£150 was bestowed on him by Sir Robert Peel in 1835. He died at Sheffield on the 30th of April 1854.
His poems were collected and edited by himself in 1841. The voluminous Memoirs, published in seven volumes (1856–1858) by John Holland and James Everett, contain valuable information on English provincial politics.
MONTGOMERY, RICHARD (1736–1775), American soldier, was born in Co. Dublin, Ireland, in 1736. Educated at St Andrew’s and at Trinity College, Dublin, he entered the British army in 1756, becoming captain six years later. He saw war service at Louisbourg in 1757 and in the Lake Champlain expedition of 1759, and as adjutant of his regiment (the 17th foot) he shared in the final threefold advance upon Montreal. Later he was present at Martinique and Havana. In 1772 he left the army, settled in New York, and married a daughter of Robert R. Livingston. Three years later he was a delegate to the first provincial congress of New York, and became brigadier-general in the Continental army. He was sent with Schuyler on the Canadian expedition, and, on Schuyler’s falling ill, the command devolved upon him. Hampered by the inclemency of the season and the gross indiscipline of the troops, he went forward, gaining a few minor successes and capturing the colours of the 7th (Royal) Fusiliers, and met Benedict Arnold’s contingent at Point aux Trembles. They pushed on to Quebec barely 800 strong, but an assault was made on the 31st of December 1775, and almost at the first discharge Montgomery was killed. The body of the American general was honourably interred by the Quebec garrison. Congress caused a memorial to be erected in St Paul’s church, New York, and in 1818 his remains were conveyed thither from Quebec.
MONTGOMERY, ROBERT (1807–1855), English poet, natural son of Robert Gomery, was born at Bath in 1807. He was educated at a private school in Bath, and founded an unsuccessful weekly paper in that city. In 1828 he published The Omnipresence of the Deity, which hit popular religious sentiment so exactly that it ran through eight editions in as many months. In 1830 followed The Puffiad (a satire), and Satan. An exhaustive review in Blackwood by John Wilson, followed in the thirty-first number by a burlesque of Satan, and two articles in the first volume of Fraser, ridiculed Montgomery’s pretensions and the excesses of his admirers. But his name was immortalized by Macaulay’s famous onslaught in the Edinburgh Review for April 1830. As a poet, he deserved every word of Macaulay’s severe censure, though the brutality of the attack cannot be defended. This exposure did not, however, diminish the sale of his poems; The Omnipresence of the Deity reached its 28th edition in 1858. In 1830 Montgomery entered Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating B.A. in 1833 and M.A. in 1838. Taking holy orders in 1835 he obtained a curacy at Whittington, Shropshire, which he exchanged in 1836 for the charge of the church of St Jude, Glasgow. In 1843 he removed to the parish of St Pancras, London, when he was minister of Percy Chapel. He died at Brighton in 1855. He also wrote The Messiah (1832), Woman, the Angel of Life (1833), Oxford (1831), and many devotional and theological works.
MONTGOMERY, a city of Alabama, U.S.A., the capital of the state and the county-seat of Montgomery county, situated (about 162 ft. above the sea) S.E. of the centre of the state, on the left bank of the Alabama river, which is here navigable. Pop. (1900), 30,346, of whom 17,229 were of negro descent and 666 were foreign-born; (1910, census), 38,136. Montgomery is served by the Louisville & Nashville, the Mobile & Ohio, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line, the Central of Georgia, and the Western of Alabama railways, and by freight steamers plying between Montgomery and Mobile. Among the principal buildings are the state capitol, near which is a Confederate soldiers’ monument (erected by the women of Alabama), the county court-house, the Federal building, the Carnegie library, the masonic temple and the First National Bank and Bell buildings. The public institutions include the city infirmary and St Margaret’s hospital, the latter under the direction of the Sisters of Charity. The city has about 100 acres of parks, Oak Park being the most important. Situated in the “Cotton Belt” of Alabama, Montgomery handles 160,000–200,000 bales annually. Truck-gardening is an important industry. The Alabama state fair is held here annually. Among the manufactures are fertilizers, machine-shop products, cotton goods, lumber products, cigars, harness, beer, stoneware, and bricks. The value of the factory products in 1905 was $3,877,653 (an increase of 31·7% over that in 1900). The leading newspapers are the Montgomery Advertiser (morning) and the Montgomery Journal (evening).
The site of Montgomery was once occupied by an Indian village known as Ecunchatty. The first permanent white settlement was made in 1814 by Arthur Moore. In 1817 Samuel Dexter of Massachusetts laid out a town and named it New Philadelphia. In 1819 it was united with East Alabama Town, an adjoining settlement on the river, under the present name (in honour of General Richard Montgomery), and a third settlement, Alabama Town, later became a part of Montgomery. Montgomery was first incorporated in 1837. The place soon became the commercial emporium of the Alabama “Cotton Belt.” In 1847 it became the capital of the state instead of Tuscaloosa. On the 7th of January 1861, the State Convention through which Alabama seceded from the Union met in the capitol; at the same place delegates from six states met, on the 4th of February, and organized the Confederate States of America. Montgomery was the capital of the new government (hence the popular name “Cradle of the Confederacy”) until May 1861, when that honour was transferred to Richmond, Virginia. It was the seat of Confederate military factories, and on the 12th of April 1865 it was captured by Federal troops. Montgomery received a new city charter in 1905.
MONTGOMERY, a town and district of British India, in the Lahore division of the Punjab. The town has a station on the North-Western railway about half-way between Lahore and Multan. Pop. (1901), 6602. It was founded in 1864 on the opening of the railway, and called after Sir Robert Montgomery, then lieutenant-governor. It is situated in a desolate upland, and though not unhealthy is singularly comfortless.
The District of Montgomery lies in the Bari Doab, or tract between the Sutlej and the Ravi, extending also across the latter river. Area, 4771 sq. m. In the former tract a fringe of cultivated lowland skirts the bank of either river, but the whole interior upland consists of a desert plateau partially overgrown with brushwood and coarse grass, and in places with impenetrable jungle. On the farther side of the Ravi, again, the country at once assumes the same desert aspect. The population in 1901 was 463,586, showing an apparent decrease of 0·4% in the decade due to emigration to the Chenab Colony. The principal crops are wheat, pulse, cotton and fodder. Camels are bred for export. The leading manufactures are of cotton and silk, and lacquered woodwork, and there are factories for ginning and pressing cotton. The district is traversed by the main line of the North-Western railway, from Lahore to Multan, and is irrigated by the Upper Sutlej inundation canal system, and also from the Ravi.
From time immemorial the Rechna Doāb has formed the home of a wild race of pastoral Jāts, who have constantly maintained a sturdy independence against the successive rulers of northern India. The sites of Kot Kamalia and Harappa contain large mounds of antique bricks and other ruins, while many other remains of ancient cities or villages lie scattered along the river bank, or dot the now barren stretches of the central waste. The pastoral tribes of this barren expanse do not appear to have paid more than a nominal allegiance to the Moslem rulers, and even in later days, when Ranjit Singh extended the Sikh supremacy as far as Mūltān, the population for the most part remained in a chronic state of rebellion. British influence was first exercised in the district in 1847, when an officer was deputed to effect a summary settlement of the land revenue. Direct British rule was effected on the annexation of the Punjab in 1849. There was a general rising of the wild clans during the Mutiny of 1857, several actions being fought before order was restored.
