Talk:Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester

Amaury's Claim - an opinion.

The law at the time gave all of the father's titles and lands to the eldest son, in this case to Amaury. He was well set up in france. Pursuing a rather tenuous claim to an English Earldom (having a claim was a requirement for the earldom, not necessarily a right)would have been a waste of time to him as he could not swear fealty to the kings of both England and France.

Simon would have offered his holdings in France in exchange for the elder sons claim to the English earldom. That would have made sense to Amaury as he was trading something he had no practical use for in return for something tangible.

For Simon, that was the easy bit. The hard work was still to follow. The earldom of Leicester had been given to another english Baron,(I believe it was the earl of Pembroke ?) who had several titles, the earldom of Leicester being a relatively insignificant one to him. Simon had to pursuade him to reliquish the title (probably in return for a large sum of money)leaving the claim vacant, and himself as a genuine contender. He then had to pursuade the king of England that his claim was the strongest and get the king to endow the title and its priveleges upon him. (More money involved)

Simon got what he wanted, he was a land holding earl in the English court. This was a huge achievement for someone who was not an eldest son. But the financial dealings inolved indebted him heavily and this dogged him for the rest of his life. A lot of his problems throughout his life were money related.

This is an educated opinion, it was long ago that I read Simon de Montforts biography but I think this sums it up pretty well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.54.202.242 (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Repitition

I have edited out a repition in the text in the section "War against the king", but (for some reason) was unable to login. If this was done in error, apologies. jim jacobs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.168.19.142 (talk) 16:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Popular culture

I noticed that citations are needed regarding two works of fiction that the earl appears in. Sharon Kay Penman's 'Falls the Shadow' and Edith Pargetter's 'The Dragon at Noon Day'. What sort of citation is required? I own both books and know that the earl does, in fact, appear in both books. Is a link to Goodreads for each book acceptable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Offeiriad (talk • contribs) 15:35, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Jews in the article

Hi there, anyone else think that this article doesn't adequately represent what Simon de Montfort did the Jews of England? Most every time that Jews are mentioned in this article, it is related solely to debts and usury. I don't think it goes far enough in explaining the violence and havoc he and his supporters wrought on Jewish communities, aside from just burning the archae chests. Entire Jewish communities in cities were wiped out by Montfort and his men, and I think that the Second Barons' War article does a better job talking about his anti-Jewish motivations. I believe the article needs to be edited to reflect this. Zchai72 (talk) 11:43, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi there Zchai72, thanks for raising this. I've authored the content on both pages. If you look at the logs in both pages, you'll see this very unpleasant aspect of de Montfort's war and English history more generally was pretty absent from these pages back in April, and also from the article on Henry III of England. The page here does say:

These "cancellations" involved massacres of Jews by his followers to obtain their financial records, for instance in Worcester[19] and London.[4] The Worcester attack and killings were led by de Montfort's son Henry and Robert Earl Ferrers.[20] At London, one of his key followers John fitz John, led the attack and is said to have killed leading Jewish figures Isaac fil Aaron and Cok fil Abraham with his bare hands. He allegedly shared the loot with Montfort. 500 Jews died.[21] … His son Simon led a further attack on Jews in Winchester. Jews in Canterbury,[22] were murdered or driven out in by a force led by Gilbert de Clare[23][24] There was further violence in Lincoln, Cambridge, Wilton[25] and Northampton.

Is there more you feel should be added? I would say that there is some contentiousness about the degree to which de Montfort was responsible for the actions of his followers. I've tried to find sources which look at this question, and we can look for some discussion on the point. What I have tried to do, in the absence of clear documentary evidence, is to show that it was his trusted followers and close relations that carried out the attacks, which ought to allow anyone reasonably sensible to come to the obvious conclusion. What muddies the water a bit is that there was a genuine popular grievance about the abuse of Jewish loans by Henry III's court (using them to leverage property off smaller landholders). Of course, the medieval mind probably didn't properly separate the abuse of loans by English courtiers from blaming Jewish people as userers and non-Christians.

As a final point, if you look in the sources, there has been a lot of very good recent academic research on the topic of medieval Jewish history in England. This does give us a very good basis for getting the factual content onto Wikipedia. if you want to dig further I would suggest reading Hillaby and Hillaby's Encyclopedia in particular.* Hillaby, Joe; Hillaby, Caroline (2013). The Palgrave Dictionary of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-23027-816-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Jim Killock (talk) 12:35, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Birthdate 23 May 1208?

A few places online have this date, some with a question mark, others not. Is there any truth to it? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

ODNB has just "c. 1208". My guess is this is from some random genealogical "researcher". Ealdgyth (talk) 11:07, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Edit coming up

Flagging that I will give this an edit within the next couple of months to push it to a GA standard with a bit of luck. Jim Killock (talk) 20:51, 9 March 2024 (UTC)