Duke John's Guest List

An invitation to Duke John’s home was the promise of a grand time, warmly planned. David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (1726-1792), who edited a volume of Duchess of Marlborough’s writings, tempered the Duchess’s skeptical perspective on Duke John’s personality. In reference to the “such pretty fancies” she testily recorded, Lord Hailes proposed, “He had other pretty fancies, not mentioned in the memoranda of his mother-in-law: he did good without ostentation. His vast benevolence of soul is not recorded by Pope; but it will be remembered while there is any tradition of human kindness and charity in England.”

This “kindness and charity” was regularly extended to animals. While guests were taking their seats, they might have heard the merry barking of a pack of dogs. At Ditton Park, a former Buccleuch residence, Duke John ran a sort of “hospital of dogs.” A visitor in 1748 noted, perhaps with some amazement, twenty to twenty-five dogs. These dogs, christened with names ranging from cheery Harlekin and Saturday to serious Charles and Calvin, were beloved members of the Montagu homes, no matter what they looked like. A friend remembered, “[Duke John] was surrounded by dogs, the ugliest of which he favored because no one else would be kind to it.”

Cats were welcome in Duke John’s homes, too. When he was writing his will, one cat jumped onto his knee. “What, have you a mind to be a witness too!” he exclaimed. “You can’t, for you are a party concerned.” But one cat was much larger than the rest. Two and a half miles east of Montagu House, Whitehall, exotic wild animals roamed the menagerie at the Tower of London. Among them were lions, favoured for their proud appearance on the coat of arms of England. Duke John was friends with the Master Keeper of the Lions, and he pulled on this connection to welcome two lions into his home. 

Today, of course, there would be a healthy degree of concern as to whether a grand home was the best place for a wild animal. Yet at the time, the Royal Menagerie was not exactly somewhere that the RSPCA, founded eighty years after lions first padded through Whitehall, would have approved of. Duke John, as best as the knowledge of the era allowed, provided an attentive and caring environment for the lions. He ordered,

“[The] lion must never be locked up at all, but go where he will except into the garden, where he must not go for fear he should be drown’d. He must be free of the Old Pantry and be fed there. To have boiled meat, no horse flesh, nor no bones given him. To lie every night in his house by the Old Pantry. To have his trough fill’d every morning with fresh water and to have fresh straw in his house twice a week.”

If a guest witnessed one of these rescue lions roaming about the house, that, quite fairly, would have been a considerable topic of conversation around the dining table. But Duke John also ensured that the guests themselves were sources of fascination. He surrounded himself with some of the greatest figures of the day, such as the musician George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). But there might have been some verbal fireworks shooting across the table if they began to reminisce about their 1749 collaboration, Music for the Royal Fireworks. 

King George II wished to celebrate the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession. Duke John was in charge of coordinating the fireworks at St. James’ Park, and he firmly defended King George’s insistence that the musical performance be kept as sparse as possible. Handel eventually convinced the king to permit military instruments, such as trumpets, horns, side drums, and even cannons, but he bitterly lost the battle on string instruments. Contemporary productions of Music for the Royal Fireworks include strings thanks to an edited composition for the Foundling Hospital.

On the bright side, fireworks can be put out quickly with water, and Duke John could have supplied that, too. It is said that when he invited Montesquieu to dinner, the philosopher was “dunked” in cold water! Being one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment was no shield against the duke’s practical jokes.

But for all of Duke John’s humour, he was also curious and more progressive than some of his contemporaries. These characteristics came to the fore when he met Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780), a remarkable Black British man. In Sancho’s own words, he “was rather unlucky, as I was placed [note: enslaved] in a family who judged ignorance the best and only security for obedience.—A little reading and writing I got by unwearied application.” 

Duke John lived by these enslavers — three spinster sisters — and he quickly noticed Sancho’s intelligence and “frankness of manner,” as recorded in a biography. He brought Sancho books and welcomed him into his home, though, critically, he did not make an explicit move to free Sancho. When Duke John died in 1749, the twenty-year-old Sancho sought aid from the Duchess, who employed him as a paid butler. Eventually, Sancho rose to become a successful shopkeeper, property owner, writer, composer, and voter. He wrote to a friend, “The latter part of my life has been—through God’s blessing, truly fortunate, having spent it in the service of the best families in the kingdom.”

Given that he was enslaved during Duke John’s lifetime, Sancho would not have sat at the dining table at Whitehall. However, thanks to his intelligence, determination, and support from the Montagu family, Sancho eventually formed part of the coalition of abolitionists who ensured that discussions of freedom and justice took place at dining tables across the British empire.