From Montfort-sur-Rille, near Brionne, in the arrondissement of Pont Audemer. The site of their castle can still be traced near the present town. This great baronial house derived from a common ancestor with the Bertrams, Oslac, Baron de Briquebec, who lived in the tenth century. His son Thurstan de Bastenberg was the father of Hugh Barbatus—Hugh with the beard—whom both Dugdale and Sir Henry Ellis believe to have been the companion of the Conqueror. But Wace expressly tells us that he had been slain in a private quarrel soon after William became Duke of Normandy—in those early and evil days "when the feuds against him were many, and his friends few; when the barons warred upon each other, and the strong oppressed the weak. A mighty feud broke out between Walkelin de Ferrieres, and Hugh Lord of Montfort I know not which was right and which wrong; but they waged fierce war with each other, and were not to be reconciled; neither by bishop nor lord could peace or love be established between them. Both were good knights, bold and brave. Once upon a time they met, and the rage of each against the other was so great that they fought to the death. I know not which carried himself most gallantly, or who fell the first, but the issue of the affray was that Hugh was slain, and Walkelin fell also; both lost their lives in the same affray, and on the same day." This combat is mentioned by William de Jumieges. It was therefore another Hugh—his son Hugh II., who furnished fifty ships and sixty knights for the expedition to England, and was the "Constable" spoken of by Ordericus at the battle of Hastings; for the De Montforts were hereditary Marshalls of Normandy. He had gained his reputation in arms twelve years before, when he had been one of the leaders at the famous battle of Mortemer. Wace describes how he helped to save William Malet's life (see p. 262) and "he is one of the four knights named by Guy, Bishop of Amiens, as the mutilators of the body of Harold at the close of the conflict; but I need only here repeat my utter disbelief in so improbable a statement, supported by no other contemporary writer."—Planche. He received a barony of one hundred and thirteen English manors, with a large proportion of Romney Marsh, and "was one of the barons intrusted by the Conqueror with the administration of justice throughout England, under Bishop Odo and William Fitz Osbern in 1067; and by the Bishop himself, Hugh de Montfort was made Governor of the Castle of Dover, the chief fortress in Odo's own Earldom, and the key of the kingdom. His absence on other duties with the Bishop south of the Thames was taken advantage of by the Kentish malcontents, and led to the assault of the Castle by the Count of Boulogne. The attempt failed, through the loyalty of the Royal garrison and the personal hostility to Eustace entertained by the townsmen from the recollection of the fatal affray in 1051."—Ibid.
This second Hugh de Montfort died a monk in the Abbey of Bec, but at what date is not exactly known. He had been twice married, and left two sons; but both were childless, and his daughter Alice was his heir. The elder, Hugh III., died on pilgrimage. The second, Robert, who in 1099 commanded the Norman army in Maine, took part with Robert Curthose against Henry I., and being "called in question for his infidelity," begged permission to go to the Holy Land, and joined the Crusaders under Bohemund, receiving a hearty welcome and a high command as Strator Normanici exercitus hereditario jure. He never returned home, and had perforce left the whole of his possessions in the King's hands. They must, however, have been given back to bis sister Alice—perhaps because she was the wife of the King's cousin, Gilbert de Gant; for "by reason of her being so great an Inheritrix," their son bore her name of Montfort, and was styled Hugh IV. He joined in the rebellion of Waleran Earl of Mellent, whose daughter he had married, and spent fourteen years of his life in prison—"no man," says Dugdale, "interceding for his enlargement, in regard what he had done was without any provocation." Fourth in descent from him comes Peter de Montfort, who, "puffed up with ambition," took a leading part in the Baron's War, and was one of the council of nine authorized to exercise regal power after the victory of Lewes. More than this; in the Commission soon after appointed "to reform and settle the Kingdom, there was a more especial power given to this Peter than any of the rest, viz.: That whatsoever he should swear to do, the King must be obliged to it. During the time of his continuance in power, certain it is, that he did much mischief;" but his reign and his life ended together in the disastrous rout of Evesham, when the Prince of Wales "came down upon those rebellious Barons like terrible Thunder," and he fell by the side of his great namesake, Simon Earl of Leicester:—
"le fleur de pris
Qui taunt savoit le guerre!"[1]
"In him this family was in the Meridian of its glory, which thenceforward daily faded." Yet his son was "in no whit abridged of his ancient Patrimony," being admitted to grace by the Dictum of Kenilworth, though he, too, had been in arms with the barons, and taken prisoner at Evesham. The next heir, John, who went to the wars of Gascony with Edward I., had summons to parliament in 1295, and was succeeded in his barony by his two sons. The youngest, Peter, was in priest's orders when his elder brother died, but "was so dispensed with that he took to the World and became a Knight," married Margaret de Furnivall, and, as we shall presently see, still further emancipated himself from the austerity of his earlier years. His wife brought him an only son, named Guy, between whom and Margaret de Beauchamp, daughter of Thomas Earl of Warwick, a marriage was arranged "for the better founding of a firm league of friendship between them and their Posterities, in regard that many Suits had been betwixt their Ancestors, by reason that their Lands, in divers places, lay continuous." There was an additional compact, which settled these questions to the Earl's advantage, for it so happened that the young heir died before his father, and left no posterity. Failing issue by Guy and Margaret, Montfort's castle and estate of Beldesert in Warwickshire, with many other lands, were to go to the said Thomas, Earl of Warwick, on Sir Peter's death. "But all this while Sir Peter was living, and having had issue by an old Concubine, Lora de Ullenhalle, took care for their advancement, as may appear by those Lands they enjoyed." These illegitimate descendants flourished at Coleshill, co. Warwick, till the attainder of Sir Simon Montfort in the time of Henry VII.
The name is kept by Wellesbourne Montford in Warwickshire.
-- Cleveland
Romney
William, with the main body of his army, moved out of Hastings, leaving a garrison in the newly built castle, and marched across the border of Kent to Romney. The men of the latter place had cut off a body of Norman soldiers who had landed there by mistake before the battle of Hastings; and the most famous sentence written by the Conqueror's first biographer relates how William at Romney "took what vengeance he would for the death of his men." Having thus suggested by example the impolicy of resistance, a march of fifteen miles between the Kentish downs and the sea brought William to the greatest port and strongest fortress in south England, the harbour and castle of Dover. --Stenton
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