the honour of Leicester, but he must first renounce the broader lands and more splendid rank which fell to him under the crown of France. To his father, but twenty years before, no such objection had been raised; but times were now changed; the consciousness of nationality had been aroused, and it behoved Amauri to choose between the two noble inheritances which had been united in his father's hands. After a long negociation he was permitted to surrender his English claims to his youngest brother Simon,* who on August 13, 1231, did homage for the inheritance of his grandmother,† and became from that day an Englishman.‡

Yet this tie, however he may have understood its obligations, did not prevent him from twice seeking a position by marriage among the great feudatories of France. Twice he found the greatest heiresses of the time not unwilling to unite themselves to a younger son, who to an illustrious and almost royal name united the far rarer attraction of a genius which made its possessor a favourite in every court, while his real intimacies were formed among the profoundest scholars of his day. Both times his matrimonial ambition was foiled by the jealousy of the French crown. A third effort was at length crowned by a great alliance, and Simon suddenly becomes prominent in English history as the husband of Eleanor, the widowed Countess of Pembroke, and the sister of King Henry III. The marriage was approved by Henry, by whose really refined taste the southern manners and high personal accomplishments of Montfort would be held at their full value. It was nevertheless clandestine, most probably at Eleanor's suggestion (as we may guess from what happened afterwards), who saw that her brother would be willing to evade the opposition which he would not have had the spirit to confront. On the 7th of January, 1238, accordingly, this memorable marriage took place at the altar of St. Stephen's chapel. The King himself gave away the bride, but a simple chaplain read the marriage office, and the privacy was complete. The storm which followed its disclosure certainly justified the precaution. That the hand of a daughter of England should be given away in secret and without the approval of the barons, was an outrage almost as great to the feeling of that day as if the Great Charter had been burnt

*Guy, the second brother, had become Count de Bigorre in right of his wife; the third, Robert, was dead.

Royal Letters,' Henry III., vol. i. p. 401.

He had already attached himself to the service of the English king, and received from him in April, 1230, a pension of 400 marks. Royal Letters,' vol. i. p. 362.

by

by the common hangman. The whole order rose as one man. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, the King's brother, armed his retainers and threatened, it would seem, to seize the Cinque Ports.* Everything portended a civil war, and the consequences might have been dark indeed had not Montfort found an opportunity of casting himself at the feet of Richard and allaying the extremity of his anger. Richard felt probably as many a brother has felt before and since; and when the barons met it was to find their leader disarmed and content with the lenient sentence which dismissed Simon from the council. The church was less easily pacified. In the first anguish of grief at the loss of her husband the Earl Marshal, Eleanor had retired to a monastery, and taken, it was said, a vow of perpetual chastity. It does not appear she had actually taken the veil, but the vow, whatever it may have been, was such as to raise the gravest doubts as to the validity of the second marriage; the doubts, at least, were discovered to be such as no English court could solve, and a reference to Rome became indispensable: if indeed the misgivings of the Dominicans were not well founded, that it was beyond the power of Rome herself to efface a vow which had been as it were registered in heaven. Disgraced at court, yet envied and unpopular, early in March Simon crossed the channel for Rome, leaving his wife at Kenilworth. On his way he paid a visit to his Imperial brother-in-law, Frederick II.,† then fresh from Cortenuova, and marching in the full tide of victory through the cities of Lombardy. The meeting of two such relatives is one of those chance passages in history which appeal most strongly to the imagination. The time, the place, the circumstances; we long to know all in detail. We long to know still more what was the impression produced by each on the other. Was their meeting shadowed by something of that mysterious awe with which it would seem that at times one great original mind watches the movements and casts the horoscope of another? Did the great Emperor, 'born for universal innovation,' impart to his younger brother some particle of his own restless spirit? Was the aftercourse of Montfort influenced by what he saw of the position and policy of Frederic, and of the immense capacity for resistance and for liberty possessed by the towns of Lombardy? We are left to our

* Rot. Pat. 22 Henry III., m. 10.

† Frederic had married Isabella, sister of Henry III. The alliance was important, as renewing the ancient ties between England and the Empire, which had been impaired by the Guelfic connexions of Henry II. and the captivity of Cœur de Lion. It paved the way for the election of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, to the Empire.

own

own surmises. The dry notice of the chronicler informs us that Simon drew his sword for the Emperor, and won his support, then powerful with the reluctant court of Rome. Gregory, at once bribed and pressed, ratified the marriage, and in October Simon returned to England, crowned with success, to find that his wife was about to give birth to a son, 'to the strength and comfort of the realm, for it was feared the queen would be barren.'*

It is impossible not to feel that thus far the career of Simon, so far as we know it, did not augur happily for the future. He gives us the impression of an adventurer, entering upon life with advantages of which he was fully conscious, and which he was resolved to turn to the best possible account, in the way of personal advancement. But had his life been brought to a close at this point, we should have judged him, in all probability, inconstant in purpose, and incapable either of deep feeling or of a lofty and unselfish ambition. Yet we shall soon meet with indications that his contemporaries had already formed a higher estimate, and expected him to rise above the level of the mere courtier's life which he had hitherto led.

Montfort's reception at court is evidence of his undiminished favour with the king, who received him, we are told, with great joy. He was restored at once to the council. On the 2nd of February, 1239, he was created Earl of Leicester; † on the 21st of June he assisted both as godfather and High Steward at the baptism of Prince Edward. Nothing portended a storm. On the 9th of August, he came with his wife to attend the churching of the Queen in Westminster Abbey. The king, when he saw him, told him he was an excommunicated man, and bade him leave the church. When the amazed Earl hesitated to withdraw, the king overwhelmed him with a storm of reproaches, until he and Eleanor retired in dismay to Winchester House, which, the see being vacant, the king had lent for their use. Henry ordered them to be turned out. In vain they returned and implored his forgiveness. Henry turned upon Simon: You seduced my sister before her marriage; and it was only when I discovered this that to avoid scandal I reluctantly gave her to you. That her vow of chastity might be no hindrance, you went to Rome, and corrupted the court of Rome with untold gifts, to permit what was impermissible. The Archbishop of Canter

*Mat. Paris, pp. 468, 471, 481; ed. 1640. Montfort's was not the only English sword drawn for the Emperor. An English contingent fought at the siege of Milan.

† See the Charter Roll, 23 Hen. III., Nos. 32, 34; Pauli, Gesch. von England, iii. 632. The older writers, and even Mr. Blaauw, have confounded the grant of the honour with that of the Earldom.

bury

bury knew the facts, and told the Pope, but the truth was compelled to give way to Roman avarice; and now that you have failed to pay, you have received the excommunication you so richly deserve. And to crown your meanness, you have made me, without my knowledge, answerable for the sums you promised.' 'The Earl,' says the chronicler, 'blushed when he heard this; and at nightfall, hurrying down the Thames with his wife and a few attendants, he crossed the sea at once.'*

It is a transaction of this kind which makes one long for a volume of contemporary gossip. We, can only guess drily at the explanation which such a volume would have clothed in characteristic anecdote. In the first place, it is probable enough that the source of Simon's trouble is to be found in his visit to the Emperor. It was the Emperor's letter, as much as the Earl's money, which had wrung from the court of Rome the ratification of his questionable marriage; and Frederic, a year ago so strong, was now in difficulties, and since Palm Sunday, the 20th of March, was under the ban of the Church. Every influence had been used to induce Henry to break with his Imperial brother-in-law, and, in fact, within a fortnight of Montfort's disgrace, the bull of Frederic's excommunication was solemnly published in England. Doubtless one chief obstacle to this step had been the presence of Montfort in the council; and hence the whole strength of the Papal party must have been bent to effect his fall. An unpunctuality in the payment of the money promised at Rome would be the ready excuse for an excommunication, which would taint his fame in the eyes of the superstitious Henry. But this does not account for all. Henry makes two distinct charges against Simon, both of the gravest kind, and as to both of which the facts must apparently have been within his own cognizance. Are they true or false, is the question which must be asked, and by the answer to which our estimate of Montfort's character must of necessity be largely affected. We have no hesitation in concluding that they were both absolutely false. On the money charge there is no need to dwell; apart from all else, the chances of a misunderstanding in such a case were not inconsiderable, and the whole tenour of Montfort's life assures us that, whatever his faults, and they were not few, a dishonourable transaction of this kind was utterly alien to his character. At the worst, however, it must stand or fall with the other and more serious charge. Against this it is no light argument that it was utterly disbelieved at the time by Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. Grosseteste's integrity and dis

*Mat. Paris, p. 497.

cernment

cernment are equally beyond dispute. Yet he writes to Montfort on the eve of his flight to the continent, exhorting him to bear up under his most bitter trial, in terms which no one but a Methodist would use, except to an intimate friend of whose true religious principle he was well assured.* And it is singular enough that almost at the same time Henry should have made a precisely similar charge against the venerable Hubert de Burgh, whom he accused of having seduced the sister of the Scotch king, to whom he was afterwards married. To one such charge we listen with respectful doubt; but to two such charges, made within a few months, by the same weak tool against two of the foremost men of their day, our only answer can be an indignant incredulity. But yet it is hard to suppose that Henry can have cast such a stain on the honour of his own sister if he did not believe it to be deserved; and perhaps this is not altogether necessary. It seems to have been one of the peculiarities of Henry's character that he never suspected for himself, but imbibed with indiscriminating greediness the suspicions which were presented to him by those who chanced to have his ear for the hour. It may well have been suggested to him that the true reason why Eleanor was impatient for an immediate and secret marriage was a care for her own honour; and if Henry was once brought to believe this, there is no reason to wonder that, careless of truth as he was, he should have asserted it as a fact known to himself before the marriage. Be this as it may, of the utter falsehood of the story we entertain no shadow of a doubt. It is belied not only by the evidence adduced, but by the whole tenour of Henry's conduct to Simon for the eighteen months which elapsed between his marriage and his disgrace. He had forwarded his suit at Rome; he had restored him to his council; he had raised him to an Earldom; he had selected him as the godfather of his eldest son; and when but three weeks had elapsed he turned upon him in a transport of fury. Is it possible that the heaviest part of the offence which occasioned this extraordinary outburst should have been present to the mind of Henry during the whole year and a half?

This sudden disgrace was a crisis in Montfort's life. It drove him perforce into a more independent position. Henceforward, the favour of the court might come or go, but he had learnt by his rude experience to distrust it, and to shape his own free It relaxed, also, to some extent, the ties of personal obligation which had hitherto bound him to Henry, and enabled him to speak with a bolder voice when the misgovernment of

course.