page_title: Elizabeth Montagu
section_title: Marriage to Montagu
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Montagu / Marriage to Montagu
caption_attribution_description: English: Elizabeth Montagu, as Anne Boleyn, by Christian Friedrich Zincke, in a friendship box, miniature, circa 1740.
context_page_description: Elizabeth Montagu was a British social reformer, patron of the arts, salonnière, literary critic and writer, who helped to organize and lead the Blue Stockings Society. Her parents were both from wealthy families with strong ties to the British peerage and learned life. She was sister to Sarah Scott, author of A Description of Millenium [sic] Hall and the Country Adjacent. She married Edward Montagu, a man with extensive landholdings, to become one of the richer women of her era. She devoted this fortune to fostering English and Scottish literature and to the relief of the poor.
context_section_description: In 1738, Montagu wrote to Harley explaining that she had no desire for men or marriage. She saw marriage as a rational and expedient convention and did not suppose it possible to love a man. In 1742 she married Edward Montagu, grandson of the Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, who owned numerous coal mines and had several rents and estates in Northumberland. She was 22 and he was 50 years old. The marriage was advantageous, but apparently not very passionate. All the same, she bore a son, John, the next year, and she loved her child immensely. When the child died unexpectedly in 1744, she was devastated. She and Edward remained friendly throughout their remaining time together, but there were no more children or pregnancies. Prior to the loss of her son, she had not been very religious, but his death brought her to consider religion increasingly. Meanwhile, her sister, Sarah Scott, was also growing increasingly devout.
  Elizabeth kept a female companion with her most of the time – not exactly a servant, but in that role. She would be expected to carry things and aid Elizabeth on her daily round. Barbara Schnorrenberg suggests that Sarah Scott took this function and says that there is good reason to suggest that she married poorly to escape the situation (Schnorrenberg 723). After Elizabeth's mother died, her father moved to London with his housekeeper or possibly mistress, giving no money at all to his children. When Sarah was removed from her bad marriage, Elizabeth's father (whose ward she was) not only gave her no financial help but forbade either Elizabeth or Matthew, her brother, from relieving her distress.
  Beginning in 1750, she and Edward established a routine, where they would winter in London in Mayfair and then in the spring go to Sandleford in Berkshire, which had been his since 1730. He would then go on to Northumberland and Yorkshire to manage his holdings, while she would occasionally accompany him to the family manor house at East Denton Hall, a mansion dating from 1622 on the West Road in Newcastle upon Tyne.
  She was a shrewd businesswoman, despite affecting to patronise Northumbrian society for its practical conversation. Though acting as Lady Bountiful to miners and their families, she was pleased at how cheap this could be. She was also glad to note that "our pitmen are afraid of being turned off and that fear keeps an order and regularity amongst them that is very uncommon." Elizabeth enjoyed hearing the miners singing in the pit, but found, alas, that their dialect was "dreadful to the auditors' nerves."
  Horace Walpole wrote to George Montagu in 1768: "Our best sun is Newcastle coal."
caption: Elizabeth Montagu, as Anne Boleyn, black and white reproduction of a miniature by Christian Friedrich Zincke, in a friendship box, circa 1740.
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