What is an historical novelist who writes about Simon de Montfort and the thirteenth century doing blogging about the current state of the world? Montfort set in motion the method of government by popular election that now prevails in most modern nations. He wasn’t interested in the past; he didn’t have a sentimental view of medieval times, he was interested in his present time, the future and how well the general population would do governing themselves. Seven hundred years later, how are we doing?

Government by popular election requires a responsible, well-informed electorate. We have the technological means to be very well informed, virtually instantly now. But the key to what fills that IT, and how it is used is that word — responsibility. That’s what we’re going to be talking about here. Montfort, if he’s reading over my shoulder, no doubt would prefer this to discussion of times past.

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When the battle was ended, monks from the nearby abbey came out to bury the dead. As they lifted the man’s stripped and mangled torso from the ground, a spring of water flowed up from beneath the body. A blind old monk, accidentally splashed with the spring’s water, suddenly could see. Soon the blind from all over England came to the miraculous spring and were cured. So says the Chronicle of William Rishanger, who was there.

Thousands came to the spring. The man who had died there was hailed as a saint, as The Angel with the Sword of the Apocalypse, or perhaps even the risen Savior Himself. And so King Henry III made it criminal to take water from the spring, and a hanging crime of treason to speak the dead man’s name.

Today, though few know of him, we have all been touched by him. For it was he who founded, fought and died for a new form of government — one elected by the people.