Third (eighth) Earl of Salisbury. Lollard supporter and lieutenant of the (now) infamous Richard II, convicted of treason.

Knighted in France during the Hundrd Years War , 1369; expedition to Prussia, 1391; commander in Ireland under Richard II, 1394-1395; prominent supporter of the lollards (a pre-Lutheran reaction to church corruption); member of king's council; advocate of an end to the 100 years war and thus unpopular; favorite of king Richard II and played a role in his marriage to French princess Isabella; deputy-marshal of England 1398;

With Richard in Ireland, 1399; then attempted to raise troops to counter rising of Duke of Lancaster, troops deserted, Lancaster became Henry IV; upon accession of Henry IV was challenged to combat over his complicity in the death of Gloucester (and thereby escaped execution); confined to the Tower, attempted to form a plot to kill Henry at the jousts, the plot was discovered, the conspirators fled to Wales and were captured and beheaded by a mob; head sent to the King and set on London Bridge. Despised by the English clergy for his pro-French views and his fervent lollardism.

The title earl of Salisbury was lost to the Montacute's when John was convicted of treason in 1400.

The Lollards were in many ways what we would today call a liberal political movement, powerful in the 1300-1400's. They were one of the first widespread movements to react to Church corruption. The CCD describes the Lollards thus:

`They are political, socialistic, and religious agitators. They oppose the worship of images and relics, pilgrimages to tombs, temporal lordships of the clergy, the hierarchy, the papal authority, the celebration of the mass, transubstantiation, religious decorations, war, and capital punishment.'(Little)

John and the Court of the day (including Chaucer, a courtier) seemed to have been quite into poetry and literature. In Chaucer and the Subject of History, Patterson writes:

`If Chaucer wrote poetry both about and for the court, it derived not from a native tradition of courtly lyricism - there was virtually none - but instead from contemporary French writing, the writing that Froissart no doubt first introduced into the royal court. ...

Chaucer's court poetry ... are examples of what he and his contemporaries called makyng. That is, they were poems designed above all to serve the recreative needs of the court. The maker provided the materials of courtly diversion, the texts that were not merely the occasion for courtly conversation ... but both provided paradigms for and constituted that conversation.' Patterson

`A list of English aristocratic poets of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ... includes John Montagu, earl of Salisbury; Edward Platagenet, second duke of York, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick... As K. B. McFarlane has said, `In what other century has the peerage been so active in literature?'' Patterson

Manors:

Knowle
Shepton Montague
Yarlington
Charlton Horethorne
Henstridge
Goathill
Chedzoy
Donyatt
Canford Magna
Poole
West Lulworth
Puddletown
Amesbury
Winterbourne Earls
?Winterbourne Stoke
Pyworthy
Oakford
Clyst St. Mary
Stokenham
Chillington
Noss Mayo
Yealmpton

Hundreds:

Coleridge
Cogdean
Amesbury
?Alderbury

Lollardry and John Montagu

Since John Montagu played a key role in Lollardry, I have selected this extract from a paragraph in George Macaulay Trevelyan's England in the Age of Wycliffe to provide additional detail:

"In 1387 Walter Pattsehull, a Lollard priest ..., raised a riot ... by posting on St. Paul's door, specific charges of murder and other horrible crimes, which, he avowed, had been committed in his old convent. ...

... In 1395 certain Lollard members of the Privy Council, finding themselves unable to influence their royal master in favour of their co-religionists, took advantage of Richard's absences in Ireland to lay their opinions before Parliament. The movers in this affair were Sir Richard Stury and Sir Lewis Clifford, Privy Councillors, Thomas Latimer the powerful Northamptonshire landlord who had helped the Wycliffites... and Lord John Montagu, brother of the Earl of Salisbury. Montagu was a man of sincere conviction, who had removed all images from the private chapel attached to his fine manor house of Shenley in Hertfordshire. His estates and influence lay in the counties bordering on London. Such were the men who brought before Parliament a paper setting out the most advanced tenets of Lollardry. The status of the proposers was itself a sufficient safeguard against views subversive of property, which had no place in the Lollard programme. As an official statement by the leaders of the party, the articles are valuable evidence of its tendencies. They correspond exactly to the doctrine... There are the usual attacks on Transubstantiation, image-worship, pilgrimage, prayers for the dead, the riches and secular employments of the clergy. The necessity of auricular confession is denounced for the reason that it `exalts the pride of the clergy' and gives opportunity of undue influence. Exorcisms and blessings continually performed on inanimate objects, as wine, bread, ... the chalice, ... and the cross, are styled `rather practices of necromancy than of true theology.' ... also - an important and novel point - a strong objection to vows of celibacy. ... The Lollards considered it superstition, and preferred the state of marriage. ... The Quakers objection to all war as unchristian also appears as part of the Lollard creed. The cause of this somewhat impracticable theory was the disgust engendered by the devastating campaigns in France, crowned, when peace seemed in sight, by the Papal Crusades. The poet Gower, through opposed to Lollardry, gave voice to the same feeling against perpetual war, and the efforts of the clergy to keep it alive.

And now to look on every side
A man may see the world divide,
The wars are so general
Among the Christians above all,
That every man seeketh reche (revenge).
And yet these clergy all day preach,
And sayen, good deed may none be
Which stands not upon charity.
I know not how charity may stand
Where deadly war is taken in hand.
...
When clergy to the war intend
I know not how they should amend
The woeful world in other things
To make peace betwen the Kings

These articles of Lollard belief were drawn up by Stury, Montagu, and their friends, and solemnly presented to Parliament, while other copies were nailed to the door of St. Paul's for the benefit of the citizens. It was the high-water mark of Lollardry. ... The Bishops easily persuaded Richard to give over chasing the wild Irish... He came back in one of his passions, vowing to hang all Lollards. There was an end of the heretical proceedings in Parliament...

... no important changes took place... Although occasional arrests were made, and although in some centres... secrecy was prudent... persecution was not consistently applied. The Poor Priests patrolled those districts where their protectors were strong, almost as safe as the friars themselves." Trevelyan

Trevelyn closes his chapter on the Lollards by quoting a passage by the historian Carlyle. I can't resist this enunciation of the dangers and disillusionment of unbridled `utopism':

"How often, in former ages, by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms of Government and the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough, and with destructive violence, to chain the Future under the Past; and say to the Providence whose ways are mysterious and through the great deep: Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther! A wholly insane attempt; and for man himself, could it prosper, the frightfullest of all enchantments, a very Life-in-Death."

Sources:
The DNB.
[DMKC].
[CCD].
[ENLMA].
[EAOW].
Chaucer and the Subject of History, Patterson.

http://www.montaguemillennium.com/familyresearch/h_1400_john.htm