Early Life
Montgomerie was a younger son of the Ayrshire laird Hugh Montgomerie of Hessilheid (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).
Read more about this topic: Alexander Montgomerie
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