Alexander Montgomerie

Alexander Montgomerie (c. 1550?–1598), Scottish Jacobean courtier and poet, or makar, born in Ayrshire. He was one of the principal members of the Castalian Band, a circle of poets in the court of James VI in the 1580s which included the king himself. Montgomerie was for a time in favour as one of the king's "favourites". He was a Catholic in a largely Protestant court and his involvement in political controversy led to his expulsion as an outlaw in the mid-1590s.

Montgomerie's poetry, much of which examines themes of love, includes autobiographical sonnets and foreshadows the later metaphysical poets in England. He is sometimes, by tradition, given the epithet "Captain".

Montgomerie was a younger son of the Ayrshire laird Hugh Montgomerie of Hessilhead (d. 1558) and so was related to the Earl of Eglinton, and a distant relation of James VI.

Nothing is known for certain about his life before about 1580, but contemporary or near-contemporary accounts suggest that he was brought up as a member of the Church of Scotland, spent some time in Argyll before leaving for the Continent, and was converted to Catholicism in Spain. He probably saw active service as a soldier for the Scottish forces in The Netherlands in the later 1570s, although there is no certain documentary evidence of this.

Montgomerie’s arrival in Edinburgh may have been linked in some way to that of the king’s Catholic, French-born kinsman Esmé Stewart, whose ascendancy at court coincides with the period of the poet’s greatest prominence (1580–86).

It is likely that his earliest surviving poems are The Navigation and the related Cartel of the Thre Ventrous Knichts, which may well have been written for performance at court at Epiphany 1580. He came to prominence as "laureled" leader of the Castalian Band, a circle of court poets headed by the King after being declared victor over a rival poet, Patrick Hume of Polwarth, in a comically scurrilous flyting, or poetic duel. The King, who was himself a practising member of the group, referred to Montgomerie as its ‘maister poete’.

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