whigamores, who took possession of Edinburgh, and afterwards entered into communication with Cromwell. On the execution of Charles I he supported the proposal for the recall of Charles II as a 'covenanted king.' Charles after his arrival appointed him on 22 July 1650 colonel of the cavalry regiment of life-guards (Balfour, iv. 85); and at his instigation the king came on the 29th from Stirling to the army at Leith (ib. p. 86). He was present at Dunfermline on 13 Aug., at the first council held by the king since his coming to Scotland (ib. p. 90). After the king joined the northern loyalists Eglinton assembled with those nobles who met at Perth, and sent him a discreet letter asking him to return (ib. p. 115). Eglinton supported the policy of Argyll, in opposition to the extreme covenanters of the west, and even proposed that the western remonstrance should be declared scandalous and treasonable, and be publicly burnt by the hangman (ib. p. 172). Afterwards he was appointed with Argyll and the lord chancellor to speak privately with some of the western gentlemen regarding an agreement for a union of the forces (ib. p. 186). In 1651 he raised a regiment for the service of the king (ib. p. 272); but while in Dumbartonshire he and his sons were betrayed to the soldiers of Cromwell, and captured in their beds. For betraying them one Archibald Hamilton was hanged at Stirling in April 1651 (Nicoll, Diary, p. 52). After being detained for some : time in the castle of Edinburgh, Eglinton was sent a prisoner to Hull, and afterwards to Berwick-on-Tweed. The statement made by most authorities that he was detained a prisoner there till the Restoration is, however, without foundation. On 15 Oct. 1652 he was allowed the liberty of the town of Berwick (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1651-2,p. 440), and subsequently his liberty was further extended, for on 18 July 1654 the governor of Berwick was ordered to secure him and Lord Montgomerie till they procure Colonel Robert Montgomerie and give him in charge to the constable, or till they give security that he will depart the Commonwealth (ib. 1654, p. 258). Although his son, Hugh, lord Montgomerie, afterwards seventh earl, was also excluded from Cromwell's Act of Grace, the sixth earl was included in it, and his estates returned to him after two years' sequestration (ib. 1657-8, p. 284). On Montgomerie's marriage in 1631, Eglinton had settled the estates on him, reserving for himself only a life-rent, but in 1635 Montgomerie bound himself not to interfere with the estates during his father's lifetime (ib. pp. 284-5), and not being forfeited, they were in 1655 settled by Eglinton on Montgomerie's eldest son (ib.) In August 1659 Eglinton was secured and put in prison by General Monck, lest he should take up arms in favour of Charles (Nicoll, Diary). He lived to see the Restoration, but died at Eglinton Castle on 7 Jan. 1661. There is an engraving of the sixth earl in Sir William Fraser's 'Earls of Eglinton.' By his first wife, Anna (d. 1632), eldest daughter of Alexander Livingstone, first earl of Linlithgow [q. v.], he had five sons and three daughters : Hugh, seventh earl [q. v.], Sir Henry of Gifien, Alexander, Colonel James of Coilsfield, ancestor of the twelfth and succeeding earls of Eglinton; General Robert Montgomerie [q. v.]; Margaret, married first to John, first earl of Tweeddale, and secondly to William, ninth earl of Glencairn; Helenor died young, and Anna died unmarried. By his second wife, Margaret (d. 1651), eldest daughter of Walter, first lord Scott of Buccleugh, and relict of James, first lord Ross, he had no issue.
[Histories of Calderwood and Spotiswood; Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals (Bannatyne Club); Balfour's Annals; Guthry's Memoirs; Nicoll's Diary (Bannatyne Club); Lament's Diary; Rothes's Short Relation (Bannatyne Club); Spalding's Memoriall of the Trubles (Spalding Club); Gordon's Scots Affairs (Spalding Club); Reg. P. C. Scotl.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser.; Patterson's Hist. of Ayr; Sir William Fraser's Earls of Eglinton; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 502-3.]
MONTGOMERIE, ALEXANDER, ninth Earl of Eglinton (1660?–1729), eldest son of Alexander, eighth earl of Eglinton, by his first wife, Lady Elizabeth Crichton, eldest daughter of William, second earl of Dumfries, was born about 1660. From the time of the death of his grandfather, Hugh [q. v.], in 1669, he was boarded with Matthew Fleming, the minister of Culross, Perthshire, who superintended his education at the school of Culross until 1673, when he was sent to the university of St. Andrews, where he remained till Lammas 1676. A few months after leaving the university he married Lady Margaret Cochrane, eldest daughter of Lord Cochrane, the son of the first Earl of Dundonald, on which occasion his father made over to him the Eglinton estates. After the revolution he was chosen a privy councillor by King William, and also a lord of the treasury. In 1700 he obtained a letter from the king to sit and vote in the Scots parliament in place of the lord high treasurer. He succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father in 1701. On Queen Anne's accession in 1702 Eglinton was chosen a privy councillor, and in 1711 he was named
