BROWNE, Anthony Maria (1574-1629)

Montagu’s great-grandfather, Sir Anthony Browne^‡, came from a cadet branch of the Brownes of Betchworth in Surrey. Sir Anthony served as a household official, diplomat, soldier and privy councillor under Henry VIII and was rewarded with extensive former monastic lands in Sussex, including those of Battle Abbey. On the death of his half-brother, William Fitzwilliam^†, 1st earl of Southampton, he inherited the latter’s house at Cowdray, near Midhurst, which became the family seat. Despite benefiting from the Reformation, Sir Anthony was a conservative in religion, as was his son, also called Anthony, who was ennobled as Viscount Montagu by Queen Mary in 1554 and made a privy councillor three years later. The 1st viscount opposed the Elizabethan settlement, speaking against the Act of Supremacy in the Lords in 1558. Nevertheless, he remained loyal to Elizabeth, whom he served as an ambassador and local governor. Moreover, though he employed deprived Marian clergymen as his household chaplains, he continued to attend church and refused contact with Jesuits or seminary priests.9 HP Commons, 1509-58, i. 513-16, 518-21; Questier, 163, 169-78, 184-6.

The political and religious ambiguities with which the subject of this biography grew up are reflected in the story of his baptism. The ceremony was performed by his grandfather’s chaplain, Alban Langdale, a Marian priest removed as archdeacon of Chichester by Queen Elizabeth for failing to take the oath of supremacy, and yet the queen herself was one of the godparents.10 Questier, 194, n.68; Oxford DNB, xxxii. 471-2; C.E.B. Rye, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Godchildren’, The Gen. n.s. ii. 295. There is no evidence that Montagu ever received any formal higher education. Instead, he was taught by Langdale who, as a doctor of theology and a former Cambridge fellow, was more than capable of providing university level tuition for Montagu. This would explain why, in 1603, Montagu was described as having been brought up ‘to his study’.11 Questier, 237; Oxford DNB, xxxii. 472; SP14/1/7. Montagu’s royal connections were strengthened on his marriage, in early 1591, to the daughter of Thomas Sackville^*, 1st Lord Buckhurst (later 1st earl of Dorset and lord treasurer), a privy councillor and kinsman to the queen. Buckhurst was the dominant magnate in Elizabethan Sussex and, though of conservative religious views, had little sympathy with recusancy.12 Ven. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel ed. J.H. Pollen and W. MacMahon (Cath. Rec. Soc. xxi), 331.

As Montagu’s father predeceased the 1st viscount, it was Montagu himself who succeeded to the viscountcy when his grandfather died in 1592. As a minor he was not summoned to the Parliament which met the following year. Nevertheless, Montagu attended the Lords three times. The first occasion, the second day of the sitting, was to witness the Speaker of the Commons being presented to the queen. His presence in the House was presumably an example of the Lords’ practice to allow under-age peers to observe proceedings in the chamber, particularly on ‘solemn days’.13 C218/1/14; LJ, ii. 169b, 170a, 173a; D’Ewes, Jnls. of all the Parls. (1682), 11; Questier, 235, n. 10.

Montagu initially sought to conform, agreeing to allow his first son, born in June 1593, to be christened according to the rites of the Church of England. However, the child died on the day of his baptism, an event which Montagu appears to have interpreted as divine judgement for compromising his beliefs. Consequently, when a daughter was born the following year Montagu decided to have her baptized in secret by a Catholic priest. When this plan was thwarted by his father-in-law, in whose house the family were staying, he christened his daughter himself. Subsequently arrested and examined by the lord keeper and Archbishop [John] Whitgift^†, he now refused to conform to the established Church, while nevertheless proclaiming his loyalty to the English crown. He remained under restraint until 1600, and so was unable to attend the 1597 Parliament. Moreover, when the last Elizabethan Parliament was summoned in 1601, he was instructed by the Privy Council to stay away.14 Questier, 234-5, 240; Letters of Philip Gawdy ed. I.H. Jeayes, 85; HMC Hatfield, x. 109; APC, 1601-4, p. 221.

Accession of James I and the 1604 session

Montagu, eager to demonstrate his support for the accession of James in 1603, was subsequently reported by a Catholic tract to have celebrated the occasion by ‘largely casting money among the people’.15 Questier, 266; Petition Apologeticall, Presented to the Kinges Most Excellent Majesty, by the Lay Catholikes of Eng., in July Last (1604), 8. The meeting of the first Jacobean Parliament the following March finally enabled Montagu to take his seat in the upper House. He attended 43 of the 71 sittings (61 per cent) before the session was prorogued in July. He was excused on 5 May, on the grounds that he was ‘not well in health’, but he was, in fact, recorded as present on that and each subsequent sitting until 16 May.16 LJ, ii. 292a. His longest absence was between 28 May and 11 June inclusive, when he missed nine sittings. It may have been during this time that he appointed the crypto-Catholic, William Parker^*, 5th Lord Monteagle (subsequently 13th Lord Morley) as his proxy.17 Ibid. 263b. During the Parliament he stayed at Montagu House, his step-grandmother’s residence in Southwark.18 T.J. McCann, ‘“The Known Style of Dedication is Flattery”: Anthony Browne, 2nd Visct. Montague of Cowdray and his Suss. Flatterers’, Recusant Hist. xix. 399; Questier, 516.

Montagu was appointed to 12 of the 70 committees of the 1604 session, nine of them legislative. On two occasions he was instructed to confer with the Commons about the Union, and he was named to attend the king regarding the settlement of the Abergavenny peerage dispute, a matter of some interest to him as one of the claimants, Edward Neville^*, was a significant Sussex landowner.19 LJ, ii. 277b, 284a, 303b.

In the early days of the Parliament Montagu had occupied himself translating a hagiography of St Francis of Assisi, which probably heightened his Catholic piety.20 McCann, 399. As the session progressed Montagu probably became increasingly disillusioned with the Parliament. His first committee appointment, on 27 Mar., was to consider the bill to restore a fellow Catholic, Charles Paget, the younger son of William Paget^*, 1st Lord Paget. Although attainted for treason for his involvement in the Babington Plot in 1586, Paget had subsequently become a prominent opponent of the Spanish among the English Catholic exiles and had been allowed to return home on James’s accession in 1603. However, the bill for his restitution was abandoned after trenchant criticism from Anthony Rudd^*, bishop of St Davids. Montagu may have seen the defeat of the bill as a rejection of the loyalist elements in the Catholic community.21 LJ, ii. 267b; Oxford DNB, xlii. 341-4; Questier, 259-64; see ANTHONY RUDD.

A further cause for disillusionment concerned the bill to naturalize William and Thomas Copley, the sons of another Catholic exile, William Copley. Montagu was indirectly related to the Copleys and may have promoted the bill, as he was given charge of the committee list on 7 May. Certainly he enjoyed good relations with this family, as Anthony Copley, the brother of the elder William, had dedicated a verse allegory entitled A Fig for Fortune to him. In this work Anthony had proclaimed the loyalty of English Catholics and called for religious toleration. However, Anthony had been involved in the recent Bye Plot, an attempt to compel James I into granting toleration, and it is therefore perhaps not surprising that the bill never emerged from committee.22 LJ, ii. 293a; Questier, 260-1, 272; Oxford DNB, xiii. 342, 358-9.

By the time he was added to the committee to consider the bill for the better execution of the laws against Catholic clergy on 19 June, Montagu may have become convinced that his co-religionists could expect no good from Parliament.23 LJ, ii. 324b. On 23 June, the bill having been reported from committee, he evidently opposed a motion to engross the measure, without success. Two days later the bill returned for its final reading. Montagu must have realized that there was now little prospect of preventing it from being enacted. Nevertheless, as the Journal records, he proceeded to deliver a speech in which he not only declared ‘his open and earnest dissent from the bill’ but also proceeded to ‘inveigh against the whole state of religion now established in this realm’. Unfortunately, apart from a summary of its contents pinned to the Journal, only one complete version of this speech survives. It exists in copy form, in a manuscript collection compiled in 1608 and now in the Bodleian, concerning defences of the Catholic faith.24 Ibid. 328a; Bodl. Eng. th. b.2, p. 846. It is described as ‘sincerely (as near as could be) written out as it was … delivered’, but it is unclear how the compiler obtained the text. Its tone and content may be more moderate than the speech actually delivered by Montagu. According to the Journal, Montagu argued that ‘we had been misled to forsake the religion of our fathers, and to follow some light persons, of late time sprung up, that were of unsound doctrine and evil life’, whereas these views are not to be found in the Bodleian text, which merely compares Calvin and Luther unfavourably to the ‘doctors and saints’ of the Catholic Church.

Following a lengthy disquisition on his own inadequacies as a speaker, Montagu attacked the bill as ‘in every part full of severity’. He thought it arose either from a desire ‘to punish us [Catholics] without any further respect’ or from a desire to convert Catholics. He dismissed the first of these possible motives as ‘far unanswerable unto … your lordships’ noble minds’ and devoted most of the rest of his speech to arguing that it was both ‘unreasonable’ and ‘impossible’ for Catholics to be won over by persecution. However, he did not suggest that persecution was inherently wrong or counterproductive, merely that it would have no effect on his co-religionists because they were the true Christians; theirs was the faith ‘approved by holy scripture’ and was the form of Christianity originally introduced to Britain in Roman times. Moreover, in the past, persecution had only served to strengthen the ‘true’ Church. Montagu also responded to an unnamed supporter of the bill, who had evidently argued that the measure was necessary to prevent children from being educated as Catholics. Pointing to the widespread belief that Catholicism had increased since James’s accession, he observed that such growth could only have come about by the conversion of ‘persons of ripe’ years rather than of children, from which he concluded that it was pointless to discourage Catholic education.

Montagu proclaimed that Catholics ‘have ever borne ourselves most dutifully and loyally both to the late queen and to the king’s majesty that now is’. However, this statement was followed by a hurried repudiation of the Bye plotters, perhaps because his insistence on the allegiance of his co-religionists had drawn protests from his audience. He accused the plotters of having had ‘daily conversation … with our greatest persecutors’ and, doubtless playing on the alleged link between the Bye Plot and the Main Plot, and of the alleged irreligion of Sir Walter Ralegh^‡, he declared that Catholics had had a ‘very great suspicion’ that the plotters were guilty ‘not only of false dealing towards us but even of failing in the very point of religion’. He concluded with a prayer that the Lords would be ‘all united in one profession of that only true faith where only we have hope of salvation’. This suggests that his real hope was not toleration but the reversal of the Reformation.25 Bodl. Eng. th. b.2, pp. 845-7.

Unsurprisingly, Montagu’s speech caused uproar on the episcopal bench where, according to the Journal, four bishops promptly ‘answered all points’. They were followed by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton^*, subsequently 1st Viscount Brackley), who had reported the bill to the House two days earlier and who now asked the House ‘whether the suffering of such a speech might stand with their duty and allegiance unto his Majesty’. In the ensuing debate all but one speaker agreed Montagu’s speech to be ‘censure, animadversion and punishment’. The exception was Thomas Cecil^*, 2nd Lord Burghley (subsequently 1st earl of Exeter), who argued that Montagu’s aim had been to garner ‘glory’ in the Catholic community, and that Montagu would gladly be punished ‘to get more reputation among the papists’. This may not have been far from the truth, as Montagu can hardly have expected to persuade the Lords to reject the bill which was, indeed, promptly passed ‘by far the greater part of the House’. Alternatively, Montagu may have felt that it was his duty to speak according to his conscience, whatever the consequences. It was said that he had declared that ‘my honour, lands and life are dear but my soul dearer and I will never yield to this bill’. However, these words, though imputed to him, are not to be found in the Bodleian text. Consideration of the viscount’s punishment was deferred until the following day.26 LJ, ii. 328-b; SP14/8/83.

On 26 June an absent Montagu was ordered to be committed to the Fleet ‘until further order’.27 LJ, ii. 329b. However, four days later, an apology was tendered on his behalf, whereupon he was released and ordered to appear, on 2 July, to apologize in person.28 Ibid. 334b. On that day he announced to the Lords ‘how far it was, and ever should be, from him, to do anything out of any ill-disposition or meaning to offend them’, but noticeably failed to retract his speech. Nevertheless, he was allowed to resume his seat and was even appointed to a committee concerned with the estate bill of Edward Neville, by now restored as Lord Abergavenny.29 Ibid. 336a, 337a.

News of Montagu’s speech and his subsequent imprisonment quickly spread and, as Burghley had predicted, increased his reputation among his co-religionists. On 30 June it was reported that Montagu’s arrest was ‘much lamented’ by Catholics, ‘who affirm that he is worthy to be prayed for to the world’s end’.30 SP14/8/83. His burnished reputation may have induced him to intervene in the continuing debates about the organization of the Catholic Church in England. However, it was not until August 1605 that he wrote to the pope urging the pontiff to appoint a bishop to supervise the Church in England, a long standing objective of the secular clergy. The Jesuits, who opposed the restoration of episcopacy, managed to ensure that his letter was never presented.31 Questier, 341-2, 352.

On 7 Feb. 1605 Montagu attended the brief meeting to postpone the Parliament until the autumn, despite not being one of the commissioners for the prorogation. This was sufficiently unusual for it to be noted by the clerk in the Journal.32 LJ, ii. 349a, 350b. The reason for his journey to London was probably to present a petition to the commissioners for the office of the earl marshal, which he did four days later. In this petition Montagu complained that Sir Edward Montagu^* (subsequently 1st Lord Montagu) was using the coat of arms of John Neville^†, marquess of Montagu (c.1431-71), even though it was he himself who was the rightful heir to the arms, being descended from the marquess (which was probably why his grandfather had chosen the Montagu title). However, as Sir Edward pointed out, the viscount was not the marquess’ heir.33 Coll. of Arms, ms I.25, ff. 15-v. 16-17; Questier, 69-70.

The Gunpowder Plot and the oath of allegiance, 1605-11

On 28 Oct. Montagu submitted a pedigree to the commissioners for the office of the earl marshal which, he claimed, proved his right to the arms of the marquess of Montagu.34 Coll. of Arms, ms I.25, f. 18r-v. He left London the following day, probably to return to Cowdray, his Sussex home, although the next parliamentary session was scheduled to start only a week later. It is therefore unsurprising that his absence from Westminster when the Gunpowder Plot was discovered on 5 Nov. aroused suspicions that, like Monteagle, he had been forewarned of the conspiracy, especially as he was apparently regarded by the principal secretary of state, Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury, as the ‘head of the Catholics’.35 G. Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, ii. 121-3.

On 7 Nov. Montagu was committed to the custody of the London alderman, Sir Thomas Bennett. He claimed that he had left London because he had been hoping that Dorset, by now lord treasurer, would procure him leave of absence and that his step-grandmother had persuaded him that a rapid return to the metropolis would be ‘too painful for me’. Understandably, these excuses did not impress the Council, which dismissed them as ‘slight and false’. Moreover, he admitted that, while in London in late October, he had discussed the forthcoming session with the leading plotter, Robert Catesby, his friend and kinsman by marriage. He had informed Catesby that he hoped he would be excused attendance, whereupon the latter observed: ‘I think your lordship takes no great pleasure there’, to which Montagu assented. Montagu also admitted having employed Guy Fawkes as his servant in the 1590s. Consequently, despite denying all knowledge of the conspiracy, he was committed to the Tower on 15 November.36 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 38, 40; Goodman, ii. 118-24; SP14/17/62.

In December it was reported that Montagu had produced a new explanation for his absence at the start of the session ‘which carrieth some good show of reason’. This was that ‘he understood more violent courses [were] now intended to be taken’ in Parliament against Catholics ‘which he could not with his conscience pass over with silence’. The writer who reported this thought that Montagu would eventually be ‘got out of the briars’ by Dorset, and that therefore his arrest was ‘no great matter’.37 SP14/17/62. This was perceptive, for although Salisbury declared, in March 1606, that Montagu and two other Catholic peers would be tried in Star Chamber for their absence from Parliament on 5 Nov., Montagu was released the following August into Dorset’s custody after paying no more than £200 to the lieutenant of the Tower. The next month he was allowed to go to Cowdray, where he was confined to the house and grounds. He was not permitted to return to London until June 1608 (possibly to deal with the estate of the dowager Viscountess of Montagu who had died two months previously). Consequently, he was unable to attend the 1606-7 session of Parliament.38 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 295; Add. 11402, ff. 115-16, 141v; Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 90; Questier, 231.

Montagu did not attend Parliament in 1610 either. The death of his father-in-law, Dorset, in 1608 meant that he no longer had a powerful protector. Moreover, by the autumn of 1610 he had antagonized the king, both by allowing Montagu House, which he had inherited from his step-grandmother, to be used as a base for Catholic priests and also for becoming publically involved in the debates over the governance of the Catholic Church in England. In May 1611 he was summoned before the Privy Council, apparently at the behest of George Abbot^*, the recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury. Montagu refused to take the oath of allegiance, which had been formulated by the king after the Gunpowder Plot and required the taker to deny categorically that the pope had any secular power and was able to release subjects from their allegiance to the king. This was a dangerous position to adopt, as Parliament had legislated to empower the Council to tender the oath to any peer. Those who refused to take it were liable to be judged guilty of praemunire and might lose their estates. Fortunately for Montagu, the crypto-Catholic lord privy seal, Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton, intervened and Montagu was allowed to compound, paying £6,000 to the cash-strapped king in return for a pardon.39 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. ser. 5 xii), 88, 96, 109, 113-14; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 258; Questier, 359; SR, iv. 1162-4; SO3/5, unfol. (June 1611); CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 51.

It seems likely that, as a condition of Montagu’s pardon, Abbot secured the viscount’s undertaking to pass on information about Catholics abroad and keep in close touch with him. This would explain why, in June 1617, Montagu sent correspondence from members of his family to Abbot, including letters from his daughters who were nuns in Lisbon. It also helps to explain why, in December 1619, Montagu, then in poor health, reacted with alarm when he received contradictory reports about whether Abbot was expecting to see him in London in the immediate future.40 HMC 7th Rep. 673; Surr. Hist. Cent. 6729/10/32.

When Montagu was initially summoned before the Council, in May 1611, a Catholic source reported that malaria had rendered him too ill to travel.41 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 109 n.426. Montagu’s poor health was more than an excuse, for in April 1611, fearing that he was ‘in danger of death’, he attempted to settle his affairs by conveying property to feoffees, including his kinsman Robert Dormer^* (subsequently 1st Lord Dormer) and his brother-in-law, Sir Francis Englefield, so that the property might be sold to settle his debts, which came to £8,000, and raise £20,000 to provide dowries for his daughters. In July 1611 he conveyed a further manor and Montagu House to the feoffees to pay his composition fine, although, in the event, the sale of the manor alone raised the £6,000 required. However, haste and poor health meant that the terms of the trust were poorly drafted, resulting in subsequent litigation with the trustees. Montagu had provided that the residue of the trust (after his debts and portions were paid) should be made over to his sons rather than to himself. Consequently, when Montagu came into conflict with Englefield, the leading trustee, the latter was able to claim that he was not answerable to Montagu himself, but to Montagu’s sons.42 C78/533/3, 11; Harl. 6847, ff. 20v-1; The effect of the Viscount Montagues bill exhibited in Parliament (1621).

Later life, 1614-29

When Parliament met in 1614 Montagu once again failed to attend. He also seems not to have appointed a proxy. He was nevertheless present in the early stages of the 1621 Parliament, attending on 30 Jan. and 3 February. However, on 8 Feb., after the upper House agreed to observe its newly drafted Standing Orders, Montagu entered a protest, presumably because these same orders included a clause requiring all new peers to take the oath of allegiance.43 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 2; HMC Lords, n.s. x. 2. Two days later, at a call of the House, he was excused by his West Sussex neighbour and kinsman by marriage, Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, who stated that Montagu had leave of absence from the king. He appears not to have attended thereafter, despite the fact that his presence was recorded on 8 Dec. (presumably a clerical error). There is no evidence that he appointed a proxy.44 LJ, iii. 10a, 14b.

Montagu returned to Cowdray, where he promptly suffered a renewed attack of malaria; on 14 Mar. 1621 he complained that he was still too weak to travel. Sir Francis Englefield took advantage of his absence to prefer a bill in the Commons, which received its first reading on 22 Feb., concerning the 1611 trust. Montagu had claimed that Englefield had not made the payments for which the trust had been established, and so had secured a Chancery decree to transfer the properties to new trustees. Englefield’s bill ostensibly confirmed this decree but it also discharged its author of responsibility for all the money he had received while a trustee.45 SP14/120/20; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, i. 77; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/13, ff. 90-103. In response Montagu encouraged his friends to promote a cross bill on his behalf in the Commons. This measure, which received a first reading on 3 Mar., required Englefield to account for the money he had received.46 Nicholas, i. 117; Harl. 6847, ff. 20v-4. Englefield’s bill was given a second reading on 15 Mar., but though it was also committed it was never reported.47 CJ, i. 554a. The following day Montagu’s bill was also committed. It was reported on 22 Mar., and ordered to be engrossed, but the committee queried the legality of a £500 fine which Chancery had imposed on Englefield. Consequently, on 26 Mar., the Speaker wrote to Montagu asking him to allow Englefield to deduct this sum from the money he owed as a trustee.48 CD 1621, iv. 185; vi. 464-5. Montagu apparently replied that he ‘did refer himself to Parliament’. This was, evidently, found satisfactory and his bill received a third reading on 12 May.49 PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/22, f. 175; CD 1621, iv. 334.

Englefield, meanwhile, fought a stubborn rearguard action. He produced two printed broadsides, one defending his own bill and the other attacking Montagu’s. Furthermore, on 14 May he delivered to the Lords a petition asking for a hearing, even though Montagu’s bill had not yet reached the upper House. Englefield claimed that the ‘ground’ of Montagu’s bill was a Chancery decree ‘procured by bribes’, and indeed, during the impeachment proceedings against the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon^*, Viscount St Alban, it emerged that Montagu had given some £600 or £700 to a client of Bacon’s, accompanied with a message that he ‘would be further thankful if he could once get his quiet’.50 The effect of a Bill exhibited in Parliament by Sir Francis Englefield Barronet (1621); The effect of the Viscount Montagues bill exhibited in Parliament (1621); HMC 3rd Rep. 23; LJ, iii. 99b. Nevertheless, Montagu’s measure had a speedy passage through the upper House; it received a first reading on 28 May and was committed the day after. The committee included Richard Sackville^*, 3rd earl of Dorset, nephew to Montagu’s wife, and William Petre^*, 2nd Lord Petre, whose son Robert^†, the future 3rd Lord, had recently married Montagu’s daughter. The bill was reported on the 29th and was passed at third reading on the 30th. However, like all the other legislation of the third Jacobean Parliament aside from the subsidy bills, it was lost at the dissolution.51 LJ, iii. 136b, 139b, 140b, 142b.

Following these proceedings, Montagu largely disappears from view. However, in late 1623 Montagu provided shelter at Cowdray for William Bishop, who had recently been appointed the first bishop of the Catholic Church in England since the Reformation. At Cowdray the bishop administered the sacrament of confirmation to several hundred Catholics, including Montagu himself.52 Douay College Diaries ed. E.H. Burton and T.L. Williams (Cath. Rec. Soc. x), 403.

When Parliament met once more in 1624, Montagu again attended the preliminary stages.53 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, ff. 5-6. However, at a call of the House on 23 Feb. Arundel again signified that Montagu had the king’s leave to be absent.54 LJ, iii. 214b. It was widely reported that Montagu was one of several Catholic peers who had absented themselves after declining to take the oath of allegiance. On 5 Mar. the Venetian ambassador stated that these same peers had changed their minds and resumed their seats, but although Montagu was recorded as attending one further sitting, on 17 Mar., there is no evidence that he took the oath.55 ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 35; William Whiteway of Dorchester: his Diary 1618 to 1635 (Dorset Rec. Soc. xii), 61; CSP Ven. 1623-5, pp. 232, 242, 247.

Montagu was presumably eager to attend on 17 Mar. because that was the day his reintroduced bill was reported to the House, having been laid before the upper House on 6 March. The most significant difference between this bill and the 1621 measure was the inclusion of new trustees, namely Montagu’s first cousin, Henry Wriothesley^*, 3rd and 1st earl of Southampton, his wife’s nephew the earl of Dorset, and Lord Petre. Despite being named in the bill, Dorset was allowed to serve on the committee, but the same consideration was not extended to Petre. Also on the committee was John Paulet^*, subsequently 5th marquess of Winchester, who was then sitting by virtue of his father’s barony as Lord St John of Basing. St John’s deceased elder brother had been Montagu’s son-in-law and, indeed, one of the provisions in the bill was that the trustees were to pay St. John’s father £1,000 in lieu of the portion Sir Francis Englefield had failed to provide. Englefield, who had again introduced his own bill in the lower House only to see it fall at the first hurdle, protested to the Lords as he had in 1621, but the committee for Montagu’s bill found Englefield’s objections ‘but vain’ and the bill was judged fit to pass. It received a third reading two days later before being transmitted to the Commons, where it passed without amendments.56 CJ, i. 724a; LJ, iii. 248a, 254a-b, 266b, 269a, 274b, 405a-b; PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1623/21J1n48. On 7 Apr. a deed reciting the measure, which had not yet been enacted, was drawn up to assure payment of £1,000 to Winchester.57 W. Suss. RO, SAS-BA/75. The only other occasion Montagu appears in the records of the 1624 Parliament is in connection with a grant of privilege for one of his servants, who had been arrested.58 LJ, iii. 372a, 402b; Add. 40088, f. 72.

When the first Caroline Parliament was summoned in 1625 Montagu attended on 17 May, when the assembly was prorogued for a month. He also attended the first day of the session, on 18 June. Thereafter, however, he stayed away. Indeed, at the call of the House on 23 June, he was excused as having leave to be absent.59 Procs. 1625, p. 45. Although not explicitly named, Montagu was attacked in the upper House, on 4 July, by George Carleton^*, bishop of Chichester (in which diocese Cowdray lay), for allowing the Catholic bishop to officiate in his house two years previously.60 Ibid. 85; Questier, 401. It may have been with some satisfaction that Carleton received an order from the Privy Council the following December to confiscate Montagu’s arms, although the haul proved meagre.61 SP16/11/39.

In February 1626 Montagu suffered the indignity of being formally indicted for recusancy in London, despite having been promised in 1611 that he would not in future be ‘troubled for points of religion’.62 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 256; SP14/64/67. He failed to attend the coronation of Charles I on 2 Feb. and was also absent when the second Caroline Parliament convened four days later. Excused on grounds of ill health at the call of the House on 15 Feb., he was recorded, perhaps mistakenly, as being present on 1 Mar. but not subsequently. On 5 Apr. John Holles^*, 1st earl of Clare, reported that Montagu was among the absentees who had not sent their proxies.63 Manner of the Coronation of King Charles the First ed. C. Wordsworth (Henry Bradshaw Soc. ii); p. l; Procs. 1626, i. 49, 256. Following the dissolution, on 24 Nov., he paid £300 towards the Forced Loan.64 E401/1386, rot. 32.

In December 1627 a warrant was issued to draw up a pardon to Montagu for recusancy and also for harbouring Catholic priests. However, this seems to have run into problems as a further warrant had to be issued the following February.65 SO3/9, unfol. (Dec. 1627, Feb. 1628); CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 585. He failed to attend Parliament in 1628, when he granted his proxy to his kinsman, the crypto-Catholic, Richard Weston^*, Lord Weston (subsequently 1st earl of Portland). He was again recorded as ill at a call of the House on 22 Mar., but this may have been a polite fiction as, during this period, he was actively engaged in the approbation controversy, a debate within the Catholic community about the powers of the reconstituted episcopacy. Earlier that month he debated the issue with a Jesuit priest, and he subsequently wrote a long manuscript tract on the subject.66 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 26, 87; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 415; Questier, 442-62. During the Parliament Montagu was presented by the Commons as a recusant officeholder in Sussex, although the only public office he is known to have held was membership of commissions of the sewers, to which he had been last appointed in 1625.67 CD 1628, iii. 64; iv. 319.

Montagu failed to attend the 1629 session, when he was again recorded as sick.68 LJ, iv. 25b. In July, the Parliament having ended, he was granted a licence to travel and, in September, he visited the Roman Catholic seminary at Douai, where he made an extempore speech in Latin testifying to his support for the college and the Catholic Church. He subsequently went to Brussels, but had probably returned to England by the time he died on 23 Oct., as he was buried at Midhurst, four days after his death. Montagu’s will says little about his estate but eloquently testifies to his Catholic faith, as he invoked 16 saints by name, including Charles Borromeo, the counter-Reformation archbishop of Milan, who had only been canonized in 1610. He also asked to be buried in the habit of a Capuchin friar and bequeathed to his only surviving son, Francis^†, ‘the cross of gold which I usually wear about my neck having in it one piece of the holy cross’. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, there is no evidence that the will was ever proved. Instead, a grant of administration was made on 30 Apr. 1630 to Sir Henry Compton^‡, who had married Montagu’s niece. Nevertheless, it is possible that the will’s provision were implemented informally, as the executors named – Montagu’s son-in-law, Robert Petre, and his cousin, Thomas Arundell^†, later 2nd Lord Arundell of Wardour - were described as such in Montagu’s funeral certificate.69 SO3/9, unfol. (7 Jul. 1629); Douay College Diaries ed. E.H. Burton and T.L. Williams (Cath. Rec. Soc. x), 419; Questier, 467-70; Bigland, 21; W. Suss. RO, SAS-BA/74; PROB 6/13, f. 158.