Diary of the times of Charles II/Volume 1/Mr. Montague to Mr. Sidney, August 11

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Diary of the times of Charles II
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Mr. Montague to Mr. Sidney, August 11 by Ralph Montagu

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2609380Diary of the times of Charles II — Mr. Montague to Mr. Sidney, August 11Ralph Montagu

MR. MONTAGUE^[1] TO MR. SIDNEY.

London, August 11th, — 79.

You are, I presume, so much taken up with politics, that a letter from a man that is out of them, and that is in town when the Court is at Windsor, cannot be of much use to you. My wife is well brought to bed of a son, and I am going into the country to be chosen if I can of the new parliament where your brother Algernon is already chosen, but upon a double return. So that I shall have an opportunity of shewing my respect to him when his election comes to be disputed.^[2] The King, when he heard he was elected, said he did

↑ Ralph Montague, afterwards created Duke of Montague, by Queen Anne. Swift says of him, that he was " as arrant a knave as any in his time," and certainly there are some well known passages in his life, which, little as Swift is to be trusted in the characters he draws of his contemporaries, prove that he was not far wrong in his estimate of Mr. Montague.
Montague had been Ambassador at Paris, an employment for which, to judge from a note of Lord Dartmouth's in Burnet's History, he was indebted more to the partiality and influence of the fair sex than to his own merits. "Montague told Sir William Temple, he designed to go Ambassador to France. Sir William asked how that could be, for he knew the King did not love him, and the Duke hated him. 'That's true,' said be, 'but they shall do as if they loved me.' Which, Sir William told, he soon brought about, as he supposed by means of the ladies, who were always his best friends for some secret perfections that were hid from the rest of the world." If he owed this appointment to woman's love, he lost it through woman's jealousy. When he was at Paris he had been very intimate with the Duchess of Cleveland, and there are several letters in this collection written by him to Sidney in 1678, in each of which he alludes to her. In May in that year, he writes thus from Paris: "I received yours by John Hill. I am glad to hear my Lady Cleveland looked so well. I do not wonder at it—I will always lay on her side against everybody—I am a little scandalized you have been but once to see her—pray make your court oftener for my sake, for no man can be more obliged to another than I am to her on all occasions, and tell her I say so, and, as my Lord Berkeley says, give her a pat from me. If you keep your word to come in June, I fancy you will come together, and I shall not be ill pleased to see the two people in the world of both sexes I love and esteem the most." She did return to Paris in June, and found him engaged in a new intrigue with her own daughter. Lady Sussex. Furious at this, she betrayed a secret political intrigue of his to the King, which lost him for ever the favour of his master. Burnet gives this account of it. "The King had ordered Montague, his late Ambassador at Paris, in the year 1678, to find out an astrologer, of whom it was no wonder he had a good opinion, for he had long before his restoration foretold that he should enter London on the 29th of May, 1660. He was yet alive, and Montague found him out, and saw that he was capable of being corrupted, so he resolved to prompt him to send the King such hints as could serve his own ends; and he was so bewitched with the Duchess of Cleveland, that he trusted her with this secret. She, growing jealous of a new amour, took all the ways she could to ruin him, reserving this of the astrologer for her last shift; and by it she compassed her ends. For Montague was entirely lost upon it with the King, and came over without being recalled." Among other passages in the letter which the Duchess of Cleveland wrote to Charles, and which is full of specimens of the "furens quid fœmina possit," is this:—"He (Montague) has neither conscience nor honour, and has several times told me that in his heart he despised you and your brother, and for his part he wished with all his heart, that the parliament would send you both to travel, for you were a dull governable fool, and the Duke a wilful fool. So that it were yet better to have you than him; but that you always chose a greater beast than yourself to govern you,"
On his return to England, he became one of the most prominent of the popular party; he quarrelled with Lord Danby, whose secret treaty of peace with Louis, which he bad himself negotiated, he betrayed to the Commons, and was the cause of that minister being impeached. If he succeeded in ruining him, he was to receive from Louis no less a sum than 100,000 crowns; and we find from Barillon's letters that 50,000 were actually paid to him.
Montague took a leading part in furthering the Bill of Exclusion; and when the tide turned in favour of the King and the Duke of York, he thought it best to betake himself to his old quarters at Paris, where Burnet fell in with him in 1685. With William's success his star again was in the ascendant, and in 1689 he was created Earl of Montague. In 1694, we find him applying to the King for a dukedom, and urging his pretensions in this strain. "I did not think it reasonable to ask the being put over the Duke of Shrewsbury's head, but now. Sir, that you have given him that rank, which the greatness of his family and personal merit has deserved, I may, by your Majesty's grace and favour, pretend to the same dignity as well as any of the families you have promoted, being myself the head of a family that many years ago had great honours and dignities, when I am sure these had none, and we having lost them by the civil wars between York and Lancaster, I am now below the younger branches, my Lord Manchester, and my Lord Sandwich. I have to add to my pretention, the having married the Duke of Newcastle's eldest daughter, and it has been the practise of all your predecessors, whenever they were so gracious as to keep up the honour of a family by the female line, to bestow it upon those who married the eldest, without there were some personal prejudice to the person who had that claim. I may add. Sir, another pretension, which is the same for which you have given a Dukedom to the Bedford family, the having been one of the first, and held out to the last in that cause which, for the happiness of England, brought you to the crown. I hope it will not be thought a less merit to be alive and ready on all occasions to venture all again for your service, than if I had lost my head when my Lord Russel did."
The claim thus advanced on the ground of his marriage with the eldest daughter of the Duke of Newcastle was a bold one. This lady, who was his second wife, was the widow of the Duke of Albemarle, and possessed immense riches by marriage and inheritance. Her head was completely turned, and she declared she would give her hand only to a sovereign Prince. Montague wooed and won her in the character of the Emperor of China, and he kept her in a sort of confinement in Montague House, where she was always served upon the knee as Empress of China.
William refused his request, but he obtained his object under his successor, by whom he was created Duke of Montague, and Viscount Monthermer. He died at Montague House, in 1709, having, according to Collins, lived with as great a splendour and as much magnificence as any man in Great Britain.—Burnet, Harris's Lives (Appendix.) Mrs. Jameson's Beauties of the Court of Charles II.
↑ This respect, as he calls it, so promptly ofi«red and apparently without reference to the merits of the case, of which we have heard something in later days, was unavailing. Algernon Sidney's return for Guildford was found not to be good.

[p67-1] Ralph Montague, afterwards created Duke of Montague, by Queen Anne. Swift says of him, that he was " as arrant a knave as any in his time," and certainly there are some well known passages in his life, which, little as Swift is to be trusted in the characters he draws of his contemporaries, prove that he was not far wrong in his estimate of Mr. Montague.
Montague had been Ambassador at Paris, an employment for which, to judge from a note of Lord Dartmouth's in Burnet's History, he was indebted more to the partiality and influence of the fair sex than to his own merits. "Montague told Sir William Temple, he designed to go Ambassador to France. Sir William asked how that could be, for he knew the King did not love him, and the Duke hated him. 'That's true,' said be, 'but they shall do as if they loved me.' Which, Sir William told, he soon brought about, as he supposed by means of the ladies, who were always his best friends for some secret perfections that were hid from the rest of the world." If he owed this appointment to woman's love, he lost it through woman's jealousy. When he was at Paris he had been very intimate with the Duchess of Cleveland, and there are several letters in this collection written by him to Sidney in 1678, in each of which he alludes to her. In May in that year, he writes thus from Paris: "I received yours by John Hill. I am glad to hear my Lady Cleveland looked so well. I do not wonder at it—I will always lay on her side against everybody—I am a little scandalized you have been but once to see her—pray make your court oftener for my sake, for no man can be more obliged to another than I am to her on all occasions, and tell her I say so, and, as my Lord Berkeley says, give her a pat from me. If you keep your word to come in June, I fancy you will come together, and I shall not be ill pleased to see the two people in the world of both sexes I love and esteem the most." She did return to Paris in June, and found him engaged in a new intrigue with her own daughter. Lady Sussex. Furious at this, she betrayed a secret political intrigue of his to the King, which lost him for ever the favour of his master. Burnet gives this account of it. "The King had ordered Montague, his late Ambassador at Paris, in the year 1678, to find out an astrologer, of whom it was no wonder he had a good opinion, for he had long before his restoration foretold that he should enter London on the 29th of May, 1660. He was yet alive, and Montague found him out, and saw that he was capable of being corrupted, so he resolved to prompt him to send the King such hints as could serve his own ends; and he was so bewitched with the Duchess of Cleveland, that he trusted her with this secret. She, growing jealous of a new amour, took all the ways she could to ruin him, reserving this of the astrologer for her last shift; and by it she compassed her ends. For Montague was entirely lost upon it with the King, and came over without being recalled." Among other passages in the letter which the Duchess of Cleveland wrote to Charles, and which is full of specimens of the "furens quid fœmina possit," is this:—"He (Montague) has neither conscience nor honour, and has several times told me that in his heart he despised you and your brother, and for his part he wished with all his heart, that the parliament would send you both to travel, for you were a dull governable fool, and the Duke a wilful fool. So that it were yet better to have you than him; but that you always chose a greater beast than yourself to govern you,"
On his return to England, he became one of the most prominent of the popular party; he quarrelled with Lord Danby, whose secret treaty of peace with Louis, which he bad himself negotiated, he betrayed to the Commons, and was the cause of that minister being impeached. If he succeeded in ruining him, he was to receive from Louis no less a sum than 100,000 crowns; and we find from Barillon's letters that 50,000 were actually paid to him.
Montague took a leading part in furthering the Bill of Exclusion; and when the tide turned in favour of the King and the Duke of York, he thought it best to betake himself to his old quarters at Paris, where Burnet fell in with him in 1685. With William's success his star again was in the ascendant, and in 1689 he was created Earl of Montague. In 1694, we find him applying to the King for a dukedom, and urging his pretensions in this strain. "I did not think it reasonable to ask the being put over the Duke of Shrewsbury's head, but now. Sir, that you have given him that rank, which the greatness of his family and personal merit has deserved, I may, by your Majesty's grace and favour, pretend to the same dignity as well as any of the families you have promoted, being myself the head of a family that many years ago had great honours and dignities, when I am sure these had none, and we having lost them by the civil wars between York and Lancaster, I am now below the younger branches, my Lord Manchester, and my Lord Sandwich. I have to add to my pretention, the having married the Duke of Newcastle's eldest daughter, and it has been the practise of all your predecessors, whenever they were so gracious as to keep up the honour of a family by the female line, to bestow it upon those who married the eldest, without there were some personal prejudice to the person who had that claim. I may add. Sir, another pretension, which is the same for which you have given a Dukedom to the Bedford family, the having been one of the first, and held out to the last in that cause which, for the happiness of England, brought you to the crown. I hope it will not be thought a less merit to be alive and ready on all occasions to venture all again for your service, than if I had lost my head when my Lord Russel did."
The claim thus advanced on the ground of his marriage with the eldest daughter of the Duke of Newcastle was a bold one. This lady, who was his second wife, was the widow of the Duke of Albemarle, and possessed immense riches by marriage and inheritance. Her head was completely turned, and she declared she would give her hand only to a sovereign Prince. Montague wooed and won her in the character of the Emperor of China, and he kept her in a sort of confinement in Montague House, where she was always served upon the knee as Empress of China.
William refused his request, but he obtained his object under his successor, by whom he was created Duke of Montague, and Viscount Monthermer. He died at Montague House, in 1709, having, according to Collins, lived with as great a splendour and as much magnificence as any man in Great Britain.—Burnet, Harris's Lives (Appendix.) Mrs. Jameson's Beauties of the Court of Charles II.

[2] This respect, as he calls it, so promptly ofi«red and apparently without reference to the merits of the case, of which we have heard something in later days, was unavailing. Algernon Sidney's return for Guildford was found not to be good.

[1]

[2]