And Now, Introducing...

Your friend and mine, the Chief Hired Goon of the West, Sir Roger of Montgomery, the 1st Earl of Shrewsbury.

I've got a soft spot for him.  Mainly because my historical novel features a Montgomery as its anti-hero.  Is he a relation?  Very probably - at some point, a group of Montgomeries moved north and settled first in Renfrewshire, presumably at the invitation of Earl David of Huntingdon (David I of Scots), before they gained lands in Ayrshire, an area with which they're more commonly associated.

I was extremely interested to see Earl Roger's coat-of-arms, to see how it compared with the arms of our Scots Montgomeries - if our Montgomeries were a cadet branch, then they would surely have the original Montgomery arms quartered in their own coat-of-arms.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the answer to this problem.  Earl Roger's arms were a gold lion rampant on an azure field.  Our Montgomeries have a quartered field of gules (red) and azure, with a trio of fleur de lys on the blue sections, and five gold rings on the red sections.  Please accept my apologies for the lousy heraldic terminology - there's a very specific way of describing heraldic devices and it's not something I'm very adept at.

Suffice it to say that there's no comparison in Earl Roger's arms (the Shropshire branch) and Earl Hugh's branch (ours).  So back to the drawing-board for me, and as usual, a historical conundrum remains unsolved.

But back to Earl Roger...

Apparently, the tomb postdates his death by around a century, which probably means it's contemporary with the abbey church's Gothic alterations.  Here's the tomb recess:-



And a close-up of Earl Roger's tomb effigy:-



It's seen better days, but it's been around a long time, and he wasn't exactly a popular fellow...