Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/221

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Montacute
215
Montagu

the defence of the coasts of Hampshire and Dorset, and bore a royal vestment at the coronation of Richard II. Having entered into an engagement to serve abroad, he embarked with the Earl of Arundel [see Fitzalan, Richard III, Earl of Arundel], and having reconnoitred, persuaded the inhabitants of Cherbourg to place their town in the hands of the English king. He was lying with his ships at Plymouth in June waiting for a wind to go to the relief of Brest and Hennebon, when Lancaster took command. He sailed with the duke as admiral. The expedition did not accomplish anything [see under John of Gaunt]. Having been made captain of Calais in February 1379, an office which he held until the following January, he went thither and made forays, bringing much cattle into the town. In September he was appointed chief commissioner to treat with France. When the revolt of the villeins broke out in June 1381, he was with the king in the Tower of London; he counselled Richard to speak gently to the insurgents, and accompanied him from the Wardrobe to Smithfield, where he is said, after the death of Wat Tyler, to have commended the king's resolution not to take instant vengeance upon the rebels (Froissart, ii. 154-63). He was in July appointed captain against the rebels in Somerset and Dorset. In common with other lords he tried to make peace between Lancaster and Northumberland, who quarrelled violently in the presence of the council at Berkhampstead [see under John of Gaunt]. In December he met the king's bride, Anne of Bohemia [q. v.], at Gravelines, and escorted her to Calais. In 1385 he was made captain of the Isle of Wight for life, accompanied the king in his invasion of Scotland, and was the next year also summoned to serve against the Scots. He shared in the anger with which the lords generally regarded the elevation of Robert de Vere as Duke of Ireland, and in their dissatisfaction with the king's misgovernment, and is said to have joined the king's uncles in their resistance to the duke (ib. pp. 606, 609, 622). In 1389 and 1392 he was appointed commissioner to treat with France, and in 1390 was employed in the march of Calais. Having no son living, he sold the lordship of Man to William le Scrope of Bolton, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire, in 1393, together with the crown thereof; for it was the right of the island that the chief lord of it should be called king and should be crowned with a gold crown (Annales Ricardi II, p. 157). Nevertheless he retained the title of Lord of Man until his death, using it in his will, dated 20 April 1397, by which he bequeathed five hundred marks to complete the buildings of Bisham priory, where he desired to be buried, and to make a tomb there for his father and mother, and another for himself and his son (Dugdale). He died on 3 June following, and was succeeded by his nephew John, third earl of Salisbury [q. v.]

He was an active, valiant, and prudent man, and was skilled in war from his youth. After the declaration of the nullity of his contract of marriage with Joan of Kent, he married Elizabeth, daughter of John de Mohun, ninth lord Mohun of Dunster [q. v.], who survived him, and had by her Sir William Montacute and two daughters. Sir William, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard, earl of Arundel, was killed at a tilting at Windsor in 1383, by, it is said, his father; he left no issue.

[Geoffrey le Baker, ed. Thompson; Froissart, ed. Buchon; Chandos Herald, ed. Michel; Rymer's Fœdera (Record ed.); Chron. Angliæ, a Mon. S. Albani, 1 328-88 (Rolls Ser.); Walsingham (ib.); Eulogii Cont. ap. Eulogium, vol. iii. (ib.); Annales Ric. II, ap. Trokelowe et Annales (ib.); Vita Ric. II, ed. Hearne; Stow's Annals; Dugdale's Baronage; Doyle's Official Baronage; Nicolas's Royal Navy; Nicolas's Orders of Knighthood; Beltz's Order of the Garter.]

W. H.

MONTAGU or MONTAGUE, Viscount. [See Browne, Anthony, first Viscount, 1526–1592.]

MONTAGU, Lord. [See Pole, Henry, 1492–1539.]

MONTAGU, Marquis of. [See Nevill, John, d. 1471.]

MONTAGU, BASIL (1770–1851), legal and miscellaneous writer and philanthropist, second (natural) son of John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich, by Martha Ray [see Hackman, James], born on 24 April 1770, was acknowledged by his father, brought up at Hinchinbrook, Huntingdonshire, and educated at the Charterhouse and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1786, graduated B.A. (fifth wrangler) in 1790, and proceeded M. A. in 1793. On 30 Jan. 1789 he was admitted a member of Gray's Inn, but continued to reside at Cambridge until 1795, when, having by a technical flaw lost the portion intended for him by his father, he came to London to read for the bar. He was on intimate terms with Coleridge and Wordsworth, whose juvenile enthusiasm for the ideas of 1789 he shared. In the autumn of 1797 he made a tour in the midland counties with William Godwin the elder [q. v.] He was called to the bar on