[3] He received private tuition as a child and also went on a grand tour of Italy and France with Pierre Sylvestre in his formative years.

He in turn appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor.

He also financed the education of two notable Black British figures of the age, Ignatius Sancho (a butler at his Blackheath home, Montagu House) and Francis Williams, allegedly sending the latter to Cambridge University (the university has no record of his having studied there).

[5] Montagu was a notorious practical joker, his mother-in-law writing of him that "All his talents lie in things only natural in boys of fifteen years old, and he is about two and fifty; to get people into his garden and wet them with squirts, and to invite people to his country houses and put things in beds to make them itch, and twenty such pretty fancies as these.

"[7] Montagu is said to have once dunked the political philosopher Montesquieu in a tub of cold water as a joke.

Montagu's country place, Boughton House, Northamptonshire, was laid out by him as a miniature Versailles, and now belonging to the Buccleuch family.