Lord Charles Greville Montagu, MP

Lord Charles Greville Montagu (1741-1784) was the last Royal Governor of the Province of South Carolina from 1766 to 1773, with William Bull II serving terms in 1768 and 1769-1771. He also was the commander of the Duke of Cumberland's Regiment during the American Revolution.

Family and Education

b. 29 May 1741, 2nd s. of Robert, 3rd Duke of Manchester, by Harriet, da. and coh. of Edmund Dunch of Little Wittenham, Berks.; bro. of George, Visct. Mandeville. educ. Ch. Ch. Oxf. 1759. m. 20 Sept. 1765, Elizabeth, da. of James Balmer of Huntingdon, 1s. 2da.

Offices Held

Gov. S. Carolina 1765-73.

Biography

Montagu succeeded his brother as Member for Huntingdonshire under a compact between their father and Lord Sandwich ‘to agree to a reciprocal nomination during the present Parliament’.1 He was listed by Fox among those favourable to the peace preliminaries, December 1762, but voted with the Opposition over general warrants, 15 and 18 Feb. 1764; adhered to the Rockingham Administration, and was appointed by them governor of South Carolina. Sandwich wrote to Bedford, 13 Nov. 1765: ‘The ministry expect an attack the first day, as Lord Charles Montagu expressly declares that he is not to vacate his seat till after the first day of the session.’2 He arrived in South Carolina 12 June 1766, ‘and was received with every mark of respect’, and indeed of joy.3 But in time he found the politics of the province as trying as its climate, and on 29 July 1769 left for England, not returning till 15 Sept. 1771. He now became engaged in a very bitter controversy with the assembly, who pressed for his recall as much as he did for a transfer.4 In the end Montagu left the province without leave, and on 1 May 1773 wrote from Bath to a friend in South Carolina: ‘You must know that by this time I am no longer your governor; upon my arrival here, I understand the ministers were displeased with my coming over without leave, as soon therefore, as I had seen Lady Charles settled at Bath, I went up to London and resigned my government.’5

Before the general election of 1774 Lord North wrote to Lord Dartmouth, on 2 Oct.:6

I have just heard that Lord Charles Montagu, upon the recommendation of the Duke of Cumberland, is going to offer himself a candidate for Southampton in opposition to Mr. Stanley and Mr. Fleming. I take it for granted that he either is not apprized that those two gentlemen have the wishes of Government, or that he has not sufficiently considered how improper it is for a person in his situation to embark in any measure of opposition. North therefore asked Dartmouth to try to dissuade him.

As to his Royal Highness [North went on to say], it would be presumptuous in me to give, or even to form any opinion upon the part which may be the most proper for him to act with respect to Southampton, but I own I shall be much concerned to hear that he has determined to take any step, which may possibly give offence, and which can not be of any advantage either to himself or to the person whom he honours with his protection, for I am informed from good authority that Lord Charles has no chance of success. Montagu replied from Southampton on 3 Oct.; expressed his concern that the part he was taking should be objectionable to Dartmouth; and concluded:

Thus situated, your Lordship will ... see the necessity of my persevering, nor think because I refuse to yield my pretensions to Mr. Fleming (with whom your Lordship will allow me to observe that I have at least an equal title to the favour of Government) I therefore mean to give into a wanton opposition to the King’s ministers. Four days later, he was badly defeated, but when (wrongly) informed that Fleming had vacated his seat by accepting office, Montagu set out for Southampton to renew his canvass—‘I must add’, wrote Manchester to Dartmouth, 31 Oct. 1774, ‘that my brother, from his connexions and living a good deal at Southampton, has formed no contemptible interest of his own, which might induce him to do more than I wish.’

After this little is heard of him till, presumably in consequence of the reconciliation between the Duke of Cumberland and the King, Manchester wrote to Dartmouth, on 26 June 1780, complaining that a man of his brother’s rank, capable and willing to serve his country, should be totally refused and forced to seek refuge in another.7 The meaning of this concluding remark is obscure, for the story that Montagu ‘had declared himself attached to the American cause, and offered his services to Dr. Franklin in Paris, to take command of an army’,8 seems hardly credible. By the end of the year a scheme of his to raise a corps from among American prisoners of war for service in Jamaica was accepted; by September 1782 he was raising a second battalion for the Duke of Cumberland’s Provincial Regiment of Foot; and when the regiment was disbanded, he went with his men to Nova Scotia for the purpose of forming a colony.9 He arrived at Halifax about the middle of December 1783, and died there on 4 Feb. 1784.10

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790 Author: Sir Lewis Namier Notes 1. Sandwich to Grenville, 17 Nov. 1765, Grenville mss (JM). 2. Bedford mss 52, f. 202. 3. Committee of Corresp. of S. Carolina to Chas. Garth, S. Carolina Hist. Gen. Mag. xxviii. 227. 4. Ibid. xxxiii. 262-80; HMC Dartmouth, ii. 92, 104. 5. S. Carolina Hist. Gen. Mag. xxxiii. 259-61. 6. Staffs. RO, Dartmouth mss. 7. HMC Dartmouth, ii. 476. 8. S. Carolina Hist. Gen. Mag. xxxiii. 260. 9. HMC Royal Institution, ii. 209, 245-6; iii. 108. 10. HMC 8th Rep. pt. 2, p. 139a; S. Carolina Hist. Gen. Mag. xxxiii. 260

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Greville_Montagu

Lord Charles Greville Montagu (1741-1784) was Royal Governor of the Province of South Carolina from 1766 to 1773, with William Bull II serving terms in 1768 and 1769-1771. Charles was the second son of His Grace, Robert Montagu, 3rd Duke of Manchester. Charles attended Oxford University in 1759 and married Ms. Elizabeth Balmer in 1765. He was also a Member of Parliament for Huntingdonshire from 1762-1765.

His attempts to enforce the 1765 Stamp Act made him unpopular with the local colonials as governor, and led to his departure and disgrace during the American Revolution. He tried to be favorable with the colonials and American rebels, having pardoned some of the Regulators. However, it was not enough.

During the American Revolutionary War, Montagu began recruiting American prisoners captured by the British for the British war with Spanish forces, who were on the colonists side. Charles was captured recruiting soldiers on British prison ships in New York but was released by General Nathanael Greene. Charles even tried to convince American General William Moultrie to join his regiment, but failed. Charles and his recruits made up the Duke of Cumberland's army regiment, and the outfit was discharged in 1783.

Charles made it to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his family. He died soon afterwords and is buried at St Paul's Church in Halifax. His tomb states that he died in 3 Feb, 1784, still in his 40s. He was remembered as a good and brave man, who was loyal to his King and Country.

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https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/montagu-lord-charles-gre...

Governor. Born on May 29, 1741, the second son of Robert Montagu, third duke of Manchester, Charles attended Christ Church College, Oxford. He represented Huntingdonshire in the British House of Commons from 1762 to 1765 and in the latter year married Elizabeth Balmer of the same shire. Appointed governor of South Carolina by the Rockingham administration, Montagu arrived in Charleston in June 1766. Granting clemency to several convicted outlaws signaled his good intentions but contributed to the Regulator movement, in which backcountry men inflicted summary justice on wrongdoers. Touring the area in 1769, Montagu informed himself sufficiently to sign the act establishing circuit courts, acquire upcountry acreage for himself, and eventually pardon the Regulators. In July 1769, shortly after South Carolina had joined the nonimportation movement against the Townshend duties, he sailed for England.

His farewell was cordial, but he quickly squandered local goodwill after his return to Charleston in September 1771. Montagu soon convinced several Carolinians that “it was not impossible for a Man to be too great a Fool to make a good Governor.” Lacking quarters in town, Montagu commuted from Fort Johnson by boat, while a local satirist ridiculed him for the cannon salutes that heralded his passing. More sympathetic men from Beaufort, he later claimed, offered to build him a house if he moved the capital there, and Montagu visited the area in the spring of 1772.

Meanwhile, he confronted more serious problems in Charleston. One involved a customs collector who successfully defied the governor’s orders; the other was an impending conflict with the Commons House of Assembly. In December 1769, while he had been in England, the Commons House had sent £1,500 sterling to London for the use of the opposition politician John Wilkes. Colonial authorities countered with an instruction requiring all future tax bills to include specified restrictions on the use of the funds. But the Commons House had long considered the control of taxation to be its most fundamental right. Accordingly, the Commons House refused to accept the instruction, deadlock ensued, and no tax act passed the legislature for the last six years of the colonial period.

Montagu’s subsequent actions made matters worse. Hoping to resolve his political and personal problems in a single stroke, he ignored contrary advice and called the assembly to meet at Beaufort instead of Charleston in October 1772. Leaders of the Commons House from Charleston, he assumed, would be late in arriving; Beaufort members would cooperate in the hope of permanently obtaining the capital; and passage of a tax bill acceptable to the ministry would be the result. But a belated cautionary note from London advised him to be conciliatory, so he met the assembly at Beaufort and sent it back to Charleston before it could proceed to business. “No Measure of any Governor,” the South-Carolina Gazette reported, “was ever more freely and generally condemned.” After the legislature censured him, he dissolved it and called new elections. Reelected members then promptly chose the same Speaker, and Montagu again abruptly dissolved them. Having lost control of the situation, he precipitously sailed for England in March 1773 and soon thereafter resigned the governorship.

Montagu faced problems well beyond his control, but his own blunders increased them exponentially. In particular, moving the meeting of the legislature to Beaufort alienated local leaders, and it–with a similar measure in Massachusetts–would appear in the Declaration of Independence as part of the evidence against King George III, whose representatives had “called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

Montagu’s later career presents a puzzle. After returning to England, he made an unsuccessful run for Parliament in 1774. After the Revolutionary War began, an apocryphal story suggests that Montagu offered his services to the American agent in Paris, Benjamin Franklin. The tale is implausible, but not impossible. Still, Montagu became a captain in the Eighty-eighth British Regiment of Foot on December 12, 1780. Sent to British-occupied Charleston, he recruited nearly five hundred American prisoners of war for service against the French and Spanish in the Caribbean. Though his old friend General William Moultrie refused to defect, Montagu’s success was sufficient to prompt a repeat performance, and he soon filled a second battalion with prisoners from New York. But the war was almost over, and in November 1783 his regiment was ordered disbanded. Most of his men settled in Nova Scotia, where Montagu died on February 3, 1784. He was buried in St. Paul Churchyard, Halifax.