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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2014
Few men have been studied more but understood less than Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. He has suffered at the hands of those writers who have written of other aspects, or concentrated on other personalities, of the age in which he lived. In one of his purple passages Winston Churchill, anxious to defend his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, dismissed St. John as an “unpurposed, unprincipled, miscreant adventurer.” Louis Kronenberger was even more vehement in his denunciation: “He had neither moral stamina nor intellectual honesty nor emotional benevolence; and as he was in his heart, so was he in his dealings with men. In short, he was a scoundrel.” In his biographers St. John has suffered almost as badly. Walter Sichel, who wrote two large volumes covering his whole career, fell into the obvious trap of being “excessively adulatory.” Sir Charles Petrie and Sir Douglas Harkness concentrated almost exclusively on his early career, and the older works by G. W. Cooke and Thomas Macknight have been largely invalidated by the discovery of a mass of new evidence and by new interpretations of eighteenth-century politics. Three recent works are really only studies of different aspects of his political philosophy and his published works rather than of his political career. Moreover, only one of all these studies on Bolingbroke has been written by a professional historian, and his study is based solely on printed sources. The result is that mistakes made by early biographers have been accepted uncritically by later writers on Bolingbroke.
1. Churchill, W. S., Marlborough: His Life and Times (London, 1938), IV, 619.Google Scholar
2. Kronenberger, Louis, Kings and Desperate Men (London, 1942), p. 26Google Scholar. Cf. Morley's remark, “of all the characters in our history, Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a Charlatan.” Morley, John, Walpole (London, 1893), pp. 79–80Google Scholar.
3. Plumb, J. H., Sir Robert Walpole (London, 1956), I, 130nGoogle Scholar.
4. The studies referred to are: Sichel, Walter, Bolingbroke and His Times (London, 1901–1902)Google Scholar; SirPetrie, Charles, Bolingbroke (London, 1937)Google Scholar; SirHarkness, Douglas, Bolingbroke: The Man and His Career (London, 1957)Google Scholar; Cooke, G. W., Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke (London, 1835)Google Scholar; Macknight, Thomas, The Life of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (London, 1863)Google Scholar; Hart, Jeffrey, Viscount Bolingbroke, Tory Humanist (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Jackman, Sydney Wayne, Man of Mercury (London, 1965)Google Scholar; and Mansfield, Harvey C., Statesmanship and Party Government (Chicago, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5. Sydney Wayne Jackman, a professor of history in Canada, whose Man of Mercury is subtitled An Appreciation of the Mind of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke and is a series of essays on Bolingbroke's published works. Nearly all the early biographies of Bolingbroke were by amateur historians.
6. An anonymous reviewer of the three studies of Bolingbroke published in 1965 wrote, “Any attentive reader of Bolingbroke biographies could continue playing this game of watch-the-error-travel quite easily for himself.” T.L.S., 12 May 1966. Cf. Pitt, H. G.'s review, New Statesman, 1 July 1966Google Scholar: “No one has yet been found who can assess his career as a whole … So he is relegated to a biography a decade from those authors who are drawn by riddles, enigmas and blasted hopes as moths to a flame.”
7. Trevelyan, G. M. (ed.), Bolingbroke's Defence of the Treaty of Utrecht (Cambridge, 1932), p. x.Google Scholar
8. Hopkinson, Lady Mary, Married to Mercury (London, 1936), p. 16Google Scholar. Sichel, , Bolingbroke, I, 145–46Google Scholar, romanticized about St. John's early years with his mother.
9. Hopkinson, , Married to Mercury, p. 16Google Scholar. See also BM, Egerton MSS, 2378, fol. 37.
10. Smallwood, Frank T., “Bolingbroke's Birthplace,” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, LX (1965), 96–99Google Scholar.
11. Bolingbroke to Swift, 21 July 1721 (N.S.), in Ball, F. Elrington (ed.), Tie Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (London, 1910), III, 92–93Google Scholar.
12. D.N.B. makes the strange claim that Daniel Burgess was employed by the Countess of Warwick, his mother's kinswoman, to act as tutor to the young St. John.
13. Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second (London, 1822), I, 195.Google Scholar
14. BM, Bolingbroke to his father, 24 July 1717, Add. MSS, 34196, fol. 2v. Hart, , Viscount Bolingbroke, p. 22Google Scholar, thought this letter was addressed to Bolingbroke's half-sister, Henrietta, but she was not even married at this time. For no very clear reason Sichel, , Bolingbroke, II, 481,Google Scholar and Harkness, , Bolingbroke, p. 17Google Scholar, thought it was addressed to Lord Harcourt. I am grateful to Frank T. Smallwood, formerly of Sir Walter St. John School, for showing me that the letter was most probably addressed to Bolingbroke's father and referred to the education of his two younger sons by his second marriage. Smallwood has also given me valuable advice on Bolingbroke's early life and education.
15. Parke, Gilbert (ed.), Letters and Correspondence of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (London, 1798), IV, 381.Google Scholar
16. Although she became an Occasional Conformist, she appears to have kept her Huguenot faith, for in his will Henry St. John the elder left £50 to the poor of the French Church of the Savoy.
17. Toulmin, Joshua, An Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters in England (London, 1814), App. 5, p. 559Google Scholar. Unfortunately Toulmin also claimed that Robert Harley was educated at Sheriffhales, and this claim was proved inaccurate by McInnes, A. J. D. M., “Robert Harley, Secretary of State” (M.A. thesis, University of Wales, 1961), pp. 170–72Google Scholar.
18. Cobbett, William, Parliamentary History (London, 1806–1820), VI, 1352.Google Scholar
19. Cooke, , Memoirs of Bolingbroke, I, 8;Google ScholarTrevelyan, G. M., England under Queen Anne (London, 1934), III, 282Google Scholar. Friedrich Bonet, the Prussian resident, explained to the Berlin Court on 11 June 1714 that Lord Wharton had alluded specifically to the education of Harley and Harcourt in dissenting academies, but only generally to St. John's dissenting ancestors. Prussian Archives, Merseburg, East Germany, Repository XI (England), No. 39a, fol. 143.
20. Williams, Basil, Stanhope (Oxford, 1932), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.
21. Harris, M. D., “Memoirs of the Right Hon. Edward Hopkins, M.P. for Coventry,” E.H.R., XXXIV (1919), 498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22. H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 777 et seq.
23. Williams, Harold (ed.), The Journal to Stella (Oxford, 1948), II, 495, 23 Feb. 1712Google Scholar.
24. Chesterfield to his son, London, 12 Dec. 1749, in Dobrée, Bonamy (ed.), The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (London, 1932), IV, 1462.Google Scholar
25. Mrs.Barrington, Russell (ed.), The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot (London, 1915), IVGoogle Scholar, “Bolingbroke as a Statesman,” 164.
26. Plumb, , Walpole, I, 130.Google Scholar
27. Sichel, , Bolingbroke, I, 159.Google Scholar
28. St. John to Thomas Coke, 16 Oct. 1704 and 28 May 1705, H.M.C., Cowper MSS, III, 49, 61.Google Scholar
29. Charborough Park, St. John to Thomas Erie, Whitehall, 31 July 1706, Erie Papers. I am grateful to Admiral Drax for permission to consult and to quote from these papers.
30. Report of Count Gallas to the Emperor, 17 July 1711, in Churchill, , Marlborough, IV, 478.Google Scholar
31. Williams, , Journal to Stella, II, 401, 3 Nov. 1711.Google Scholar
32. Bodleian, St. John to Lord Orrery, Bucklebury, 1 Sep. 1709, English MSS, Misc. E. 180, fol. 6.
33. For St. John's early compositions, see Cooke, , Memoirs of Bolingbroke, II, App. 1, 285–99Google Scholar; also Barber, G. G., “A Bibliography of Henry St. John, Vis-count Bolingbroke” (B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar.
34. Williams, , Journal to Stella, II, 397, 30 Oct. 1711.Google Scholar
35. Parke, , Correspondence of Bolingbroke, I, 246–47Google Scholar. Swift, Matthew Prior, John Arbuthnot, and John Friend were all members of this club. Ibid., I, 246n.
36. Bolingbroke, Viscount, “Of the True Use of Retirement and Study,” Letters on the Study and Use of History (London, 1752), pp. 414–15Google Scholar.
37. Bolingbroke, Viscount, A Letter to Sir William Windham (London, 1753), p. 31.Google Scholar
38. Macknight, , Life of Bolingbroke, p. 682.Google Scholar
39. See Dickinson, H. T., “The Attempt to Assassinate Harley, 1711,” History Today, XV (1965), 788–95Google Scholar.
40. St. John to Sir William Trumbull, London, 31 Oct. 1701, H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 810.Google Scholar
41. Bodleian, St. John to Orrery, Bucklebury, 1 Sep. 1709, English MSS, Misc. E.180, fol. 6.
42. St. John to Swift, 3 Aug. 1714, in Ball, , Correspondence of Swift, II, 214.Google Scholar
43. See St. John to Trumbull, 26 May 1701, H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 802.Google Scholar
44. See Macpherson, James (ed.), Original Papers (London, 1775), II, 532.Google Scholar
45. William Stratford to Harley, Christ Church, 1 July 1714, H.M.C., Portland MSS, VII, 193Google Scholar. For a study of St. John's relations with his first wife, see Hopkinson, Married to Mercury, passim.
46. Burton, I. F., “‘The Committee of Council at the War-Office’: An Experiment in Cabinet Government under Anne,” Historical Journal, IV (1961), 81–84Google Scholar.
47. The best study of Bolingbroke's attack on Pope over The Idea of a Patriot King is in Barber, , “Bibliography of Bolingbroke,” pp. 184–206Google Scholar.
48. BM, Bolingbroke to his father, 24 July 1717, Add. MSS, 34196, fol. 2.
49. See H.M.C., Cowper MSS, III, passim; Charborough Park, Erle Papers; Davies, Godfrey and Tinling, Marion (eds.), the James Brydges-Henry St. John correspondence, Huntington Library Bulletin, Nos. 8 and 9 (1935–1936)Google Scholar.
50. Williams, , Stanhope, pp. 149, 259–60Google Scholar.
51. Hopkinson, Married to Mercury, passim.
52. H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 782.Google Scholar
53. Berkshire Record Office, St. John to Trumbull, London, 12 June 1702, Downshire Papers, Trumbull Add. MSS, 133, bundle 1/1. I am grateful to Lord Downshire for permission to consult and quote short extracts from these papers.
54. Davies and Tinling, “Letters of Henry St. John to James Brydges,” Huntington Library Bulletin, No. 8, 161, Bucklebury, 26 June 1709.
55. Trevelyan, , Bolingbroke's Defence of the Treaty of Utrecht, p. 91.Google Scholar
56. St. John to Harley, 5 Nov. 1706, H.M.C., Bath MSS, I, 121.Google Scholar
57. Williams, , Journal to Stella, II, 401, 3 Nov. 1711.Google Scholar
58. Blanchard, Rae (ed.), The Englishman (Oxford, 1955), p. 288.Google Scholar
59. Chesterfield to his son, London, 12 Dec. 1749, in Dobrée, , Letters of Chesterfield, IV, 1463Google Scholar. There appear to be no extant drafts of any of Bolingbroke's speeches. See Cobbett, , Parliamentary History, VI, 301-02, 1330, 1351Google Scholar, for short speeches by St. John. See Cunningham, Alexander, History of Great Britain 1688-1727 (London, 1787), II, 349–50Google Scholar, for a longer speech. It is not certain that these are verbatim reports. See H.M.C., House of Lords MSS, new series, X, 269, 493Google Scholar, for copies of speeches from the Queen to Parliament, delivered by Bolingbroke in 1714; these were not necessarily his own compositions. See Bodleian, William Bishop to Arthur Charlett, 20 Dec. 1710, Ballard MSS, 31, fol. 85, for this interesting remark: “yt Mr. St. Johns outdid himself they say in speaking & my Coz's character of him is yt wn he speaks his own thoughts no one speaks better, & noe one worse, others.” Even if St. John's speeches had survived, only contemporary testimony could describe the impact he made on his listeners.
60. Journals of the House of Commons, XIII, 492, 764-65, 808Google Scholar. Many of St. John's biographers have incorrectly claimed that he introduced the Act of Settlement of 1701: e.g., Petrie, , Bolingbroke, p. 52Google Scholar; Macknight, , Life of Bolingbroke, p. 56Google Scholar; Harkness, , Bolingbroke, p. 33Google Scholar. In Jan. 1702 he was ordered to prepare “a Bill for a further security of his Majesty's Person and the Succession of the Crown in the Protestant line.” This was a different measure. See Commons Journals, XIII, 657.Google Scholar
61. Ibid., XIII, 416, 514, 553, 574, 738, 748, 775.
62. Berkshire Record Office, St. John to Trumbull, 2 May 1704, Downshire Papers, Trumbull Add. MSS, 133, bundle 27/1. Cited by Dudley, G. A., “The Early Life of Henry St. John” (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, 1955)Google Scholar. See also St. John to Trumbull, 13 Oct. 1704, H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 835–36Google Scholar.
63. Levens Hall, Westmorland, letter dated Whitehall, 23 June 1705, Grahme Papers, box D, file S. I am grateful to Mrs. O. R. Bagot of Levens Hall for per-mission to consult and quote from these papers.
64. Swift, Jonathan, “An Enquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's Last Ministry” (London, 1715)Google Scholar, The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Davis, Herbert (Oxford, 1939–1962), VIII, 135.Google Scholar
65. Jean de Robethon's report to the Elector, 21 Mar. 1711, in Churchill, , Marlborough, IV, 372.Google Scholar
66. Gallas's report to the Emperor, 17 July 1711, in ibid., IV, 478.
67. For examples of St. John's efforts to find a seat in 1708, see St. John to Harley, 1 May 1708, H.M.C., Bath MSS, I, 190Google Scholar; also St. John to Harcourt, 20 Dec. 1708, H.M.C., Portland MSS, IV, 515Google Scholar. The letter from Sir James Long, ibid., IV, 175-76, tentatively dated Apr. 1705, is almost certainly the letter referred to by St. John in his letter to Harley on 1 May 1708 and therefore should be dated Apr. 1708.
68. Hart, Both, Viscount Bolingbroke, p. 33Google Scholar, and Jackman, , Man of Mercury, p. 25Google Scholar, have repeated the mistakes of earlier writers; this is particularly inexcusable since this theory was exploded by Petrie, , Bolingbroke, pp. 104–06, in 1937Google Scholar. Hart relied heavily on Petrie, and Jackman's book even has a foreword by Petrie.
69. Levens Hall, Westmorland, letter dated 18 July 1708, Grahme Papers, box D, file S. An abbreviated form of this letter was published in H.M.C., Tenth Report, Bagot MSS, p. 341Google Scholar, and cited by Petrie, , Bolingbroke, p. 105.Google Scholar
70. Davies and Tinling, “Letters of Henry St. John to James Brydges,” Huntington Library Bulletin, No. 8, 161, Bucklebury, 26 June 1709.
71. St. John to Harley, 11 Oct. 1708, H.M.C., Bath MSS, I, 191–92Google Scholar.
72. St. John to Coke, Whitehall, 19 Sep. 1705, H.M.C., Cowper MSS, III, 63–64Google Scholar.
73. Plumb paid tribute to Bolingbroke's grasp of public opinion and even went so far as to base Bolingbroke's flight in 1715 on an awareness of George I's unpopularity. Plumb, , Walpole, I, 214Google Scholar. In a later work he put down the flight to sheer panic. Plumb, J. H., The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675-1725 (London, 1967), p. 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
74. Peter Wentworth to Lord Raby, London, 27 Mar. 1711, in Cartwright, J. J. (ed.), The Wentworth Papers (London, 1883), pp. 189–90Google Scholar. This letter gives the best description of this extraordinary incident. Cf. Bishop Burners History of His Own Time (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1833), VI, 31–32Google Scholar, and Speaker Arthur Onslow's note, which wrongly claims that St. John deliberately connived at this defeat. Ibid., VI, 31n.
75. Commons Journals, XVI, 562.Google Scholar
76. Williams, , Journal to Stella, I, 215, 12 Mar. 1711.Google Scholar
77. St. John to Pensionary Buys, 23 Mar. 1711, in Parke, , Correspondence of Bolingbroke, I, 488.Google Scholar
78. St. John to Trumbull, Lidiard, 13 Aug. 1701, H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 804–05Google Scholar.
79. BM, Duke of Marlborough to Earl of Godolphin, Meldert, 11 July 1707, Add. MSS, 9100, fol. 26.
80. Bolingbroke to Oxford, 6 Jan. 1714, H.M.C., Portland MSS, V, 379.Google Scholar
81. “The Earl of Oxford's Account of Public Affairs,” 6 June 1710-1 July 1714, ibid., V, 465.
82. For the attitude of St. John's colleagues to this volte-face, see Williams, , Journal to Stella, I, 252, 27 Apr. 1711.Google Scholar
83. Foot, Michael, The Pen and the Sword (London, 1957), p. 217Google Scholar, surmised that St. John might have something to hide but believed that there was no proof. He overlooked the letter from Brydges, which was published in 1936.
84. Davies, and Tinling, , “Letters from James Brydges to Henry St. John,” Huntington Library Bulletin, No. 9, 130–31, 20 Oct. 1711Google Scholar.
85. Cobbett, , Parliamentary History, VI, 1365.Google Scholar
86. Bolingbroke, , A Letter to Sir William Windham, pp. 19–22Google Scholar.
87. St. John to Coke, Whitehall, 19 Sep. 1705, H.M.C., Cowper MSS, III, 61–64Google Scholar.
88. Harris, , “Memoirs of Hopkins,” E.H.R., XXXIV, 498Google Scholar. Henry St. John the elder was apparently a Whig. In 1716 he secured a peerage from George I though his son, Bolingbroke, had been attainted of high treason. Moreover, as early as 10 Aug. 1712 the Due d'Aumont reported to the French Court about Bolingbroke: “Son Pere Mr. de St. Jean est encore en vie, et est Wight aussy outre que le fils est Thorris, ce qui fait peu de commerce entre eux.” Cited by Salomon, Felix, Geschichte de letzten Ministeriums Konigin Annas von England (Gotha, 1894), p. 356.Google Scholar
89. BM, Bolingbroke to Bishop Atterbury [Oct. 1714], Stowe MSS, 242, fol. 177.
90. Basil Williams wrote: “The desire … expressed by Bolingbroke to lead the Tory party out of the wilderness of Jacobitism and make it a party ready to support the throne and take a part in the national politics seems to have been perfectly genuine.” Williams, , Stanhope, p. 259.Google Scholar
91. St. John to Trumbull, Lidiard, 13 Aug. 1701, H.M.C., Downshire MSS, I, Pt. 2, 804–05Google Scholar.
92. St. John to Marlborough, 12/23 Nov. 1706, in Macknight, , Life of Bolingbroke, p. 106.Google Scholar
93. Berkshire Record Office, St. John to Trumbull, Bucklebury, 2 June 1710, Downshire Papers, Trumbull Add. MSS, 133, bundle 39/2.
94. On 29 Mar. 1714 Abbé Gaultier reported to the Marquis de Torcy: “Le Grand Turc sera plutost Roy d'Angleterre que le Chevalier tant qu'il sera Catholique Romain; ce sont les dernieres paroles que m'ont dit Mylord Bolingbroke.” Legg, L. G. Wickham, “Extracts from Jacobite Correspondence, 1712-1714,” E.H.R., XXX (1915), 517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
95. Bodleian, St. John to Orrery, Bucklebury, 9 July 1709, English MSS, Misc. E.180, fols. 4-5.
96. Parke, Correspondence of Bolingbroke, passim; Bodleian, St. John to Orrery, Whitehall, 24 July 1711, English MSS, Letters E.4, fol. 53; BM, St. John to James Dayrolle, 2 Aug. 1711, Add. MSS, 15866, fol. 222.
97. Feiling, Keith, The History of the Tory Party 1640-1714 (Oxford, 1924), p. 386.Google Scholar