Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Poems of Alexander Montgomerie

APPENDIX A.
THE GENEALOGY OF ALEXANDER MONTGOMERIE.
The chart affixed to this appendix practically summarises the results
of the present inquiry into Montgomerie’s family history. The in¬
formation on which it is based has been drawn from rather widely
scattered, and in part, at least, not very readily accessible sources.
These are sufficiently indicated in the detailed references given in
the notes. It may be well, however, since the following account
of the poet’s genealogy is at variance in certain important points
with what has been hitherto known of the subject, to state with
some fulness the more authoritative parts of the evidence. Those
interested in the matter will thus be in a position to judge for
themselves of the editor’s conclusions. It should be mentioned
that the order of birth assigned in the chart to the members of
each generation is, with the exception of the eldest born, mostly
conjectural. In the case of a family having a landed succession, it
is usually, and for obvious enough reasons, not difficult to ascertain
the names of succeeding heirs. On the other hand, to settle the
respective positions of younger members is far from easy and often
impossible. Of the generation to which the poet himself belonged
we know that at least two brothers were born before him ; but with
regard to his sisters, of whom there is authentic evidence of two,
it is, as pointed out later, impossible to say with any degree of
certainty whether they were older or younger than the poet. The
genealogy of the Montgomeries of Braidstane, a collateral branch,
is given as far as the sixth laird, since it throws some light on
the question of Montgomerie’s parentage. His relationship to the
Eglinton family is also shown, and to Margaret Montgomerie,
Countess of Winton, the lady for whom he has been supposed, on
very trivial grounds however, to have indulged a hopeless passion.
His mother’s connection, too, with the House of Stewart is indicated
in order to bring out clearly Montgomerie’s own degree of kinship
to James VI. and to the two dukes of Lennox, who were his friends
and patrons.
The view now generally accepted, that the poet belonged to a well-
known Ayrshire family of the sixteenth century, the Montgomeries
of Hessilheid, a junior branch of the noble House of Eglinton, has