He lost his head to a lost cause

Sir John de Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury and 2nd Baron Montagu, appeared in my family tree with an intriguing note attached: "[H]is head was sent to King Henry IV at Oxford, and was set on London Bridge. His body was buried at Cirencester Abbey, but his widow was allowed by Henry V to remove it to Bisham Priory, Berkshire, of which he was the hereditary patron."

No information shared exactly how he lost his head, so I immediately began looking on the 'Net to find out who he was and how he came to such a horrible end. Like many in the peerage he came by his title the old-fashioned way, by inheriting it. 

The sources I looked at concentrated firstly on his heritage and then jumped to his life as an adult. He served in the military and made a name for himself in a war against France, where he picked up a knighthood. [1]

He joined Parliament in 1391 and managed to become a favorite of King Richard II, one of the kings Shakespeare wrote a play about, mostly because Will thought Richard wasn't much of a king. Montagu went with Richard to Ireland in 1394 and 1395 and became a privy councilor to the king. In this role he helped arranged the king's marriage to Isabella of Valois. 

At some point he became a follower of the reformer John Wycliffe, which earned him a rebuke from Richard, though he remained an ally and helped bring about the fall of a couple of the king's enemies. His efforts were rewarded with lands and a knighthood in the order of the Garter -- a prestigious honor only the king makes. 

Soon after this feat, though, Henry Bolingbroke would manage to depose Richard to become Henry IV, which landed Montagu in the Tower of London with Richard because of his activities trying to raise troops on Richard's behalf. 

He was released through the efforts of influential friends and very soon joined in a plot to restore Richard to the throne. This would prove his (literal) undoing. Richard had taken up residence at Windsor Castle for Christmas -- which you'll remember is a long celebration in England. A few days into 1400 C.E. the conspirators made an attempt to capture Henry at Windsor with the intention of assassinating him. Most of them had lost rank after Henry's rise to the throne, so restoring Richard to the throne would probably restore their fortunes. 

The idea was that they would go to the castle to join in the games and festivities taking place and use the occasion to seize Henry and dispose of him. Unfortunately, one of the conspirators ratted them out, and Henry had gone to London, 20 miles away.

The group showed up at the castle with a group of 400 men, but left on hearing of Henry's departure. They spread through the countryside trying to raise additional troops. When Montagu and his pals arrived at a town called Cirencester, the met opposition from the residents. An all night battle resulted in the rebels' imprisonment in the town abbey. 

A sympathetic priest set a fire in the abbey to cause confusion and allow the prisoners to escape. This only infuriated the townsfolk, who found and fell upon the rebels, beheading them on the spot. Henry decided that allowing Richard to live would be a bad idea and issued orders for him to die, which he eventually did after being starved. Hard to decide which is worse, beheading or starvation, but beheading has the advantage of being quicker.

Given that the goal I had in mind for these post was to learn about history through exploring our family tree, it doesn't matter that shortly after I began my investigations, Montagu disappeared from our tree. That's right; I'm not related to him at all. I expected that because while I was reading about Montagu I found an article listing his offspring, and none of them were the son who had brought me to his story. 

Also, as I was sorting through the branches, I discovered that the controversy over the parentage of my ancestor Samuel Morse had resulted in his no longer having a listing for parents on Family Search. This disappearance happened shortly after my first post about Samuel. 

I have no way to account for these coincidences, but it's happened before, and I'm beginning to be a bit paranoid. 

[1] All these titles confuse me in terms of how to refer to the person holding them. I assume he would be referred to by his highest rank, earl, which would mean he'd be referred to as Salisbury. I'm just going to call him Montagu, which also confusingly is sometimes spelled Montague. Danged medieval English.

Image: John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury retrieved from the National Portrait Gallery, used under Creative Commons license.