Walter Montagu (abt. 1604 - 1677)

Born about 1604 in St Botolph Without, Aldersgate, London, England

Ancestors

Died 5 Feb 1677 at about age 73 in Paris, France

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Biography

Born about 1604 Walter was the second son of Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester and his wife, Catherine Spencer. Henry was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge after which he travelled on the continent to acquire polish. When he returned to England he took service with the Duke of Buckingham and was sent to France in 1624 to assist in negotiations for the marriage of Charles Prince of Wales to Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France, becoming her devoted servant. A trip abroad in 1627 saw him incarcerated temporarily in the Bastille and the following year he was a witness to the assassination of Buckingham in Portsmouth.

While serving in the English embassy in Paris in 1635 he converted to Roman Catholicism and on his return to England was appointed chamberlain to the Queen. With the rising conflict between King and Parliament Walter found himself banished as a recusant in 1640, returned in secret in 1643, was captured at Rochester and clapped in the Tower where he remained until 1647. On 31 August 1649 he was banished by the Commons under pain of death and joined the exiled court in Paris being charged in 1654 by the Dowager queen to convert her youngest son, Henry, to Catholicism. The endeavour failed but brought Walter into conflict with the Prince of Wales.

With the restoration in 1660 he managed a brief visit to England and his brother, Edward, Earl of Manchester but lived out his life quietly in France. He died on 5 February 1677 at the Hospital of the Incurables in Paris.

Sources

• Wikipedia biography [1]

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Montagu, Walter (1604/5–1677)

• Cambridge Alumni Adm. Fell.-Com. at SIDNEY, Jan. 27, 1617-8. 2nd s. of Henry (1582-3), 1st Earl of Manchester. B. in London, c. 1603. Matric. 1618; M.A. 1627. Adm. at the Middle Temple. Royalist. Employed on many missions in France. Became a Roman Catholic, 1635. Confessor to the Dowager Queen Henrietta-Maria and Lord Almoner to her Chapel. Imprisoned in the Tower, 1643-7. Exiled, 1649. Abbot of St Martin, Pontoise. Author, theological and political. Died at Paris, Feb. 5, 1676-7. Buried there in the Hospital of the Incurables. Brother of Edward (1617-8), etc. (Collins, II. 56; Her. and Gen., III. 55; D.N.B., where he is said to have been buried at Pontoise.)