Loading
Loading

Clan Montgomery

WATCH WELL


Originally from Wales, clan Montgomery arrived in Scotland in the 12th century as vassals of the FitzAlans. The earliest noted record of Montgomery land was in Renfrewshire.

Clan Montgomery also held the Isle of Arran, and the third Lord Montgomery was made baillie of Bute and Cunningham. However, this appointment triggered a feud with clan Cunningham which laster for over 200 years. A marriage between the two clans eventually ended the conflict.

The Montgomery clan motto is "Garde bien"(Watch well) and the clan crest is a female figure holding a sword and a savage's head.

Scottish History

of Clan Montgomery


Knightly valour

A powerful family of Norman nobles were the original bearers of what became the proud name of Montgomery and they, in turn, are believed to have taken their name from a Roman commander by the name of Gomericus who held lands in Gaul, now present day France.

Gomericus had given his name to the lands in Calvados, in Normandy, and for centuries the ancestors of today’s Montgomerys held the castle of Saint Foy de Montgomery, at Lisieux.

From these roots in the soil of Normandy, the Montgomerys were to flourish in later centuries in England, Wales, and Scotland, owning vast tracts of land and the recipients of a glittering array of honours and titles.

A Roger de Mundegumrie, whose mother was a distant relation of William, Duke of Normandy, accompanied him on his conquest of England in 1066, and was in the thick of the bloody combat at the battle of Hastings.

This battle-hardened warrior was rewarded with not only the lands of Chichester and Arundel, but also the earldom of Arundel.

Not content to rest on his well-deserved laurels, however, he was also at the forefront of the Norman invasion of Wales, capturing Baldwin Castle.

So significant was his impact on Wales, that both a Welsh town and county still bear his name.

During the reign from 1124 until 1153 of Scotland’s David I, who had spent a period of his life at the English Court, a number of Anglo-Normans were invited to settle in Scotland.

Among them was a Robert Montgomery, who obtained lands at Eaglesham, in Renfrewshire.

Further lands and honours were to follow over succeeding centuries as the Montgomerys played a leading role in their adopted nation’s frequently turbulent affairs.

It should be pointed out that the spelling of the name varies between ‘Montgomery’ and ‘Montgomerie’, but for the sake of clarity the more common form of ‘Montgomery’ is the one adopted for the purposes of this brief historical narrative of the family’s colourful lives and times.

One of the earliest Montgomerys to feature in Scotland’s roll of battle honours was Sir John Montgomery, 7th Baron of Eaglesham, who was one of the heroes of the battle of Otterburn, in Northumberland, on August 19, 1388.

The Scots had earlier been involved in a skirmish outside the walls of Newcastle when the Scottish commander, James, the 2nd Earl of Douglas, managed to snatch the silk pennant from the lance of his adversary Henry Percy, heir to the 1st Earl of Northumberland and better known to posterity as Henry Hotspur.

Douglas proceeded to lead his army back towards Scotland, but Hotspur, stung by the insult to his honour, swore his precious pennant would never be allowed to cross the border.

He pursued Douglas, and the two armies clashed at Otterburn, the young earl receiving a fatal blow.

As the Scots army faltered, demoralised over the fate of their commander, the famed Banner of the Bloody Heart of the Douglases was raised, however, and this rallied the Scots to victory.

Crucial to the victory was the capture of Hotspur by Sir John Montgomery after the two had engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat, with an exhausted and blood-spattered Montgomery at last emerging the victor.

The famous duel is recalled in The Ballad of Chevy Chase, which describes how the two knights ‘swiped swords’ and blood flew from their injuries.

In keeping with the chivalric code of the time, high-ranking prisoners such as Hotspur were ransomed for vast sums of money, and the ransom Montgomery received for his defeated foe allowed him to build Polnoon Castle, at Eaglesham.

Later, through a marriage to the heiress of Sir Hugh Eglinton he acquired the baronies of Eglinton and Ardrossan, in Ayrshire.

To this day, the Montgomery connections with the conservation village of Eaglesham, situated on the southern outskirts of Glasgow, are recalled in the form of street names and a local hotel.

An example of the Montgomerys’ selfless actions on behalf of the Scottish Crown came in 1424 when Sir John Montgomery of Ardrossan was one of the sons of the Scottish nobility who was taken as a hostage to England to secure the release from captivity of James I.

James had become a pawn in a struggle between powerful nobles and his father Robert III, culminating in him being carried for his own safety to the refuge of the Bass Rock, in the Firth of Forth.

He stayed here for about a month before a merchant vessel picked him up in March of 1406 to take him to more secure refuge in France, but English pirates captured the ship off Flamborough Head, and the eleven-year-old prince was taken into the custody of England’s Henry V.

Robert III died only a few weeks later, and the young prince now became James I of Scotland.

He was not released from custody until the signing of the Treaty of London of December of 1423, which made arrangements that he would be released only for a ransom of £40,000, payable over six years, while twenty-one sons of the Scottish nobility were to be taken as hostages until the full amount was paid.

Sir John Montgomery was one of these hostages who sacrificed his own freedom in the service of his king.

One of his sons, Sir Alexander Irvine, later became a trusted ambassador of the Crown, and was rewarded for his service when he was created Lord Montgomery in about 1449.

The Montgomerys became caught up in a bitter power struggle when a group of influential nobles rebelled against James III in favour of his son and heir, the future James IV.

The Montgomerys took the side of the young prince, and fought against the king and his supporters at the battle of Sauchieburn, near Stirling, in June of 1488; fleeing the battlefield, a defeated James III was later mysteriously stabbed to death.

As reward for his support, Hugh, the 3rd Lord Montgomery was rewarded with a grant of Arran, off the Ayrshire coast, and the custodianship of the island’s Brodick Castle.

In September of 1513, Lord Montgomery, who had been created Earl of Eglinton in about 1507, was one of the few to escape the terrible slaughter of the battle of Flodden, that claimed the lives of 5,000 Scots including James IV, an archbishop, two bishops, eleven earls, fifteen barons, and 300 knights.

The Scottish monarch had embarked on the venture after Queen Anne of France, under the terms of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and her nation, appealed to him to ‘break a lance’ on her behalf and act as her chosen knight.

Crossing the border into England at the head of a 25,000-strong army that included 7,500 clansmen and their kinsmen, James IV had engaged a 20,000-strong force commanded by the Earl of Surrey – but despite their numerical superiority and bravery they proved no match for the skilled English artillery and superior military tactics of Surrey.

Feuds and vendettas

The Montgomerys served not only the interests of the Scottish Crown but also the French Crown, and this was through the Auld Alliance between the two nations, first forged by treaty in 1295.

In later years a Scots Company served with distinction in the ranks of the French Army.

In 1425, in recognition of the company’s valour at the bloody battle against the English at Verneuil one year earlier, an elite unit was raised to serve as a permanent bodyguard to the French monarch.

Divided into both the King’s Guard and the King’s Bodyguard, the units were collectively known as the Scots Guard.

Granted great privileges and honours, the prestigious guard was composed of the sons of some of the noblest houses in Scotland, such as those of Montgomery, Hay, Sinclair, Hamilton, Stuart, Seton, Cunningham, and Cockburn. They acted not only as soldiers and bodyguards, but also as courtiers and diplomats.

Three members of the guard would stand on either side of the enthroned French monarch at state ceremonies, while guardsmen also slept in the royal bedchamber.

In 1559 the captain of the Scots Guard was 29-year-old Count Gabriel Montgomery, and in July of that year he became involved in an incident that sent shockwaves throughout Europe.

A great devotee of jousting, the French monarch Henry II had arranged a gala tournament in celebration of a peace treaty with the Hapsburgs of Austria and the marriage of two of his daughters.

Held in Paris, the gala tournament had attracted the cream of European royalty and a glittering retinue of nobles - and all had gone well until Henry insisted on entering the lists himself.

He tilted against both the Duke of Savoy and Francis, Duke of Guise, before competing against his trusted Captain of the Scots Guard.

Both men successfully clashed and splintered lances against one another’s shields but, in contravention of the normal rules of the joust, arranged for another contest.

A sliver of wood from Montgomery’s shattered lance, however, pierced the king through the right eye, entering the brain, and he died in agony several days later – but not before absolving Montgomery from any blame.

Montgomery nevertheless resigned from his post of captain of the Scots Guard and some time later converted from Catholicism to Protestantism.

He narrowly escaped the slaughter of what became known as the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day, on August 24, 1572, when thousands of Protestant Huguenots in Paris and the surrounding countryside were hunted down and killed by rampaging Catholic mobs.

Montgomery escaped by swimming the Seine and found refuge in England later returning to France as a leading Protestant commander in the bloody Wars of Religion.

He was betrayed and captured, however, and executed in 1574.

Hugh, the 3rd Earl of Eglinton, was a loyal supporter of the ill-starred Mary, Queen of Scots, and was among the nine earls, nine bishops, 18 lairds and others who signed a bond declaring their support.

The queen had been forced to abdicate and imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, but following her escape her supporters rallied and met her foes, known as the Confederate Lords, at Langside, to the south of Glasgow, on May 13, 1568.

Her forces, under the command of the Earl of Argyll, had been en route to the mighty bastion of Dumbarton Castle, atop its near inaccessible eminence on Dumbarton Rock, on the Clyde, when it was intercepted by a numerically inferior but tactically superior force led by her half-brother, the Earl of Moray.

Cannon fire had been exchanged between both sides before a force of Argyll’s infantry tried to force a passage through to the village of Langside, but they were fired on by a disciplined body of musketeers and forced to retreat as Moray launched a cavalry charge on their confused ranks.

The battle proved disastrous for Mary and signalled the death knell of her cause, with more than 100 of her supporters killed or captured and Mary forced to flee into what she then naively thought would be the protection of England’s Queen Elizabeth.

The Earl of Eglinton was among those captured and imprisoned. Declared guilty of treason, he finally accepted the rule of Mary’s son and successor, James VI.

A bloody feud that for more than two centuries had blighted the lives of the Montgomerys and their Ayrshire neighbours, the Cunninghams, plunged to new depths in the spring of 1586 when the young Hugh, 4th Earl of Eglinton was murdered.

His murder, however, only served to further inflame the hatred between the two families, to the extent that the vendetta did not reach its exhausted conclusion until 75 years later, in 1661.

The spark that lit the flame of this vendetta came in 1448 when Sir Alexander Montgomery, a brother-in-law of Sir Robert Cunningham, was controversially made bailie of Cunningham, a lucrative sinecure that the Cunninghams had held for a number of years and claimed belonged to them by right.

Ten years later, in 1458, the bailieship was restored to the Cunninghams and the feud between the two families intensified.

The Montgomerys burned down the Cunningham stronghold of Kerelaw Castle in 1488, while in 1528 William Cunningham, 4th Earl of Glencairn, burned the Montgomery stronghold of Eglinton Castle, at Irvine.

Despite numerous attempts to broker a truce between the two families the internecine warfare continued, with Montgomerys and Cunninghams being killed in a series of tit-for-tat killings.

The slaying of a Cunningham by a Montgomery in 1584, apparently in self-defence, set off the tragic chain of events that led two years later to the murder of the young Earl of Eglinton.

The Cunninghams had immediately decided to exact vengeance for the killing of their kinsman.

A young man, Cunningham of Robertland was selected for the task and, accordingly, insinuated himself into a close friendship with the young Hugh Montgomery, who became earl on the death of his father in June of 1585.

In April of 1586, the earl, at the urging of his friend Cunningham of Robertland, accepted an invitation to dine at a house in the hostile Cunningham land of Lainshaw.

But, accompanied by only a few servants as he made his way back from the dinner, he was ambushed and killed by about 60 armed men, who included Cunningham of Robertland.

The vendetta dragged on, with countless numbers of Montgomerys and Cunninghams being slain or fleeing the country in fear of their lives.

It did not end until 1661, when William Cunningham, 9th Earl of Glencairn, married Margaret Montgomery, daughter of the 6th Earl of Eglinton.

The tradition of medieval tournaments, meanwhile, recalling a glorious age of chivalry, was re-enacted in 1839 when the 13th Earl of Eglinton staged a famous tournament at the family’s ancestral seat of Eglinton Castle.

Through marriage, the chiefs of the Montgomerys also hold, in addition to the earldom of Eglinton, the earldom of Winton, while the family motto is ‘Watch well’ and the crest is a woman holding an anchor in her right hand and the head of a savage in her left.

Read more

Family History Mini Book


We hope you enjoyed reading this excerpt from this mini book on the Scottish history of the Montgomery family.

You can buy the full book for only
$5.08

111 Clan Montgomery

Tartan Products

The Crests

of Clan Montgomery

Clan Montgomery
Clan Montgomery
Clan Montgomery
Clan Montgomery
Clan Montgomery
Clan Montgomery

65 Clan Montgomery

Crest Products

Spellings

of Montgomery

Montgomerie

174 Clan Montgomery

Products