“ He was in the service of the regent Morton; thereafter, on the regent’s demission of office in 1578, in that of the king, James VI. In 1583 the grant by the Crown of a pension of 500 marks was confirmed; and three years later he set out on a tour through France, Flanders and other countries. He appears to have got into trouble, to have been imprisoned abroad, and to have lost favour at the Scottish court, and (for a time) his pension. ”

“ Montgomerie’s chief poem is the Cherry and the Slae, first printed in 1597 (two impressions) . It was frequently reprinted in the 17th and 18th centuries, and appeared twice in Latin guise in 1631, in Dempster’s Cerasum et sylvestre prunum, opus poematicum. It is included in the collected edition of Montgomerie’s Poems, by David Irving (1821) , and by James Cranstoun, for the Scottish Text Society (1887) . The text in the latter is a composite of 930 lines from the second impression of 1597 (u.s.) and 666 lines from the version in Allan Ramsay’s (q.v.) Ever Green (1724) ”