MONTAGU, Edward (1648-88)

Edward Montagu appeared to have a glittering future in store in May 1660 when, barely 12 years old, he first met the king, ‘who kissed the child very affectionately’, and Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, ‘who spoke very merrily to the child’. Ibid. i. 133, 143–5, 147–50, 163. At the time he was accompanying his father, and Samuel Pepys^‡, to the Netherlands to bring the restored Charles II back to England. When his father became earl of Sandwich Montagu was styled Viscount Hinchingbrooke. He returned to England in August 1665 after travelling in France and Italy, when Pepys was pleased to find him ‘a mighty sober gentleman’ of ‘few words’. Ibid. ii. 114, 163; vi. 13, 183; vii. 235–6; viii. 276, 333, 516, 573, 579, 580. In January 1668, after several months of negotiations conducted by Sir George Carteret^‡ and Clarendon himself, Hinchingbrooke made an advantageous marriage to Lady Anne Boyle. Ibid. viii. 190–1, 216, 498; ix. 28; Add. 75355, Clarendon to Burlington, 1 June 1667; Add. 75354, Lady Ranelagh to Burlington, 1, 7 June, 9 July 1667.

In November 1670, having just reached his majority, Hinchingbrooke was returned for the port of Dover in a contested by-election where he ran on his father’s interest and had the support of the ‘fanatics’ there as well. CSP Dom. 1670, pp. 494, 506. He inherited the earldom of Sandwich in May 1672 after his father died a hero’s death at the battle of Solebay. He took his seat in the Lords on 30 Oct. 1672, a day of prorogation. He then came to all but five of the meetings of the session of February–March 1673, when he was named to 12 committees.

The last day of this short session, 29 Mar. 1673, was also Sandwich’s last day in the House, as shortly after he obtained a pass to go to France to recover his health, which had never been robust. HMC Buccleuch, i. 319; CSP Dom. 1673, p. 550. He spent the rest of his life there and was consistently marked as ‘abroad’ at the many calls of the House in the following years. Nor did he ever register a proxy during his long years of foreign convalescence and his disengagement with the affairs of the House meant that his political views could never be determined by contemporaries. Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, marked him as ‘doubly worthy’ in the spring of 1677, while he was considered a ‘court lord’ in the weeks preceding the first Exclusion Parliament. Late in the reign of James II he was consistently classed as an opponent of the king’s attempt to repeal the Test Acts and penal laws. Although absent, his local standing in the east of England was still acknowledged. Early in 1681 he was appointed to replace his disgraced kinsman Robert Montagu, 3rd earl of Manchester, as lord lieutenant of Huntingdonshire, and in February 1685 he was made lord lieutenant of Cambridgeshire in the place of the deceased William Alington, Baron Alington. It was Robert Bruce, earl of Ailesbury, and later his son Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, who actually executed these two lieutenancies during the absence of Sandwich. CSP Dom. 1680–1, pp. 173, 204; 1685, pp. 34, 378; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 271.

In the spring of 1686 Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, confided to the English ambassador in France, Sir William Trumbull^‡, that he hoped that the departure of Sandwich’s French Protestant servants from his service, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, would convince Sandwich to return home, for ‘his living so long at Saintes in the manner he has done, in so profound a retirement, seems very strange’, especially when back in England ‘he has two very hopeful sons to whom he is quite a stranger’. HMC Downshire, i. 133, 157, 171. It was the elder of these two ‘hopeful’ sons, Edward Montagu, who was to succeed as the 3rd earl of Sandwich when Sandwich finally succumbed to his lingering illness sometime before 29 Nov. 1688. The earl had made ample provision for his second son, Richard, and his daughter, Elizabeth, to whom he assigned a £10,000 portion upon her marriage, in his will of December 1680. HMC Hastings, ii. 198.