Sandwich, John Montagu, 4th Earl of
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- Sandwich, John Montagu, 4th Earl of
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(1718 - 92), s. and h. of Edward, Vct. Hinchinbrooke; suc. gd.-fa. 1729 as 4th E. of Sandwich; educ. Eton and Trin. Camb. 1735; m. 1741 Hon. Dorothy Fane (1717 - 97), dau. of 1st Vct. Fane [I]; FRS 1740; FSA 1746; army officer, col. 1745, gen.1772; min.plen. Breda 1746, Aix-la-Chapelle 1748, The Hague 1746 - 9.
1737 - 40 Turin, Florence (Aug. 1737), Rome (by Feb. - Mar. 1738), Naples (Mar. - Apr.), Sicily [Malta, Greece, Constantinople] Leghorn (Oct.), Florence (by 19 Oct. 1738 - 20 Feb. 1739), Genoa [Lisbon] Leghorn (27 Jun. - Jul.) [Egypt] Leghorn (23 Dec. 1739), Florence (Jan. 1740), Turin (9 Feb.)
On leaving Cambridge without taking his degree, Lord Sandwich went to Italy, where he 'observed the remains of the Roman arts and magnificence ... in no common manner'. He spent some time in Turin, since he later said he had spent a year there and found it 'a polite and friendly court, where both French and Italian are spoken, and there you have good academies of all kinds',1 and the Duke of Savoy was enquiring after him in April 1738.2 He was in Florence in August 1737,3 where he probably first met his future wife, Dorothy Fane, who had been staying with her brother Charles, the British minister.
The following year, not being satisfied 'with the beauties he had met [in Italy]', Sandwich 'bought a ship' and prepared for a Mediterranean voyage from Naples for Sicily.4 According to A Voyage performed by the late Earl of Sandwich round the Mediterranean in the years 1738 and 1739 [1799], he set out from Leghorn on 12 July 1738 aboard the Anne, but the Voyage (published after Sandwich's death and edited by John Cooke [1738 - 1823], his chaplain) seems inaccurate on several counts. Sandwich was in Rome in February 1738,5 and came to Naples from Rome early in March 1738.6 On 7 April Shadwell wrote from Naples that Sandwich, having spent 'about a month' there, sailed with his party 'last week'.7 His party comprised his governor (said variously to have been James Frolich8 or the Swiss Fralioli9), his friends William Ponsonby (later Viscount Duncannon and 2nd Earl of Bessborough), James Nelthorpe and John Mackye, and the French artist Liotard. In the Cliston, commanded by Captain Doran,9 they sailed from Malta to Sicily, Greece and the Greek Islands and Constantinople (where Liotard stayed), returning to Leghorn in October. On 19 October they were all in Florence, where Nelthorpe and Mackye then left his party.(10) On 24 January 1739 Sandwich was still in Florence, being presented at Court with Lord Augustus Fitzroy 'and many other English Gentlemen'.(11) On 20 February he left with Lords Augustus and Charles Fitzroy to go to Genoa, where they were to embark for Lisbon.(12) Sandwich returned to Leghorn from Lisbon on 27 June aboard the Dolphin commanded by Lord Aubrey Beauclerk and it was then announced that he had hired a boat in Genoa for a second voyage to the Levant.(13) It was probably at this time, fresh from his eastern travels, that Sandwich encountered the Pr?sident de Brosses in the Uffizi and assured him that all Greek women resembled the Medici Venus (and then extemporised a Latin couplet as a more suitable epitaph for a bust of Brutus).14
In the course of his second eastern voyage war broke out between Spain and England, but Sandwich managed to get back to Italy from Alexandria in the Faulkland with a convoy of nine merchantmen, reaching Leghorn on 23 December.15 After performing quarantine, Sandwich was briefly in Florence in January 1740,16 and on 9 February 1740 came to Turin, where he met and talked at length of his travels with Joseph Spence. 'A man that has been all over Greece, at Constantinople, Troy, the pyramids of Egypt, and the deserts of Arabia', wrote Spence, 'talks and looks with a greater air than we little people can do that have only crawled about France and Italy'. Sandwich had been expected to stay five or six weeks, but stayed 'only two or three days. He has some affairs that require very much his presence in England, and will be there in a fortnight'.17
1. HMC Charlemont, 1:179. 2. Sinclair jnl.MSS (23 Apr. 1738). 3. SP 98/40, f.175 (Rhodes, 20 Aug. 1737). 4. Spence Letters, 252 - 3. 5. Sinclair jnl.MSS (13 Feb.). 6. SP 93/9 (E. Allen, 11 Mar. 1738). 7. BL, Sloane MSS 4049. 8. Spence Letters, 243. 9. D. Baud-Bovy, Peintres genevois, [1903], 1:18. 10. SP 98/40 (Florence Newsletter, 20 Oct. 1738). 11. Ibid. (26 Jan. 1739). 12. Ibid. (23 Feb. 1739). 13. SP 98/42 (Leghorn Newsletter, 3 Jul. 1739). 14. De Brosses, 1:268 (4 Oct. 1739). 15. SP 98/42 (Leghorn Newsletter, 25 Dec. 1739). 16. Pomfret jnl.MSS. 17. Spence Letters, 248 - 9 (10 Feb. 1740).