He worked as a lawyer for the Abbey of Saint Vaast in a lawsuit against lay assessors (1222–26) and a case involving the chapter of Arras Cathedral (1232).
The assessment of probability of his authorship below takes into account whether the ascription is in witnesses from more than one manuscript family.
For five of these songs, witnesses outside that family are anonymous; for RS487 there is additionally an attribution to a composer local to the Messine manuscript TrouvC, Gautier d'Espinal.
It also appears in three members of the KNPX group (not in TrouvX) but its attribution there varies: TrouvK and TrouvP ascribe it to Simon, but TrouvN names Jehan l'Orgueneur; TrouvC transmits it anonymously.
The very widely copied song, RS882, is absent from TrouvM, anonymous in three other sources, and ascribed to the Chastelain de Couci in the three members of the KNPX group that carry it (all but TrouvN).