Simon de Montfort: The medieval maverick who defied the king

Born around 1208 in France, Simon de Montfort was the younger son of the famous crusader and heretic-hunter Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, who led the brutal Albigensian Crusade in southern France.

The younger Simon inherited the claim to the English earldom of Leicester through his grandmother, Amicia de Beaumont.

In 1230, he arrived in England and successfully asked King Henry III for the return of his family’s English titles and estates, which had fallen into royal hands. 

Though initially accepted at court and married in 1238 to Henry’s sister, Eleanor of England, Simon’s relationship with the crown would worsen into one of England’s most dramatic confrontations between monarch and powerful noble.

Simon’s marriage to Eleanor, conducted without the barons’ consent and initially disputed due to her vow of chastity, which had been officially cancelled by the Pope, caused a scandal and lawsuits, but Henry defended his brother-in-law.

In 1240, Simon travelled to the Holy Land during the later stages of the Sixth Crusade, when he gained more military experience and religious standing.

Upon his return, he was made governor of Gascony in 1248, but his strict rule and violent crushing of rebellion in the duchy led to complaints.

The Gascon nobles said he was a cruel ruler, and Henry fired him in 1252, and this started a long personal fight.

Simon said the king was deceitful, and their relationship became impossible to fix. 

The 1250s were a period of increasing unhappiness in England. Henry III’s attempts to secure foreign territories for his children, especially the expensive and disliked attempt in Sicily to place his son Edmund on the throne of Sicily, used up royal money and annoyed the English nobles.

The king’s support for foreign advisors, especially his Lusignan half-brothers, further turned the English nobles against him.

By 1258, tensions became extreme, and in June that year an official crisis began. A group of unhappy nobles, who included Simon de Montfort, forced Henry to accept the Provisions of Oxford, reforms that aimed to limit royal power and place the rule of the country in the hands of a council of fifteen barons.

This moment showed the beginning of Simon’s change from an ambitious noble to a supporter of constitutional reform. 

Simon became the main leader among the reformers, who supported broader political involvement, as well as the reduction of royal waste and poor management.

The provisions required regular parliaments, local responsibility, and restrictions on foreign influence.

Yet Henry, and was supported by Pope Urban IV who officially cancelled the provisions in 1261, soon rejected the agreement.

Tensions increased, and by 1263, England fell into civil war: the Second Barons’ War.

Simon, now in his mid-fifties, as he led the baronial forces against the royalists with energy and determination.

His political platform mixed personal grievances with genuine ideological fervour for what he and his followers viewed as good rule. 

The turning point came on 14 May 1264, at the Battle of Lewes. There, Simon de Montfort achieved an impressive victory, and captured King Henry III and his son, the future Edward I.

With the king in his custody, Simon held actual control over royal authority for the next fifteen months, though his rule faced ongoing opposition and increasing internal divisions.

In January 1265, he called what many historians see as the first truly representative English parliament.

Though earlier meetings had existed, this parliament included barons and clergy, as well as two knights from each county, and most remarkably, two burgesses from each borough.

While the exact selection process and extent of representation is debated, this expansion of political consultation beyond the nobility was a new and bold idea and set the basis for the later English parliamentary system. 

However, Simon’s control caused ill-will. His controlling ways and the promotion of his own family weakened his position, while his inability to maintain unity among his allies further undermined his standing.

Prince Edward escaped captivity in May 1265 and gathered a royalist army. On 4 August 1265, Simon de Montfort was caught by surprise near the town of Evesham in Worcestershire.

Outnumbered and betrayed by former allies, he and led a desperate charge against Edward’s forces.

The following battle was a slaughter. Simon was killed, his body disfigured on the battlefield.

His head and genitals were cut off and sent to his enemies, and his corpse was shown off to insult him. 

Even though he met a horrible end, Simon de Montfort’s impact lived on. To some, he was a dangerous rebel who dared to raise arms against his king and upset the established order.

To others, he became a martyr for the cause of responsible government. Historians who supported him described him as a devout and man of principles whose downfall came from betrayal, instead of ambition.

In later centuries, as parliamentary democracy grew, Simon de Montfort was more and more seen as a groundbreaking figure who had first suggested the idea that the king should be limited by law and answerable to the people: ideas that would continue to grow in importance through Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, and later periods.