MONTAGU (Family). Dru of Montaigu or Montagud, the ancestor of the Montagus, earls of Salisbury, came to England with Robert, count of Mortain, half-brother of William the Con queror. He is found in Domesday among the chief tenants of the count in Somerset, holding the manor of Shepton. This holding is represented in the return of 1166 by the ten knights' fee upon which his descendant, another Dru, is assessed. William Montagu of Shepton is among the knights summoned by Henry III. to the Gascon War and to the Welsh border in 1257. His son Simon, the first of the family to make a figure in history, followed Edward I. in 1277 and in 1282 against Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. In 1298 he was summoned as a baron; and in 1301, as Simon lord of Montagu, sealed the famous letter of the barons to the pope with his seal of the arms of Montagu, the counterseal showing a griffon.. His son William (d. 1319), a favourite of Edward II., and senes chal of Aquitaine and Gascony, was succeeded by his eldest son, another William, who in 133o secretly led the young king's par tisans into Nottingham Castle, and carried off the earl of March.
In 1337 Montagu was created earl of Salisbury, and on the death of Thomas of Brotherton in 1338 was made marshal of England. His king employed him in missions to France, Scotland, Germany and Castile, and some time between 1340 and 1342 he led an expedition of his own against the Isle of Man, winning from the Scots the little kingdom to which he had inherited a claim through his grandfather Simon who had been granted the island by a certain Auffray or "Aufrica," who styled herself "Aufreca of Counnoght, heir of the land of Man." The first earl was succeeded in 1344 by William, his son and heir, who was one of the knights-founders of the Order of the Garter, fought at Crecy, and commanded the rearward battle at Poitiers. Accord
ing to Froissart he attended the young Richard in Smithfield when the king faced the mob after the death of Wat Tyler. His only son was killed in 1383 at a tournament, and in 1393 the earl sold the lordship and crown of Man to William Scrope of Bolton. He was succeeded by his nephew John, the third earl (c. 1350-1400), son of Sir John Montagu by Margaret, the heir of the barons of Monthermer. The new earl was notorious as a Lollard, and was accused, after Henry IV.'s accession, of a share in Gloucester's death. He joined Kent, Huntingdon and Rutland in their plot against Henry, and was beheaded with the earl of Kent by the Cirencester mob. His son Thomas (1388-1428) was summoned as an earl in 1409, his father's dignities being restored to him in 1421, by which time his services at Harfleur and Agincourt had earned him French lordships, the lieutenant-generalship of Nor mandy and the earldom of Perche. He was killed at the famous siege of Orleans. His only daughter, Alice, married Richard Ne ville, a younger son of the first earl of Westmorland, who was allowed the earldom of Salisbury in right of his marriage. The famous "Richard-Make-a-King," earl of Warwick and Salisbury, was the grandson of the last of the Montagu earls.