Doome, p. 351). He was also apparently at this time much mixed up in the tortuous negotiations with the papacy which were conducted through Panzani. Panzani recorded that in an interview on 3 Nov. 1635 Montagu spoke slightingly of the obstacles to reunion, admitted the authority of the pope, suggested a conference in France,' said freely that he believed all that I believed except transubstantiation,' adding that Laud was 'pauroso e circonspetto.' At a later interview he seemed, according to Panzani, to think reunion quite easy (see Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, by Joseph Berington, 1793, pp. 237, 241, 246; and Mr. S. R. Gardiner's transcripts from the Record Office quoted in his History, viii. 138-9, 143). These statements must be received with considerable distrust (cf. a Roman catholic writer, C. Plowden [q. v.], Remarks on Panzani's Memoirs, Liège, 1794), as Panzani was notoriously ignorant of English opinion, and Montagu's writings maintain throughout an unflinchingly Anglican and anti-Roman position. But at the same time Montagu was asking license for his son to visit Rome (see letter to Windebanke, Cal. State Papers, 26 Jan. 1634-5), and the matter became in the hands of Prynne a plausible accusation of romanising (see Hidden Workes of Darkenesse brought to Publike Light, 1645, pp. 146-7).
On the translation of Wren, bishop of Norwich, to Ely, Montagu was appointed to the vacant see. He was elected on 4 May 1638, and the election received the royal assent on 9 May (Le Neve, Dignitaries, p. 212, and Cal. State Papers}. The temporalities were restored to him on 19 May (ib.) In Laud's annual accounts of his province to the king we find that in 1638 the bishop complained much of the impoverishing of the see by his predecessors' long leases and exchanges of land (Laud, Works, v. 359. His report for 1638 is Lambeth MS. No. 943). The next year he declared his diocese 'as quiet, uniform, and comformable as any in the kingdom if not more' (Laud, Works, v. 364). He had long been suffering from a quartan ague, as well as gout and stone (ib. p. 353, and Cosin Correspondence, vol. i. passim). But he was not to die without further public criticism. He was again attacked in the House of Commons on 23 Feb. 1641 on account of a petition from the inhabitants of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, against an inhibition directed by the bishop against Mr. Carter, parson of that parish, and a commission was appointed to consider his offences. Before any further steps were taken he died on 13 April 1641, and was buried in his cathedral, with a simple monument and epitaph written by himself 'Depositum Montacutii Episcopi.'
Selden and Savile both bore testimony to his great learning, and Laud described him as 'a very good scholar and a right honest man.' His works show him to have been a man of erudition, with a considerable gift of sarcasm, which he expressed in somewhat cumbrous Latin, but in clear and trenchant English. Both in Latin and in English he shows himself a writer of great power. Fuller says of him that 'his great parts were attended with a tartness of writing, very sharp the nip of his pen, and much gall mingled in his ink against such as opposed him. However such the equability of the sharpness of his style, he was impartial therein; be he ancient or modern writer, papist or protestant, that stood in his way, they shuld all equally taste thereof' (Church History, bk. xi. c. 7). His humorous, familiar letters to his intimate friend, Cosin (Cosin Correspondence, vol. i., Surtees Soc., 1869, No. 52), afford interesting details as to the composition of his different books. A scholar and theologian rather than a politician or man of the world, he was an enthusiast for his leading idea, the catholicity of the English church. In theological literature he was probably at least as powerful an influence as Andrewes or Jeremy Taylor. The 'Appello Cæsarem' was certainly one of the most famous pamphlets in an age of controversial activity.
Besides the works already mentioned, Montagu wrote: 1. 'Antidiatribæ ad priorern partem diatribes J. Cæsaris Bulengeri,' Cambridge, 1625. 2. 'Eusebii de Demonstratione Evangelicâ libri decem . . . omnia studio R. M. Latine facta, notis illustrata,' 1628. 3. 'Apparatus ad Origines Ecclesiasticas,' Oxford, 1635. 4. 'De Originibus Ecclesiasticis,' first part, London, 1636; second part, London, 1640. 5. 'Articles of Inquiry put forth at his Primary Visitation as Bishop of Norwich' (unauthorised), Cambridge, 1638; (corrected by the bishop), London, 1638; new edition, Cambridge, 1841. 6. 'Acts and Monuments of the Church,' London, 1642. 7. 'Versio et Notæ in Photii Epistolas,' London, 1651.
[Le Neve's Dignitaries, ed. 1716; Calendar of State Papers; T. Harwood's Alumni Etonienses, 1797; Catalogue of Provosts, Fellows, and Scholars of King's College, Cambridge, by Anthony Allen, circa 1750 (King's College MSS.); Maxwell Lyte's History of Eton College; Isaac Casaubon's Epistolæ, ed. 1709; Mark Pattison's Life of Casaubon; Cosin Correspondence, vol. i. (Surtees Society, vol. lii.); Godwin's Bishops, ed. 1615, with manuscript notes in continuation,
