Montgomery History

It is a curiosity of our history that the only county name to be transported from Normandy belonged originally to a castle in the parish of Lisieux, and became planted in Wales. The first person on record as having brought it to Scotland was Robert of Montgomery, who obtained a grant to lands in Renfrewshire and witnessed charters between 1165 and 1177. It was his descendant who captured Harry Hotspur at the battle of Otterburn in 1338, after Douglas had been killed and buried by the braken bush. So the ballad tells:

The Percy and Montgomery met,

That either of other were fain;

They swapped swords, and they twa swat,

And aye the blood ran down between.

"Now yield thee, yield thee, Percy,"he said,

"Or else I vow I' ll lay thee low,"

"To whom must I yield,"quoth Earl Percy,

"Now that I see it must be so?"

Hotspur had to build the castle of Polnoon as his ransom; and by marrying the heiress of Sir Hugh Eglinton, John Montgomery also acquired the baronies of Eglinton and Ardrossan. Their grandson Alexander was created 1st Lord Montgomerie in 1449, and became a member of the King's Council and ambassador to England.
Hugh the 3rd Lord was amongst those who fought against James III at Sauchieburn in 1488, where the King lost his life. He received the island of Arran with the custody of Brodick Castle, and in 1508 was created 1st Earl of Eglinton. The 3rd Earl remained a devout Catholic at the Reformation and was among those who fought for Queen Mary in her final defeat at Langside. He was declared guilty of treason by Parliament and warded in Doune Castle. As soon as he was released he attempted to secure toleration for Catholics in those harsh days of Calvinism triumphant. But the tables were turned when the 3rd Earl's daughter Margaret married Robert Seton, 1st Earl of Winton, and their son Alexander succeeded as 6th Earl of Eglinton. For he was a staunch Presbyterian, who fought with the Covenanters in the wars of Charles I. He also supported Charles II as a Covenanted King, and in 1659 he was imprisoned by General Monk after the death of Cromwell, lest he should take up arms again in the royalist cause. He must have laughed when, in the following year, Monk himself marched to London with his Coldstream Guards and placed Charles II on the throne there.
Alexander Montgomerie, the court poet of the reign of James VI, was a second son of Hugh of Hessilhead Castle in Ayrshire, a kinsman of the Eglintons. By 1577 he was in the suite of the Regent Morton, and James VI gave him a pension. But somehow he fell into disgrace, and left Scotland in 1586. He was deprived of his pension, and imprisoned on the Continent.
His allegorical poem "The Cherrie and the Slae"appeared in 1597, while his flyting in the traditional manner with Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth was published in 1621, some ten years after his death, as Flyting betwixt Mantgomerie and Polwart. The famous song, "Declare, ye banks of Helicon", is now considered a rather doubtful attribution to Alexander Montgomerie.
Archibald, 18th Earl of Eglinton (b.1939) is the Chief of the Montgomerys and lives at Skelmorlie castle in Ayrshire,