Roger de Montgomery (died 1094), also known as Roger the Great, was the first
Earl of Shrewsbury, and
Earl of Arundel, in Sussex. His father was
Roger de Montgomery, seigneur of Montgomery, a member of the
House of Montgomerie, and was probably a grandnephew of the Duchess
Gunnor, wife of
Duke Richard I of Normandy, the great-grandfather of
William the Conqueror. The elder Roger had large landholdings in central
Normandy, chiefly in the valley of the
River Dives, which the younger Roger inherited.
Life
Roger inherited his father’s estates in 1055. By the time of the
Council of Lillebonne, which took place in about January of 1066, he was one of William the Conqueror's principal counsellors, playing a major role at the Council. He may not have fought in the initial invasion of England in 1066, instead staying behind to help govern Normandy. According to
Wace's ''Roman de Rou'', however, he commanded the Norman right flank at Hastings, returning to Normandy with King William in 1067. Afterwards, he was entrusted with land in two regions critical for the defence of the
Kingdom of England. At the end of 1067 or early in 1068, William gave Roger nearly all of what is now the county of
West Sussex, a total of 83 manors,
which at the time of the
Domesday Survey (1086) was an area known as the
Rape of Arundel; and about 1071 Roger was granted estates in
Shropshire which amounted to some seven-eighths of the whole county;
he was also made
Earl of Shrewsbury, but it is uncertain that the earldom came to him at the same time as the land, and it may have been a few years later. In 1083, Roger founded
Shrewsbury Abbey.
[
Roger was thus one of the half dozen greatest magnates in England during William the Conqueror's reign.][Salzmann, 'The rape of Chichester: Introduction', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4: The Rape of Chichester (1953)]
pp. 1-2
accessed: 8 August 2010 The Rape of Arundel was eventually split into two "rapes", one keeping the name of Arundel, the other being called the Rape of Chichester.Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
(four manors), Hampshire (nine manors), Wiltshire (three manors), Middlesex (eight manors), Gloucestershire (one manor), Worcestershire (two manors), Cambridgeshire (eight manors), Warwickshire (eleven manors), and Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...
(thirty manors).[Horsfield. History of Sussex. pp. 76–77] The income from Roger's estates amounted to about £2,000 per year, and in 1086 the income of all the land in England was around £72,000. The £2,000 (equivalent to several million in 2022) was almost 3 per cent of the nation's GDP.
After William I's death in 1087, Roger joined with other rebels to overthrow the newly crowned king, William II, in the Rebellion of 1088. However, William was able to convince Roger to abandon the rebellion and to side with him. This worked out favourably for Roger, as the rebels were beaten and lost their land holdings in England. ["CONQUEST & RESISTANCE England: 1066 TO 1088", britannia.com, accessed 14 September 2012]
Family
Roger married Mabel de Bellême, who was heiress to a large territory straddling the border between Normandy and Maine. The medieval chronicler Orderic Vitalis
Orderic Vitalis ( la, Ordericus Vitalis; 16 February 1075 – ) was an English chronicler and Benedictine monk who wrote one of the great contemporary chronicles of 11th- and 12th-century Normandy and Anglo-Norman England. Modern historia ...
paints a picture of Mabel of Bellême being a scheming and cruel woman.[Orderic Vitalis. ''The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis'', Volume 2, Book 3. pp. 49–55] She was murdered by Hugh Bunel and his brothers who, possibly in December 1077, rode into her castle of Bures-sur-Dive and cut off her head as she lay in bed.[Orderic Vitalis. ''The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis'', Volume 2, Book 3. Footnote pp. 54–55. Discussion on date of death of Mabel of Bellême, 1077 and 1079 being the most likely.] Their motive for the murder was that Mabel had deprived them of their paternal inheritance.[Allen Brown. Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman studies: 1978. p.41.] Roger and Mabel had 10 children:
* Robert de Bellême, Count of Alençon in 1082, he succeeded his younger brother Hugh as 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury. He married Agnes, Countess of Ponthieu
Agnes of Ponthieu (c. 1080 – aft. 1105) was ruling Countess of Ponthieu from 1100.
She was the daughter of Count Guy I of Ponthieu. Enguerrand, the son of Count Guy, died at a youthful age. Guy then made his brother Hugh heir presumptive, b ...
and died in 1131.
* Hugh of Montgomery, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury, died without issue 1098.
* Roger the Poitevin, Vicomte d'Hiemois, married Adelmode de la Marche.
* Philip of Montgomery.[K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ''Domesday People, Vol. I Domesday Book'' (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, UK, 1999), p. 399]
* Arnulf of Montgomery,Muirchertach Ua Briain
Muircheartach Ua Briain (old spelling: Muirchertach Ua Briain) (also known as Murtaugh O'Brien) (c. 1050 – c. 10 March 1119), son of Toirdelbach Ua Briain and great-grandson of Brian Boru, was King of Munster and later self-declared High King ...
.
* Sibyl of Montgomery, she married Robert Fitzhamon, Lord of Creully.
* Emma, abbess of Almenêches.
* Matilda (Maud) of Montgomery, she married Robert, Count of Mortain
Robert, Count of Mortain, 2nd Earl of Cornwall (–) was a Norman nobleman and the half-brother (on their mother's side) of King William the Conqueror. He was one of the very few proven companions of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastin ...
and died c. 1085. He was a half-brother of William the Conqueror.[K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ''Domesday People, Vol. I Domesday Book'' (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, UK, 1999), p. 372]
* Mabel of Montgomery, she married Hugh de Châteauneuf.[George Edward Cokayne, ''The Complete Peerage; or, A History of the House of Lords and all its Members from the Earliest Times'', Vol XI, Ed. Geoffrey H. White (London: The St. Catherine Press, Ltd., 1949), pp. 688, 689-92] His eldest surviving son, Robert of Bellême, received the bulk of the Norman estates (as well as his mother's estates); the next son, Hugh, received the bulk of the English estates and the Earldom of Shrewsbury.
References
Sources
*
*J. F. A. Mason, "Roger de Montgomery and His Sons (1067–1102)", ''Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'', 5th series vol. 13 (1963) 1-28
*
*
*Kathleen Thompson, "The Norman Aristocracy before 1066: the Example of the Montgomerys", ''Historical Research'' 60 (1987) 251-263
*''Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700'' by Frederick Lewis Weis Lines: 124-26, 185-1
Stirnet: Montgomery01
*
External links
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* VIMOUTIERS Heart of the Pays d'Auge in Normandy
(scroll down to On Roger de Mont Gommeri's lands section)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Montgomery, Roger
1030s births
1094 deaths
11th-century English nobility
Anglo-Normans in Wales
11th-century Normans
11th-century French people
Earls of Shrewsbury
Clan Montgomery