parliament where your brother Algernon is already chosen, but upon a double return. So that I shall have an opportunity of shewing my respect to him
yet better to have you than him; but that you always chose a greater beast than yourself to govern you,"
On his return to England, he became one of the most prominent of the popular party; he quarrelled with Lord Danby, whose secret treaty of peace with Louis, which he bad himself negotiated, he betrayed to the Commons, and was the cause of that minister being impeached. If he succeeded in ruining him, he was to receive from Louis no less a sum than 100,000 crowns; and we find from Barillon's letters that 50,000 were actually paid to him.
Montague took a leading part in furthering the Bill of Exclusion; and when the tide turned in favour of the King and the Duke of York, he thought it best to betake himself to his old quarters at Paris, where Burnet fell in with him in 1685. With William's success his star again was in the ascendant, and in 1689 he was created Earl of Montague. In 1694, we find him applying to the King for a dukedom, and urging his pretensions in this strain. "I did not think it reasonable to ask the being put over the Duke of Shrewsbury's head, but now. Sir, that you have given him that rank, which the greatness of his family and personal merit has deserved, I may, by your Majesty's grace and favour, pretend to the same dignity as well as any of the families you have promoted, being myself the head of a family that many years ago had great honours and dignities, when I am sure these had none, and we having lost them by the civil wars between York and Lancaster, I am now below the younger branches, my Lord Manchester, and my Lord Sandwich. I have to add to my pretention, the having married the Duke of Newcastle's eldest daughter, and it has been the practise of all your predecessors, whenever they
