As we go to the polls today it is appropriate that Radio 4 should broadcast an edition of In Our Time which examines the nature of power, and in particular how a section of the ruling class in Medieval England attempted to alter how the country was governed.*
It is the stuff of politics, and crops up in every school history book along with that earlier attempt to pull back the power of the king, which we know as Magna Carta.
"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the years of bloody conflict that saw Simon de Montfort (1205-65) become the most powerful man in England, with Henry III as his prisoner.
With others, he had toppled Henry in 1258 in a secret, bloodless coup and established provisions for more parliaments with broader representation, for which he was later known as the Father of the House of Commons.
When Henry III regained power in 1261, Simon de Montfort rallied forces for war, with victory at Lewes in 1264 and defeat and dismemberment in Evesham the year after.
Although praised for supporting parliaments, he also earned a reputation for unleashing dark, violent forces in English politics and, infamously, his supporters murdered hundreds of Jewish people in London and elsewhere.
With David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London, Louise Wilkinson, Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Lincoln, and, Sophie Thérèse Ambler, Lecturer in Later Medieval British and European History at Lancaster University.
Producer: Simon Tillotson"
Pictures; The Pictorial History Book, 1959
*The Second Barons' War, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vqq3
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