Dance The Montgomeries' Rant 4641

The first Montgomerie, Robert, came to England from Normandy with William I and was created Earl of Arundel, a title which did not remain with the Montgomerie family. The Scottish Montgomeries began with Robert’s grandson, another Robert, who moved to Scotland prior to 1164 in the train of Walter, created first Steward of Scotland by David I. This Robert de Mundegumri, whose name is found thus on records for the years 1165–1177, was granted the barony of Eaglesham in Renfrewshire which the family held without change for seven hundred years.

It was Sir John Montgomerie, 9th of Eaglesham, who captured Sir Henry Percy, “Hotspur”, at the battle of Otterburn in 1388.

The Percy and Montgomery met,
That either of other were fain;
They swapped swords, and they two swat,
And aye the blood ran down between.

Sir John married the heiress of Sir Hugh of Eglinton which brought the family Polnoon Castle and the baronies of Eglinton and Ardrossan.

Hugh, 3rd Baron Montgomerie (c. 1460–1545) was even more acquisitive. He was one of the band of disaffected nobles who defeated, and perhaps murdered, James III at the battle of Auchieburn in 1488 and was rewarded in the reign of James IV with land and power. He was created Earl of Eglinton in 1508 and was given the island of Arran with custody of Brodick Castle. In 1527 he was a Justice general and in 1536 a member of the Council of Regency. He survived to an advanced age and outlived james III, IV, and V.

Hugh, 3rd Earl of Eglinton (1531–1585), supported Queen Mary, fought for her at Langside in 1568 and was imprisoned in Doune Castle.

The sixth Earl was Alexander Seton (1588–1661), son of Lady Mary Montgomerie, daughter of the third earl, who had married Robert Seton, Earl of Winton. As ardent a Covenanter as his grandfather had been a Roman Catholic, the new Lord Eglinton, known as “Greysteel”, fought against Charles I at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, but yet urged the recall of Charles II to the throne as a Covenanted king.

The Montgomerie Earls of Eglinton always seemed to make advantageous marriages and their wives were the daughters of the great nobles of Scotland: Argyll, Hamilton, Linlithgow, Buccleuch, Rothes, Dumfries, Dundonald, Aberdeen and Crawford.

Alexander, 9th Earl of Eglinton, married three noble heiresses during his long lifetime: Margaret Cochrane, Ann Gordon and, last, Susanna Kennedy and from each of them he gained more estates. His widow, the Dowager Countess of Eglinton, a once famous beauty, a lifelong Jacobite and an eccentric who preferred rats to cats as pets, died in 1780 at the age of ninety.

The tenth earl, Alexander, Governor of Dumbarton Castle, Lord of the Bedchamber to George III and a Representative Peer, was shot and killed by a poacher on his estate in 1769. He was the older friend of James Boswell who introduced the journalist as a young man to “the great, the gay, and the ingenious” of London and very nearly turned the future travelling companion of Dr Samuel Johnson into a rake.

Archibald Montgomerie succeeded his brother as eleventh earl. Known as “General Montgomerie” he raised the old 77th Regiment of Foot (Montgomery’s Highlanders) in 1757, a regiment recruited chiefly from among the Jacobite clans that was disbanded in 1763. He became Governor of Edinburgh Castle in 1782.

The eleventh earl was succeeded by his cousin, Colonel Hugh Montgomerie of Coilsfield (1740–1819), Burns’ “Sodger Hugh” of “The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representatives in the House of Commons”. The twelfth earl served in the army in the Seven Years War and in America. There was another side to “Sodger Hugh”, that of an expert fiddler and the composer of such tunes as “Lady Montgomerie’s Reel”, “Ayrshire Lasses”, “The Island of Mull” and “Anwick Lodge”. Niel Gow’s Fourth Collection of Strathspey Reels of 1800 was dedicated to the Earl of Eglinton.

Alas! I’m but a nameless wight,
Trode i’ the mire out o’ sight!
But could I like Montgomerie fight,
  Or gab like Boswell,
There’s some sark-necks I wad draw tight,
  An’ tie some hose well.