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Sir Edward Wortley Montagu (8 February 167822 January 1761) 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. Son of Sidney Wortley Montagu and grandson of Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, Wortley Montagu was educated at Westminster School, Trinity College, Cambridge (1693) and trained in the law at the Middle Temple (1693). He was called to the bar in 1699 and entered the Inner Temple in 1706. He was best known for his correspondence with, seduction of, and elopement with Mary Pierrepont, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. They married in 1712. Edward succeeded his father in 1727, inheriting Wortley Hall, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. Edward was a prominent Whig politician, and was MP for Huntingdon before eventually becoming a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from 1714 to 1715. He 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. He arrived with his wife at Adrianople (now known as Edirne) on 13 March 1717. As Ambassador, he was charged with pursuing the ongoing negotiations between the Ottomans and the Habsburg Empire. Unsuccessful in his position, he was not made Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte in Constantinople before he was recalled in October 1717. He left Turkey on 15 July 1718 and traveled for some time in the East. Upon his return to England from Constantinople, he fell out with the Whig hierarchy but remained a Member of Parliament for Huntingdon (1722–1734) and Peterborough (1734 until his death in 1761). From 1757 to 1761, he remodelled Wortley Hall, adding the East Wing. On his death, he left the hall and a large fortune to his daughter Mary, having in 1755 cut off his son Edward with only a small allowance. Mary married the future Prime Minister, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. |
