Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 1 Vol 7.djvu/136

134 SHREWSBURY. Normandy, and was probablyf) Joint Regent of Normandy, Sep. 1066 to March 1066/7, during that Duke's invasion of England, whom he accompanied on his return thither in Dee. 1 <>G7. receiving shortly afterwards, among other large grants from the Conqueror, about one third of the county of Susses together with the Castle of Arundel and the city of Chichester and tlui3 becoming EARL OF ARUNDEl.( b ) or BARL OK CHICHESTER or (probably more correctly) EAIiL OK SUSSKX. On the distnetnljerment of Mercia, in 1070, another Karldom was conliruied upon him by the grant, in 1071, of nearly the whole of the county of Shropshire twith apparently Putatinti*] authority) together with the castle and city of Shrewsbury, and the castle afterwards called (from him) Montgomery, the honour of Eye, co. Suffolk, the Lordship of the West- .Marches, &c. lie became accordingly EARL OK SHROPSHIRE SALOP, the,' from bis residence, be was generally called EARL OK SH BEW8BUttY,(*j and {■) Even on this important point there is some doubt ; Wace expressly states that he was present at the battle of Hastings where be was personally addressed by Duke William. William of Poitiers, without alluding to this Roger, says that Roger tie Beaumont was the head of the Couucil of the Regency of 1066-67, but, of course, in that Council, Montgomery might have been included. This " old Rogierde Belmont, however, is stated by Wace to have himself been present at the said battle. Thus these two authorities contradict one another. Hut a much greater authority (in this, case at all events) than either, is Orderic (b. 1075 and connected, all his life, with the Montgomery family), sou of OdeUrius, a follower of this very Earl linger to England and one who settled uear Shrewsbury. Ordetie (who had every means of knowing) Dot only makes no mention (which a retainer uf the bouse would doubtless have ilouej of the Earl's achievements at the battle of Hastings, but positively states that in 1066 he was left (with Duke William's wife) " Governor of Normandy." It is somewhat startling to find that Freeman does not fedlow (his " beloved ") Onleric on this occasion, but sets down Orderie's assertion as " a plain tho' very strange coufusiou between lioijer of Montgomeri aud Begir d Beaumont" as to which (" very strange ") conjecture l'lauehe aptly remarks " I only suggest that the son of Odelii ius is the least likely persou to have made that eon- fusion, and that we have no proof of Roger de Moutgotneri'a presence in England previous to 1068."' ( b ) See fuller particulars of this anomalous Earldom under " Arundel." ( c ) The (palatine) Earldom of Chester was (by gift, of the couuty thereuf) granted at the same time to Oherbud, the Fleming. () " It has beeu shewn by Mr. Stapletou that Earl Roger was a Comes by reason of bis English possessions only. Contemporary writers call him Earl of Shrewsbury from the caput of the honour, in accordance with a common French custom which was followed in England. Thus the Counts of Champagne were often called Counts of Troyes ; those of Vnlois. Couuts of Crepy ; those of Artois, Counts of Arras ; those of Poitou, Counts of Poitiers, and so with many others. In early times it was the fashion, for I consider it nothing move, for French Comites to sign the Christian name with the addition of Cornet only ; this was then sufficiently distinctive. But that territorial designations existed is evident from the usage of Chroniclers and an occasional mention in the body of charters (such as " Et/o Droco, Comeii Ainbianentinm — Dreux, Count of Amiens — in a charter before 1035 ; he Bigns it as l-'roco Comes) and they were usually added in the signatures by the time of the Conquest of England. As Earl Roger followed the more ancient custom we must look to historians to discover his Earldom — not suppose that he was 'an Earl pure and simple ' (i'.f., apart from possessing any special Earldom) then an impossible person, I believe, in England as it was in France." [G. W. Watson (The Genealogist N.S., vol. x, p. 142, note 4), in his additions to the "Seize Quartiers of Isabel (of Gloucester) Queen Consort to John."] Courthope remarks that the Earls "chief residences were at his castles of Shrewsbury and Aruudel ; ami if, as he sometimes hits been, styled Earl of Shrewsbury or Aruudel, such descriptions are merely derived from his residence at those places, for the same reason that the Earls of Pembroke and Derby were called Earls of Strighull and of Tutbury. The towns of Shrewsbury and Arundel could not confer the title of an English Earl, accord- ing to the usages of the period in question ; and if such dignity were vested in Roger de Montgomery, it was derived from the county of Salop, where we gather from Selden that he possessed palatine authority. Ordericus Vitalis states that the