Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, 1st Earl of Chester (c. 1208 – 4 August 1265), also known as Simon V de Montfort, was an English nobleman of French origin and a member of the English peerage, who led the baronial opposition to the rule of King Henry III, culminating in the Second Barons' War. Following his initial victories over royal forces, he became de facto ruler of England, and played a major role in the constitutional development of England.
During his rule, Montfort called two famous parliaments: the Oxford Parliament stripped Henry of his unlimited authority, while the second included ordinary citizens from the towns. For this reason, Montfort is regarded today as one of the progenitors of modern parliamentary democracy. As Earl of Leicester he expelled Jews from that city; as he became ruler of England he also cancelled debts owed to Jews through violent seizures of records. Montfort's party massacred the Jews of London, Worcester and Derby, killing scores of Jews from Winchester to Lincoln. After a rule of just over a year, Montfort was killed by forces loyal to the king in the Battle of Evesham.
Montfort was a younger son of Alix de Montmorency and Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, a French nobleman and leader of a crusade against the Cathars in south-west France. His paternal grandmother was Amicia de Beaumont, the senior co-heiress to the Earldom of Leicester and a large estate owned by her brother Robert de Beaumont, 4th Earl of Leicester, in England.
With the irrevocable loss of Normandy, King John refused to allow the elder Simon to succeed to the earldom of Leicester and instead placed the estates and title into the hands of Montfort senior's cousin Ranulf, the Earl of Chester. The elder Simon had also acquired vast domains during the Albigensian Crusade, but was killed during the Siege of Toulouse in 1218 and his eldest son Amaury was not able to retain them. When Amaury was rebuffed in his attempt to get the earldom back, he agreed to allow his younger brother Simon to claim it in return for all family possessions in France.
Simon arrived in England in 1229, with some education but no knowledge of English, and received a sympathetic hearing from King Henry III, who became well disposed towards foreigners speaking French, then the language of the English court. Henry did not oppose Simon's claim, so Simon approached the older, childless man himself and his claim was subsequently recognised. It would take another nine years before Henry formally invested him with the title Earl of Leicester.
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.
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 against 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
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.