Edward Wortley Montagu (8 February 1678 – 22 January 1761) was an English coal-owner and politician. He was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, husband of the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and father of the writer and traveller Edward Wortley Montagu.
Contents
Life
Son of Sidney Wortley Montagu and grandson of Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, Wortley Montagu was educated at Westminster School and was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1693. He entered the Middle Temple, also in 1693, and the Inner Temple in 1706. He was called to the bar in 1699.
In 1700–1701 Montagu went on a Grand Tour, some of the time accompanied by Joseph Addison. He visited France and Switzerland.
Montagu was a prominent Whig politician, and first elected as Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1705. In a close election in the two-member seat, with much bribery by the victors, he was returned with Sir John Cotton, ahead of John Pedley. He became a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, serving from 1714 to 1715. In 1715 Montagu stood for Westminster. The election in the two-member constituency was uncontested, and he was returned with the Tory Sir Thomas Crosse.
Made Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and elected the representative of the Levant Company on the nomination of King George I on 10 May 1716, Montagu arrived with his wife at Adrianople (now known as Edirne) on 13 March 1717. He was charged with pursuing the ongoing negotiations between the Ottomans and the Habsburg Empire. Unsuccessful in his position, he was not accredited Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte in Constantinople before he was recalled in October 1717. His daughter Mary was born at Constantinople in January 1718. He left Thrace on 15 July 1718 and travelled for some time in the Near East.