Eglinton and Winton

Eglinton and Winton, ARCHIBALD WILLIAM MONTGOMERIE, EARL OF, K.T., twice Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was born at Palermo in 1812. By male descent a Seton, he was also the representative of the Anglo-Norman family of Montgomerie, one of whose members settled at Eaglesham, in Renfrewshire, about 1157. Alexander de Montgomerie, lord of that ilk, was created a baron of parliament about 1455, and the family was further ennobled by the creation of Hugh, Lord Montgomerie, as Earl of Eglinton in 1506. The direct male line of the Earls of Eglinton terminated in Hugh, the fifth earl, who died in 1612, when his titles and estates passed to Sir Alexander Seton, third son of the daughter of Hugh, third Earl of Eglinton, who married Robert, first Earl of Winton. In 1840 Lord Eglinton was served heir-male of George, fourth Earl of Winton, a title which had been forfeited on account of the participation of the fifth earl in the rebellion of 1715. This forfeiture, according to law, affected all heirs entitled to succeed under the same substitution with the forfeited earl, but these being extinct, it could not affect the right of a collateral heir, which Lord Eglinton was. He therefore assumed the title of Earl of Winton, which was confirmed to him by patent in 1859, giving him that dignity in the peerage of the United Kingdom. He was a well-known patron of the turf and field-sports, and his name is associated with a splendid reproduction of a medieval Tournament (q.v.), which he gave at Eglinton Castle in 1839. Amongst the knights there was Prince Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III. Lord Eglinton, who was at various times Lord-lieutenant of Ayrshire, Lord Rector, and Dean of the Faculty of Glasgow University, &c., died 4th October 1861. See Sir William Fraser's Memoirs of the Montgomeries (2 vols. 1859).