by his predecessor in favour of the Jews. An outbreak of anti-Semitic fanaticism in Tangier in the following autumn led the veteran philanthropist, now in his eighty-first year, to undertake a mission to Morocco. H.M.S. Magicienne carried him from Gibraltar to Mogador, whence, under an escort provided by the sultan, he crossed the Atlas desert, arriving at Morocco on 26 Jan. 1864. He was well received by the sultan, who issued an edict placing the Jews upon a footing of perfect equality with his other subjects. In 1866 he was once more in Syria, distributing alms to the sufferers by a recent plague of locusts and epidemic of cholera. In the following year he visited Bucharest, and interceded with Prince Charles on behalf of the persecuted Jews of Moldavia (August 1867). By the prince he was well received, but the excited populace surrounded his hotel and threatened his life. Though in ill-health, he maintained perfect self-possession, quieted the mob by addressing them from an open window, and afterwards drove through the streets without escort in an open carriage. In 1872, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Peter the Great, Montefiore carried to St. Petersburg an address from the British Jewish community felicitating Tsar Alexander II upon the event. He was then in his eighty-eighth year, and the tsar, to mark his respect for his aged visitor, left his troops, whose summer manoeuvres he was then directing, and returned to St. Petersburg to receive him at the Winter Palace (24 July). A seventh and final pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which Montefiore made in the summer of 1875, is described in his 'Narrative of a Forty Days' Sojourn in the Holy Land,' printed for private circulation on his return. He passed the rest of his days in comparative seclusion at his seat, East Cliff Lodge, Ramsgate, where he died on 28 July 1885, within three months of completing his hundred and first year. His remains were interred in a private mausoleum on his estate. Montefiore was one of the strictest of Jews, rigidly orthodox in his religious opinions, and scrupulously exact in his observance of the precepts of the Mosaic law. On his death without issue the baronetcy became extinct, but a similar honour was conferred, on 16 Feb. 1886, on Montefiore's grandnephew, Francis Abraham Montefiore (b. 1860). Montefiore was brought into close relationship with the Rothschild family by his marriage, 10 June 1812, with Judith, second daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, whose sister Hannah was wife of Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1777-1836). Lady Montefiore was a woman no less remarkable for vigour and refinement of mind than for beauty, piety, and benevolence. She died on 24 Sept. 1862, and was buried in the mausoleum at Ramsgate.
Lady Montefiore was her husband's inseparable companion in his wanderings, which not unfrequently involved great personal risk and hardship Their first expedition to the East is described in her entertaining 'Private Journal of a Visit to Egypt and Palestine by way of Italy and the Mediterranean,' printed for private circulation, London, 1836, 8vo. A portrait of Montefiore by H. Weigall was lent by him to the Victorian Exhibition.
[Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, ed. Dr. L. Loewe, 1890 (portrait); Wolf's Sir Moses Montefiore, 1884; Bailey's Modern Methuselahs, 1888; An Open Letter addressed to Sir Moses Montefiore, bart., &c., 1875.]
MONTEITH, ROBERT (fl. 1621–1660), historian. [See Menteith.]
MONTEITH, WILLIAM (1790–1864), lieutenant-general Indian army, diplomatist and historian, son of William Monteith and his wife Janet Goodwin, was born in the Abbey parish, Paisley, Renfrewshire, on 22 June 1790. On 18 March 1809 he was appointed a lieutenant in the Madras engineers, and became captain in that corps on 2 May 1817, lieutenant-colonel on 4 Nov. 1824, colonel on 13 May 1839 (brevet on 18 June 1831). Monteith accompanied Sir John Malcolm's embassy to Persia, and when at Tabriz, in February 1810, was sent to reconnoitre the Russian frontier-posts on the Arras, near Megeri, at the request of Abbas Mirza, the prince royal of Persia. When Malcolm's embassy quitted Persia, Monteith was one of the officers left behind. He went with Abbas Mirza to Erivan, and accompanied an expedition into Georgia, in which the Persians were unsuccessful. During the four succeeding campaigns against the Russians in 1810-13 Monteith was in command of a frontier force of cavalry with six guns, and of the garrison of Erivan. He was engaged in many skirmishes, and once was wounded. The war against Russia was supported by the British minister, Sir Harford Jones Brydges [q. v.]; but the Moscow retreat brought about a reversal of British policy. When Henry Ellis [see Ellis, Sir Henry, 1777-1855] and David Richard Morier [q. v.] concluded the treaty of Teheran between Great Britain and Persia, which was signed on 25 Nov. 1814, and remained in force until the war of 1857, Monteith acted as secretary to Morier. He was still in Persia in 1819, and acted as aide-de-camp to Sir William Grant Keir, afterwards Keir Grant [q. v.], commanding the Bombay force sent
