assuming the name of Montfleury. About 1635 he was a valued member of the company at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and he was in the original cast of the Cid (1636) and of Horace (1640). Richelieu thought highly of him, and when in 1638 Montfleury married the actress Jeanne de la Chalpe (d. 1683), the cardinal desired the ceremony to take place at his own country house at Rueil. Montfleury died in Paris from the rupture of a blood-vessel, while playing the part of Orestes in Andromaque, in December 1667. He was the author of a tragedy, La Mort d’Asdrobal, performed in 1647.
MONTFORT, the name of a famous French family long seated at Montfort l’Amauri, near Paris, descended from a certain
William, a descendant of the counts of Flanders, who flourished
during the latter part of the 10th century, and who built a
castle at Montfort l’Amauri. Until 1209, when Simon IV.
took the title of count, William and his successors were known
as barons de Montfort. This Simon IV. de Montfort (c. 1160–1218),
a son of Simon III. (d. 1181), is chiefly known for the
very active part which he took in the crusade against the Albigenses.
Twice he went to Palestine as a crusader, and in 1209,
answering the call of Pope Innocent III., he joined the host
which marched against the enemies of the Church in Languedoc.
He became vicomte of Béziers and of Carcassonne, and was
soon the leader of the Crusaders. He took place after place,
defeated Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, at Castelnaudary,
and about a year later (September 1213) gained a victory over
Raymond’s ally, Peter II., king of Aragon, under the walls of
Muret. Simon then turned his attention to administering and
organizing Languedoc. After a lively discussion in the Lateran
Council of 1215, the pope, somewhat reluctantly, confirmed
him in the possession of the greater part of the lands of the count
of Toulouse, and after two more years of warfare he was killed
whilst besieging the city of Toulouse on the 25th of June 1218.
The count’s eldest son, Amauri de Montfort (1192–1241), was
unable to hold his own, although Philip Augustus sent some
troops to his assistance in 1222. He abandoned his interests
in the south of France in favour of the new king Louis VIII.,
and in 1239 he went on crusade to the Holy Land, dying soon
afterwards at Otranto. In 1230 Amauri was made constable
of France. Simon IV. had a brother, Guy de Montfort (d. 1228),
who shared his military exploits both in Asia and in Europe,
and who was afterwards employed by Louis VIII. to negotiate
with the pope at Rome. He was killed before Vareilles on the
31st of January 1228. In 1294 Yolande (d. 1322), the heiress
of the Montforts, married Arthur II., duke of Brittany, and the
county of Montfort became part of this duchy. Their son,
John, count of Montfort, claimed Brittany in opposition to
Charles, count of Blois, and at length secured the duchy. Except
for one interval his descendants held it until it was united with
the French crown at the end of the 15th century.
See A. Molinier, Catalogue des actes de Simon et d’Amaury de Montfort (1873); and C. Douais, La Soumission de la vicomté de Carcassonne par Simon de Montfort et la. croisade contre Raimond VI.
MONTFORT, SIMON DE, Earl of Leicester (d. 1265), English statesman and soldier, was born in France about the year 1200. He was the fourth and youngest son of Simon IV. de Montfort (see above), the leader of the Albigensian crusade, by Alicia de Montmorenci. Simon IV., whose mother was an heiress of the Beaumont family, claimed in her right, and received from King John, the earldom of Leicester (1207), only to lose it again through espousing the French side in the wars between that sovereign and Philip Augustus. The young Simon, of whose youth and education nothing is recorded, came to England in 1230 and attached himself to Henry III.,
obtaining with the consent of his sole surviving brother Amauri
a re-grant of the family earldom. Simon was for a time unpopular
with the English and closely attached to the royal party.
He gave, however, an early proof of religious fervour, and of
an unbending harshness, by the expulsion of all the Jews who
had settled in his borough of Leicester to practise usury. In
1238 he obtained the hand of the king’s sister Eleanor, the widow
of the younger William Marshal. The king approved of the
match, but it was resented by his brother Richard of Cornwall
and the baronage, and objections were raised on the ground
that Eleanor had previously taken vows of chastity. With
some difficulty Earl Richard was pacified; and Montfort
obtained the pope’s confirmation of the marriage by a
personal visit to Rome. In 1239, however, the influence of
detractors and a quarrel over some obscure financial transactions
in which he appears to have used Henry’s name without
a formal warrant led to a breach between himself and the
king. The earl and his wife went for a time to France; and,
though a nominal reconciliation with the king was soon effected,
both departed on crusade with Richard of Cornwall in 1240.
Eleanor was left behind in Apulia while her husband proceeded
to the Holy Land. He acquitted himself with distinction,
and there was some thought among the Frankish barons of
appointing him to act as regent of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.
But he returned in 1241, took part in Henry’s disastrous
French expedition of 1242, and was readmitted to full favour.
Between 1243 and 1248 he received many gifts from the king;
he stood forward in parliament as a mediator between the court
party and the opposition; it is only from the correspondence
of his friends Grosseteste and Adam de Marsh that we learn
of his dissatisfaction with the condition of church and state.
He was keenly interested in Grosseteste’s proposals for ecclesiastical
reformation, and was considered the mainstay of the
reforming party. In 1248 he again took the cross, with the idea
of following Louis IX. to Egypt. But, at the repeated requests
of the king and council, he gave up this project in order to act
as governor in the unsettled and disaffected duchy of Gascony.
Bitter complaints were excited by the rigour with which the
earl suppressed the excesses of the seigneurs and of contending
factions in the great communes. Henry yielded to the outcry
and instituted a formal inquiry into the earl’s administration.
Montfort was formally acquitted on the charges of oppression,
but his accounts were disputed by the king, and he retired
in disgust to France (1252). The nobles of France offered
him the regency of the kingdom, vacant by the death of the
Queen-mother Blanche of Castile, but he preferred to make his
peace with Henry (1253), in obedience to the exhortations of the
dying Grosseteste. He helped the king in dealing with the
disaffection of Gascony; but their reconciliation was a hollow one,
and in the parliament of 1254 the earl led the opposition in
resisting a demand for a subsidy. In 1256 and 1257, when the
discontent of all classes was coming to a head, Montfort nominally
adhered to the royal cause. He undertook, with Peter of
Savoy, the queen’s uncle, the difficult task of extricating the
king from the pledges which he had given to the pope with
reference to the crown of Sicily; and Henry’s writs of this date
mention the earl in friendly terms. But at the “Mad Parliament”
of Oxford (1258) Montfort appeared side by side with
the earl of Gloucester at the head of the opposition. It is said
that Montfort was reluctant to approve the oligarchical constitution
created by the Provisions of Oxford, but his name appears
in the list of the Fifteen who were to constitute the supreme
board of control over the administration. There is better
ground for believing that he disliked the narrow class-spirit
in which the victorious barons used their victory; and that he
would gladly have made a compromise with the moderate
royalists whose policy was guided by the Lord Edward, Henry’s
eldest son. But the king’s success in dividing the barons and in
fostering a reaction rendered such projects hopeless. In 1261
Henry revoked his assent to the Provisions, and Montfort left
the country in despair.
He returned in 1263, at the invitation of the barons, who were now convinced of the king’s hostility to all reform; and raised a rebellion with the avowed object of restoring the form of government which the Provisions had ordained. For a few weeks it seemed as though the royalists were at his mercy; but he made the mistake of accepting Henry’s offer to abide by the arbitration of Louis IX. of France. At Amiens, in January 1264, the French king decided that the Provisions were unlawful and
