Playboy, dilettante, author, revolutionary, and traveler - dysfunctional child.

Son of the famous Lady Mary, his childhood and relationship with his mother appears to have been unfortunate. First native of United Kingdown to be vaccinated against smallpox, 1716-1717; Westminister School (ran away more than once; he was only 5 years old!), 1718; the DNB reports that in 1727 he was found in Oxford and `with difficulty `reduced to the condition of a school boy'; apparently was in the habit of escaping to sea and then deserting ship; returned from West Indies, 1733; married a much older unknown women; considered by his parents to be insane; his parents `brought off' the woman and incarcerated him in Holland; was confined on a number of occasions; became proficient in Arabic and French; Leyden University, 1741; exorbitant gambling debts; encountered his mother occasionally in Europe, who called him "an excellent linguist, a thorough liar, and so weak-minded as to be capable of turning `monk one day, and a Turk 3 days after'"

Served at battle of Fontenoy (what side? with what army?), 1745; parliament, 1747; secretary of congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748; dazzled London on return with opulent dress (diamond shoe-buckles and a wig of iron wire), 1750; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1750; in Paris with `Miss Ashe' (did he marry her?), 1751; in Chatelet prison charged with `cheating a Jew', sued his accuser, apparently it was a minor scandal, 1752;

His father died, leaving him a small amount; reenrolled in Leydon University, 1761; his mother died, leaving him 1 guinea; Rome, 1762; Egypt, 1762; married Caroline Dormer, Irish catholic wife of a Danish Protestant merchant in Egypt by convincing her that her husband was dead; when she found her first husband alive in Cairo, Montagu convinced her that the previous `mixed-faith' marriage was not `real', 1762; pursued by the Dane across the Sinai to Jerusalem, 1764; abandoned Caroline in a convent on Mount Lebanon, 1764; to Armenia and Italy, 1765; narrative to the Royal Society regarding his `explorations', 1765; rejoined Caroline, 1767, they lived in Rosetta, Egypt, separated, 1772; by this time he had apparently `gone Turkish', adopting Turkish dress and manners and with (probably among others) a Nubian paramour (Nubian was the politically correct way of the time to say Black).

He died of choking on a fish-bone; he left a number of illegitimate children, some of whom were addressed in his will.

Edward was disinherited, yet apparently made one last attempt, to force the issue:

"... Edward had been disinherited by his father for excesses, bizarre even for the eighteenth century. They included sporting buckles and buttons worth £2,500, wearing a wire wig, becoming a Mohammedan, marrying first a lady of easy virtue and then a Nubian, and having to run to escape jail in Paris. In 1776 Edward Montagu, anxious to provide a heir to the money so long in his sister's care, but short of time and energy, advertized in Italy for a pregnant bride. This nefarious plot was ruined by his death from choking on a chicken bone." (Watson)

A letter from William Robinson to Elizabeth Montagu, 1762:

"I have much regretted Lady Mary Wortley leaving Venice, as I was in great hopes of seeing that extraordinary phenomenon, but have had some consolation in meeting the son, who is not less curious in his way. He is preparing himself for his Eastern expedition by learning Arabic, and really studies very hard. He rises before daylight, and has let grow his whiskers, which, with the addition of a turban, which he wears in the house, makes him a very odd figure. Nor is his household less oddly formed than himself. He has a sister-in-law with him as he calls her, a Miss Cast - you will say a good name for one of his females. He has, too, a young girl of 12 years old whom he proposes to make a nun of; he has lodged her with a priest of St. Peter's with the view of instructing her in the Roman Catholic religion. I forgot to tell you she is his daughter. Upon being told that he could not make her a nun upon account of her religion, he said that would be no obstacle and they were all alike to him. He purposes being in the East eight or ten years which is a considerable time for a man turned fifty, and from which, indeed, he will probably never return. I saw him the other day when he was very busy drawing up a letter to the Royal Society in regard to a discovery you must have heard of, of the similarity between the Chinese and Egyptian characters." Robinson

Does anyone else find this slightly equivocative of Henry James Portrait of a Lady?

In Franco Venturi's The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1776-1789 (1984, R. Litchfield, trans., Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), Venturi claims in a footnote that Edward Montagu's book Reflections on the rise and fall of the ancient republicks, adapted to the present state of Great Britain, London, 1759, had numerous editions and was reprinted in French, German, and Italian... Venturi quotes the line "For a nation so favored by commerce and the arts and sciences, we would sincerely like to predict a revolution leading to a better future."

The authorship of Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks is disputed, and it is not clear that historians have decided the issue. After Edward's death, his governor, a somewhat unusual fellow himself, claimed to be the real author:

" Forster was very much an original character, who had been keenly interested in Russia since his first visit there during the reign of Elizabeth... In the 1760s we find Forster acting for some time as tutor in history to a Russian nobleman in London... Forster in the 1720s and 30s had been governor to Edward Wortley Montagu, and in 1777, a year after his former pupil's death, he claimed publicly authorship of Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks, published under Montagu's name in 1759. Undoubtedly Samborski and Petrov were among the Russians who knew of his claim from their time in England, and Petrov was to see Forster frequently in Russia in the late 1770s, together with the Duchess of Kingston, whose chaplain Forster was." (Cross, in Russians in 18th century Britain)

Sources:
[DNB].
English Eccentrics, Sitwell.
The Reign of George III, Watson.

http://www.montaguemillennium.com/familyresearch/h_1776_edward.htm