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Historical person
1208–1265
Simon de Montfort was an Anglo-French nobleman who led the baronial opposition to Henry III of England. His victory at Lewes and the parliament associated with his rule made him a major figure in the development of English representative politics.
Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester also held the offices or ranks of Earl of Leicester, Earl of Chester, and Lord High Steward. Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester belonged to the House of Montfort-l'Amaury and operated within Kingdom of England. Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester was born in Montfort-l'Amaury and died in Evesham.
Sharon Kay Penman’s Falls the Shadow gives Simon de Montfort the fullest treatment, following his marriage to Eleanor of England, break with Henry III, victory at Lewes, experiment with baronial government and death at Evesham. David Field’s The Conscience of a King begins earlier, with Simon arriving at Henry’s court as a landless nobleman and gradually deciding that loyalty to the king cannot be reconciled with demands for reform. Elizabeth Chadwick’s A Marriage of Lions views the same crisis from the household of William de Valence, one of the royal relatives driven into exile by Montfort’s movement. Paul Bannister’s Kingmaker places a fictional baron and the missing royal regalia inside the coalition gathering around Montfort before the Second Barons’ War. In Griff Hosker’s Broken Arrow, Montfort survives as political memory: the ageing Gerald Warbow has fought at Evesham, and that earlier civil war informs his response to renewed baronial conflict under Edward II.
Series
The trilogy follows native Welsh rulers and their families across the thirteenth century, from Llywelyn the Great and Joanna through Simon de Montfort’s baronial reform movement to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s final struggle against Edward I. It treats Welsh politics, marriage, kinship and resistance alongside English royal expansion.
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Lord Edward’s Archer follows Gerald Warbow from the Welsh Marches into the wars and political crises of Edward I and Edward II. The series combines archer warfare with the Second Barons’ War, Welsh resistance, crusading, the Scottish wars and court intrigue. It is a medieval military sequence about…
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Ian Ross’s de Norton Trilogy follows the fictional Adam de Norton through the Second Barons’ War, from the crisis of 1264 to the last major resistance against Henry III in 1266. Battle Song takes the young squire from the tournament circuit into the Battle of Lewes; War Cry…
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The Medieval Saga follows interlinked fictional families through two centuries of English dynastic conflict, beginning with the invasions of 1066 and ending with Simon de Montfort’s challenge to Henry III. The sequence places ordinary soldiers, household officers and landed families beside the rulers whose wars repeatedly reshape their…
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The Longsword series follows Hugh Longsword and the surviving Montfortian rebels after the Second Barons' War. Moving from outlaw resistance in England to Edward's crusade, political conspiracy and the conquest of Wales, the novels trace the violent consolidation of royal power under Henry III and Edward I.
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Carol McGrath’s Rose Trilogy reimagines the lives of three medieval queens of England through the women around them, pairing royal politics with intimate viewpoints from beyond the throne. The Silken Rose follows Eleanor of Provence and the commoner Rosalind in Henry III’s troubled court; The Damask Rose turns…
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The Wars of the Roses Saga begins well before the fifteenth-century conflict, tracing the Plantagenet inheritance from the defeat of Simon de Montfort in 1265. The fictional Bywater family serves successive kings and discovers that royal patronage can restore an estate in one reign and destroy it in…
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The Crusader series follows the fictional Lancastrian knight Frederick Banastre and his descendants through the conflicts of the Angevin and early Plantagenet monarchy. Frederick enters the household of the future Richard I, campaigns in France and the Holy Land, and becomes involved in the political struggles caused by…
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The William Falconer mysteries follow a Regent Master at the early University of Oxford between 1261 and 1275. Falconer approaches murder through observation, logic and experiment at a time when natural philosophy, Aristotelian teaching and church authority are contested. His cases involve students, clerics, royal officials, theatrical companies,…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
