Edward Montagu (1692-1775) was the son of Charles Montagu (c.1658-1721) and his second wife Sarah Rogers; his father was the fifth son of the 1st Earl of Sandwich. He was educated at Eton and Clare College, Cambridge, and was admitted as a barrister to Lincoln’s Inn in 1710.

He married Elizabeth Robinson in 1742, when she was twenty-four and he was fifty. They had one child, John (known as ‘Punch), who died at the age of 15 months. In 1730 he had purchased Sandleford Priory in Berkshire and in 1758, on the death of his cousin John Rogers (1685-1758), he inherited Denton Hall in Newcastle and the associated coal mines that had been purchased by his maternal grandfather; these formed the foundation of the family’s later wealth. Montagu was something of a recluse, and preferred to spend his time on mathematics and natural philosophy; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1745. For over thirty years, from 1734-1768, Montagu was Whig MP for Huntingdon, a seat controlled by his cousin John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, and dedicated much of his political career to his support, standing in opposition to the government both before and after the removal of Walpole.

Montagu was an invalid for the last ten years of his life, and on his death in 1775, his sister Jemima and half-brother James being dead, he left his entire estate (save one small legacy) to his wife, rather than to some distant male relative as was common at the time.