Henry of Almain

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Henry of Almain (1235 – March 13, 1271), so called because of his father's German connections, was the son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and king of the Romans.

As a nephew of both Henry III and Simon de Montfort he wavered between the two at the beginning of the Barons' War, but finally took the royalist side and was among the prisoners taken by Montfort at Lewes (1264), and later released.

In 1268 he took the cross with his cousin Edward, who, however, sent him back from Sicily to pacify the unruly province of Gascony. Henry took the land route with Louis IX of France and Charles I of Sicily.

While attending mass at Viterbo (13th March, 1271), he was attacked by his cousins Guy and Simon the younger de Montfort, sons of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, and killed in revenge for the brutal deaths of their father and older brother at Evesham. The deed is mentioned by Dante Alighieri, who took it upon himself to place Guy de Montfort in the seventh circle of hell in his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, which was written at least 40 years after Henry's death.

See WH Blaauws The Barons' War (ed. 1871); Ch. Bmont1 Simon de Montfort (1884).

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.