Ayrshire - 1908 Author:William Robertson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE MONTGOMERIES OF EGLINTON To get to the origin of the Montgomeries one requires to go a long way back—further back than the days of the eleve... more »nth century, when William Duke of Normandy appeared at Pevensey to claim the throne of England as next of kin to Edward the Confessor, appealing to the promise of the great Confessor himself, and broke the might of the Saxon monarchy at the battle of Senlac, near Hastings. Among the Norman nobles who accompanied him was Roger de Montgomerie, afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury. There was, between 1000 and 1050, a Roger de Montgomerie, who preceded him. The family even then, there is little reason to doubt, was old, but this Roger is the first who comes within the range of authentic history. In addition to the Earl of Shrewsbury he had four other sons. Two of them, William and Hugh, made war on their neighbours in Normandy, and caused much bloodshed. The third was accidentally poisoned, 1063, by his sister-in-law Mabel, the countess of his brother Roger ; he died in the flower of his age, and distinguished for his chivalrous gallantry. To his paternal estates Roger had added, by his marriage, the earldoms of Belesme and Alencon, and was one of the wealthiest and most influential of all the Norman nobility. He entered with great zeal into the expedition of the Conqueror, to whom he was allied by marriage, equipped no fewer than sixty ships for the conveyance of the troops, and greatly contributed to the success of the expedition by his general superintendence of the preliminary operations. He was left in charge of Normandy when William crossed over, and it was not until two years later that he accompanied the great Norman to England. His services were munificently rewarded. He was granted the castle of Arundel in the city of Ch...« less