Simon de Montfort, the founder of England’s Parliament, was the foremost knight and military strategist of his time. Friend of Saint Louis, thorn in the side of the Plantagenets, he was chosen viceroy by Prince Richard’s crusaders and the Christian lords of Palestine. He served as Regent of France, but rejected the Crown of England, championing instead the New Millennium of democracy preached by Dominican and Franciscan friars.
Believed by his followers to be the Angel of the Apocalypse, or even the Risen Christ, a cult grew that centered upon miracles witnessed at the site of Simon’s death in battle at Evesham. To suppress his faithful and revolutionary partisans, it was made a hanging crime to speak his name. But medieval tales of Robin Hood suggest it was he, not Richard Lionheart, who was the “king” the common folk prayed would return to rescue them from oppressive sheriffs.
For his chivalry, honor and astounding deeds of combat, he was proudly cited by Henry VIII as an ancestor of the Tudors. Indeed, through his daughter Eleanor’s marriage to Llewellyn, Prince of northern Wales, Simon de Montfort is ancestor to the united royal lineages of northern and southern Wales from whom the Tudors claimed descent.
Was Simon the actual father of King Edward I? It was the gossip of his time, and there is persuasive evidence.
