Simon de Montfort was a very different man, and very different estimates have been formed of him. On one side he is regarded as an almost inspired statesman, a scholar, a saint, a martyr; on the other he is a mere adventurer, a demagogue, a man full of selfish ambitions and personal hatreds, a rebel, a traitor, a criminal. A short notice of his chief actions may indicate what reason there is for either, neither, or both of these estimates. Simon de Montfort was no doubt an adventurer, descended from a race of counts that had played for high stakes with very little capital, and had been persistently pushing into power for some centuries. His father was the scarcely less renowned Simon de Montfort, the persecutor of the Albigensian heretics, who had, at the head of that cruel crusade, been made Count of Toulouse, and perished in making good his claims. The Counts of Evreux, his remoter ancestors, had made their way into that position by a fortunate marriage as early as the time of Henry I. They had made a bold attempt in the time of Lewis VI. to claim the high stewardship of France; in later times one of the family had held, in the right of his wife, the earldom of Gloucester after the death of Geoffrey de Mandeville and Hawisia. Earl Simon, the Crusader, was a nephew of the last Earl of Leicester of the house of Beaumont, on whose death John divided his earldom into two, that of Winchester going to Saer de Quincy as co-heir, and that of Leicester to Simon de Montfort. But that Simon, although he was Earl of Leicester, had little to do with England; he was an enemy of John, and the barons are said, at one time, to have thought of calling him in as a deliverer. His crusade against the Albigenses was directed really against Raymond of Toulouse, who was John’s brother-in-law; and as John was never loth to keep the lands of his enemies in his own hands, the revenues of the earldom seldom found their way into the treasury of the Montforts. This Simon had four sons; Amalric, Count of Montfort, was the eldest, and the second Simon, the hero of the barons’ war, was the youngest. Amalric, of course, was his father’s heir, but he contented himself with his patrimony in France; and the two intermediate brothers being now dead, Simon, according to Matthew Paris, attempted, at the Council of Bourges, in 1226 or 1227, to recover the county of Toulouse. Failing to do this, he came to England to see whether he could not get the earldom of Leicester, and his brother consented to make over to him such rights in it as he possessed. After some years he succeeded. Henry allowed the arrangement between the brothers to take effect, and gave Simon the honor of Leicester. He had already failed in two attempts to make himself a great position by marriage with the countesses of Flanders and Boulogne. In a third he was more successful; Henry connived, as it was said, at a clandestine marriage between Simon and his sister Eleanor,