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 thou