[The date of the MS. in which this ballad occurs is usually placed at an earlier period than that fixed upon by Percy. Mr. Thomas Wright, who prints it in his volume of Political Songs of England (Camden Society), with several other poems in French, Anglo-Norman, and Latin, on Simon de Montfort and the Barons' Wars, assigns it to the reign of Edward II. It will be seen from Percy's note to verse 44, that the last stanza was printed for the first time in the fourth edition of the Reliques. This is explained by the fact that these lines are written on a new folio of the MS., and must therefore have been overlooked by the original copyist.
This little poem is without rival as an early exhibition of English popular feeling in the vernacular; and it also stands alone as the first dated English historical ballad in existence. It was probably written during the first flush of enthusiasm after the memorable battle of Lewes, because, before a year had gone by, victory had passed to the other side, and at the battle of Evesham, fought on the 4th of August, 1265, Simon, his eldest son Henry, and a host of distinguished men, fell on the fatal field. As Drayton sang:
"Great Lester here expired with Henry his brave sonne,
When many a high exploit they in that day had done."
Prince Edward, who had passed his boyhood in Henry's company and was much attached to him, personally attended his funeral.
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., was elected King of the Romans on the 13th of January, 1256-7, at Frankfort, and is styled in Latin documents Rex Alemanniæ. In earlier times Richard had been a leader of malecontents, and "all from the child to the old man heaped frequent blessings upon him," but Montfort (then a courtier) gained him over to the King's side, and the insurgents were in consequence dispersed.
Richard was probably not so base a man as the writer of the ballad would wish us to believe, and a good action is recorded of him which was very ill returned. He interceded for the life of De Montfort's second son Simon, when that youth surrendered to the royal party at Northampton in 1266, and he was successful in his suit. In 1271, Simon and his brother Guy assassinated Henry, Richard's son, then in the suite of Philip of France, on his return from the Holy Land, while he was at mass in the church of St. Lawrence, at Viterbo. Richard himself died in this same year at Berkhampstead, and his estates descended to his son Edmond, Earl of Cornwall.
The uncertain manner in which biographic honours are apportioned is noteworthy, and a writer in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxix. p. 26) very justly points out a deficiency in English literature, when he writes that Simon de Montfort V., second Earl of Leicester, "the founder of the English House of Commons, has had no biographer."[2] Mr. Freeman, however, promises to do full honour to his memory in a forthcoming volume of his history.
This is not the place to give any detailed account of De Montfort, but a few words on the great leader may be allowable, more particularly as Percy's introduction does injustice to the anti-royalist party.
Simon de Montfort, fourth son of Simon de Montfort IV., fourth Comte de Montfort,[3] married Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke, the daughter of King John. She had made a vow of widowhood, and although her brother Henry III. gave her away when she was married, by one of the royal chaplains, in the king's private chapel at Westminster, 6th January, 1238, Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, remonstrated strongly against the marriage. It is said that when the prelate left England, he stood on a hill which commanded a view of London, and, extending his hands towards the city, pronounced a parting blessing on his country, and a curse on the countess and the offspring of her unholy union.