Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/46

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[Nicholas's Testamenta Vetusta, 462; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 355, 405, 433; Morant's Essex, i. 118, 120; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Strype's Memorials (fol.), ii. (pt. ii.) 509, iii. (pt. 1.) 51, 198, 265, 340, (pt. ii.) 40O; Narratives of the Reformation (Camden Society), 212, 237; Foxe's Martyrs (ed. 1684), iii. 157–9, 222, 700–2; Dugdale's Orig. 217; Dugdale's Chron Ser. 90, 91; Wynne's Serj.-at-Law; Dyer's Reports, 175a; Plowden's Reports, 249, 356, 376.]

J. M. R.


On the accession of Elizabeth, Montague lost his seat in the privy council, and he boldly expressed his dissent in the House of Lords from the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. Nevertheless he was employed two years afterwards, in 1561, on a special mission to the court of Spain, as one whom the queen 'highly esteemed for his great prudence and wisdom, though earnestly devoted to the Romish religion.' In 1562 he made a forcible and courageous speech in the House of Lords against the act entitled 'for the assurance of the queen's royal power over all estates and subjects within her dominions,' by which all persons were bound to take the oath of supremacy if required to do so by a bishop or by commissioners, incurring the penalties of præmunire for refusing to take it, and of his treason if the refusal was persisted in, Montague opposed the measure, not only on the ground that the queen's Roman catholic subjects were peaceably and loyally disposed, but also as being in itself 'a thing unjust and repugnant, to the natural liberty of men's understanding ... for what man is there so without courage and stomach, or void of all honour, that can consent or agree to receive an opinion and new religion by force and compulsion ?'

He did not, however, forfeit the favour of Elizabeth. He was one of the forty-seven commissioners who sat on the trial of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, and in 1588, when the Queen reviewed her army at Tilbury Fort, Montague was the first to appear on the ground, leading a troop of two hundred horsemen, and accompanied by his son and grandson. Three years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in August 1591 the queen paid a visit to Cowdray, where she was most magnificently entertained for nearly a week. In October of the following year Montague died, and was buried in Midhurst Church. A splendid table tomb of marble and alabaster, surmounted by a kneeling figure of himself and recumbent effigies of his two wives, was erected over his remains, but has since been removed to Easebourne Church, close to the entrance of Cowdray Park.
