William Montagu, 2nd Earl of Salisbury

Lord Salisbury was born in Donyatt in Somerset, the eldest son of William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury and his wife Catherine Grandison. One of his sisters, Philippa (d. 5 January 1382) was the wife of Roger Mortimer, 2nd Earl of March. In 1344 upon the death of his father, Lord Salisbury succeeded to the titles of earl and of King of Mann. On 13 July 1346, he was made a Knight Bachelor.^[1] In 1348, Lord Salisbury, at this time married to the King's first cousin, was one of the knights admitted at the foundation of the Order of the Garter.^[2][3]

In the early 1340s, Lord Salisbury was married to Joan of Kent, a first cousin of the King, and a princess of England. Both Lord Salisbury and his bride were of exactly the same age, and both were in their early teens. Lord Salisbury entered into the marriage in good faith, without knowing that Joan had already, at the age of twelve, secretly married Thomas Holland, just before the latter left England on crusade. Upon returning to England in 1348, Holland declared that Joan was his wife and demanded that she be restored to him. An inquiry was instituted to examine the question, and it found that Joan had indeed been married to Holland, and that that marriage was valid in law; consequently, Lord Salisbury's own marriage to Joan was invalid. Lord Salisbury attempted to disrupt the proceedings by interfering with Joan's representatives and holding her captive so that she could not testify. Salisbury only released Joan after a second petition by Holland and the Church ordered Salisbury to do so. Joan testified she had consented to her marriage to Holland and it had been consummated. Following the findings of the inquiry, Lord Salisbury's marriage with Joan, Fair Maid of Kent, was annulled by the Pope in 1349. It is not known if Salisbury and Joan ever lived together during the years of their marriage for no records exist.

Lord Salisbury, by now twenty-one years of age, was showing signs of becoming a successful military commander. Despite the fiasco of his marriage with a member of the royal family, Lord Salisbury rose rapidly in the ranks of the army upon the strength of his own competence. He served as a commander of the English forces in France in many of the following years, including as commander of the rear guard of Edward the Black Prince's army in 1355, and again at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, and further serving in 1357, 1359 and 1360. Later in 1360, he was one of the commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Brétigny.

The treaty led to a period of tranquillity, during which time Lord Salisbury served on the king's council, working closely with King Edward III. In October 1361, the Edward the Black Prince married Lord Salisbury's former wife Joan. Lord Salisbury returned to the field in 1369, serving in John of Gaunt's expedition to northern France, and then in other raids and expeditions, and on some commissions that attempted to negotiate truces with the French. Lord Salisbury helped Richard II put down the rebellion of Wat Tyler. In 1385, he accompanied Richard II on his Scottish expedition.

In 1392–3, Lord Salisbury sold the Lordship of the Isle of Man to William le Scrope of Bolton.

 

Lord Salisbury married Elizabeth, daughter of John de Mohun, 9th Lord de Mohun of Dunster. They had a son and two daughters and lived at Bisham Manor in Berkshire. Their only son, Sir William Salisbury married Lady Elizabeth FitzAlan, daughter of Richard Fitzalan, 11th Earl of Arundel, but was killed in a tournament in 1383, leaving no children. Therefore, when Lord Salisbury died in 1397, the earldom was inherited by his nephew, John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury.

• Beltz, George Frederick (1841). Memorials of the Order of the Garter. London: William Pickering. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
• Hunt, William (1894). "William de Montacute or Montagu, second Earl of Salisbury". Dictionary of National Biography. 38: 214–215.
• Shaw, Wm. A. (1971). The Knights of England: A Complete Record from the Earliest Time to the Present Day of the Knights of All the Orders of Chivalry in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the Knights Bachelors. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. OCLC 247620448.

• Royal Berkshire history: William Montacute, 2nd Earl of Salisbury
• Inquisition Post Mortem