harter and promise were alike disregarded;
and in 1242 the resentment of the barons expressed itself in a determined
protest and a refusal of further subsidies. In spite of their refusal
however Henry gathered money enough for a costly expedition for the
recovery of Poitou. The attempt ended in failure and shame. At Taillebourg
the king's force fled in disgraceful rout before the French as far as
Saintes, and only the sudden illness of Lewis the Ninth and a disease which
scattered his army saved Bordeaux from the conquerors. The treasury was
utterly drained, and Henry was driven in 1244 to make a fresh appeal with
his own mouth to the baronage. But the barons had now rallied to a plan of
action, and we can hardly fail to attribute their union to the man who
appears at their head. This was the Earl of Leicester, Simon of Montfort.

[Sidenote: Simon of Montfort]

Simon was the son of another Simon of Montfort, whose name had become
memorable for his ruthless crusade against the Albigensian heretics in
Southern Gaul, and who had inherited the Earldom of Leicester through his
mother, a sister and co-heiress of the last Earl of the house of Beaumont.
But as Simon's tendencies were for the most part French John had kept the
revenues of the earldom in his own hands, and on his death the claim of his
elder son, Amaury, was met by the refusal of Henry the Third to accept a
divided allegiance. The refusal marks the rapid growth of that sentiment of
nationality which the loss of Normandy had brought home. Amaury chose to
remain French, and by a family arrangement with the king's sanction the
honour of Leicester passed in 1231 to his younger brother Simon. His choice
made Simon an Englishman, but his foreign blood still moved the jealousy of
the barons, and this jealousy was quickened by a secret match in 1238 with
Eleanor, the king's sister and widow of the second William Marshal. The
match formed probably part of a policy which Henry pursued throughout his
reign of bringing the great earldoms into closer connexion with the Crown.
That of Chester had fallen to the king through the extinction of the family
of its earls; Cornwall was held by his brother, Richard; Salisbury by his
cousin. Simon's marriage linked the Earldom of Leicester to the royal
house. But it at once brought Simon into conflict with the nobles and the
Church. The baronage, justly indignant that such a step should have been
taken without their consent, for the qu