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James Montagu

Boughton, Northhamptonshire, 1568 - 1618, Greenwich

BiographyLC name authority rec. no.n85816204
LC Heading: Montagu, James, 1568?-1618

Biography:
Montagu, James (1568–1618), bishop of Winchester, was born at Boughton, Northamptonshire, the fifth son of Sir Edward Montagu (c.1532–1602) and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Harington of Exton and his wife, Lucy Sidney. Edward Montagu, first Baron Montagu (1562/3–1644), and Henry Montagu (c.1564–1642) were his elder brothers. His family connections with the Sidney circle strongly influenced Montagu's career at university, court, and in the church. He matriculated a fellow-commoner at Christ's College, Cambridge, in June 1585. Montagu's great-aunt, Frances Radcliffe (née Sidney), countess of Sussex (1531–1589), provided in her will for the foundation of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Her principal executors, Montagu's grandfather Harington and Henry Grey, earl of Kent, chose Montagu as the first master after securing the cautious approval of the vice-chancellor and other heads for such a young master. He laid the foundation-stone in May 1595, and meticulously oversaw the building works until their completion in 1602. He served as master from 1596 to 1608, during which time the college earned a reputation for puritanism. He was created DD ‘by special grace’ in 1598, and never held a parochial living.

Upon the accession of James I and VI, Montagu was swiftly preferred first to a royal chaplaincy (between April and July 1603, formally sworn 23 December), and then to the deanery of the Chapel Royal. The chapel deanery had lapsed under Elizabeth, but was revived by Archbishop John Whitgift and Bishop Richard Bancroft in 1603 as a safeguard against Scottish presbyterian influence in James's English court. Though without any prior court service, Montagu probably appealed as a mediator between ecclesiological extremes: he had strong Calvinist credentials and was sympathetic to those of godly conscience, but yet committed to episcopacy and the royal prerogative over church discipline. As such, Montagu was the epitome of mainstream Jacobean conformist Calvinism. His intimacy and favour with the new king was immediate and lifelong. He attended the king constantly, and no cleric had more direct personal contact with James than Montagu; Francis Bacon judged him one of the three most influential servants in the king's household. This intimacy might be seen as part of James's revival of the Essex circle's fortunes, which included the appointment of Montagu's uncle John Harington, first Baron Harington, as guardian of Princess Elizabeth, and the prominence at court of Montagu's first cousins, Lucy Russell, countess of Bedford, and her brother John Harington.

Montagu was an effective dean of the Chapel Royal. He was sworn dean on Christmas day 1603 in the vestry at Hampton Court, the marginal gloss in the minute book providing the only record of his familiar name: ‘Bertie Mountague sworne Deane of the Chapell’ (Ashbee and Harley, 1.82). In his first year as dean he issued orders for the election and attendance of the gentlemen and children of the chapel, and for the appointment of music for services, and persuaded a royal commission to augment all chapel wages by a third, the first increase since Henry VIII's reign. As dean he presided or assisted at the baptism of the princesses Mary and Sophia (1605, 1606), and Queen Anne's churchings thereafter, as well as at the confirmations of the surviving royal children, Henry (1607), Elizabeth (1610), and Charles (1613), and preached at the marriage of Elizabeth to the elector palatine (1613). The chapel ‘cheque books’ show Montagu's continued routine involvement with the business of the chapel to within a year of his death.

However, Montagu also used his court position to further puritan interests in the church. Two near-disasters taught him that the king did not share his sympathies: in 1604 the puritan John Burgess was sent to the Tower for preaching before the king against ceremonies in a sermon arranged by Montagu as an audition for a chaplaincy to Prince Henry; in 1605 Montagu was openly accused of sympathizing with ministers deprived for ceremonial nonconformity. Yet he had already given signs that his personal preferences were otherwise. He had ordered that the surplice be worn in his college chapel for the first time in 1604, and spoken in favour of ceremonies at the Hampton Court conference.

In July 1603 Montagu had been instituted dean of Lichfield, with the prebendal stall of Brerewood, which he resigned upon presentation to the deanery of Worcester on 20 December 1604. In September 1606 James promised Montagu the next vacant bishopric, and doubled his chapel dean's annual stipend to £400. Bath and Wells fell vacant in February 1608, and Montagu accepted the king's offer of it, but begged not to be forced to surrender the chapel deanery. He offered instead to forfeit his stipend, the Worcester deanery, and his college mastership to ensure ‘that I may not too suddenly be drawn from the breasts of so dear and precious a master’ (Salisbury MSS, 20.86). This proposal was accepted. Montagu was consecrated at Lambeth by Bancroft on 17 April, 1608; the sermon (soon printed) was preached by the reconciled puritan, George Downame, Montagu's contemporary at Christ's. In spite of his court obligations Montagu was an assiduous bishop, immersing himself in diocesan administration during annual residence in his see from July to September. His only surviving visitation articles (1609) are notable for strict attention to excommunication, Sunday observance, and keeping ‘holy’ the anniversaries of the Gowry and Gunpowder plots. Montagu spent large private sums on roofing the nave of Bath Abbey, and restoring the chapel of the bishop's palace at Wells. On 3 July 1616 he was translated to Winchester. Remaining dean of the Chapel Royal, he continued the pattern of residence and service that he had established in his former see.

Later in the same year appeared Montagu's lavish folio edition of King James's Workes, a project he claimed, in the dedication to Prince Charles, was his brainchild; a Latin edition appeared posthumously in 1619. The long panegyrical preface is his only surviving original work. His influence at court remained strong. He accompanied James to Scotland in the summer of 1617, and was appointed to the privy council in October. He furthered the appointment of his brother Henry as lord chief justice (1616), and brother Sidney as master of requests (1618). At Christmastide 1617–18 he held a lavish entertainment to mark his restoration of Winchester House in Southwark. Active at court until March, by April he lay dangerously ill of dropsy. Samuel Daniel's fine verse epistle to him, first printed 1623, dates from this time.

Montagu died at Greenwich on the morning of 20 July 1618, attended by his brother, Sir Charles, who on the same day reported the death personally to the marquess of Buckingham and the king. In his will dated 1 April, Montagu remembered the king's favour as ‘the greatest comforte of my life’, and left him a gold cup of £100 value; to Buckingham, ‘the most faithful friend that ever I had’, he left a diamond ring. Montagu estimated in his will that he had already bestowed over £5000 on his episcopal properties; further bequests included rents and ‘all my bookes’ to Sidney Sussex College, and legacies to his brothers and servants. He also set aside £300 for ‘a Monument in the bodye of the churche of Bathe’ that would ‘stirre up some more Benefactors to that place’ (TNA: PRO, PROB 11/132, sig. 71, fols. 37–8). His executor, Sir Charles Montagu, commissioned the tomb, with canopied recumbent effigy of the bishop by William Cure and Nicholas Johnson, that stands in the nave of Bath Abbey. Montagu's bowels were buried in the chancel at Greenwich; after lying at Winchester House, his body was taken to Bath for burial in the abbey church on 20 August 1618. His death marked a turning-point in the influence of anti-Spanish Calvinism at court.

P. E. McCullough
(P. E. McCullough, ‘Montagu, James (1568–1618)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/19021, accessed 15 Jan 2016])

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