Edward Wortley Montagu

Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 – April 29, 1776), was an English author and traveller.

He was the son of Edward Wortley Montagu, MP and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose talent and eccentricity he seems to have inherited.

He twice ran away from Westminster School, and the second time made his way as far as Porto. He was then sent to travel with a tutor in the West Indies, and afterwards with a keeper to the Netherlands. He made, however, a serious study of Arabic at Leiden (1741), and returned twenty years later to prosecute his studies. His father made him a meagre allowance, and he was heavily encumbered with debt.

He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdonshire in 1747, and was one of the secretaries at the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1751 he was involved in a disreputable gaming quarrel in Paris, and was imprisoned for eleven days in the Châtelet. He continued to sit in parliament, and wrote "Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republics ..." (1759). His father left him an annuity of £1000, the bulk of the property going to Lady Bute.

He set out for extended travel in the East, and George Romney describes him as living in the Turkish manner at Venice. He had great gifts as a linguist, and was an excellent talker. His family thought him mad, and his mother left him a Guinea, but her annuity devolved on him at her death. He died at Padua in Italy.

References

*"Isobel Grundy, "Edward Wortley Montagu", "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19013?docPos=1]
*"This entry incorporates domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica."