MONTFORT, SIMON DE, EARL OF LEICESTER (C. 120o 1265), English statesman and soldier, was born in France, the fourth and youngest son of Simon IV. de Montfort (see above), the leader of the Albigensian crusade. Simon IV., whose mother was an heiress of the Beaumont family, claimed in her right, and received from King John, the earldom of Leicester (1207), only to lose it again through espousing the French side in the wars between that sovereign and Philip Augustus.
The young Simon, of whose youth nothing is recorded, came to England in 123o and attached himself to Henry III., obtaining with the consent of his sole surviving brother Amauri a re-grant of the family earldom. Simon was for a time unpopular and closely attached to the royal party. He gave, however, an early proof of religious fervour, and of an unbending harshness, by the expulsion of the Jews from his borough of Leicester. In 1238 he married the king's sister Eleanor, the widow of the younger William Marshal. The match was resented by her brother Richard of Cornwall and the baronage on the ground that Eleanor had taken vows of chastity. With some difficulty Earl Richard was pacified; and Montfort obtained the pope's confirmation of the marriage by a personal visit to Rome. In 1239, however, the influence of detractors and a quarrel over some obscure financial transactions in which he appears to have used Henry's name with out a formal warrant led to a breach between himself and the king. The earl and his wife went to France ; and, though a nominal reconciliation with the king was effected, both departed on crusade with Richard of Cornwall in 1240. Returning in 1241, Simon took part in Henry's disastrous French expedition of 1242, and was readmitted to full favour.
He stood forward in parliament as a mediator between the court party and the opposition, and was keenly interested in Grosse teste's proposals for ecclesiastical reformation. In 1248 he again took the cross, with the idea of following Louis IX. to Egypt, but at the requests of the king and council, he gave up this project to act as governor in the disaffected duchy of Gascony. Bitter
complaints were excited by his rigorous suppression of the excesses of the seigneurs and of contending factions in the great com munes. Henry yielded to the outcry and instituted a formal in quiry into the earl's administration. Montfort was formally acquitted on the charges of oppression, but his accounts were dis puted by the king, and he retired in disgust to France (1252).
The nobles of France offered him the regency of the kingdom, vacant by the death of the Queen-mother Blanche of Castile, but he preferred to make his peace with Henry (1253), in obedience to the exhortations of the dying Grosseteste. He helped the king in dealing with the disaffection of Gascony; but their reconcilia tion was a hollow one, and in the parliament of 1254 the earl led the opposition in resisting a demand for a subsidy. In 1256-57, when the discontent of all classes was coming to a head, Mont fort nominally adhered to the royal cause. He undertook, with Peter of Savoy, the queen's uncle, the 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 the earl in friendly terms. But at the "Mad Parliament" of Oxford (1 58) Montfort with the earl of Gloucester headed the opposi tion. It is said that he was reluctant to approve the oligarchical constitution created by the Provisions of Oxford, but his name appears in the list of the Fifteen who were to constitute the supreme board of control over the administration. There is better ground for believing that he disliked the narrow class-spirit in which the barons used their victory; and that he would gladly have made a compromise with the moderate royalists. But the king's success in dividing the barons and in fostering a reaction rendered such projects hopeless. In 1261 Henry revoked his assent to the Provisions, and Montfort left the country in despair.