MONTAGU, William (d.1489), of Henley in Crewkerne and Sloo, Som.

The manor of Henley in Crewkerne had come by the late fourteenth century to a junior branch of the family of Montagu which was related to the earls of Salisbury of that name, but precisely how is unclear. VCH Som. iv. 15. William was well known to his kinsman Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and received handsome bequests in his will. A codicil, dated 20 May 1427, lists various bequests to members of the earl’s family, including a bastard son, and William Montagu (whose relationship to the testator is not defined), was left the large sum of 100 marks with which he might purchase land or a good marriage. The earl also instructed the feoffees of his estates in Wiltshire and Hampshire to pay out specified amounts of money from their profits, including 200 marks to William, although whether this was in addition to the other legacy is not made clear. Reg. Chichele, ii. 393, 395. The earl died at the siege of Orléans in 1428, but the provisions of his will were still in dispute in the early 1430s. It was then that William took legal action in Chancery against the feoffees, claiming that his noble kinsman had left him a lordship in Lambourn, Berkshire, which they were refusing to relinquish to him. C1/12/227; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 422; VCH Berks. iv. 254. Perhaps as a gesture of recompense, in 1436 the earl’s executor and feoffee Andrew Sperlyng* conveyed to him lands in Milford and Keyhaven on the Hampshire coast. CAD, ii. B2643. These properties, later known as the manor of Milford Montagu, were to remain in the possession of this junior branch of the Montagu family for at least a century. VCH Hants, v. 117-18, notes that the nearby manor of Efford passed to the earl’s grandson John Neville, Marquess Montagu. Yet when it came to choosing a place of residence William himself preferred to live in Somerset.

In that county, Montagu twice attested the parliamentary elections held at Ilchester in the 1440s. He was patron of the Somerset churches of Weston Bampfylde (from 1444) and Sutton Mountagu (from 1449); Reg. Bekynton, i . nos. 66, 416, 760, 1031, 1387. and by licence of the diocesan dated November 1455 he and his wife Joan were permitted to employ a chaplain to celebrate masses in the oratory at their dwelling house at Henley. Ibid. no. 951. Of Montagu’s status there is little doubt: he was invariably styled ‘esquire’ or ‘gentleman’, and his standing in local society is also indicated by those with whom he chose to be associated among the gentry. He was fined for failing to take up knighthood, a fact which also indicates that his landed holdings were believed to be worth at least £40 p.a. Montagu held positions of trust, for instance being enfeoffed by Joan, widow of Robert More†, of her inherited estates in Wiltshire, which he finally released to the nominees of Walter, Lord Hungerford†, in May 1437. CCR, 1435-41, p. 126; Hungerford Cart. (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), nos. 458-60. Two months later he stood surety at the Exchequer for those given keeping of the manor of Overhall in Bures, Suffolk, which had formed part of the inheritance of the wealthy Elizabeth Bryan, the widow of Robert Lovell*, who had recently died. CFR, xvi. 337. Elizabeth’s grand-daughter Avice (the only child of Sir Richard Stafford*) eventually inherited the former Bryan estates, and it may have been through this connexion that Montagu first entered the circle of Sir James Butler, afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, to whom this much sought-after heiress was married not long afterwards.

It is this link with the earl of Wiltshire which provides the key to Montagu’s election to the Parliament of November 1449 for the Dorset borough of Weymouth. The borough returned others of the earl’s affinity in this period: his henchman Henry Filongley* from Warwickshire had represented Weymouth in the previous Parliament, earlier that same year, and Filongley’s nephew Thomas Froxmere*, who came from Worcestershire, was to do likewise in 1453. Furthermore, Montagu’s fellow MP, John Russell III* (unlike the others a local man), had only a short while before been married to Filongley’s kinswoman Alice Froxmere. Montagu was closely enough linked to the earl as to become involved in his quarrel with Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, which caused a serious break-down of order on the border of Devon and Dorset in the winter of 1450-1, with hundreds of their followers allegedly up in arms. Although Montagu’s own part in the eruption of violence is not well documented, in the Trinity term of 1451 both he and a namesake were listed in association with Filongley and Robert Cappes, another of the earl’s most prominent retainers in Dorset and Cobham’s chief opponent, as defendants in a suit brought by Cobham in the King’s bench. One of the William Montagus so listed was called ‘formerly of Sloo, Somerset, esquire’, and the other ‘formerly of Hooke, Dorset, esquire’, the latter place, Hooke in west Dorset, being the earl of Wiltshire’s adopted seat in the county. KB27/761, rot. 16d.

The relationship between these two Williams is now hard to determine, but it seems likely that they were father and son; indeed, our MP appears to have had two sons who shared his name. Deciding which of the later records relate to William the MP becomes problematic. Probably it was he who in Hilary term 1454 sued Joan, widow of Robert Hill I*, on a plea of trespass, KB27/771, rot. 49. although it was William Montagu ‘the younger’ who was commissioned in June that year to requisition vessels and mariners to serve under the keepers of the seas appointed in Parliament. CPR, 1452-61, p. 175. While no further record of either man’s association with the earl of Wiltshire has been traced, it may be pertinent to note that while the earl was treasurer of England in March 1460 our William Montagu was given at the Exchequer keeping of lands in Somerset late of Thomas Wattis, a deceased tenant-in-chief, whose heir was a minor and an ‘imbecile’. CFR, xix. 261. Whether the Montagus offered the earl their services in the field during the civil war years does not transpire; although it may be noted that while battles were being fought in the north of England and at St. Albans in the early months of 1461 William Montagu of Henley was devoting at least some of his energies to pursuing men of Bristol in the law-courts at Westminster, attempting to recover a debt of £100. CP40/800, rot. 147. This was in association with John Wykes (d.1472) of Wellington, Som., for whom he acted as a feoffee: C140/36/24.

The execution of the earl of Wiltshire by the Yorkists in 1461 seems not to have affected Montagu adversely. He was listed as a potential juror at sessions of oyer and terminer at Dorchester on 31 May 1462 (though not pricked in the event); and served on the jury at the post mortem for William, Lord Botreaux, conducted at Sherborne that July. KB9/21, m. 18; C140/7/15. In 1463 his ward, Richard Wattis, complained that he had been wrongly expelled from his inheritance, as he was sane and had always been so. Montagu was summoned to Chancery to show why the letters patent granting him the wardship should not be annulled, but failed to appear in court; the grant was revoked and Wattis restored to his inheritance and all profits taken from the time of its seizure. CPR, 1461-7, p. 290. Montagu was among those former MPs to whom William Oliver I* of Bridport granted his goods and chattels in 1463. CAD, vi. C4383. One of the others, John Bettiscombe*, later enfeoffed him of the manor of Vere’s Wootton: C146/8166, 9540. In March 1466, having been appointed by the vicar general as tutor and guardian of his son the clerk John Montagu, he stood in for John on his institution to a living at their parish church at Crewkerne, on the presentation of the earl of Warwick’s feoffees, although any connection between them and the Nevilles has not been discovered. Reg. Stillington, no. 11. Montagu witnessed deeds for (Sir) Thomas Hungerford*, the first-born son of the attainted Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, in December that year, and after Thomas’s own execution for treason in 1469 he continued to be loosely linked with the family, for he did likewise for Thomas’s brother Walter Hungerford† four years later. He also witnessed a release by Sir Theobald Gorges* to John Worsop* of the manor of Bradpole and hundreds of Redhove and Beaminster in Dorset, which had once been in the possession of the late earl of Wiltshire. CCR, 1461-8, p. 395; 1468-76, nos. 133, 1139.

It may be the case that the Montagus welcomed the Readeption of Henry VI, although firm evidence for this is lacking. Following Edward IV’s triumphant return to his throne in 1471 two William Montagus saw fit to purchase royal pardons: William Montagu, ‘late of Henley, esquire’, did so on 23 Nov. 1471, and William Montagu ‘of Sloo, Somerset, gentleman’, on 20 Feb. 1472 (although it is always possible that this was the same man). C67/48, mm. 3, 33. A William Montagu attested the shire elections held at Ilchester for the Parliament summoned for the autumn of that year; C219/17/2. and two ad hoc commissions of local government were addressed to him ‘of Henley’ a year later. In October 1473 Montagu of Henley obtained another licence from the bishop of Bath and Wells to have masses celebrated in the oratory in his house there. Reg. Stillington, no. 587. The same man was a feoffee of the manor of Timbercombe for the Sydenhams, C140/61/36. and was occasionally called upon to witness important transactions, for instance one concerning the Chideock inheritance of Katherine, widow of Sir John Arundel. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1385. In late 1480 in association with the bishop of Exeter a William Montagu was a feoffee of the Shillingford estates in Devon, which were conveyed shortly afterwards to William Huddesfield† shortly afterwards; he had a remainder interest in the property, to vest if the issue of Huddesfield and his wife happened to fail. CCR, 1476-85, nos. 722, 913, 944, 1000; CP25(1)/46/92/47; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 264.

As these snippets of information imply, in the late 1470s and 1480s it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle the lives of the different William Montagus. However, one way of interpreting the evidence is that our MP was the William Montagu of Sloo, esquire, who was patron of the church of Weston Bampfylde in 1476 and 1478, Reg. Stillington, nos. 345, 427. and that his two sons named William both predeceased him. The elder of these two sons died before 14 Oct. 1478, CFR, xxi. no. 449 – no inq. post mortem survives. leaving a son and heir named Robert, and, by his wife Katherine, four daughters. Our MP had entailed on William and Katherine and their issue property in Queen Camel and Sheryston, which the widowed Katherine continued to hold after her subsequent marriage, to John Bevyn junior. Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 152-3; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 510. In 1483 he settled on his other son and namesake his manor of Henley, to hold jointly with his wife Florence. That William died on 20 Jan. 1484, leaving as his heir a son also called Robert, said to be aged 24, although the estate at Henley ceased to belong to the Montagus before too long, passing to John Wykes, who acquired a reversionary interest in Florence’s dower portion in 1490 and the rest subsequently. CFR, xxi. nos. 739, 743; C141/1/16; VCH Som. iv. 15; CP25(1)/202/42/5.

If this interpretation is correct, our MP was the esquire who died on 17 June 1489, leaving as his heir his grandson Robert (the son of William and Katherine, who was said to be aged 15). He had held substantial estates in Somerset, including the manors of Sutton Mountagu and Sloo. The former, Sutton Mountagu, he had settled on his wife Alice, a twice-widowed woman of advanced age, at the time of their betrothal. He had also given one of her sons, John Pyke the younger, an annuity of £2 for life. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 510. Alice, who had brought to the marriage her Pyke dower and jointure, worth some £35 p.a., survived Montagu by ten years, and did not mention him in the will she made on 16 Sept. 1499. She asked to be buried in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the parish church of Queen Camel, and left bequests to her three Pyke sons (the oldest of whom was then aged over 60), and other members of their family. CFR, xxii. no. 645; Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 384-6; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 284.