Ralph, Duke of Montagu
By RILEY.
Three-quarter Length.
(Curled Wig. Loose Gown of Orange Silk.)
Born, ——. Died, 1708. The only surviving son of Edward, second Lord Montagu of Boughton, by Anne, daughter of Sir Ralph Winwood. He was educated at Westminster and on the death of his elder brother succeeded him as Master of the Horse to Queen Catherine, Consort of Charles II. He was sent as Ambassador to Paris, in 1669, for which office, says a contemporary, he was more indebted to the partiality of the fair sex, than to his own merits. He told Sir William Temple he was resolved to become Ambassador in France, and Sir William asked him on what he founded his hopes, as neither the King nor the Duke of York were attached to him. “They shall act” said Montagu, “as if they were;” upon which Sir William Temple remarks that his appointment was brought about by the favour of the ladies, who were always his best friends, for some perfection the rest of the world did not discover.
He was famous when in France, for the state in which he lived. “He entered Paris,” (says Collins) “with a more than common appearance, having seventy-four pages and footmen in rich liveries, twelve led horses with their furniture, twenty-four gentlemen on horseback, and eighteen English noblemen and gentlemen of quality in four rich coaches with eight horses each, and two chariots with six, made as costly as art could contrive.” The King and the Duke of Orleans received him with great honour, and he was entertained both at St. Cloud and Versailles, the fountains of which played in his honour; and it was here he imbibed a taste for building and laying out gardens, which he afterwards indulged to a great extent. The beautiful and youthful Countess of Northumberland, who had lately become a widow, was residing in Paris, and as we mention in the notice of her life, Montagu became her suitor, and eventually her husband. They were married privately in England in 1673. After his marriage he became a Privy Councillor and Master of the Great Wardrobe, an office he bought of the Earl of Sandwich. He busied himself in building on a magnificent scale, and found his wife’s money most useful to him in carrying out his plans.
Although already rather in disrepute at Court, King Charles II. did not disdain to employ Montagu in 1678 on a new, and in every sense of the word, extraordinary mission to Paris. At that time there resided in the French capital, an astrologer who had gained great credit by predicting, not only the restoration of the English Monarch, but the exact date, May 29, 1660, of his return to England, and that some time before it actually happened. Charles, in consequence, had the firmest belief in the wise man’s auguries, and he despatched Montagu on an errand to ask his advice and predictions on some subject of political importance. The Envoy-extraordinary sounded the Necromancer, and finding the black art did not blind its professor to self-interest, the King’s messenger offered the wise man a large bribe to shape his predictions according to his (Montagu’s) directions; then, with an imprudence which was inconsistent with his previous cunning, he went off to the Duchess of Cleveland and confided his secret to her. But Barbara was angry with her former admirer, and jealous of his admiration for her own daughter, and she resolved to be revenged. Accordingly she wrote to the King and told him the whole story. “Montagu,” she says, “has neither conscience nor honour; he has told me several times he despises you in his heart, and that he wishes the Parliament would send you and your brother to travel, for you are a dull, ungovernable fool, and he is a wilful fool.” This version of the story is taken from Algernon Sidney’s correspondence.
In consequence of this letter Montagu was recalled, and found himself but coldly received at Court, and all hopes of a place under Government were at an end. The ex-Plenipotentiary now threw himself into all manner of contending intrigues of a political nature. He was accused of receiving a large bribe from Louis XIV. to compass the impeachment and ruin of Lord Danby (Treasurer) who was very obnoxious to the French Government, and an enemy to the Roman Catholics; yet at the same time he took a prominent position in the popular party. He was said to have been instrumental in bringing over Louise de la Quérouaille, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth, and to have endeavoured to persuade her to use her influence with the King to exclude his brother from the succession. Finally his vote for the exclusion bill rendered him so obnoxious at Court, that he thought it best to depart once more to Paris with his wife and children. Hence he was summoned by a sad catastrophe, he had lent his magnificent house in Bloomsbury to the Earl of Devonshire, whose servant, in airing one of the rooms, set fire to it, and the “noble mansion” was burned to the ground. The conflagration was witnessed by Lady Rachel Russell, who says: “I heard a great noise in the square, and sent a servant to know what it was, and they brought me word Montagu House was in flames. My boy awaked and said he was nearly stifled, but being told the cause, would see it, and so was satisfied, and accepted a strange bed-fellow, for the nurse brought Lady Devonshire’s youngest boy, wrapped up in a blanket.” The loss was computed at £30,000; but Montagu rebuilt it on a more magnificent scale. Collins says: “It is not exceeded in London.”
Under William III. Montagu’s star was once more in the ascendant; he being one of the Lords who invited over the Prince of Orange. In 1689 he was created Viscount Monthermer and Earl of Montagu, and attended their Majesties’ coronation in his new dignity. In 1690, while engaged in beautifying and laying out Boughton, his excellent wife, who called herself Countess Montagu, died, but he soon gave her a successor. The new made Earl was not content with his coronet, and coveted the “strawberry leaves.” He applied to the King for a dukedom, mentioning among many other cogent reasons: “I am now below the younger branches of my family, my Lord Manchester and my Lord Sandwich;” also that he had taken to his second wife, the daughter of the Duke of Newcastle; and above all that he had been first and last to advocate the cause of William. “I hope it will not be to my disadvantage that I am alive, and ready to do so again, instead of having lost my head with Lord William Russell.” The King refused the dukedom, but showed Lord Montagu much favour, and was his visitor at Boughton, in Northamptonshire where the Court was sumptuously entertained.
Collins says: “My Lord was content with his fortune, and would accept no office save the one he had bought.” Of this he had been unlawfully deprived by James II., who bestowed it on Lord Preston. My Lord Montagu thought himself bound in honour to bring Preston to account, and when the office was restored to him and considerable damages awarded, he was so considerate of Lord Preston’s ill circumstances that he generously forgave him not only the damages, but the costs of the suit.
Queen Anne bestowed upon him the coveted dukedom; in the fourth year of her reign she created him Marquis of Monthermer, and Duke of Montagu. His first wife died in 1690; when he lost no time in soliciting the hand of the relict of Christopher Monk, second Duke of Albemarle, and daughter and sole heiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. He does not appear to have been so disinterested in his views where money was concerned as Collins would have us believe; since this lady, in spite of her enormous wealth, was a confirmed lunatic, and an obstacle to their union existed in the fact that she had announced her resolution of wedding no one but a sovereign. Montagu was accordingly presented to her as the Emperor of China, and after a short period of eccentric wooing they were married. Until her death the poor maniac was addressed as Empress of China, and served on the bended knee. Lord Ross wished to marry her, and when the Duke prevailed in his suit wrote the following lines:—
“Insulting Rival, never boast
Thy conquest lately won;
No wonder if her heart was lost,
Her senses first were gone.
From one that’s under Bedlam’s laws
What glory can be had?
For love indeed was not the cause,
It proves that she was mad.”
She survived her husband twenty-six years, and died at Newcastle House in Clerkenwell, being interred in Westminster Abbey, as became her Imperial dignity.
Ralph, Duke of Montagu was, as his picture shows, of a middle height, inclining to fat, and of a dark complexion. He was a man of pleasure, and self-indulgence, but of refined taste in architecture, and his gardens at Boughton were world famed. On one occasion he was showing them to the Duke of Marlborough, who said he believed the water-works were the finest in the world. “They are not to be compared,” replied the courteous host, “to your Grace’s fireworks.” St. Evremond, who was a constant visitor at Boughton and in London, and who met the Duke frequently at the Duchesse de Mazarin’s little salon in Chelsea, was a pensioner on his bounty, and is never tired of extolling his hospitality and generosity, also the charms of the Saturday and Wednesday receptions, at Montagu House.
“On admire avec raison
Votre superbe maison,
A tous étrangers ouverte;
Les jets d’eau de Boughton,
Les meubles de Ditton, etc.”
He says the cascade at Boughton, though smaller than the one at Versailles, is more beautiful. The old gourmet is never tired of praising the good living and extolling the comestibles that the Duke had sent him, and he says: “J’ai été à Boughton voir milord, la bonne compagnie, l’érudition, les perdreaux, les truffes;” in fact all that had charms for him in the absence of the Duchesse de Mazarin herself, to whom he writes. The two men met frequently at the house of the beautiful Hortense, one of whose most fervent admirers was the Duke of Montagu. To her he was most generous, for in one of her letters she says that if Montagu discovered you liked or admired a thing, you need take no more thought about it: “‘Quelque dépense qu’il faille faire, quelque soin, quelque peine qu’il faut employer pour l’avoir, la chose ne vous manquera pas.’ Ce sont les propres paroles de la feue Duchesse de Mazarin.” But it seems that there was some interruption in their intimacy, for in one of Algernon Sidney’s letters there is this passage: “Montagu goes no more to the Duchesse de Mazarin; whether his love or his politics proved too pressing, I know not, but the town says he is forbid the house.”
His Grace departed this life on the 9th of March, 1708, at Montagu House in Bloomsbury, afterwards the British Museum.