Marry me, for I am the Emperor of China
The Montagu family in England pre-dates the Norman invasion of 1066. In the Domesday Book, the inventory of his realm ordered by William the Conqueror, the family is described as ancient landowners in the West Country. The family has produced a number of famous or infamous members. There was John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, after whom the sandwich is named. He was a Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the notorious Hellfire Club. At one of its meetings a political rival, John Wilkes, the so-called Radical Reformer, had managed to secrete a large baboon. This was flung onto Lord Sandwich’s shoulders during black mass, where it clung on, screaming. Sandwich, believing it to be the devil, is said to have fallen to his knees crying, ‘Forgive me God, I have not been half so wicked as I intended.’ Perhaps his most famous exchange with Wilkes came when he said to him, ‘Wilkes, you will surely either die of the pox or on the gallows,’ to which Wilkes responded, ‘That, My Lord, will depend on which I embrace; your mistress or your principles.’
One of the most interesting Montagu’s was Ralph, created 1st Duke of Montagu.
Born on Christmas Eve 1638, he was the son of Edward, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton and his wife Anne, daughter of the Secretary of State, Ralph Winwood, for whom he was named. Edward supported parliament during the Civil War. His sons were later involved at the court of King Charles II. The eldest son, Edward, was Master of the Horse to Charles’s wife, Catherine of Braganza, a post from which he was dismissed for ‘showing attention to the queen of too ardent a nature.’ She appointed his young brother, Ralph, to replace him; he soon became one of the great Gallants of the licentious Restoration court. Politically, he was one of the team that sold England’s neutrality to King Louis XIV of France, thereby preventing English intervention in the war between France and the Netherlands. The price was £300,000 a year to the king. He was King Charles’s ambassador to the French Court, from whence he carried the last messages of the Duchess of Orleans, whose death was believed by many to be due to poison. In 1670 Ralph was sworn of the Privy Council, the body whose members are advisers to the monarch, a role dating back to Anglo Saxon times, when its equivalent was called the Witenagemot.
Montagu had a famous row with the Duchess of Cleveland. This seems to have been occasioned by his being both her, and her daughter’s lover simultaneously. The duchess was also a mistress of King Charles II, so naturally had his ear. She told the king that Montagu ‘meant to lead him by the nose.’ Montagu also had a much more serious row with Lord Danby, the Lord Treasurer, and one of the king’s most senior advisers. This was over the secret negotiations with Louis XIV, and included an accusation by Danby that Montagu was planning a treaty with the pope, for the conversion to Catholicism of England. Montagu, once again in Paris, returned to England and formulated a plan with Louis XIV’s ambassador, Paul Barillon d’Amoncourt, Marquis de Branges, to bring about Danby’s disgrace. Montagu’s price was 100,000 crowns. In parliament, sitting as member for Northampton, he produced two letters from Danby, which asked for the annual payment of £300,000. This led to Danby being impeached in 1678. Montagu managed to avoid being found guilty by association — he had helped negotiate this payment of course. Whilst hiding to avoid any backlash, he was making plans for a number of causes, including installing James, Duke of Monmouth as king after the death of James’s father, King Charles II; he was trying to increase French influence in English government and, in this, he was helped by his sister Anne. Nothing came of any of them and in 1680 he went back to Paris, returning when Charles died and his Catholic brother became king in 1685. He then supported the Glorious Revolution, bringing William III and Mary II to the throne — and bringing Montagu membership of their Privy Council. Jonathan Swift described Montagu as, ‘as arrant a rogue as any in his time.’
Montagu married twice. His first wife, whom he married in 1673, was Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Northumberland, and daughter of the Earl of Southampton. She brought a large fortune with her, useful in funding his ambitions. It was not a happy marriage and the couple were known to be at loggerheads within a few weeks. A diary entry from a well known scientist says, during Montagu’s time as ambassador to France, ‘About six or seven o’clock I was called to My Lady Ambassadress, whom I found crying out in one of her fits.’ Elizabeth was clearly unhappy, as a friend noted in her diary, ‘she pined in the midst of her splendour for calmer and more domestic happiness’. She seems often to have been in pain from toothache. A French doctor pulled out two healthy teeth; not surprisingly the pain continued. An English scientist made the first ever diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia and treated her by that 17th century favourite, the purge. He wrote later that he did this to, ‘my lady ambassadrice to the extent of seven or eight workings and although she was pregnant, she responded to the treatment satisfactorily.’ The couple had two children, a boy and girl. The boy made a splendid match, marrying the daughter of John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough. Elizabeth died in 1690.
When Montagu and Elizabeth married, he was untitled, so she kept her title from her first marriage. As the years passed, he gained his own. On the death of his father in 1684, he became Baron Montagu of Boughton. William III created him Earl of Montagu and Viscount Monthermer in 1689. More was to come, but first Ralph was to marry again.
Elizabeth Monck was the daughter of the Duke of Newcastle and widow of Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albemarle. His father, the first duke, had been responsible for the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, and the family wealth was rooted in that event. Christopher was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica in 1687, growing his fortune there by recovering treasure from a wrecked Spanish ship. He died in Jamaica in 1688 and his widow returned home, escorted by the young Hans Sloane. He was starting out as a collector and had managed to acquire a number of rare and fascinating items. Sadly, his alligator died on the voyage home; a sailor scared his iguana so much that it jumped overboard and his snake managed to escape from its jar. This died when the duchess’s footman shot it. Perhaps most worrying of all, the duchess, who had always been a little strange, went completely mad. One can imagine how young Dr Sloane felt, and sympathise with him!
Back at home, Her Grace determined to marry again. There was one condition; she would marry only a sovereign prince. It entered her disordered mind that the Emperor of China, Kangxi, was in love with her, and intended to marry her. Hearing of this delusion, Montagu dressed as the emperor and asked her to marry him. This she agreed to, with the ceremony taking place at Newcastle House on 8th September 1692. Having gained her, and of course, her substantial fortune, the poor woman was confined to Montagu House. For its time, the house, 17 bays wide, was considered the grandest private house in London. Ralph also gained control of the Manor of Bowland, one of the most important in the north of England.
Such was the notoriety surrounding this unusual match, the playwright Colley Cibber wrote, ‘The Double Gallant or The Sick Lady’s Cure’ about it. By now Elizabeth had been moved out of Montagu House (the site of which is now covered by the British Museum,) and kept at a house in the less salubrious area of Clerkenwell, where she was treated as a sovereign, with her staff serving her on bended knee. Her household was costing Ralph Montagu £3,000 a year. Despite this, her family believed her to be dead, and in a legal case brought by them, he was forced to have her brought into court, to prove she was still alive. She died in 1734, and the annual payment of £3,000 was then made to her family.
In 1705, Ralph achieved his ambition and was created first Duke of Montagu and Marquess of Monthermer by King William III. By now he was using his wife’s fortune to turn his estate, Boughton in Northamptonshire into what was called, ‘The English Versailles,’ creating a splendid (if unfinished,) house and magnificent grounds. A writer in 1715 said, ‘On the North Side of the Parterre-Garden is a small Wilderness which is call’d the Wilderness of Apartments, an exceeding delightful Place, and nobly adorned with Basins, Jet d’Eaus, Statues, with the Platannus, Lime-Tree, Beech, Bayes, &c. all in exquisite Form and Order, To the Southward of the lower part of the Parterre-Garden, is a larger Wilderness of a different Figure, having Ten equidistant Walks concentering in a round Area, and adorn’d also with Statue. In one of the Quarters is a fine Pheasantry. The larger Trees upon the Sides of the Walks have Eglantine and Woodbind climbing up and clasping about the Bodies of them.’
Ralph died on March 9th 1709. His son and heir was the second and last duke of the first creation, dying in 1749. The title was recreated for Ralph’s son in law in 1766. He was a Brudenell, a member of another illustrious Northamptonshire family, which, in the 19th century produced the Earl of Cardigan, famous for the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. He died without a direct heir in 1790, with the earldom passing to his brother, the 5th Earl of Cardigan. The 11,000 acre estate is now the English estate of the Montagu Douglas Scott family, the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensbury. It passed to them in 1790, when the third duke’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Henry Scott, the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch.
