne foi ne sauroit excuser; mais il lui en reste assez

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pour que les Catholiques ne rougissent pus de la proclamer hautement. L'histoire offre assurement bien peu de caractères aussi grands que le sien par la volonté, la persévérance, le courage, le mépris de la mort; et quand on songe à la ferveur et à l'humilité de sa piété, à la pureté inviolable de ses mœurs, à cet inflexible dévouement à l'autorité ecclésiastique, qui l'avoit fait se retirer tout seul du camp des croisés devant Zara, parceque le Pape lui avoit défendu de guerroyer contre les chrétiens, on conçoit tout l'excès de son indignation contre ceux qui troublaient la paix des consciences, et renversaient toutes les barrières de la morale. Son caractère et son époque se peignent à la fois dans ce mot qu'il prononça au moment d'entreprendre une lutte inégale: "Toute l'église prie pour moi, je ne saurois succomber;" et encore lorsque poursuivi par l'ennemi, et ayant passé avec sa cavalerie une rivière, que les gens à pied

Simon's order, at the capture of the castle of Brom, to cut off the noses of a hundred of the garrison, and to pluck out their eyes, with the exception of one eye reserved to a single guide, he immediately praises him as "the mildest of men'."

There is, indeed, some reason to hope that the service was unpopular among his troops, and revolted their common feelings of humanity; for Simon, in a letter to Pope Innocent III. (August, 1209), not only urges his own merits for having so rapidly marched upon the heretics, but also puts forward this special reason why he ought to be confirmed in his government over the country, that "he had been obliged to hire soldiers to remain with him at a greater price than in other wars, as he could scarcely retain them, unless rewarded by double pay?"

This zealot has been compared to Cromwell, as a hero well fitted for a holy war, and was superior to the meaner superstitions of his time. When his wife came to him greatly alarmed at having dreamed of blood flowing from her arms, he replied, "Do you think we follow dreams and auguries like the Spaniards? If you had even dreamed that I was to die in this war, I should go forward so much the bolder and freer, in order to reprove the folly of such people." The Countess de Montfort, was, indeed not unlikely to have such dreams of blood; for, a Montmorency herself, she shared all her husband's perils of war, at one time (1210) leading to him a reinforcement of 15,000 soldiers, at others enduring, with her children, the miseries of a besieged town.

ne pouvaient franchir, il là repassé avec cinq hommes seulement, en s'écriant: "Les pauvres du Christ sont exposés à la mort, et moi je resterais en sureté? advienne de moi la volonté du Seigneur, j'irai certainement avec eux."-In accordance with these opinions, the bust of Simon de Montfort is placed in the great Salle des Batailles at Versailles, among those Frenchmen who have fought for their country.

1 "Omnium mitissimus erat."Pet. Vell. Sarn. Besides clemency, he laid claim to the virtue of truth, and bore "Veritas" as the motto of his seal. See Montfaucon, pl. 88. 2 Gugl. Pod. Laur.

3 Hallam, Middle Ages.

4 Pet. Vall. Sarn., anno 1213.

5 At Vaur, 1211, while nursing her sick son; and at Narbonne, 1217, blockaded with her sons and their wives.-Pet. Vall. Sarn.

From such noble and fierce parentage issued the Simon de Montfort' of English history, the youngest of four sons, a youth of about eighteen years, at the time of his father's death in 1218.

Large grants had rewarded the terrible services of the sword and torch of religious bigotry; and to these Almeric, the eldest son, succeeded, who is described as "an imitator of

1 The pedigree of the de Montfort family includes so many historical characters that it is here subjoined for reference.-See Dugd. Baron., Nichols' Leicest., Househ. Exp., Gugl. Pod. Laur.

The children of Simon de Bald, eighth Count de Montfort, were these :

1. Almeric, Count d'Evreux, which he ceded to the King of France, 1200; died about 1224.

2. Simon, ninth Count de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, 1206; banished rebel, 1208; leader of the war against the Albigenses, 1209; killed at Toulouse, 1218; married Alice, who died 1221, daughter of Bouchard, Sire de Montmorency and Ecouen, Constable of France, who died 1230.

3. Guy, a crusader in Palestine and against Albigenses, received a grant of Castries.

4. Robert, killed at Toulouse, 1218. 5. Bertrade, who died 1231; married to Hugh, Earl of Chester; their son Ranulph died 1231, having had a grant 1215 of the forfeited estates of the rebel Earl of Leicester.

The children of the above Simon, ninth Count were

1. Almeric, tenth Count de Montfort, knighted 1213; Constable of France in succession to his grandfather de Montmorency, 1231; crusader 1238; prisoner there till 1241; died at Otranto, 1241; he married, 1222, Beatrice, daughter of Count de Vienne; their son John, sixth Count de Montfort renounced all English claims, 1248.

2. Guy, a crusader, slain at Castelnauderi, 1220; Count de Bigorre, by his marriage with Petronilla, Countess of Bigorre, 1216; she died, 1251,

surviving five husbands; Eskivat was their son; their daughter Alicia died at Montargis.

3. Robert, died unmarried, 1226.

4. Simon, born about 1200, became Earl of Leicester on the cession of his brother Almeric 1232; commanded the Barons' army at Lewes, 1264; killed at Evesham, 1265; married, Jan. 7, 1238, Princess Eleanor, daughter of King John, who was born, 1212; widow of William le Mareshal, Earl of Pembroke, who died April, 1231; she died, at Montargis, 1274.

5. A daughter, in treaty of marriage to a son of the King of Arragon, 1210.

6. A daughter, married 1217, to Ademar Poictou.

The children of Simon, Earl of Leicester, and Princess Eleanor,

were

1. Henry, named after his sponsor, Henry III.; killed at Evesham, 1265.

2. Simon, prisoner at Northampton, 1264; defeated at Kenilworth, 1265; murdered his cousin, Prince Henry, at Viterbo, 1271.

3. Guy, wounded at Evesham, 1265; entered service of Count d'Anjou in Italy; murdered P. Henry at Viterbo, 1271.

4. Almeric, a priest, treasurer of York, 1265; taken prisoner by Edward I. 1273; released, 1283; became a knight in Italy.

5. Richard, left England for Bigorre, 1265, perhaps the ancestor of the Wellysbourne Montforts.

6. Eleanor, left England for Montargis with her mother, 1265; taken prisoner, 1273; married, 1279, to Llewellyn, Prince of Wales.