Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (16 September 1678 – 12 December 1751) was a British Tory politician and philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology.See e.g., Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope: Introduction", The Works of Lord Bolingbroke: With a Life, Prepared Expressly for This Edition, Containing Additional Information Relative to His Personal and Public Character, (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841) Vol 3, pp. 40–64. Also available on Project Gutenberg as "Letter to Alexander Pope" in Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope.D'Holbach, Baron. Good Sense paragraph 206The philosophical works of Lord Bolingbroke Volume 2, p. 287Allen, Brooke, Moral Minority p. 75Voltaire, God and Human Beings pp. 64, 80, 104 Bolingbroke supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France, he became foreign minister for the Jacobite pretender James Francis Edward Stuart. He was attainted for treason but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman (1726–1735) by adopting the formerly Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle."
Early life
Henry St John was most probably born at Lydiard Tregoze, the family seat in Wiltshire, and christened in Battersea.H. T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (London: Constable, 1970), p. 2. St John was the son of Sir Henry St John, 4th Baronet later 1st Viscount St John, and Lady Mary Rich, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Warwick. Although it has been asserted that St John was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, his name does not appear on registers for either institution and there is no evidence to support either claim.Dickinson, pp. 2–3. It is possible he was educated at a Dissenting academy.Dickinson, pp. 3–4.
He travelled to France, Switzerland and Italy during 1698 and 1699 and acquired an exceptional knowledge of French. St John made friends with the Whigs James Stanhope and Edward Hopkins and corresponded with the Tory Sir William Trumball, who advised him: "There appears indeed amongst us [in England] a strong disposition to liberty, but neither honesty nor virtue enough to support it".
Oliver Goldsmith reported that he had been seen to "run naked through the park in a state of intoxication". Jonathan Swift, his intimate friend, said that he wanted to be thought the Alcibiades or Petronius of his age, and to mix licentious orgies with the highest political responsibilities. In 1700, he married Frances, daughter of Sir Henry Winchcombe of Bucklebury, Berkshire, but this made little difference to his lifestyle.
Early career
He became a Member of Parliament in 1701, representing the family borough of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, as a Tory. His seat was Lydiard Park at Lydiard Tregoze, now in the Borough of Swindon. He attached himself to Robert Harley (afterwards Lord Oxford), then Speaker of the House of Commons, and distinguished himself by his eloquence in debate, eclipsing his schoolfellow, Robert Walpole, and gaining an extraordinary ascendancy over the House of Commons. In May, he had charge of the bill for securing the Protestant succession; he took part in the impeachment of the Whig lords for their conduct concerning the Partition treaties, and opposed the oath of loyalty against the "Old Pretender". In March 1702, he was chosen commissioner for taking the public accounts.
After Queen Anne's accession, St John supported the bills in 1702 and 1704 against occasional conformity, and took a leading part in the disputes which arose between the two Houses. In 1704, St John took office with Harley as secretary at war, thus being brought into intimate relations with John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, by whom he was treated with favour. In 1708, he left office with Harley on the failure of the latter's intrigue, and retired to the country till 1710, when he became a privy counsellor and secretary of state in Harley's new ministry, representing Berkshire in parliament. He supported the bill for requiring a real property qualification for a seat in parliament. In 1711 he founded the Brothers' Club, a society of Tory politicians and men of letters, and the same year witnessed the failure of the two expeditions to the West Indies and to Canada promoted by him. In 1712, he was the author of the bill taxing newspapers.
The refusal of the Whigs to make peace with France in 1706, and again in 1709 when Louis XIV offered to yield every point for which the allies professed to be fighting, showed that the war was not being continued in the national interest, and the Queen, Parliament and the people supported the ministry in its wish to terminate hostilities. Because of the diversity of aims among the allies, St John was induced to enter into separate and secret negotiations with France for the security of British interests. In May 1712, he ordered James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, who had succeeded Marlborough in command, to refrain from any further engagement. These instructions were communicated to the French, though not to the allies, Louis putting Dunkirk as security into possession of England, and the British troops deserted their allies almost on the battlefield. Subsequently, St John received the congratulations of the French foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, on the French victory over Prince Eugene at Denain (24 July 1712).
In June 1712, St John's commercial treaty with France, establishing free trade with that country, was rejected by the House of Commons. The treaty was presented in the Commons by Arthur Moore as St John had been created Viscount Bolingbroke earlier that year. A major campaign was waged against its approval under the slogan "No Peace Without Spain". At least 40 from the Tories voted to reject the treaty. In August 1712, Bolingbroke went to France and signed an armistice between Britain and France for four months. Finally, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in March 1713 by all the allies except the Emperor. The first production of Joseph Addison's Cato, a Tragedy was made by the Whigs the occasion of a great demonstration of indignation against the peace, and by Bolingbroke for presenting the actor Barton Booth with a purse of fifty guineas for "defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator".
Meanwhile, the friendship between Bolingbroke and Harley, the basis of the whole Tory administration, had been gradually dissolved. In March 1711, when Marquis Antoine de Guiscard made an attempt on Harley's life, Bolingbroke assumed temporary leadership of the ministry's affairs. His difficulty in controlling the Tory back-benchers, however, only made Harley's absence the more noticeable. In May, Harley obtained the earldom of Oxford and became Lord High Treasurer, while in July, St John was greatly disappointed at receiving only his viscountcy instead of the earldom lately extinct in his family, and at being passed over for the Order of the Garter.
In September 1713 Jonathan Swift came to London and made a final vain attempt to reconcile his two friends. But now a further cause of difference had arisen. The Queen's health was visibly breaking, and the Tory ministers anticipated their downfall on the accession of the Elector of Hanover. During Bolingbroke's diplomatic mission to France he had incurred blame for remaining at the opera while the Pretender was present, and according to the Mackintosh transcripts he had several secret interviews with him. Regular communications were kept up subsequently.
In March 1714, Charles-François d'Iberville, the French envoy in London, sent to de Torcy, the French foreign minister, the substance of two long conversations with Bolingbroke in which the latter advised patience till after the accession of George I, when a great reaction was to be expected in favour of the Pretender. At the same time, he spoke of the treachery of Marlborough and James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, and of one other (presumably Oxford) whom he refused to name, all of whom were in communication with Hanover. Both Oxford and Bolingbroke warned James Stuart that he could have little chance of success unless he changed his religion, but the latter's refusal does not appear to have stopped the communications.
Bolingbroke gradually superseded Oxford in the leadership. Abigail Masham, the Queen's favourite, quarrelled with Oxford and identified herself with Bolingbroke's interests. The harsh treatment of the Hanoverian demands was inspired by him, and won favour with the queen, while Oxford's influence declined; and by his support of the Schism Bill in May 1714, an aggressive Tory measure forbidding all education by dissenters by making an episcopal licence obligatory for schoolmasters, he probably intended to compel Oxford to give up the game. Finally, a charge of corruption brought by Oxford in July against Bolingbroke and Lady Masham, in connexion with the commercial treaty with Spain, failed, and the lord treasurer was dismissed or retired on 27 July 1714. The Queen died four days later, after appointing Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury to the lord treasurership.
Exile
On the accession of George I the illuminations and bonfire at Lord Bolingbroke's house in Golden Square were "particularly fine and remarkable", but he was immediately dismissed from office. The new king had been close to the Whigs but he was willing to bring in Tories. The Tories however refused to serve and gambled everything on an election, which they lost. The triumphant Whigs systematically removed the Tories from most of the posts nationally and regionally.
Bolingbroke followed an erratic course that baffled his contemporaries and historians. He retired to Bucklebury and is said to have now written the answer to the Secret History of the White Staff accusing him of being a Jacobite. In March 1715, he in vain attempted to defend the late ministry in the new parliament; and on the announcement of Robert Walpole's intended attack upon the authors of the Treaty of Utrecht he gave up.
Bolingbroke fled in disguise to Paris—a major blunder. In an even greater blunder he joined the Pretender, was made Earl of Bolingbroke in the Jacobite Peerage, and took charge of foreign affairs in the Stuart court. The uprising of 1715 was badly botched and the death of Louis XIV meant the Pretender had lost his major sponsor; the French regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, wanted peace with Britain and refused to endorse any further schemes. In March 1716, Bolingbroke switched sides again. He had lost his titles and property when Parliament voted a bill of attainder for treason, the (1 Geo. 1. St. 2. c. 16). He hoped to recover the good graces of King George, and indeed managed to do so in a few years.
He wrote his Reflexions upon Exile, and in 1717, his letter to Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet in explanation of his position, generally considered one of his finest compositions, but not published till 1753 after his death. The same year, he formed a liaison with a widow Marie Claire Deschamps de Marcilly, whom he married in 1720, two years after his first wife's death. He bought and resided at the estate of La Source near Orléans, studied philosophy, criticised the chronology of the Bible, and was visited amongst others by Voltaire, who expressed unbounded admiration for his learning and politeness.
Pardon and return