Montagu was the eldest son of Sir Henry Montagu* (later 1st earl of Manchester), a wealthy and ambitious London lawyer who, in 1620, with the blessing of the royal favourite George Villiers*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, purchased for himself the title of Viscount Mandeville and the office of lord treasurer. In 1623, aged about 21, Montagu married Susan Hill, a distant cousin of Buckingham’s, in order to further his father’s ambition of becoming head of Chancery. However, their union lasted less than two years, as Susan died prematurely in January 1625. Following Susan’s death, Buckingham reassured Montagu of his continued favour, and that autumn he suggested that he remarry, taking as his new wife Anne Rich, one of the daughters of Robert Rich*, 2nd earl of Warwick. The proposed match was eminently suitable, and not merely because the young lady was ‘much commended for her good nature and graces’. Montagu had already earned himself the reputation of a spendthrift, and Anne’s father was almost as wealthy as Montagu’s. Moreover, their two families shared a similar outlook in matters of religion. Such a union would also help keep Montagu within Buckingham’s circle, as the duke was then on friendly terms with Warwick. However, in mid November Mandeville, who had been persuaded to surrender the treasurer’s staff in return for the less lucrative position of president of the Privy Council, was angry that Buckingham had recently appointed as lord keeper Sir Thomas Coventry* (later 1st Lord Coventry) rather than him. He was also annoyed that the duke had still not refunded him part of the purchase price for the office of lord treasurer. Far from warmly embracing Buckingham’s proposal for a match between Montagu and Warwick’s daughter, Mandeville accused the duke of failing to keep his promises and of doing little to advance the interests of his son.1 HMC Buccleuch, i. 262. A report from mid October that Montagu had already married Anne Rich was premature: Letters and Memorials of State ed. A. Collins, ii. 365. In order to placate the disgruntled lord president, the new king, Charles I, elevated Mandeville to the earldom of Manchester at the coronation in February 1626. At the same time, and probably for the same reason, he created Montagu a knight of the Bath.
The coronation was immediately followed by the 1626 Parliament. For much of this assembly Montagu, now styled Viscount Mandeville, served as the senior knight of the shire for Huntingdonshire, in which capacity he had also sat in the previous two assemblies. However, on 19 May Mandeville relinquished his Commons’ seat, having been summoned by writ in acceleration to the House of Lords.2 Procs. 1626, i. 541. This elevation was undoubtedly intended to help bolster support in the upper House for Buckingham, who was then facing impeachment, as two other men closely connected to the duke – Dudley Carleton* and Oliver St John*, Viscount Grandison [I] – were also given English peerages at around the same time (as Lord Carleton and Lord Tregoz respectively).3 Ibid. iv. 289; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas I, i. 106. However, Mandeville’s admission to the Lords may also have been intended as an expression of gratitude to his father, the earl of Manchester. On 16 May, just three days before Mandeville was summoned, Manchester successfully defended the right of Buckingham to continue sitting in the upper House after his enemies tried to sequester him.4 HENRY MONTAGU.
As convention required, Mandeville sat in the Lords in right of his father’s barony. Normally, therefore, he was referred to in the upper House as Lord Kimbolton rather than as Viscount Mandeville.5 For a rare exception, from July 1642, see LJ, v. 100. He was formally introduced to the Lords on 22 May, when his sponsors were his uncle Lord Montagu (Edward Montagu*) and fellow Buckingham client Lord Percy (Algernon Percy*, later 4th earl of Northumberland), who had himself only entered the Lords two months earlier.6 Procs. 1626, i. 540. Thereafter he attended assiduously, missing only the final day of the session, on 15 June. He made no recorded speeches, nor was he appointed to any committees.
Shortly after the dissolution, on 1 July 1626, Mandeville married Anne Rich, even though her father, the earl of Warwick, had supported the recent parliamentary attempt to impeach Buckingham. The duke evidently still wished the marriage to proceed. Indeed, this may help to explain why he did not strip Warwick of his office of lord lieutenant of Essex until September. Manchester, too, seems not to have opposed the wedding, as he bestowed a considerable part of his Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire estate on the couple.7 PROB 11/192, f. 373r-v. This is not entirely surprising, for Manchester gained not only a dowry of £6,000 from Warwick but also a promise to pay off Mandeville’s debts, which were considerable.8 Hunts. RO, dd/M28/1/1. The claim that Manchester disapproved and allowed his son only a slender income appears to be groundless: Oxford DNB, xxxviii. 703.
Following his marriage, Mandeville developed a warm friendship with Robert Sidney*, 2nd earl of Leicester. The two men were only distantly related - Leicester and Mandeville’s father were second cousins - but despite the remoteness of their connection Leicester described Mandeville as ‘brother’.9 M.V. Hay, Life of Robert Sidney, 247; HMC 8th Rep. II, 55. During the first three months of 1628, Mandeville regularly dined with Leicester at the latter’s lodgings in Essex House, on the Strand. On two of these occasions (28 Jan. and 2nd Feb.) his father-in-law, Warwick, was also present.10 Kent Hist. and Lib. Centre, U1475/A28/1, unfol. How far these dinners helped to shape Mandeville’s political outlook is unknown. However, Leicester, like Warwick, did not count himself among Buckingham’s supporters, and may even have opposed the duke in Parliament in 1628. Mandeville himself never openly criticized Buckingham in the Lords, as to have done so would have put him at loggerheads with his father. However, his pattern of attendance during the 1628 session, which opened on 17 Mar., speaks volumes. He sat continuously until 25 Apr., and fairly regularly during May, but in June, when the parliamentary attack on Buckingham was revived, he was absent for all but one of 21 sittings, suggesting an unwillingness to defend the duke.
Although Mandeville regularly attended the House before the end of May, he played little recorded part in its proceedings. On 20 Mar. he helped to introduce to the Lords Warwick’s half-brother Lord Mountjoy (Mountjoy Blount*, later 1st earl of Newport), and on 3 May he was appointed to help consider a bill on fen drainage, in which measure his family was certainly interested. His only other committees were to consider a proposal for holding a general fast and a bill regarding the tenants of Bromfield and Yale, in Denbighshire.11 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 74, 78, 120, 371. For the Montagu interest in fen drainage, see Hunts. RO, D/DM28/1/40. He made no recorded speeches.
Mandeville played an even less conspicuous part in the Parliament’s short-lived second session, which met in January 1629. Although he missed just five sittings, he was appointed to only one committee, on a bill regarding the crown’s revenues, and is not known to have addressed the House. However, he evidently sympathized with the complaint of many of his fellow peers, raised in mid February by Lord Fauconberg (Thomas Belasyse*, later 1st Viscount Fauconberg), against the practice of allowing the English holders of Irish and Scottish viscountcies precedence on local commissions over English barons. This is because, shortly after the dissolution, at a service preached in Westminster Abbey on 22 Mar., he and several other English peers pressed forward in order to prevent an Irish peer, Viscount Monson (Sir William Monson‡), from taking a seat higher than them. Monson was so angry at being jostled aside that he challenged Mandeville to a duel. However, when Mandeville turned up at Lambeth at the appointed hour, it was in the company of his father-in-law, Warwick, who addressed Monson with such kindness and familiarity that the latter was prevailed upon to withdraw his challenge.12 C115/99/7241.
In 1633 Mandeville’s father bemoaned the fact that Warwick had done nothing to pay off his son’s enormous debts.13 Hunts. RO, dd/M28/1/1. Despite this failure, Mandeville remained on close terms with Warwick, whom he seems to have regarded as an alternative father figure. In 1634 he even christened his eldest son Robert† (later 3rd earl of Manchester) after Warwick, rather than Henry, his father’s name. Two years later, Mandeville was given by Warwick’s cousin and man of business, Sir Nathaniel Rich‡, half the latter’s shares in the Providence Island Company, of which organization Warwick was a leading member. On his death later that same year, Rich, who never married, left Mandeville his entire fortune, including his remaining shares in the Providence Island Company and all his lands in Virginia and Somers Island (modern Bermuda).14 J. Adamson, Noble Revolt, 29; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 75.
These new possessions gave Mandeville a share in the tobacco trade. They also made him a slave owner. Mandeville seems to have been untroubled by this for, like his father-in-law Warwick, he regarded negroes as commodities, to be bought and sold.15 CSP Dom. 1574-1660, p. 275. When, in May 1638, one of his colonial managers suggested that he might free his negro slaves, he replied that ‘I can see no reason why they should deserve freedom from their service’. However, in order to avoid seeming inhumane, he added that he hoped ‘that you do not over-use them with intemperate labour, which, as they be men, ought to be avoided’.16 Add. 63854B, f. 242. Whether Mandeville made a profit from any of his colonial ventures is unknown, but like Warwick he was slow to risk his money: in 1639 both men owed the Providence Island Company more than £2,000.17 CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 290.
Mandeville was entrusted with the day-to-day management of the family estates by his father, who was too busy with government business to do more than issue letters of instruction to his son.18 Hunts. RO, D/DM28/1/40; Acc. 2091/474. However, for most of the 1630s Mandeville may have tried to keep his father, one of the central pillars of the Caroline regime, at arm’s length. It is certainly noticeable that in 1638 he was living at Leicester’s lodgings in Essex House rather than at his father’s house in Canon Row.19 CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 162. However, the outbreak of violent disturbances over the crown’s attempt to impose the English Prayer Book on the Scots led to a clash between father and son. Early in 1639, Mandeville, who secretly sympathized with the Covenanters (and who had recently employed as his chaplain the radical preacher Jeremiah Burroughes), expressed reluctance to attend the king in person at York, whereupon he was threatened with disinheritance by Manchester. Faced with the loss of his birth-right, Mandeville grudgingly gave in, but only on condition that his father provided him with the wherewithal to equip himself, which stratagem may have got him off the hook.20 Adamson, 540; HMC 8th Rep. II, 55; E. Cope, Life of a Public Man, 168 and 168n. For evidence that Mandeville did not go, see Hunts. RO, Acc. 2091/460.
Over the course of the next few years, though, it became clear to all that Mandeville was one of the Caroline regime’s chief critics. In August 1640 he was one of the signatories of the Petition of Twelve Peers, which called upon Charles to summon another Parliament, and during the early stages of the Long Parliament he helped lead the opposition to the king’s chief minister, Thomas Wentworth*, earl of Strafford. Although taken into government in February 1641, he remained distrusted by the king, who attempted to arrest him in Parliament in January 1642, along with the Five Members. During the ensuing civil war, Mandeville, who inherited his father’s earldom in November 1642, emerged as one of the leaders of the parliamentarian cause, serving as Speaker of the House of Lords until shortly before its abolition, and being appointed commander of the army of the eastern association in 1643. However, he was eclipsed following the king’s execution, and only re-emerged from obscurity at the Restoration, when he was appointed lord chamberlain. He died in 1671, and was buried in the parish church at Kimbolton, his family’s seat principal country seat. He was succeeded in his titles by his eldest son Robert.