Montagu, Edward Wortley, 1713-1776

MONTAGU, EDWARD WORTLEY, eldest son of Edward Wortley Montagu (b. 1678, qv); b. May 1713; inoculated for smallpox at Belgrade 18 Mar 1718, being the first native of this country to undergo that operation; at school under Freind (Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iv, 626-7); ran away more than once; sent to the West Indies under charge of a tutor; returned to England c. 1733; Grand Tour (Italy) 1740; Leyden Univ., adm. 6 Sep 1741; studied Arabic and European languages; Cornet, 7th Dragoons 1743; Capt. -Lieut., 1st Foot 1745; retd. 1748; served at battle of Fontenoy; MP Huntingdonshire 1747-54, Bossiney 1754-68; one of the Secretaries at Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle 1748; Society of Dilettanti 1749; FRS 31 May 1750; FSA 17 Dec 1761; successfully sued by Abraham Payba for cheating at faro in Paris 1751; finally left England early in 1761; travelled in Italy, Egypt and Palestine; adopted Islamic dress and professed Islamic beliefs, but died a Roman Catholic, into which church he had been received at Jerusalem 29 Oct 1764 (Notes and Queries, 4th series, xi, 7-8); author, Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republics, 1759, and other works; m. in or after 1733 “a handsome honest laundress older than himself, of whom he got tired in a few weeks” (but he paid her a small annuity until his death) (Doran, In and about Drury Lane, 1881, ii, 288, 324); subsequently went through the ceremony of marriage several times, and left several illegitimate children for whom he provided in his will, including a black boy; d. at Padua, Italy, from effects of swallowing a fishbone, 29 Apr 1776. DNB.

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The Record of Old Westminsters: A biographical list of all those who are known to have been educated at Westminster School from the earliest times to 1927, Volumes 1 & 2, compiled by G. F. Russell Barker and Alan H. Stenning, London, 1928.