Montfort, Simon de, Earl of Leicester

b. circa 1206; d. 1265

English noble, born in France, son of Simon IV of Montfort l'Amaury. Montfort came to England in 1229 and successfully claimed the earldom of Leicester in 1231 (formally invested, 1239). He became one of Henry III's favourites and married Henry's sister, Eleanor. For 20 years Montfort assisted in royal ceremonial and administration, being governor of Gascony, 1248-52, where he ruled with extreme rigour. Later he acted as the King's ambassador on several occasions. It is not known when and how Montfort developed his ideas on administrative reform which led eventually to his becoming the leader of a rebellion against the King.

He was a friend of Grosseteste, a man of strong religious principles, and, as his Gascon administration showed, one with an almost fanatical respect for efficiency and orderly government. He had many of the qualities of leadership, but seems to have given the impression or arrogance and was unwilling to delegate authority. Probably the inefficiency and resultant injustices of Henry's administration finally drove Montfort to the side of the dissident magnates, and his power, ability, and liking for authority made him the obvious leader.

In 1258 Montfort and his baronial followers forced Henry to accept the Provisions of Oxford by which the King's powers were in effect transferred to a committee of barons. After the French king, St Louis, had decided in favour of the King (1264) on the subject of the Provisions, open war broke out between Montfort and the King's followers. On 14 May 1264 Montfort won a great victory at Lewes, capturing the King. By the Mise of Lewes Henry acceded to all Montfort's demands and for a year Montfort was the effective ruler of England. But power was slowly slipping from him. Many of his baronial followers were deserting him; the Queen was in France, collecting an army to fight him; and Henry's son, Edward, was now old enough to take part in government and was proving himself a far stronger character than his father. Possibly it was in the hope of getting support from the commons to counter the growing defection of the nobility that Montfort summoned representatives from some of the towns to his 'parliament' (January 1265), a decision of importance in the future history of English representative institutions, though its direct influence on the development of the House of Commons has probably been exaggerated.

But Montfort was doomed to failure. When the Earl of Gloucester deserted him (1265) his chances of military victory against the royalists became negligible, and at Evesham, in August, Montfort was defeated and killed by a vastly superior force commanded by Prince Edward, his body mutilated, and the limbs distributed to various towns as a warning

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