MONTAGU, BASIL, Queen's counsel, was the natural son of the fourth Earl of Sandwich and of that Miss Ray who was shot in the piazza of Covent Garden, in 1779, by her jealous lover, a clergyman of the name of Hackman. He was born in April 1770. His early education was received at the Charter-House School in London; and he studied and took the degree of M.A. at the university of Cambridge. He afterwards entered Gray's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1798. His professional eminence, however, was not the result of his power of pleading, but of the numerous works which he continued to write. The most important of these was A Digest of the Bankrupt Laws, &c., which was published in 4 vols. in 1805, and which secured for him the office of commissioner of bankrupts. Montagu was also distinguished for his exertions to mitigate the severity of the penal code. He wrote several pamphlets on capital punishments; and in conjunction with
Montagu. Wilberforce, Romilly, and others, he succeeded in abolishing hanging for forgery. To the reader of general literature, however, he is best known as the friend of Coleridge, and the editor of an elaborate edition of Bacon's works in 16 vols. He died at Boulogne in November 1851.