in the arrondissement of Coutances, which remained in the possession of the French branch of the family until the death of Sebastien de Montaigu in 1715, without children. According to the Duchess of Cleveland (Battle Abbey Roll, 1889): "(Drogo de Montaigu) had come to England in the train of the Earl of Mortain, and received from him large grants of lands, with the custody of the castle, built either by the Earl or his son William, in the manor of Bishopston, and styled, from its position on a sharp-topped hill, Monte Acuto" (sic, Mons Acutus). The French spelling "Mont-Aigu" means "sharp mountain", and the family's name was Latinised as de Monte Acuto (ablative form of Mons Acutus - "from the Sharp Mountain"). Authorities are not agreed as to whether the family was named after the hill in Bishopton, or whether the hill, village, parish and priory, were named after the family, thus ultimately after Montaigu-les-Bois in Normandy. History To the west of the village is the Iron Age hill fort of Ham Hill, a large tribal fort of the Durotriges. The fort was conquered by the Roman Legio II Augusta sometime around 45 AD. The Romans briefly occupied the fort, then moved to a more permanent garrison at nearby Ilchester (Lindinis), and constructed the Fosse Way Roman road a few miles west of the village. A Roman villa was excavated near Batemoor Barn early in the 20th century and an extensive mosaic documented. Never adequately protected, this has probably been damaged by deep ploughing in the last 20 years. Originally called Logaresburgh by the Saxons, it was later known as Bishopstone ("Bishop's Town", i.e. "estate belonging to the Bishop") or Biscepstone which name survives today as the hamlet of "Bishopston" on the site of the former Cluniac priory (now containing "Abbey Farmhouse" and "Priory Pond") within the village of Montacute, to the immediate south-west of St Catherine's Church. The last Anglo-Saxons to own it before the Norman Conquest of 1066 were Tofig (d.1043), then successively his son Athelstan (or Æthelstan) and his grandson Asgar. Tofig was a staller (placeman or court office-holder) to Danish King Canute. Local tradition remembers Tofig as "Cnut's standard bearer". In 1030 (1035 in some records) following a series of dreams in which the Devil told him where to dig, a local blacksmith found buried on St Michael's Hill a black flint crucifix or Holy Rood.