# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Montacute, William de (1301-1344)

​MONTACUTE or MONTAGU, WILLIAM de, third Baron Montacute and first Earl of Salisbury (1301–1344), born in 1301, was eldest son of William de Montacute, second baron Montacute (d. 1319) [q. v.], and succeeded his father as third baron on 6 Nov. 1319, being granted wardship of his own lands, though yet a minor. In 1322 he came of age, and received livery of his lands, together with the grant of Lundy Isle. In 1325 he was knighted, and received letters of protection on his departure for France (Rymer, ii. i. 606). In 1327 he went with Edward III to repel the Scottish invasion, when the latter nearly missed capture. In 1329 he accompanied the king abroad and was sent in June to treat for a marriage between the eldest son of the king of France and Edward's sister Alianore (ib. ii. ii. 764, 766). In September he was despatched with Bartholomew de Burghersh (d. 1355) [q. v.] on an embassy to the pope at Avignon, returning before the end of the year, when, in his capacity as executor of Blanche, queen of Navarre, he lent the king two thousand marks that had belonged to her, and were deposited at Whitefriars.
Next year the young king took him into his confidence about his plans for the arrest of Mortimer. During the parliament held at Nottingham in October 1330, Montacute, with a band of retainers, including Sir John de Molines [q. v.], penetrated by a secret passage into the castle, where they found Mortimer in the queen-mother's apartments (Murimuth, p. 61). After a struggle, in which two of Mortimer's attendants were killed, his arrest was effected, and he was sent to London for trial [see Mortimer, Roger IV de, first Earl of March; and Barnes, Edward III, pp. 47-8]. Edward obtained from parliament indemnity on Montacute's behalf for all consequences of the death of Mortimer's attendants, and rewarded him with various grants of land forfeited by Mortimer in Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent, and Wales, including Sherborne, Corfe Castle, and Purbeck Chase in Dorset, and the lordship of Denbigh (Rolls of Parl. ii. 60 b; Galfridi le Baker, Chron. ed. Maunde Thompson, pp. 46, 226-8; Walsingham, Ypodigma Neustriæ, p. 270; Murimuth, pp. 62, 285; Dugdale; Stow, Annals, p. 229; Stubbs, ii. 390; Longman, Edward III, i. 35). On 4 April 1331 Montacute accompanied Edward III when, disguised as a merchant and attended by a handful of men-at-arms, the king paid a secret visit to France; he was present when Edward repeated his homage to the French king at Amiens on 13 April, and returned with him to Dover on 20 April (Froissart, ed. Lettenhove, ii. 232; Rymer, ii, ii. 818). In September Montacute held a tournament in Cheapside, entertaining his guests in the Bishop of London's palace.
Next year he attended the king in Scotland, and in 1333 was present at the siege of Berwick and the battle of Halidon Hill (Barnes, p. 80); in the same year Edward made over to him all his rights to the Isle of Man. He appears to have accompanied Balliol to Scotland, and in February 1334 was deputed by him to excuse his absence from the parliament held at York. On 30 March Montacute was appointed envoy to France with the Archbishop of Canterbury and two others (Rymer; Barnes, p. 92); but in June was again in Scotland, where in 1335 he was left in command of the army with Arundel. In the same year he was granted the forests of Selkirk and Ettrick and town of Peebles, made governor of the Channel Islands and constable of the Tower. In November he was given power to treat with Andrew Murray, constable of Scotland; on 27 Jan. 1336 he commenced the siege of Dunbar Castle, but after nineteen weeks the blockade was raised by Alexander Ramsay, and Montacute gave it up in despair, making a truce that was strongly disapproved of in England (Walsingham, Ypodigma, p. 275; Hist. Angl. p. 200; Stow, p. 231; Longman, p. 189; Lettenhove, xxiii. 93-7; Barnes, pp. 101 sqq.) In the same year he was appointed admiral of the fleet from the mouth of the Thames westward.
On 16 March 1337, at the parliament held in London, Montacute was created Earl of Salisbury. In the following April he was sent to Philip to declare Edward's claim to the French crown, and thence on an embassy to the emperor Lewis, Rupert, Count Palatine, the Duke of Bavaria, and other princes of Germany and the Netherlands, to organise a league against France (Lettenhove, xxiii. 97; Rymer, ii. ii. 969, 992, 995). In October he was commissioned to treat with Scotland, but in July 1338 commanded a successful raid into Scotland from Carlisle. Later on in the year he sailed with Edward from the Orwell to Flanders, and by a patent, dated Antwerp 20 Sept. 1338 (Rymer), was appointed marshal of England, an office then vacant by the death of Thomas, earl of Norfolk. He remained in Flanders, where he was one of the captains of the English forces, for the next two years, during part of which he was in garrison at Ypres (Lettenhove, passim). In November 1338 he was one of those appointed to treat with Philip of Valois at the desire of the pope; shortly after ​he made an inroad into the territories of the Bishop of Liège, and in February 1339 negotiated an agreement with the Archbishop of Trèves and the Duke of Brabant, and was subsequently employed in various other negotiations. In 1340, induced, perhaps, by treachery within the walls, Salisbury and Suffolk with a small force made an attempt on Lille ; the attack failed, and both were taken prisoners and conveyed to Paris, when Salisbury, it is said, owed his life to the intervention of the king of Bohemia (Murimuth, p. 104; Chronicon Angliæ, ed. Maunde Thompson, p. 10; Walsingham, Ypodigma, p. 278; Hist. Angl. i. 226; Froissart, Chron. ed. Lettenhove, ii. 5; Galf. le Baker, Chron. pp. 67, 241-2 ; Barnes, pp. 168-9, and Stow, p. 369, who gives a very different account from Froissart). On 18 Oct. Edward demanded a levy of wools to secure his liberation. He was set free, on condition of never serving against Philip in France, at the peace negotiated after the siege of Tournay, in exchange for the Earl of Moray, who had been captured in the Scottish wars (Rymer, passim ; Cal. Rot. Parl. p. 138).
He returned to England in November, and took part in Edward's arrest of the treasury officials and others [see Molines, John de] ; in May 1341 he was commissioned to examine into the charges against Stratford (Murimuth, p. l20). Perhaps it was at this time that he conquered the Isle of Man from the Scots and was crowned king there; but the event has also been assigned to 1340 and 1342 (cf. Annals of England, p. 193; Lettenhove, Galf. le Baker, Stow, and Longman). In May 1343 Salisbury embarked with Robert d'Artois for Brittany (Lettenhove), captured Vannes, and proceeded to besiege Rennes (Longman, Edward III, i. 212 ; Barnes, pp. 281-5). After the death of Artois and some months' ineffectual fighting a truce was signed, and in August Salisbury was sent on an embassy to the court of Castile, and took part in the siege of Algebras, which Alfonso XI was then prosecuting against the Moors (Lettenhove; Ryemr, 11. ii. 1232 ; Dugdale antedates this occurrence by two years). He was soon recalled to England, and sent against the Scots. He died on 30 Jan. 1344 from bruises, it is said, received during a tournament held at Windsor, and was buried at Whitefriars, London. Montacute was a liberal benefactor of the church, his principal foundation being Bustleham, or Bisham, Berkshire. Walsingham says of him 'de elegantia, strenuitate, sapientia, et animositate, scribere, speciales actus requirit.' He married Catharine, daughter of Sir William Grandison, by whom he had two sons, William, second earl of Salisbury [q. v.], and John, and four daughters, one of whom, Philippa, married Roger Mortimer, second earl of March [q. v.]
The Countess of Salisbury in 1341, with her brother-in-law, Sir Edward Montacute, defended for some months the castle of Wark, Northumberland, against the Scots ; the siege was raised by Edward III, who is said on this occasion to have fallen in love with her. A similar story attributes to her a share in the origin of the order of the Garter. She is said to have dropped her garter at a court ball ; Edward, who was in love with her, picked it up, and overhearing a courtier's jest, bound it on his own knee with the remark 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' which became the motto of the order he then resolved to establish. Both these stories confuse the countess with Joan, the 'Fair Maid of Kent' [q. v.], daughter of Edmund, earl of Kent [q. v.l who was betrothed, but never married, to William, second earl of Salisbury, and attribute Joan's youth and beauty to the Countess of Salisbury. Polydore Vergil, who visited England a hundred and fifty years later, is said to be the earliest authority for the story, which is palpably fictitious. Edward had already determined on the establishment of the order, and it is possible that some such incident, quite unconnected with the Countess of Salisbury, may have given the name to the order (cf. Froissart, ed. Lettenhove, xxiii. 105-9; Jehan le Bel, Chronique ; Aashmole, Order of the Garter ; Nicholas, Orders of Knighthood, i. 18 ; Barnes, Edward III'; and Longman, i. 295-8). She died in 1349 or 1354, and was interred in her husband's foundation at Bisham, which became the family burial-place.
[The best connected accounts of Montacute are in Lettenhove's Froissart, xxiii. 93-109, and Dugdale's Baronage and Monasticon, passim ; Cal. Rotulorum Patent. ; Rolls of Parliament ; Parliamentary Writs ; Rymer, n. i. ii. passim ; Murimuth and Robert of Avesbury, Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II, Capgrave's Chronicle of England, pp. 203-4, Flores Historiamm, ii. 178, Chronicon Angliæ, ed. Maunde Thompson, pp. 5, 8, 10, Walsingham 's Hist. Anglicana and Ypodigma Neustriæ, Knighton's Chronicon Leycestrensis, p. 478, &c., all in Rolls Series; Galfridi le Baker's Chronicon, ed. Maunde Thompson, passim ; Chronique de Jehan Le Bel, passim ; Stow's Annals, passim ; Holinshed's Chronicles, iii. S48, 366 ; Barnes's History of Reign of Edward III, passim ; Weever's Funerall Monuments, p. 437 ; Ashmole's Order of the Garter, pp. 647-50 ; Collinson's Somerset, passim ; Lingard, vol. iii. ; Stubbs, vol. ii. ; Annals of England ; Longman's Edward III, passim ; Peerages by Burke and G. E. C.]
A. F. P.