was created Baron Montagu of Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, and Viscount Mandeville (19 Dec.)
Mandeville was a member of the committee of lords and commons which sat in the Painted Chamber to confer on Bacon's case (19 March 1620-1), and one of the commissioners of the great seal in the interval (1 May-10 July) between the disgrace of the chancellor and its delivery to his successor, Lord-keeper Williams. At Buckingham's instance he resigned the lord-treasurership, to make way for Lord Cranfield, in the following September [see Cranfield, Lionel, Earl of Middlesex], and was sworn president of the council, upon which Bacon punningly remarked that, as the king had made a strange example of him, so he had made a strange precedent (president) of Mandeville.
In 1624 Mandeville was appointed master of the court of wards (21 May), and placed at the head of the Virginia commission (15 June). By Charles I he was continued in office as lord president, and created Earl of Manchester 5 Feb. 1625-6. He so far sympathised with those who refused to subscribe the forced loan of 1626-7, though himself one of the commissioners for raising it, as to procure their enlargement from the Gatehouse during the summer. In 1628 he sat on two commissions nominated the same day (29 Feb.)—one to treat with the Dutch ambassadors, the other to devise ways and means of raising money, known as the commission of excise, and soon afterwards dissolved in deference to the remonstrances of the commons. On 30 June he was made lord privy seal. As lord-lieutenant of Huntingdonshire he was commissioned to take compositions in lieu of compulsory knighthood within the county, and among others took in 1631 that of Oliver Cromwell, whose quarrel with the newly elected mayor and recorder of Huntingdon he had composed the preceding year.
Manchester was one of the most assiduous members of the court of Star-chamber, and equally resolute in enforcing the law against puritan and papist. In 1634 he was placed on the legislative council for the colonies (28 April). In 1635 he was made a commissioner of the treasury (15 March), and on 6 April placed on the committee for trade.
Manchester was one of Charles's most trusted advisers and loyal adherents. Though far from wealthy for his station, he subscribed, in 1639, 4,000l. for the public service, and in the following year exhausted all his eloquence in endeavouring to raise a loan of 200,000l. in the city of London. The aldermen, however, were very shy, and he only succeeded in obtaining a fourth of the amount. The same year he sat on a special commission, appointed 20 May, to collect arrears of ship-money, and on the commission of peace and safety, in which the executive was vested on the king's departure for the north (12 Sept.) On 9 Aug. 1641 he was appointed one of the guardians of the realm during the king's absence in Scotland, and one of the commissioners for giving the royal assent to bills. During part of May 1642 he acted as speaker of the House of Lords. He died on 7 Nov. following, and was buried at Kimbolton. Besides Kimbolton, Manchester held, by royal grant of 1631, the adjacent estate of Naybridge Park in fee farm. He had also a villa at Totteridge, Hertfordshire. His town house was in Aldersgate Street. Though hardly in the front rank, either as a lawyer or as a statesman, Manchester was a man of high and various ability and untarnished honour. Clarendon justly praises his great 'industry and sagacity,' his 'integrity and zeal to the protestant religion as it was established by law,' and his 'unquestionable loyalty.' He is the subject of a somewhat ponderous elegy in Glapthorne's 'Whitehall,' 1643. He married thrice: first, Catherine, daughter of Sir William Spencer of Yarnton, Oxfordshire; secondly, in 1613, Anne, daughter of William Wincot of Langham, Suffolk, and relict of Sir Leonard Haliday, lord mayor of London in 1606; thirdly, on 26 April 1620, Margaret, daughter of John Crouch of Cornbury, Hertfordshire, and relict of John Hare, clerk of the court of wards, who survived him, and died in 1653. By his first wife he had issue four sons Edward, who succeeded him as Earl of Manchester [q. v.], Walter [q. v.], who became a Roman catholic and abbot of Pontoise; James of Lackham, ancestor of the Montagus of Wiltshire [see Montagu, John, 1719-1795]; and Henry, master of St. Catherine's Hospital, near the Tower, London and three daughters. By his second wife he had no issue; by his third he had two sons, George, father of Sir James [q. v.] and of Charles Montagu, earl of Halifax [q. v.], and Sidney, who died in infancy, also two daughters, the second of whom, Susannah, married, 14 Dec. 1637, George Brydges, sixth lord Chandos.
Manchester is the author of a piece of devout moralising entitled 'Contemplatio Mortis et Immortalitatis,' published anonymously in 1631, London, 12mo; reprinted under the title 'Manchester al Mondo. Contemplatio Mortis et Immortalitatis,' 1633, 12mo; 3rd edit., much enlarged, 1635, 12mo; other editions, 1639, 1642, 1676, 1688, 1690,
