Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu

Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu (24 December 1638 – 9 March 1709) was an English courtier and diplomat.

He was the second son of Edward Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton (1616–1684) and Anne Winwood, daughter of the Secretary of State Ralph Winwood. The peerage of his father was one of several granted in the seventeenth century to different members of the Montagu family.

Sir Edward Montagu, Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the time of Henry VIII, was grandfather of the 1st Earl of Manchester, and of the 1st Baron Montagu of Boughton (1562–1644), who was imprisoned in the Tower by the Parliament on account of his loyalty to Charles I. The eldest son of the latter, Edward, who succeeded him as the 2nd Baron, took the side of the Parliament in the Civil War, and was one of the lords who conducted the king from Newark-on-Trent to Holmby House after his surrender by the Scots in January 1647.

He had two sons, of whom Ralph was the younger. The eldest son, Edward, was Master of the Horse to Queen Catherine, wife of Charles II, a post from which he is said to have been dismissed by the king for 'showing attention to the queen of too ardent a nature'. Catherine immediately appointed the younger brother, Ralph, to the vacant situation, and the latter soon acquired a reputation for gallantry at the court of Charles II. He took an active part in the negotiations in which Louis XIV purchased the neutrality of England in the war between France and the Netherlands.

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