Guy de Montfort, Count of Nola

Biography

He participated in the Battle of Evesham in August 1265 against the royalist forces of his uncle, King Henry III of England, and his cousin, Prince Edward. Both his father and elder brother Henry were killed during the disastrous battle. Guy de Montfort was seriously wounded and captured.

He was held at Windsor Castle until spring 1266, when he bribed his captors and escaped to France to rejoin his exiled family. Guy and his brother, Simon the Younger, wandered across Europe for several years, eventually making their way to Italy.

Guy took service with Charles of Anjou, serving as his Vicar-General in Tuscany. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Tagliacozzo and was given Nola by Charles.

In 1271, Guy and Simon discovered that their cousin Henry of Almain (son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and cousin of King Henry III) was attending mass at the church of San Silvestro, Viterbo. In revenge for the deaths of their father and brother at Evesham, on 13 March 1271, Guy and Simon murdered Henry while he clutched the altar, begging for mercy. "You had no mercy for my father and brothers", was Guy's reply. This murder was carried out in the presence of cardinals, who at the time were conducting a papal conclave; of King Philip III of France; and of King Charles of Sicily. For this crime the Montfort brothers were excommunicated.

The news reached England, and King Henry III dispatched a clerk of the royal household to inform the northern counties and Scotland about the excommunication. Pope Gregory X wrote a letter (29 November 1273) to King Edward from Lyons, where he was preparing for an ecumenical council, that Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi and Cardinal Giovanni Orsini were still in Rome and had been ordered to find a secure place of imprisonment in the territories of the Church for Guy de Montfort.

Simon died later that year at Siena, "cursed by God, a wanderer and a fugitive". Guy was stripped of his titles and took service with Charles of Anjou again, but was captured off the coast of Sicily in 1287 by the Aragonese at the Battle of the Counts. He died in a Sicilian prison.

Family

In Tuscany, he married an Italian noblewoman, Margherita Aldobrandeschi, the Lady of Sovana. With her he had two daughters: Anastasia, who married Romano Orsini, and Tomasina, who married Pietro di Vico.

Cultural Reference

Dante banished Guy to the river of boiling blood in the seventh circle of his Inferno (Canto XII).

Notes

Sources

• Maddicott, J.R. Simon de Montfort, 1996

References

1. [[David Baldwin (historian). David Baldwin]], ''Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower'', (The History Press, 2010), Genealogical table 4.
2. Other sources give the site as Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Viterbo, or the Church of San Biagio. F. Cristofori, ''Il conclave del MCCLXX in Viterbo'' (Roma-Siena-Viterbo 1888), pp. 6-7, 56.
3. Thomas Rymer ''Foedera, Conventiones, Literae et cuiusque generis Acta Publica inter Reges Angliae et alios...'' editio tertia Tomus I. pars 2 (The Hague 1745), pp. 134-135.
4. [[David Baldwin (historian). David Baldwin]], ''Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower'', (The History Press, 2010), Genealogical table 4.
5. Margherita, ward of [[Pope Boniface VIII. Benedetto Cardinal Caetani]], survived him and went on to be married four times more. (G. Ciacchi, ''Gli Aldobrandeschi nella storia e nella 'Divina Commedia' '', (Rome) 1935, vol. i, ch. 6).
6. Napoleone Cardinal Orsini succeeded Benedetto Caetani as her mother's guardian, married her to his brother Orsello and arranged this marriage, which brought [[Sovana]] and the Aldobrandeschi inheritance to the [[Orsini family. Orsini]].