Thomas Montacute, 4th Earl of Salisbury

Who was Thomas Montacute, 4th Earl of Salisbury?

Thomas Montacute, 4th Earl of Salisbury, 6th and 3rd Baron Montacute, 5th Baron Monthermer, and Count of Perche, KG was an English nobleman. He was one of the most important English commanders during the Hundred Years' War.

He was the eldest son of John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, who was killed while plotting against the King in 1400, and his lands forfeited. His mother, Maud Montacute, Countess of Salisbury, survived. Thomas did get back some of his father's lost lands, and helped his financial position further by marrying Eleanor Holland, a sister and eventual co-heiress of Edmund Holland, 4th Earl of Kent, and daughter of Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent.

Thomas was summoned to Parliament as Earl of Salisbury in 1409, although he was not formally invested as earl until 1421. In 1414, he was made a Knight of the Garter. In July 1415, he was one of the seven peers who tried Richard, Earl of Cambridge, on charges of conspiring against the King. Montacute then joined Henry V in France, where he fought at the Siege of Harfleur and at the Battle of Agincourt. Montacute fought in various other campaigns in France in the following years. In 1419, he was appointed lieutenant-general of Normandy, and then created Count of Perche, part of Henry V's policy of creating Norman titles for his noblemen. He spent most of the rest of his life as a soldier in France, leading troops in the various skirmishes and sieges that were central to that part of the Hundred Years' War. In 1425, he took over the city of Le Mans. On 27 October 1428 he was wounded during the Siege of Orléans, when a cannonball broke a window near to where he stood, and he died a few days later.