Simon de Montfort and the Fight for Parliament, 1263 to 1265

by Katherine Ashe

It was a document known as The Provisions of Oxford, not the Magna Carta, that brought modern elective government into existence. It was the Provisions that created Parliament, and gave Parliament power over the Crown.

The Provisions were composed by the barons and clergymen of England, meeting in committees at Oxford in 1258. Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, was a leading member of the committees. But as soon as this work of proposed monumental reform was completed in draft, the lords abandoned their weeks of effort and rode off into the night. Led by the instigator of the Oxford meeting, the Earl of Gloucester Richard de Clare, they went in pursuit of King Henry III’s dangerous half-brothers of Lusignan, fearing the brothers would flee abroad and raise an army against them.

Of all the lords, it was only Montfort who remained behind. As England’s chief military strategist he probably understood that whether the Lusignan escaped or not, invasion from abroad was likely. The principals expressed in the Provisions were an offense to every king’s free exercise of power, and challenged the Pope who had a claim on England’s Crown as security for a debt King Henry owed the Vatican, but which the lords refused to pay.

At Oxford, Montfort and the clergymen saw to it that the Provisions were properly copied from erasable wax tablets and published to the new sheriffs who helpfully had been appointed by the King from the Oxford meeting’s lists.

The pursuing lords camped in the yard of Winchester Castle, holding the Lusignan brothers besieged during the time this essential work was being carried out at Oxford. Then suddenly the besiegers succumbed to poison. Virtually every major lord of England fell desperately ill and many died. Those who survived required years to recover. It was left to Simon de Montfort and the clerics at Oxford to actually put the Provisions into effect, creating the first Parliament.

Over his own seal, and with the assumed authority of the new Council called for by the Provisions (which did not yet actually exist), Montfort single-handedly called for the election of four knights from each shire to represent the people of England. It was he who summoned the first Parliament to convene, who replaced the royal bailiffs and castellans and set England on a footing to repel the expected invasion from abroad.

The first Parliament commenced on October 18th, 1258 in Westminster Hall. King Henry and his heir Prince Edward were virtual prisoners of the government Montfort had brought into being, and they were forced to swear allegiance to the new order. But while Prince Edward for a time entertained an interest in hearing regularly from the people’s elected representatives, Henry would use covert means to undermine and suppress this abominable expression of democracy.

With the new institution of Parliament an achieved success, the next issue on the Crown’s agenda was the completion of a treaty with France. As ambassador to France for King Henry, the Earl Montfort had negotiated the treaty and he attended the royal party to Paris.

Henry now claimed his goal in life was to lead a crusade to Palestine – a project he knew was close to King Louis’ heart. This is the king we know as Saint Louis. As an article of the treaty, Louis was granting Henry funds for an army for his crusade.
Simon learned the army being raised was not to embark for the East, but for England. As Henry lingered in France, Parliament was due to reconvene. The army would give Henry the means to squash it. As the King’s foremost general, Simon was well known in the office of the Duke of Brabant where mercenary armies were hired and assembled. It was no difficulty for him to order the soldiers so far assembled to meet him – and to lead them himself to England for Parliament’s defense. This was, beyond any doubt, a clear act of treason against his king.

Yet was it? Henry had sworn loyalty to his subjects’ new government. Simon saw his move as forcing the King to stand by his oath. But when, many weeks later, King Henry finally arrived in England protesting innocence and love of the Parliament, Simon was arrested and taken to the Tower of London, charged with high treason. From there his friend King Louis, knowing Henry had intended to misuse the army granted for crusade, rescued Simon and had the trial transferred to Paris.

It was 1263 before the trial came to a close. King Henry withdrew his charges, realizing that Louis was fully aware of his treachery and breach of the treaty. Henry was forced to let Montfort go, rather than make his treaty null and void.

During his stay in Paris pending trial, Simon was frequently approached by clerics and the young English lords whose fathers had succumbed to the Lusignan’s poison at Winchester. Between 1259 and 1263 King Henry undermined and finally succeeded in suppressing the Parliament. And he returned to his abusive former ways. Englishmen of every rank prayed for Montfort to come and lead them to restore the government of the Provisions.

There was more to these prayers than the hope of resuscitating Parliament. The theologian Joachim de Flor, in the late 12th century, posited three Ages of Man: the Era of the Father, in which tribal society prevailed; the Era of the Son which saw the rise of kingship, nations and the Church; and the Era of the Holy Ghost in which nations, kingship and the Church would dissolve into a single World Order, governed by the vote of the common man inspired to wisdom by the Holy Spirit. Joachim specified the year 1260 as the commencement of this New Age.

The creation of Parliament was seen as the first act of this new era. And Simon de Montfort was its champion. He was hailed in England as the Angel of the Apocalypse, or perhaps even the Risen Christ.

All this Simon most probably considered heretical. He certainly was not flattered by it. His intention, once free of the trial, was to return to Palestine and assist in its Christian kingdom’s revival after the invasions by the Khoresines and the political disorders that followed the Khoresines’ withdrawal.

But almost immediately after King Henry vacated his charges, a group of young English lords pled with Simon on behalf of his cousin Peter de Montfort, who was leading a force against King Henry’s royalists in England’s western shires. A much larger force was massing at Oxford, the lordlings said. Simon agreed to go to observe what was happening. At the meeting he was so moved by the numbers of determined young warrior lords that he agreed to be their leader.

In a few months, in the spring and summer of 1263, Simon conquered England, held the King, the Queen and Prince Edward his prisoners and reinstated Parliament.

Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, was a brilliant general and a man who genuinely thought a means was necessary to control kings who were incompetent. He did not believe in replacing legitimate kings, but in harnessing them to serve the will of the people. So he did not kill King Henry and accept the Crown of England for himself, not even when it was twice offered to him by his Parliaments. He was not really an advocate of democracy, but saw himself as a royalist protecting the royal line from its own self-inflicted disasters.

Nor was he a politician deft at manipulating the lesser powers that surrounded him. Jealousies arose, and complaints when he used the abundant funds of royal rents to fortify the castle that had been his home but which he had returned to the Crown at Oxford in 1258. It was to be a stronghold, should one be needed against a royalist resurgence. Surrounding walls and towers were built after the manner of crusader castles in Palestine: castles that could be held by just a few defenders indefinitely against siege. Kenilworth would withstand attack for eighteen months in 1265-66, surrendering only when its defenders were tricked into a false amnesty.

Simon rightly understood the risks inherent in England’s new form of government. It was an offense to every untrammeled Crown in Europe, and to the papal advocacy of Thomas Aquinas’s theology. Joachim’s books describing a coming democratic age had been burned and his teachings banned by a series of Popes. The theology of Aquinas was now embraced -- and that described the Lord’s Creation as an immutable hierarchy: the Pope, then kings held precedence – with complete freedom of action – over all the rest of Creation.

Montfort used the funds that flowed into his government for England’s sustained military alert, instead of giving the customary monetary gifts to his followers. Soon dissatisfaction gathered into conspiracy.

With aid from among Montfort’s own staff, King Henry and Prince Edward escaped and formed a royalist army to reconquer England. The Queen, who had been sent for her own safety to France, raised a force abroad: 20,000 mercenaries and a fleet to transport them across the Channel from Flanders. Simon summoned the people of England to defend their coasts, and the royalist fleet turned back, unable to land. King Henry marched on London, Simon’s headquarters. But the Londoners brought Simon’s army within their walls and defied their King.

King Louis had offered to arbitrate a peace; now Henry and Montfort accepted his offer. But on the way to the arbitration, in January of 1264, Simon’s horse fell in a frozen creek. Simon’s hip and leg were crushed and he could not attend the meeting. Without him, Cardinal Guy Folques, King Louis’ confessor and an ardent advocate of Aquinas’s hierarchies, dominated the meeting. The Provisions and its Parliament were declared heretical. The most Louis could achieve for his friend was amnesty. But the Marchers lords, on the borders of Wales and always Montfort’s enemies, observed no amnesty. They attacked and seized Montfort holdings. The Earl sent his sons Henry and Guy to counter them. War had resumed.

The Earl’s son Simon, following the King’s army’s movements, was defeated at Northampton and taken prisoner. The Earl, traveling in a specially constructed armored vehicle since his leg was not yet healed, went to London to see what forces could be raised there to defend the Parliament. The Londoners proved to be violent against civilians but highly unreliable as an army. When Simon left for Northampton to rescue his son, they sacked and burnt the Jewry to the ground.

Rather than remain trapped in London by the necessity of keeping the townsmen from committing further destruction, Montfort took them with him as he marched against the city of Rochester which guarded the road from the southern ports to the capital. King Henry again was intending to bring his troops from abroad.

In a brilliant use of the London boatmen’s knowledge of currents, Montfort launched a flotilla of the Londoners against Rochester’s water gate, on the River Medway. Led by a blazing fire ship that came to lodge firmly in the gate’s flammable timbers, the Londoners quickly took the gate. Slaughtering the gate’s guards who leapt from their flaming tower, they poured into the city, killing, raping, stealing everything including the cathedral’s candlesticks, and making the cathedral’s bell ringer an archery target.

Hours after the Londoners’ landing, when Simon took the landward gates and entered the city, he was appalled by the horrors he found. He commanded his knights to seize anyone caught raping, stealing or killing civilians.

The next day, in the city’s square at the foot of the castle, which still held out for King Henry, he ordered the Londoner prisoners beheaded as, unarmed, he knelt, penitent and well within bowshot of the castle’s roof. The defenders watched with fascination, and they did not draw an arrow at the Earl.

For days Simon remained in his tent outside Rochester. He sent repeated pleas to King Henry begging peace and offering substantial reparations. The very foundation of his belief in his cause seems to have been shattered. What would a government be, led by the vote of such monsters as the London commoners showed themselves? But King Henry, sensing weakness, refused peace and continued his tour of the southern ports, seeking a means of bringing in his army from Flanders.

All recourse gone, with a few young lords, Welsh and woodland archers and the remaining 3,000 Londoners and other common volunteers, Simon followed King Henry’s army. His archers, free roving and not particularly under his command, harassed the royal progress on the roads between each port.

Henry was finding that Montfort’s supporters in the ports had taken all vessels out to sea. He moved on, hoping to find some loyal captain who would carry word to Flanders that would bring his mercenary troops.

The march between Romney and Hove passed inland, particularly exposed to the archers who were picking off the King’s men and plundering his supply wagons. Roger Leybourne suggested that Henry halve the risky journey with a stop at the little castle of Lewes where the monastery at Lewes was large enough to entertain the lords with meals and lodging for the night.

Henry accepted. His knights made camp in front of Saint Pancras monastery, filling the deep and narrow valley. Their horses were stationed ahead for the morning’s departure, thus obstructing any quick movement forward, while the supply wagons were drawn up in a dense camp at the rear as they arrived. King Henry effectively was being trapped by his own massive entourage.

While the King and his friends drank Saint Pancras’s wines and feasted, Simon led his small force to the nearby village of Fletching. He sent the Bishops of London and Worchester to make one last plea with King Henry for peace, but they were refused and mocked.

After knighting twenty of his youthful followers, the Earl had his entire little army confessed and given the Last Rights for, undoubtedly, facing the King’s enormous, highly experienced forces, they all were going to die.

Then, while still in darkness, Simon ranged his young and novice knights on the edge of the high downs where the land sloped steeply down to the valley of Lewes. At dawn, astride an inconspicuous horse – and not in his well-known armored cart – he gave the order to attack. His young knights in three groups rode down upon the sleeping camp, while the Londoners walked towards the castle tower where Prince Edward and a force of mercenaries were lodged.

Edward, seeing the Londoners, whom he hated for their insults to his mother, took off with his men after the commoners. The Londoners fled back up the slope and scattered across the downs. Pursuing them, Edward absented himself from the main battle for the whole day. His Lusignan uncles spent their time on the high downs, attacking the fully enclosed, armored cart which actually held not the Earl, but two of their own spies. Meanwhile, in the valley, Simon’s young and new-made knights and archers destroyed King Henry’s army as they wallowed, entangled in their own tents.

Montfort won a total victory. It was thought a miracle. Saints were seen fighting in support of the youths who vanquished England’s barony.

Simon reinstated the Parliament but held the principal lords, the King and Prince Edward his prisoners. For England’s security he refused to let them be ransomed.

At one meeting of Parliament, then another, the youths who actually had captured the baronial prisoners lodged complaint – the lords’ ransoms were rightfully theirs, earned legitimately in battle. Increasingly, as the government of Parliament appeared to be succeeding, the Earl’s own followers became angry about the withheld funds. The very success of the movement made the argument that the monies were being used for the land’s security seem less and less viable -- especially as a substantial amount of the funds was being used to fortify Simon’s former home, Kenilworth, where his family again was living.

For the first Parliament of the year 1265, not only four knights elected by the common men of each shire, but also representatives of the cities, towns and merchant guilds were summoned to attend. The Ordinances, a program that would extend to the common man the rights won by the Provisions for the lords, was to be presented. Radical in the extreme, the Ordinances were at the very core of Parliament’s democratic movement.

But the lords thoroughly objected to extending rights to commoners. Only five, including Montfort and Richard de Clare’s heir Gilbert, attended the Parliament. The meeting, heavily weighted with representatives of the commonality, was expected to make the principal of equal rights for commoners the law of the land.

It is a tragedy in history that this Parliament miscarried badly. Gilbert de Clare had taken major lords his prisoners at Lewes. He not only demanded that the lords’ ransoms and collected rents be paid to him, but he accused Simon and his sons of appropriating the money for themselves. Henry de Montfort, Simon’s eldest son, and usually a pacifist, launched himself at Gilbert, beating him to the floor. The Parliament broke into mayhem and had to be adjourned.

Gilbert, staggering away, challenged the Montfort brothers to a tourney a outrance at the upcoming fair at Dunstable. A tourney a outrance was armed combat to the death with no limit as to time or location – it was no sport, but cross-country battle.
At Dunstable Gilbert gathered a substantial army of royalists, including England’s foremost barons and their knights. The Montfort brothers brought their own army of defenders of the family name. The Earl, leading the force of mercenaries that had been King Henry’s and now was his, disbursed the two armies, but Gilbert retreated to his home shires with an intact and numerous force.

Disorder in the shires, the revolt of the common people against the royalists’ abuses, had continued for three years. Parliament, under Montfort’s leadership, had instituted the Guardians of the Peace, a force able to impose martial law all across the shires. By 1265 the Guardians had achieved much of their purpose. Disputes that had been solved out-of-hand by murder and mayhem were being referred to the courts.

But the courts were overloaded to the point of crippling. The King’s Council, chosen by the Parliament, decided that the cure was for King Henry himself to go on a tour of the country, complete with Court, legal staff, Chancery, Treasury, Royal Household and all the clerks, courtiers and servants that implied, to restore the proper functioning of justice in each shire.
Simon opposed the plan. With Clare in possession of an army in the west, and armed forces abroad still ready to invade whenever possible, this tour was dangerous in the extreme. The bishops on the Council thought otherwise. In their view, nothing would prove the rightness of the Parliament than demonstrating that it was a viable form of government, able to bring peace and good order to the land. God had provided the victory at Lewes, God would defend the Parliament and the royal tour from mishap.

Reason would have it that at this point Simon de Montfort should have left England to its own unfounded optimism and gone to Palestine. But he was under excommunication by the Pope (none other than Louis’ old confessor Guy Folques who had opposed the arbitration of 1264.) His safety, his life and the future of his sons depended upon the success of Parliament.

He was allowed by the Council only a small force of fewer than two-hundred of his friends and Leicester knights for the King’s immediate security. Knowing the army Clare was massing, and seeing this appalling situation, the Welsh Prince Llewellyn leant him a hundred archers.

But now the Lusignan brothers were bringing in the mercenary army from abroad to join Gilbert de Clare. Clare lured the royal entourage to Hereford for talks of reconciliation. Hereford was in the west, across the Severn River, far from the principal shires of England and the concentration of Montfort’s supporters. Then Clare broke off talks and held Hereford at siege. And Prince Edward escaped to lead Clare’s combined forces.

The Earl wrote to his son Simon to raise an army of the Provisions’ partisans and come to Hereford at once to lift the siege. But young Simon failed to perceive the emergency. He dawdled at Winchester, holding court instead of marching to Bristol as his father ordered, and commandeering the merchant fleet there to cross the flooded Severn River. Clare had destroyed all the Severn boats, bridges and fording places, obstructing Montfort’s ready access to his supporters.

Waiting in vain for his son to arrive with relieving forces, eventually Simon managed to escape from Hereford with a much reduced assembly: the King, his Treasury, the few knights and the hundred archers. Along obscure mountain paths used only by shepherds, Simon led his little royal march to Bristol, where he himself had arranged for the fleet to cross and meet him. But from the heights overlooking the Severn he saw his ships met by Gilbert’s vessels, burnt and sunk. He retreated quickly to Hereford again.

Young Simon was sent urgent messages, ordering him to build boats to bring his army across the river. Simon Fils gradually moved to Kenilworth to have the master builder there build boats and transports.

July past at Hereford but Simon received no word from his son. On August 2nd, with food scarce, he managed to break out again from Hereford by night with only his friends, his Leicester knights, his Welsh archers and the King. He would travel at quickest speed to reach the safety of Kenilworth. Flooding on the Severn had receded and he was able to ford the river at Kempsey, near Worcester. At Kempsey his company spent the daylight hours of August 3rd in hiding. Worcester was Edward’s headquarters.

On August 2nd, young Simon, at Kenilworth, at last had completed outfitting his army, including boats, and transports for the boats that he did not know were unneeded. To celebrate his achievement, he gave a party for all his young captains. He held the celebration in the bathing house in Kenilworth’s village; such bathing houses often doubled as brothels. The party was drunken and quite naked when Prince Edward arrived with his soldiers. The Prince was very fond of his Montfort cousins. He did not put them to the sword but laughingly stole their clothes, their armaments, their flags, their horses and all their wagons of supply.

While young Simon spent August 3rd attempting to re-equip his army, that night his father began the last part of his journey to safety at Kenilworth. Marching at speed, the distance should have been achieved before dawn. But, lost and wandering on shepherd paths in the darkness, it was full morning when Simon and his following reached Evesham, still twenty miles from Kenilworth. Twenty very exposed miles, with Edward’s army somewhere nearby.

King Henry, decrepit for his years, complained incessantly. He shouted that this traveling was killing him. He had to rest. With deep misgivings, Simon relented. There was a monastery in Evesham and the monks he knew were strong supporters of his cause. He agreed to pause for breakfast at Evesham Abbey.

The decision was, perhaps, no more fatal than if he had proceeded. Edward led a true army, many times the size of the small guard Simon commanded. But Evesham, held in a deep bend of the River Avon, was a perilous place to pause.

The lookout on the abbey’s tower hurried to the dining hall to report advancing forces bearing young Simon’s flags. Celebration rang out in the hall. The relief forces were come at last.

Simon went to the tower’s roof. He was nearsighted but his squire Peter reported to him all that could be seen. The advancing army split in three, one moving towards the bridge to the south, over which the Earl had just come. One moving into place to the east of the village, and one moving northward towards Green Hill, bordering Evesham to the north. Before the northward moving troops were lost from sight behind the hill, the flags of young Simon’s army were lowered and Edward’s raised in their place.
A scout the Earl had sent out rode in with confirmation. It was indeed Edward’s, Gilbert’s and the Lusignan brothers’ armies that was surrounding Evesham. It appeared that young Simon’s army had been met and vanquished.

Simon commanded his followers to leave him and save themselves: to escape by the bridge before Clare’s forces succeeded in closing it off. Although they knew they were facing almost certain death, no one left. Bending to their loyalty, Simon had the Last Rights given to them all. King Henry was outfitted from helm to foot in borrowed armor and Simon led his followers up Green Hill to meet Edward.

At the ridge of the hill, with the Lusignan brothers and Marcher lords beside him, Edward had his troops form an unbroken line. The Prince called for Simon to surrender. Simon continued moving forward. The Marcher lords, led by Roger Mortimer, broke ranks, galloping down upon the little force opposing them with the King in their midst. King Henry was injured in the thigh but rescued from the battlefield. The Welsh archers released flights of arrows, then fled towards the river, where they were slaughtered. Fragments of their bones were turned up in the fields for centuries.

The Earl Simon de Montfort, his sons Henry and Guy and their few knights fought for three hours. Henry’s horse was killed. Edward, his friend since childhood, tried to send him another, but failed. Repeatedly the Prince cried out, calling halt to the slaughter. Ignored, he left the battlefield.

With his son Henry killed at his back, Simon fought alone, surrounded until, exhausted, he received deadly thrusts. Mortimer ordered the body stripped and had his henchman Maltraverse cut the limbs, head and genitals from Simon. And Mortimer sent Simon’s head to Maude, his bloody-minded wife.

When the battle was ended, the monks of Evesham came to the field with their carts for the wounded and dead. They found Simon’s truncated torso. As they lifted up the gory remains, from underneath there flowed a new spring. A spring with magical powers to heal the sick and blind.

Pilgrims soon came in great numbers to the miraculous healing spring. Simon de Montfort was recognized by the common man as a saint, if not an angel or the Twice Sacrificed Savior.

King Henry panicked rightly. He proclaimed it a treasonous crime to speak of Simon de Montfort in any but disparaging terms, or to take water from his spring.

This year the wrongs done Simon’s memory are being righted. All England is celebrating the 750th Anniversary of Simon de Montfort and his Parliament. At Evesham, among multiple celebrations, the battle is being recreated on August 8 and 9. I’ll be the speaker at the dinner on August 10.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Katherine Ashe is the author of the Montfort four volume novelized biography:
Amazon
Evesham Events calendar

Bibliography

Primary sources:
Montfort Archive, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. There is preserved, in this boxed archive of original documents, the trial notes and a brief autobiography by Simon written in 1260 in preparation for his trial before King Louis for treason against King Henry. (In the event, the trial was actually heard by Queen Margaret of France.)

Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, H.R., 1864-69:
Vol. I, Annals of Burton
Vol. II, Annals of Winchester and Waverly
Vol. III, Annals of Dunstable
Vol. IV, Annals of Osney; Chronicle of Thomas Wykes; Annals of Worcester

Calendar of Charter Rolls, Vol. I, 1226-1307, Public Record Office. Kraus Reprint, Neldeln/Liechtenstein, 1972. (Note: Kraus reprints are not complete.)

Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, Volumes I and II, Public Record Office, 1916.

Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232-1272, Henry III. Public Record Office. Kraus Reprint, Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1971. (Note: Kraus reprints are not complete.)

Chronica Johannis Oxenedes, John of Oxford, ed. H. Ellis, Rolls Series, 1859.

Documents of the Baronial Movement of reform and Rebellion, 1258 – 1267, ed. R. F. Treharne and I. J. Sanders, Oxford, 1973.

Excerpta e Rotulis Finium in Turri Londdinensi Asservatis Henry III, 1216-72, ed. by C. Roberts, Public Record Office. 1835-36.

Exchequer: The History and Antiquities of the Exchequer, Madox, Greenwood, 1769-1969, Volumes I and II.

Gervais of Canterbury, Historical Works of Gervais of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, Vols. I and II, Rolls Series, 1880.

Guisborough, The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Society, third series, LXXXIX, 1957.

John of Oxford: Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes, ed., H. Ellis, Rolls Series, 1859.

Laffan, R.G.D. Select Documents of European History, 800-1492, Volume I, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Matthew Paris’s English History, from the year 1235 to 1273, volumes I to V, translated by the Rev. J. A. Giles, Henry Bohn, London, 1852. Note: Kessinger Publishing’s Rare Reprints are incomplete. www.kessinger.net.

Matthaei Paris, Monachi Albanensis, Historia Major, Juxta Exemplar Londinense 1640, verbatim recusa, ed. Willielmo Wats, STD. Imprensis A. Mearne, T. Dring, B. Tooke, T. Sawbridge & G. Wells, MDCLXXXIV (1684)

Rishanger, William, The Chronicle of William de Rishanger, of the Barons’ War: The Miracles of Simon de Montfort. ed. J.O. Halliwell, Camden Society, 1840. Also known as the Chronicon de Bellis

Royal Letters, Henry III, ed. W.W. Shirley, Rolls Series, 1862.

Life in a Medieval Village

by Katherine Ashe

When Julius Caesar arrived in Albion, what we call Briton, he reported to the Roman Senate that here was a land completely under cultivation. A thousand years later, when William of Normandy conquered England he had to eradicate numerous villages to plant what is still known as the New Forest to create a future supply of oak for ships.

What did this long sustained agriculture look like and how was it maintained? We don't know if the "three field system" was already in place in Caesar's time, it certainly was well before the arrival of the Normans, who were using it on their home fiefs as well.

Picture a land wide open, dotted with villages here and there, a manor house, often fortified and with a bit of woodland, a hunting chase that would also supply wood for heat and cooking and occasionally a few large timbers for a crook-built building the walls of which, between the supporting timbers, would be woven willow wands -- a sort of basketry -- wadded with clay and horsehair: a building material called wattle and daub.

The single village street would be lined with wattle and daub "half timbered" cottages, each set on its own little "toft", usually planted with a vegetable garden at the back and surrounded by a willow "wattle" fence to keep in the chickens. The cottage would also possess a "croft", another small piece of land probably planted with a few fruit trees: apple, pear, quince, cherry, and here pigs might be kept.

These cottages were not the property of the cottagers but belonged to the fief, the whole of the estate that included the village, the manor house, the fields and the chase. Before the Conquest in 1066 these fiefs belonged to whatever Britain, Saxon or Dane happened to hold it as overlord from time immemorial or as the results of war and apportionment to the dominant power's friends. With the arrival of the Normans the fiefs were granted to William's followers under the feudal system, through the King's direct gift of a multitude of fiefs to his most useful followers who then apportioned the fiefs under their control to their knights to supply them with a living through specific taxes so that they were free and well supplied when their services were called upon for war.

But regardless of who might be living in, or rebuilding the great house to suit his tastes, the life of the villagers, or "villeins" as they were properly called with no disparagement intended, remained the same. Even what they paid in duties to the holder of the fief remained the same according to ancient custom. For each village had a "wittenmote" a group of elders who knew the customs of the place: what was owed to the lord of the manor and when, how the cultivated land was apportioned and to whom, what the penalties were for crimes, etc. Thus the wittenmote provided a continuity for village life regardless of who was the dominant force politically at any given time. In the 13th century the royal judge Henry de Bracton made a compilation of these customary laws of the wittenmotes and that collection lies at the foundation of the British and U.S. legal systems based upon precedent, rather than a code of law as is the practice in most of the rest of the world.

But who were these villagers who had been occupying the cottages from time out of mind? Each cottage was held by its "house-bondsman," the eldest son, or in the counties under the Danelaw, the youngest son. One must suppose this Scandinavian practice of making the youngest son the inheritor, on the idea that the older ones would certainly be old enough to fend for themselves long before their father died, encouraged the expansionary practice of going a-viking -- from which nearly everyone in reach of Scandinavian ships suffered.

The house-bondsman, or "husbandman," inherited the bond for the cottage and all that pertained to it: the toft, the croft and a right to a certain number of rows, say three rows for example, in each of the three great fields surrounding the village. Since the land was not of equal quality in all of its rows, the rows were not permanently allotted to specific cottages. Each year the fief's husbandmen drew straws for which set of rows would be theirs to cultivate that year. The unfortunate ended up with that "short straw" and "a hard row to hoe," but the misfortune would probably be rectified the following year.

The fields, and the rows in them, were demarcated by posts: palings or "pales." To trespass on someone else's row was to "go beyond the pale." Don't picture these rows as the little scraping of the soil you might do in your veggie garden, these rows were huge -- and S shaped, giving the fields something of the look of a sea ruffled with waves as high as a man's waist and sometimes wider than one might be able to jump over. The S shape was the result of the wide turning radius of the ox drawn plows in use.

Though the Minoans apparently had huge bulls and the Romans had what look like the beautiful modern, good sized and cream colored Charolais, England's oxen in the Middle Ages were not very big at all, their backs reaching only to about the height of a man's chest.

For those not familiar with cattle raising, oxen are castrated bull calves. Since a cow, to be milk-able, must bear a calf, and since half the calves born are likely to be male and useless as milkers, its these bull calves that supply the meat -- as of course do the old cows past milking age. When needed, a strong bull calf would be kept for breeding, or castrated and trained to the heavy wooden oxbow that would couple him to another ox and enable him to be hitched to a plow or wagon. These little cattle were not very strong; a team for plowing would require six of them, a heavy wagon might require a team of ten or more. So the husbandman would share his two oxen with his neighbors who had rows of a sufficient distance from his that the team, wending its way through the row's S curve, would take up the neighbor's row at the right place in the curve.

Where were all these oxen kept when they weren't plowing? Here we come to the three field system. The oxen lived on that year's fallow field, helpfully manuring it. The three fields in which the principal manor lands were divided followed a regular three year cycle.

The Fallow Field, on which nothing was planted, rested and was renewed with manuring by the village animals. The next field in the cycle, known as the Spring Field, was planted with oats, peas, beans and barley: all nitrogen-fixing plants. Because these four plantings required different growing conditions regarding moisture, the slope of the row was used like a little hillside with the four different kinds of plants each in its own row along the incline. After harvesting, these plants would be plowed into the soil, enriching it even further. The third field was planted with wheat (called "corn" but not at all the Indian corn we designate by that name now), which requires a great deal of nutrients. Grains will exhaust the soil in a short time if those nutrients are not replaced - and that is why modern farmers are so dependent upon chemical fertilizers. The three-field system, because of its cycle of two years of nutrient replacement before a piece of land was planted again with grain, was endlessly sustainable.

A certain number of rows in the field belonged to the manor house although, managed by the lord's steward, it took its chances in the row selection along with everyone else in many places. The husbandmen, in part payment of the "bond" for their holdings in the fief, gave service, plowing, seeding and harvesting the lord's crops. They also might owe a hen or eggs every now and then, especially at Christmas time. How their debt of labor was paid was specific to the customs of each fief and were well known to the wittenmote. Much distinction was made between a water bidreap and a beer bidreap when the steward of the manor was required to serve the plowmen beer when they rested.

Regarding local law and order, the principal person responsible in the village was the husbandmen's chosen "reeve." The reeve had a horn that he blew whenever there was an emergency: as when the sheep had gotten into the meadow or a cow into the corn -- Little Boy Blue was a typical reeve.

For crimes, there was a system of fines. Even murder was squared with a fine, a very heavy one that economically crippled not only the perpetrator but his entire family. The amount of fine for a murder depended upon the social status of the victim, fundamentally his lifetime's worth in earning ability, his value to the community. Except of course for aristocrats, who might be seen as having very little value to the local community but whose murder commanded so high a fine that the convicted, or a relative taking his place, would languish a lifetime in prison for the unpayable debt.

If the husbandman was the eldest, or youngest son in the Danelaw, what became of his brothers and sisters? Some migrated to the cities, learning crafts, becoming a new middle class of merchants and artisans. Some became servants in the manor house. Many of the excess population of the fiefs peopled the enormous religious houses with their vast communities of low level monks and nuns, and some of these rose through education to become priests, and even bishops, as in the case of the brilliant Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, author of the standard published work on manor management of his time, translator of the Old Testament from Hebrew, mathematician, scientist, theologian, and author of "On Kingship and Tyranny" and hence instigator of the movement that resulted in the first Parliament with power over the Crown.

And one of Grosseteste's acts as bishop was to establish a system for legitimizing bastard children. By the old system, only the husbandman (husband) could marry, for only he could provide a stable living for a family. It was a system that just about guaranteed a goodly supply of bastards. Grosseteste's solution was to perform marriages for those who weren't husbandmen, to cover the couple's children with a sheet until the end of the wedding ceremony, then to whisk away the sheet, revealing the couple's children as "new-born" in legitimacy. One wonders if Grosseteste, whose name is not a surname but means "the fat-head", was himself illegitimate, though such a history might impair a person's qualifications for the priesthood.

Each fief's village would have a church, and the lord of the manor would have the right, called "advowson", to designate whom the priest would be. With the appointment went a modest "living" charged against the local husbandmen. Since the "living" might be given as an income to someone who didn't live in the village, indeed never showed up to preach or otherwise, there was a need for some currency. This was solved by fairs held in the nearest town. The husbandman's wife (which word incidentally means "carver of the loaf") would take the fruits and vegetables from her toft and croft, or a hen or eggs, in a basket and would walk to the nearest fair. If more money was needed she might have her child come with her to drive along some geese or a pig.

If these images: of the Goose Girl or Little Boy Blue the reeve, and phrases such a "going beyond the pale," ring deep in our psyches it's not only because we saw illustrations in books when we were very small, but because, if they dwelled in Europe, this was the life that most of our ancestors lived. And on inspection at this remove, it seems not such a bad life, given they had no expectations of plumbing, heating or modern means of travel and communications. There were, actually certain advantages, certain absences of stress regarding expectations of achievement -- life would be what it had always been.

Suggested further reading: George Caspar Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, Russell and Russell, New York, 1960.

Katherine Ashe is the author of the Montfort series, available from Amazon:
Montfort: The Early Years
Montfort: The Founder of Parliament
Montfort: The Revolutionary
Montfort: The Angel with the Sword

The Harlot Who Was Dickens’ Muse, or, Even Greater Expectations

by Katherine Ashe

This is the story of a British author’s inspiration. It happens his muse was an American woman. She fits into the history of British letters for she was the inspiration for Miss Havisham, the bitter spinster jilted at the altar who is the central character of Great Expectations. Just how far may an novel depart from the facts of its inspiration? Very far indeed.

Granted, Dickens met her when she was an old woman, a wealthy dowager living in a mansion in New York City’s then fashionable Harlem. She was Madame Jumel, widow of the wealthy French liquor importer, Stephen Jumel, and wealthy even more in her own right, for she had cornered the Manhattan real estate market just as farms were being divided into the blocks now demarcated from 14th Street to 34th Street. She was, by her own effort, the richest woman in the western world.

She entertained Charles Dickens during one of his American tours. And astonished him by showing him her dining room, festooned with cobwebs, scattered with green and rock hard crumbs. For the room was her relic of the night she entertained Joseph Bonaparte, the Emperor of France’s brother.

Also, in her household was a little girl, actually her sister’s granddaughter, whom she was training to entrance men with her charms. A little boy was even provided for the child to practice upon. Thus Eliza Jumel came to inspire the character of the raddled, embittered, jilted-at-the altar Miss Havisham, of Great Expectations.

Dickens noted what he saw, and wrote the story that sprang to his mind. But the truth of Madame Jumel could not have been further from Miss Havisham.

We know the actual details of Eliza’s life because, after her death, the son, George Washington Bowen, whom she left in Providence, Rhode Island, to be brought up in the brothel of Mother Freelove Ballou, sued to gain her estate. A parade of witnesses, from her own servants in New York, to the Governor of Rhode Island himself who, from his childhood, remembered her as Betsy Bowen, the tart of the dockyards.

The revelations left New York scandalized, titillated, entranced. Madame Jumel was eccentric, yes. A few years before her death she had offered charity to homeless men during an economic crash. The men found themselves dressed in uniforms (designed and paid for by Madame) and being drilled daily by the lady herself astride her charger. She was preparing to invade of Mexico and make herself an empress. If this sounds like utter madness, it wasn’t quite. She was carrying forward the plans of her second husband, Aaron Burr.

What was Madame’s heritage? She was born Eliza (Betsy) Bowen, the daughter of a servant girl who, very unfortunately, previously had become pregnant and was cast into the streets of Providence. There she was first rescued by a brothel owner named Solomon Angel (one would not dare to make these names up) who handed her on to Mother Freelove.

In 1775 the now confirmed harlot, Phoebe, attracted the attention of a gentleman visiting Providence, and he took such an interest in her that he gave her enough money to stay off the streets for a while. During her time of absence from her profession, Phoebe discovered she was pregnant, and the child she bore was Eliza. The father, she informed Eliza, was none other than George Washington.

While still sheltered from life on the streets, Phoebe married a fisherman named Bowen, and the baby Eliza was given his name. But Bowen soon fell from his boat in a drunken stupor and was drowned.

Phoebe and Eliza were back at Mother Freelove’s, where Eliza, or Betsy as she was being called, grew to be a lively beauty and a great asset to the establishment. That is, until a French sea captain named DelaCroix, finding her not only winsome but quite intelligent as well, lured her to France. There he taught her French, and she joined several other of his protégées in his remarkable business.

Betsy, speaking French now, was set up by Captain DelaCroix in New York City and passed off as his wife. The aim was to entrap rich men into affairs with this lonely, lovely French wife. Then the captain would appear in the midst of a scene flagrant and the fearful lover would find himself the victim of blackmail. Charming, n’est pas?

New York City was prosperous and merry in these early years of the 1800’s, and Eliza’s victims included the very best people. But there were two men who escaped being her victims: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Hamilton, because gossip had it he as a love-child of George Washington’s – hence Eliza may have considered him her brother – and she did have SOME standards, you know.

Burr, because she fell in love with him, and he got rid of Captain DelaCroix for her and set her up in a career in the theater.

On the stage she was not nearly the success she had been in the boudoir, but she did well enough to dazzle an acquaintance of Burr, the liquor importer Stephen Jumel, a Frenchman with his own fleet of ships. Her French was sufficiently convincing even to fool him.

Soon Eliza gave up the stage and was installed as Jumel’s mistress, with the clothes, the coach, the house: all the accoutrements of a wife except the legality. Why did Burr give her up? He was pursuing a political career. A career that would bring him repeatedly into tied vote with Thomas Jefferson for the Presidency of the United States. He couldn’t afford a woman with Eliza’s reputation. But there’s every indication that he loved her, and her acquisition by Jumel may have done nothing to slow him down—at first.

Secure and rich, Eliza now set her sites to the next step up: official marriage to Jumel. The businessman was frantically summoned to return at once from a trip to Washington. What he found was Eliza, pale, coughing her last, attended by his doctor and a priest. History has it that, in tears, he begged his mistress if there was anything he could do for her in these, her last moments, and she murmured, “Yes, Stephen, make an honest woman of me.” The priest was there, the rite was performed, and Eliza leapt from her deathbed screaming, “I’m Mrs. Jumel!”

Jumel was known for his practical jokes. He took this one in good part, and married Eliza again, properly in a church.

It was about this time that Burr found his access to his beloved curbed. The doors of the Jumel house were mysteriously closed to him. And it was at this time that his exchange of letters with Alexander Hamilton, which led to their fatal duel, commenced. The letters show Burr being vague in his complaint. He had withstood Hamilton’s politically aimed slanders for years without wincing, but now he was implacable but rather vague. Hamilton tried every means to appease his opponent, until at last Burr accused him of having irreparably impaired his private life. He demanded Hamilton “give satisfaction” and the duel took place on the cliff at Weehawken, New Jersey. Was the cause Eliza? Had Hamilton hinted to Jumel an ongoing relationship that caused Burr’s banning from the Jumel house?

After the duel, which brought on Hamilton’s slow death, Burr retreated to Washington to serve out his term as Vice-President of the United States. He had been the runner-up in the Jefferson/Burr presidential election and Vice Presidents then were the number two winner.

Dueling was of course illegal, officially Burr had murdered Hamilton, but in Washington, so long as he was serving in office, Burr couldn’t be touched by the law. His term finished, he fled west-- to found an army to invade Mexico and establish a dominion for himself. Unfortunately, Jefferson took fright, imagine the army was intended to abduct HIM. The law was sent after Burr and he was brought back ignominiously (he was a small man) tied on a lawman’s saddlebow. But accusations didn’t stick, and Burr ended exiled to France.

What was Mrs. Jumel doing all this time? Finding herself in such happy circumstances, she went to Providence hoping to rescue her sister. Their mother was dead by this time: shot as a squatter in an illegal shack. The sister, Eliza discovered, was also dead, found floating in Providence’s harbor. But she had left a little girl, named Eliza, who was beginning the cycle of their family’s sad history again, as a servant. Madame Jumel bought little Eliza out of servitude and made her an adoptive daughter.

Then she set about creating what was probably the first historical restoration in the United States, now known as the Morris Jumel Mansion (it claims to be the oldest house in Manhattan and can be can be visited: http://www.morrisjumel.org)

Why did Eliza do this? Built in 1765, this magnificent home of a royalist, Roger Morris, had been abandoned as the Continental Army moved into New York, and it came to serve as George Washington’s headquarters.

After the war it had degenerated into a country inn. Eliza persuaded Jumel to buy it, then spared no expense in restoring it, and magnificently furnishing its octagon ballroom. For this was to be the occasion of her entry into New York high society.

It was a grand event, no doubt. But it backfired. A guest brought a friend who was none other than the Governor of Rhode Island, who remembered Eliza as Betsy of the dock and streets, and he told Jumel a bit of his wife’s early history.

Years later, the servants reported how Jumel confronted Eliza – and she fought back. Had she not been a good wife? A good mother to their adopted daughter? How dare he take the word of a stranger above what he knew of her himself! And she brought from her capacious skirt’s pocket the little pistol he had given her. Jumel was reduced to tears, begging her not to shoot. Indeed, how could he have been so foolish? So cruel? Could she forgive him? If she only would forgive him, he would take her and little Eliza on a trip to France on his flagship named for her, the Eliza.

Eliza relented and put away her gun. And the Jumels went to France on the Eliza.

But nothing in Eliza’s life could be so ordinary as a shopping trip to Paris. Approaching her port of la Rochelle, the Eliza was battered by storms and driven south, taking shelter in the Gironde, near Bordeaux, to make repairs. There, a boat filled with magnificently uniformed French officers hailed them and asked to come aboard.

It seemed that Napoleon had just lost the Battle of Waterloo. He was intending to flee to America but his ship was trapped at La Rochelle, unable to leave harbor because of the storm. The American ship had been seen trying to beat her way in, then turning south. The Emperor’s aide de camp, Lelande, had been sent to see if that American ship could be found, and if it would be willing to rescue Napoleon and take him to where he might start a new life. The vanquished Emperor hoped to retire to a farm in New Jersey.

Of course the Jumels agreed. But by the time Lelande reached La Rochelle, the British had closed off the harbor. In despair, Napoleon had surrendered. In thanks, he sent Lelande back to the Jumels with a gift; his coach and his personal effects, all that remained of his earthy possessions.

The Jumels entered Paris in the Emperor’s wreath-emblazoned coach – and they were the only ones who knew what had become of Napoleon. Soon they were deep in efforts to free the Emperor, and Eliza was the darling of the Paris aristocracy. Forget about those parvenu snobs in New York City!

But soon the Jumels were near bankruptcy, attempting to fund the Emperor’s restoration.
There was the house in New York, and Stephen’s warehouses, they were worth something. Eliza insisted that only she knew the mansion’s worth, so she should return and see to its sale, while Stephen remained, seeing to their interests in Paris.

In New York, the first person Eliza contacted was Aaron Burr, who was returned from his French exile and had a small law practice now in Lower Manhattan. Burr advised Eliza to keep the house and rent it, and sell the warehouses. He would guide her in her investments of the proceeds. Thus Eliza got into the business of real estate speculation. How much was Burr’s work and how much Eliza’s will never be known, but in a few years she could move from her miserable room in a Long Island farmhouse back into her mansion with riches to spare.

Stephen returned from France. Life was idyllic; the mansion’s hilltop lands stretched down on each side to the Hudson and the East River, and the view from the master bedroom’s balcony reached (with a spy glass) to the harbor. Stephen, elderly now, loved his land, and rode the hay wagon up to the house with the last load of haying. He slipped off, broke his arm, the arm became gangrenous and soon he died.

Eliza was a very rich widow. Burr wasted little time. He brought a clergyman to visit. Aaron Burr and Eliza Betsy Bowen Jumel were married. During their divorce proceedings, which happened fairly soon afterward, she said he had forced her and embarrassed her into marrying him. And she accused her hasty husband of infidelity already.

It seemed that Burr, still entranced by the opportunities out West, sold one of Eliza’s carriages and its fine team of horse, and gave the proceeds to a woman who was leading a group of settlers westward. In a terrific argument in the mansion’s hall, Eliza insisted the woman was his mistress. He swore she was not, and then and there suffered a stroke. Crippled, barley able to speak, Burr insisted on being taken from the house, down the length of Manhattan to his office.

Paralysed, poverty-stricken, unable to pay his office’s rent, he ended living at the mercy of a kind woman innkeeper on Staten Island. It was there that Eliza’s lawyer, Alexander Hamilton Junior, handed Burr the final papers of divorce. Burr took the documents, saying, “I have always loved women…” and died. One might say he died at the hands of his victim Hamilton’s son.

Did Eliza regret her actions? She took up Burr’s project of invading Mexico and made it her own. But she died in her bed, composing a polite letter to a friend.

Madame Jumel, the inspiration for Miss Havisham, was a far cry from a jilted and embittered spinster.


Katherine Ashe is the author of the Montfort series; Montfort The Early Years, Montfort The Viceroy; Montfort The Revolutionary and Montfort The Angel with the Sword. Her radio series on Eliza Jumel, The Richest Woman in the Western World, starring Kathleen Widdoes, was broadcast on Public Radio in 1992.

King Lear’s TownA Little History of the City of Leicester

by Katherine Ashe

The City of Leicester. In the so called “dark” and “middle’ ages, Leicester was not a happy place. In 1173, by order of King Henry II, the city was besieged, razed and depopulated as punishment for its earl, Robert “White-Hands’” support of Queen Eleanor (of Aquitaine) and her son Richard the Lion Hearted. On Richard’s ascension to the throne, the Earl of Leicester was forgiven, and rebuilt his hall. But the town recovered very slowly and sporadically, being still sparsely populated within its walls as late as 1722.

The situation was so bad that White Hands forgave any taxes the townspeople owed him. Of course, it was his fault they had suffered at all, so renouncing his taxes was the least he could do.

Roman ruins at Vaughn College, Leicester

But Leicester had a prominent past. In the early Christian era Leicester had been a major Roman town at the crossing of two of the most important of the Roman legions’ roads in Britain. Fine mosaic floors in costly Roman villas have been excavated near the city. Endearing objects may be seen in Leicester’s museum, such as a bowl inscribed from a centurion to his lady love.

Massive stone arches, perhaps a part of the Roman baths, still stand. In the Middle Ages those thick walls with their gaps served as the Jewish district, with shacks built against the walls, using the gaps as part of the shelter. Jews were not permitted to own land. But since no one owned the ancient stretch of wall and arches, the Jews remained there undisturbed. At least until the shameful incident of Simon de Montfort’s youth, when he evicted them from the city.

Since Montfort had no title, and no knights or henchmen at the time, so he probably didn’t accomplish that eviction single-handed. It’s most likely the people of Leicester joined in the rout, thus cancelling their debts to the Jews who were chiefly money-lenders. Similar attacks against Jews in London and elsewhere occurred and seem to have been motivated by a desire to not pay back loans, rather than for any religious reasons. Being a Jew in England in the 13th century was hazardous.

The Jewry Wall

It may not be coincidence that when young Simon drove out the Jews of Leicester, his mentor, Fr. Robert Grosseteste, had just founded a refuge for homeless Jews, in London: later the site of the Public Record Office. However, the Jews Simon drove from the old Roman wall probably knew that the local priest (Dean of Lincoln Cathedral) was offering not just hospitality, but an attempt at conversion. They simply crossed the River Soar to Simon’s grand-aunt’s house, where they found sympathetic shelter. From there they spread all over England the news of their mistreatment by the would-be Earl of Leicester. It made a very bad beginning for a young Frenchman hoping to redeem an English title.

Another instance of the impact of the youthful Simon de Montfort on Leicester appears in the royal court’s legal records. The villeins of the Leicester fief brought suit against Simon for fencing their fields. He had done more than fence the fields, he had tried to persuade them away from the age-old three-field system of cultivation and toward the raising of sheep and cattle. It may be that the depopulation of Leicester had made the three-field system too unproductive, with too many of the field rows going uncultivated. It’s well to remember Montfort’s mentor again, the ubiquitous Robert Grosseteste, who had published the then most respected “modern” work on manor management.

Saint Mary de Castro church, favored retreat of Robert Grosseteste








It is unlikely Montfort ventured such a change without Grosseteste’s advice. As for the future of Leicester, woolen processing became its chief industry and remained so until after WWII.

Old Guild Hall, Leicester

But let’s go further back in time. After the conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons, and the division of Britain into the heptarchy, the “seven kingdoms, in 753, Leicester became the capital city of the kingdom of Mercia. The name “Leicester” derives from “Legre-caestre,” Lyger, or Legre, was the old name of the River Soar, which encloses two sides of the old city. If King Lear is not to be looked upon merely as mythical, then Leicester was the site of his castle. There is a mysterious conical mound with a door set in it on the castle grounds. A fairy hill? My inquiries when I was there only gained the answer, “It was where m’lord kept his wines.” Well, that too – probably.

In 874, Leicester fell to the Danes. Its Roman walls protecting its perimeter (not the walls of the baths, that became the Jewry) were destroyed and the city became incorporated in the Danish “five boroughs,” which included Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby and Stamford.

In 920, Ethelfloeda, the daughter of King Alfred, succeeded in raising an army and driving the Danes from Leicester, Derby and Nottingham. She caused the Roman walls to be rebuilt, with an assortment of stone and Roman tiles cemented together with an extraordinarily sturdy mortar that adhered in clumps, making any subsequent reuse of the building materials all but impossible. City and castle walls were knocked down and rebuilt regularly in medieval times. The Palestinian castle at Caesaria was disassembled and reassembled with every passing phase of Moslem or Christian crusading success. To not be able to reassemble the cut stones of a city or castle wall was an unusual and serious problem.

After Ethelfloeda's death, at Castle Tamworth in 922, Leicester passed back and forth between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes, resulting in further demolition -- no longer repairable thanks to Ethelfloeda's mortar.

In 1068, the Saxon, Earl Edwin of Coventry and Leicester (grandson of the minimally covered Lady Godiva of Coventry and Leicester – one always hopes that notable ride was in summertime), surrendered and did homage to William the Conqueror. Leicester passed to William’s follower Hugh de Grantmesnil, as Norman governor.

After William’s death, Hugh supported Robert of Normandy, rather than William’s heir, William Rufus, or his brother Henry. When Henry succeeded as Henry I, Hugh retired to a monastery in France, and the king created his friend Robert de Beaumont the first Norman Earl of Leicester. After him came Robert de Bosso, who enjoyed the earldom for fifty years.

Then there was “Robert White Hands.” His son and heir, Robert FitzParnel died without heirs and the inheritance of the earldom of Leicester passed to father White Hands’ surviving sisters. One of those ladies was Margaret, the Countess of Winchester, the very one who welcomed the fleeing Jews – she already had complaints of her own against her grand-nephew for putting up his fences and encroaching on a corner of her lands. But Margaret only got twelve of the seventy-eight fiefs belonging to the earldom.

The other sister, who inherited the earldom’s titles and sixty-six fiefs, was the mother of Simon de Montfort the crusader and harrier of Albigensians. There was a prediction, in his time, that the people of England would rise up and elect Simon de Montfort their king. The crusader announced he would “never set foot in a land given to such prophecies.” And he never did.

Chartres window – this image has roused a great deal of confusion regarding the arms of Simon the Earl of Leicester, whose blazon, as depicted by his friend Matthew Paris in his Chronica Majora, shows a two tailed RED lion rampant on a White ground – suitably differenced from his father white-lion-on-red arms as a younger son’s would be.

Simon Pere might have been disappointed if he had claimed his titles. Of those sixty-six fiefs, sixty were held by the knights whom the earl was expected to lead in battle. Most of those knights paid no rent, giving military service instead, although one of them was compelled, in lieu of rent, to deliver to the earl each year a single red rose. (This echoes of Beauty and the Beast, but it’s true. One wonders how commonly acceptable a single roses was for the clearing of a debt. There were certain advantages to living in the Middle Ages.)

Simon de Montfort’s son and namesake, after the father’s death and the family’s relative bankruptcy, not only set foot in England, but did everything he could to gain the titles. But fighting the Welsh for King Henry III accomplished little for him. It was when he fell in love with the King’s sister, who was a nun, and the marriage was secret and hasty – followed by a successful effort at bribing the Pope to lift the nun’s vows -- that King Henry finally granted Simon the title Earl of Leicester and its companion honor, Steward of England. A few decades later, much to Henry’s chagrin, the people of England did elect Simon de Montfort to be their king. Luckily for Henry, he refused the Crown.

With Simon’s death at Evesham, and the stripping from his sons of all of their claims of inheritance in England, Leicester passed to the Crown and became a bonus for royal relatives, enjoyed by a series of Lancastrians until John of Gaunt’s heir ascended the throne as Henry IV.

The earldom then remained in the Crown’s keeping again until Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, Robert Dudley, was granted the title in 1564.

With the fall of Dudley from royal favor, Leicester went back to the Crown -- to be lobbed like a tennis ball out to the Sidney family in 1618, where it bounced happily for the next hundred and fifty years before a royal serve sent it to Thomas Coke. Strangely, Coke’s descendants didn’t receive the earldom after his death in 1795, but it was lobbed back to them in 1837, and has remained with the Coke family ever since, the Seventh Coke Earl of Leicester receiving the title in 1994.

Dugdaleleicester view

Leicester’s chief industry, from the time of Earl Simon on, was the processing of wool. Prior to WWII a major business was the lindsey-woolsey works, where a sturdy fabric of wool and linen was manufactured. During the war the factory was taken out of private hands for the war effort.

In recent years Leicester has blossomed as an academic center, with Montfort University perhaps the largest and fastest growing educational institution in England. Earl Simon, whose statue is one of four ringing the base of the town clock, would be pleased.






See History and Antiquities of the antient Towne and once Citte of Leicester, MS, Thomas Staveley, 1679; History and Antiquities of the Town of Leicester, John Throsby, 1791; History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Leicester, John Nichols, 1795. History of Leicester from the time of the Romans to the end of the seventeenth century, James Thompson, 1849. Roman Leicester, James Francis Hollings, The Literary and Philosophical Society, 1851.

Interestingly, despite the battering the town suffered, a merchants' guild was in existence in Leicester from as early as Oct. 9, 1196. See Stenton, F.M. "Documents Illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw," British Academy, 1920, no. 347; cf. no. 392.)

Giveaway: Montfort The Early Years 1229 to 1243 Kindle e-books

Katherine Ashe is giving away 5 kindle e-book copies of Montfort The Early Years. Go HERE for more information.

An Alchemist, an Earl and the Stupor Mundi: the cannon and gunpowder in 13th century Europe, with a nod to Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

by Katherine Ashe

Roger Bacon is considered to have introduced the formula and use of gunpowder to Europe in an article in his encyclopedic De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae. He illustrates a vase-shaped bronze vessel, and offers a practical compounding of what is now called black powder. How did this 13th century Oxford scholar and alchemist come to have the secret of China’s explosive substance and its use in artillery?

The trail of evidence is sometimes circumstantial but the facts are these:

Gunpowder and cannons were known in China by the twelfth century. The first recorded use in the West appears to have been by Islamic forces battling Christians on the Iberian Peninsula in the early thirteenth century. Arab trade with China at that time, with dhows sailing to Canton and junks sailing to Aden, was quite active, and most likely was the means of bringing the technology to Arabic domains. But cannons and gunpowder remained very secret weapons.

The Holy Roman Emperor Frederic II, known as the Stupor Mundi for his breadth of education and his insouciance toward Christianity, was educated by Arab scholars, attended by Arab physicians, and remained close to Arabic intellectuals and informants all his life.

At his siege of Milan 1238, Frederic's army deployed a strange weapon that reportedly lofted missiles amid smoke and a thunderous roar. This same Milanese siege, at which Simon de Montfort was serving while in Italy (applying to the Vatican for the lifting of his wife’s vows as a nun), was commanded by Henry D'Urberville, on loan to Frederic from England and Simon's former commander in Wales. D’Urberville would have seen Frederic’s secret weapon in operation.

D'Urberville was also Simon's immediate predecessor as governor for Gascony, England’s dukedom in southern France. Incidentally, this is that same Henry d’Urberville whose empty tomb appears in Tess of the D’Urbervilles to inspire the country girl with her great ancestry. Henry died on crusade in the Holy Land, at King Louis’ battle at Mansourah.

Before going to govern Gascony for King Henry, Simon de Montfort served as ambassador for England at King Louis IX’s' Court in Paris (1246-48.) During the time of his stay there, the university brought charges against a young alchemist named Roger Bacon who was annoying everyone by making foul smells in his room. The university authorities applied to King Louis to have him evicted.

Roger Bacon next turns up established at Oxford, which is then under the care of Robert Grosseteste's protégé Adam Marsh. Grosseteste's and Marsh's existing letters to Simon show an extraordinary degree of familiarity with the Earl, they undoubtedly were his closest friends. It would seem likely that Simon was the link between Bacon and Oxford, and it was probably through his initial patronage that Bacon found a home there – on a bridge where his malodorous matter could be conveniently dumped into the river.

In his De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, published in 1248, Bacon describes explosives and includes a drawing of a bronze vase-like vessel, the prototype of the European cannon.

Commissioned to suppress the Gascon lords’ rebelling against England’s rule, Simon de Montfort's defeat of the mountain fortress of Mauleon in 1248 was so miraculously swift that it was attributed to supernatural agency, and brought about a fairly prompt surrender to the new governor. Might Simon have been using the cannon that Bacon describes?

Pyrenees castles, usually quite capable of holding out against attack.

The next record of what seems to have been the use of a cannon was in 1253, when King Henry was trying to raise funds from his English barons for a war – again to subdue Gascony. The king displayed to the lords steel arrows, quarrels, which had been lobbed at him amid thunderous noise from the roof of the fortress of La Reole -- which previously had been supplied and used as headquarters by Montfort. The butt ends of the arrows were blackened as from a fiery explosion.

[La Reole was built by Richard Coeur de Lion. A truly mighty fortress guarding the Garrone, it is notable also for its perfect stone likeness of Alfred E. Neuman, carved over the lintel of the door leading down from this great tower’s roof, and for the English ghosts who inhabit the top of the inner side of the long wall visible to the right of the tower. The soldiers were past their term of duty, murdered by the Piis faction as they slept on their barracks. I thank the Viort family, castellans for 500 years, for the tour they gave me of this castle that is their home.]

A cannon, very similar to the one Bacon illustrated in his writings of 1248, appears in De Nobilitatibus, Sapientii, et Prudentiis Regum, by Walter de Milemete in 1326. But the use of cannon and gunpowder by the English is not widely recognized until the Battle of Crecy in 1346.


Katherine Ashe is the author of the four volumes of Simon de Montfort, Founder of Parliament. A review of her second volume can be accessed below:

Review of Simon de Montfort Volume II: Montfort the Viceroy

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