ST JOHN, Oliver (1634-88)

In origin a Norman marcher family, the St Johns migrated to Bedfordshire as a result of the marriage of Sir Oliver St John^‡ to Margaret Beauchamp (grandmother of King Henry VII) in the fifteenth century. The barony of St John followed in 1559, and on 28 Dec. 1624 the earldom of Bolingbroke was created for Oliver St John, 4th Baron St John of Bletsoe^† (1584-1646). Bolingbroke sided with Parliament and was lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire during the Civil War. He seems not to have fought in the conflict but his eldest son, also Oliver St John^†, Baron St John (formerly Member for Bedfordshire) was mortally wounded at Edgehill, leaving four daughters but no sons by his wife, a daughter of John Egerton^†, earl of Bridgwater. On Bolingbroke’s death in 1646 it was, therefore, his grandson by his second son, Sir Paulet St John, who succeeded to the earldom aged just 12 years.

Nothing is known of the 2nd earl of Bolingbroke’s early education, but it seems likely that there may have been a family arrangement involved in his marriage in 1654 to Frances Cavendish, whose sister Elizabeth Cavendish had previously married John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, brother to Bolingbroke’s aunt, Arbella Egerton. The family’s tendency to name their eldest sons Oliver has created ample opportunity for confusion, as has the existence of the courtesy title of the marquesses of Winchester, St John of Basing. Head of one of the three principal families in Bedfordshire, Bolingbroke commanded considerable interest in the north of the county and, while at 38 hearths his seat at Bletsoe Castle was small in comparison with Woburn Abbey (taxed in 1671 for 82 hearths), he could also boast a second residence at Melchbourne manor, which at 33 hearths was also a substantial residence, and to which the family appears to have moved by 1671. Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xvi. 101, 133, 149.

Despite the family’s close association with the parliamentary cause, by 1660 Bolingbroke, in common with many others, had become reconciled to the Restoration. It is reasonable to assume that he acted to a degree in concert with his kinsman, Bridgwater. Bolingbroke was certainly one of a small group of peers comprising Bridgwater, William Wentworth, 2nd earl of Strafford, and Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, who appear to have liaised with George Monk, later duke of Albemarle, concerning the readmission of the ‘young lords’ to the House. Eg. 2618, f. 70. Inaccurately detailed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as one of those lords ‘whose fathers sat’, Bolingbroke took his seat on 27 Apr. 1660, one of three peers to be sent for that day. Carte 81, f. 63; Clarendon 72, f. 59; CCSP, iv. 681. He proved to be a conscientious member, attending almost 91 per cent of sitting days during the first session of the Convention. During the course of his parliamentary career he was one of the most prominent committee chairmen, displaying a particular interest in matters concerning navigation. Indeed, boats appear to have been one of Bolingbroke’s obsessions. Letters of Lady Rachel Russell, 94; Beds. Archives, J 1478. Named to ten committees during the first session, on 3 May he chaired a session of the committee for privileges. Seven days later he chaired the committee again, and on 14 May he was added to the committee for petitions. Bolingbroke demonstrated a consistent interest in the religious settlement, almost invariably lending his support to those in favour of a broad toleration. Shortly before the adjournment on 11 Sept. he entered his dissent at the resolution to accept the proviso added by the committee considering the bill for confirming ministers. Following the adjournment Bolingbroke was named to a further ten committees, and he was also one of those nominated to consider the manner of congratulating the Queen Mother on her return to England on 8 November.

Bolingbroke was overlooked as lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire, despite his rather peremptory appeal to Sir Edward Nicholas^‡ requesting the position, ‘Sir, my desire is in which I beg your favour to be lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire where all my land lies. My name is Bolingbroke.’ Noble Govt. 75. The former royalist, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland, was appointed instead. Despite this setback, it seems likely that Bolingbroke attempted to exercise his interest in the county during the elections for the Cavalier Parliament. Fierce rivalry existed between the St Johns and the Bruces in Bedfordshire, while in Bedford itself Bolingbroke and Cleveland both enjoyed influence. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 125-6. It is not known whether he supported his candidature actively, but Bolingbroke would almost certainly have been sympathetic to the return of Sir Samuel Browne^‡ for the county (Browne being possibly a distant kinsman). Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. ii. 138-9.

Bolingbroke resumed his seat at the opening of the new Parliament and was again assiduous in his attendance, sitting on 86 per cent of all days during the session. He was also once more active in committee-work being named to some 66 committees during the session, including that for repealing the acts of the Long Parliament. On 17 Dec. he entered a solitary protest against the proposed amendments to the corporations bill, arguing that the provision to allow commissioners to remove corporation officers was contrary to the terms of Magna Carta. Bolingbroke’s local interest as well as his recent stand on the issue of corporations may have encouraged the corporation of Bedford to nominate him to the recordership following the resignation of Sir Samuel Browne towards the end of the year. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 734; Bedford Minute Book, 156-7. On 7 Jan. 1662 he was named one of the reporters of the conference for dissolving the joint committee concerning the plot and the same day chaired the committees considering the bills for naturalizing Lady Wentworth and concerning Hackney coaches. On 9 Jan. he chaired the committee considering Anthony Ettrick’s bill, and the following day he reported the committee’s findings to the House. On 11 Jan. the House read for the third time and passed a bill for discharging the manors of Stadscomb and Holwell from a trust of 150 years granted to Bolingbroke, Bridgwater and John Cecil, 4th earl of Exeter. Bolingbroke chaired a session of the committee considering the uniformity bill on 28 Jan. and the following day reported from the committee for petitions the case of Lee v. Sir Henry Pigott. He chaired a session of the committee for privileges and a further session of the committee considering the uniformity bill on 3 Feb., and on 5 Feb. he chaired the committee for the bill of John Scudamore^‡, Viscount Scudamore [I]. On 8 Feb. he entered his protest at the resolution to pass the bill to disunite the hundreds of Dudston and Kingsbarton from the city of Gloucester, and the same day he chaired the committee considering the bill for allowances for curates. Bolingbroke chaired the committee for the uniformity bill again on 15 Feb. and chaired three more committees before the end of the month. PA, HL/PO/CO/1//1, pp. 89-90, 117, 119, 131, 138, 151, 153. During March Bolingbroke presided over 16 committee sessions, reporting the findings of four to the House, and on 1 Apr. chaired the committee considering the bill for customs. On 5 Apr. he reported from the committee considering John Deerham’s bill, and on 12 Apr. chaired the committee considering the bill for the manor of Rannes, whose findings he reported to the House on 25 April. The same day he was named to the committee for the bill for money for officers who served the king during the civil wars. He presided over it on 28 Apr., during which the preamble was agreed to. The following day the committee convened again, and at a session again chaired by Bolingbroke on 30 Apr. it was resolved to omit a proviso offered by Bridgwater. PA, HL/PO/CO/1//1, pp. 266, 269-70. Bolingbroke reported the committee’s findings on 5 May and entered his dissent when it was resolved not to add a proviso to the bill reserving the king’s right to the disposal of the money. He believed that, ‘the sole and supreme power of disposing of monies is in the king, and that no aid ought to be disposed but by his sole warrant and commission’. Timberland, i. 53. Named a manager of the conference with the Commons concerning the bill, on 17 May he was nominated to manage two more conferences with the Commons, and on 19 May he subscribed the protest against rejecting the Lords’ provisos to the act for enlarging and repairing the common highways.

Bolingbroke was admitted formally as recorder of Bedford during the summer, having been nominated to the office the previous December. During the course of 1663 he was able to use his increased interest in the corporation to secure the return of his brother, Paulet St John, as Member for Bedford at the by-election held that year. HP Commons 1660-90, iii. 383. Bolingbroke resumed his seat for the 1663 session on 18 Feb. after which he was again regularly present in the House, though there was a slight decline with his attendance falling to approximately 63 per cent of all sitting days. Named to some 26 committees during the session, on 17 Mar. he chaired a session of the committee considering the tithes bill. He chaired a further session of the same bill on 23 Mar. and the following day he reported the committee’s findings to the House. The bill was recommitted, and Bolingbroke again presided over the committee on 31 Mar. and on 4 and 13 April. On 2 May he chaired the committee for Edward Challoner’s bill, which he reported back to the House two days later. PA, HL/PO/CO/1//1, pp. 296, 302, 316, 321, 336, 341. The same day (4 May) he chaired a session of the committee for privileges concerning the arrest of a servant of Charles Rich, 4th earl of Warwick. Bolingbroke reported the findings of the committee for privileges concerning fees payable to officers of the House for translating bishops and on lords’ descents on 8 May, and on 13 May he reported from the committee considering Sir John Packington’s^‡ bill.

Besides his activities in the House as a committee chairman, through the spring and summer of 1663, Bolingbroke was also concerned in a family drama resulting from Lady Elizabeth Cranfield’s decision to leave her uncle and guardian, Lionel Cranfield, 3rd earl of Middlesex. Although Lady Elizabeth had chosen Bolingbroke as her preferred guardian, he proved reluctant to involve himself in the quarrel. Acting on a ‘whim’, he refused to ‘venture without my Lord Middlesex’s consent’ and turned her away from his house, forcing her to seek refuge with Bridgwater. Herts. RO, Ashridge mss AH 1070; HMC 7th Rep. 173; HEHL, EL 8093. On 12 June the resulting dispute between Bridgwater and Middlesex was brought to the House’s attention and both men were taken into custody. Bolingbroke was granted leave of absence on 27 June, after which he remained away from the House for the remainder of the session.

Despite his reluctance to become embroiled in the affairs of Lady Elizabeth Cranfield, early in 1664 Bridgwater appealed to Bolingbroke to search out a copy of a settlement that had been lodged with Bolingbroke’s grandfather to enable Cranfield to answer a chancery case brought against her by Middlesex. HEHL, EL 8096; Herts. RO, Ashridge mss AH 1076. Bolingbroke took his seat on 21 Mar. 1664, when he was named to the sessional committees for privileges and the Journal (he was named to the committee for petitions two days later). Present for all but one of the 36 days of the session, he was again prominent as a committee manager. Bolingbroke’s attitude to the attempt made by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, in 1663 is uncertain. On 1 Apr. Lady Bristol attempted to persuade him to deliver a petition to the House on her husband’s behalf. Bolingbroke was said to have taken the paper while rushing into the House. Then, realizing what it contained, he thought better of it and ran out again to return it into Lady Bristol’s hands, ‘protesting he thought of somewhat else when he took it and that never a peer in the House, who considered what he did, would hope it longer in his hands, than he had done’. Carte 44, f. 513; Verney ms mic. M636/19, Sir N. Hobart to Sir R. Verney, 1 Apr. 1664. That Lady Bristol approached him suggests that she believed that he would be sympathetic to Bristol’s cause. There is reason to believe that Bolingbroke was no friend of Clarendon’s, but he was clearly reluctant to associate openly with Bristol.

Bolingbroke chaired two committees on 26 Apr. 1664 and the following day he was named to the committee concerning the bill for Sir John Pakington and the inhabitants of Aylesbury. PA, HL/PO/CO/1//1, p. 447. He was named to the committees considering four further bills before the prorogation, and on 10 May, during the debates on the Conventicles Act chaired by Bridgwater, he offered a proviso allowing lords indicted for a third offence to be tried by their peers. Ibid. 458; A. Swatland, 179. Bolingbroke resumed his seat on 24 Nov. after which he was present for over 90 per cent of the session. On 1 and 5 Dec. he chaired sessions of the committee for privileges, and on 6 Dec. he reported from the ‘grand committee for privileges’ that lords were not to be granted leave of absence without the king’s permission and without leaving their proxies. Bolingbroke was named to a further 22 committees during the remainder of the session, mostly concerning trade and private estate bills. He appears to have co-operated closely with Bridgwater in the management of committee business. On 13 Jan 1665 he chaired the committee for Sir Jacob Astley’s^‡ bill, and on 16 and 24 Jan. he presided over committees considering navigation schemes in Hampshire and on the river Medway. On 28 Feb. he chaired three committees, including that considering the additional bill for collecting the excise. On 1 Mar. he chaired the committee for the bricks and tiles bill and reported back from the committee for the excise bill. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, pp. 8, 16, 20, 31-32, 73-74.

Bolingbroke was granted leave not to attend as one of the triers of Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley and Monteagle, at the close of April 1666. HEHL, EL 8398. He returned to the House later that year, eight days into the new (1666-7) session. On 27 Sept. he was added to the committees for privileges and the Journal. On 5 Oct. he chaired a session of the committee deliberating on the plague bill, and on 10 Nov. he chaired the committee considering the bill for preventing the importation of foreign cattle. Nominated a manager of the conference concerning the public accounts on 22 Nov, on 12 Dec. Bolingbroke chaired the committee for the bill for regulating the price of victuals. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, pp. 96, 109, 130. On 29 Dec. he was named one of the managers of the conference concerning the impeachment of John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt. The same day he was named a manager of a conference for the Irish cattle bill, and of a further conference on the public accounts. By the close of 1666, Bolingbroke appears to have aligned himself clearly with the opposition to Clarendon, and his continuing prominence as one of the foremost committee chairmen may be indicative of the extent to which those in opposition to the chancellor had assumed control of the House.

The year 1667 witnessed the greatest concentration of Bolingbroke’s involvement in the House’s business. Between January 1667 and May 1668, he was named to at least 39 committees for private bills, besides being involved heavily as one of the regular chairmen of the privileges committee. On 2 Jan. he was named a reporter of the three conferences held that day on the poll bill, the public accounts bill and the Irish cattle bill. On 4 Jan. he chaired a session of the committee for privileges, and the following day two sessions of the committee concerning the bill for regulating of the price of victuals. He chaired the same committee on 7 and 10 January. Ibid. 142, 144, 146, 151. A reporter of the conference concerning Mordaunt’s impeachment on 4 Feb., the following day Bolingbroke entered his dissent at the resolution to refuse the Commons’ request for a further conference on Mordaunt’s impeachment.

Bolingbroke took his seat in the seventh (1667-9) session on 15 Oct. 1667 and the same day he was added to the sessional committees for privileges, petitions and the Journal, as well as being named to two further committees. He appears to have been intended as chairman of the committee concerning the Anglo-Scottish trade bill on 16 Oct., but his name was scratched out and replaced with that of George Berkeley, 9th Baron Berkeley (later earl of Berkeley). Ibid. 184. Bolingbroke resumed his chairing role on 22 Oct. when he presided over the committee concerning proceedings in the courts of justice, and on 30 Oct. he chaired the committees considering the bill for regulating the price of wine, and concerning the colliers, woodmongers and butchers bill. Heavy commitment to committee business continued in November, with Bolingbroke chairing two committees on 4 Nov. and four on 21 November. On 3 Dec. he chaired a further session of the committee for the Irish cattle bill, and the following day he reported the resolution of the privileges committee that the Painted Chamber should be fitted up for accommodating the Lords at conferences. Ibid. 185, 191-2, 195, 209, 217. Bolingbroke reported further findings of the committee for privileges the following day over the precedence to be granted to foreign nobility, and on 6 Dec. he again supervised a session of the committee considering the bill for foreign cattle, during which the employment within the bill of the term ‘nuisance’ was discussed. Ibid. 219. Nominated a reporter of the conference considering freedom of speech in Parliament on 10 Dec., on 14 Dec. Bolingbroke was named a reporter of a further conference concerning the Lords’ dissent to the vote. On 20 Dec. he was named to the sub-committee named to draw up answers to the Commons’ objections to the Lords’ amendments to the cattle bill.

Absent from the House from 16 Dec. 1667 until 6 Feb. 1668, on 15 Feb. Bolingbroke chaired the committee concerning certiorari, and he chaired a further eight committee sessions the following month, again dominated by the business over the Irish cattle bill. Ibid. 235. On 16 Mar. he entered a protest over the cause of Morley v. Elwes, and on 31 Mar. he entered a further dissent at the resolution that the case should be remitted to chancery. Bolingbroke reported the findings of the committee considering the Irish cattle bill on 17 March. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. n.s. lx. pt. 2, p. 39. On 30 Mar. he was compelled to inform a committee of the whole house that a sub-committee over which he was presiding had proved incapable of producing a quorum, upon which 17 more peers were named to the sub-committee. HLQ, xlv. 30. On 3 Apr. he was named a manager of the conference concerning the bill for taxing adventurers in the Fens, and on 21 Apr. he chaired a session of the committee concerning the bill for creditors of the Hamburgh Company. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 272.

Bolingbroke returned to the House following the adjournment, and was again remarkably consistent in his attendance, being present on 86 per cent of sitting days. Named to the standing committees for privileges, petitions and the Journal on 19 Oct. 1669, he was named to a further five committees during the session. On 9 Nov. he reported from the committee for petitions the cause of Sir Theodore Devaux v. Sir John Collingdon and on 22 Nov. subscribed the protest at the resolution to pass the bill limiting certain trials in Parliament and parliamentary privilege, along with his uncle by marriage, John Carey, 2nd earl of Dover. Granted leave of absence on account of ill health on 29 Nov., he resumed his seat on 6 Dec. and then sat for a further five days before the close of the session.

Although Bolingbroke attended 60 per cent of all sitting days in the ensuing (1670-1) session, during which he was named to 30 committees, his involvement as a committee chairman declined after 1670. Principally involved with just two committees, between 12 and 24 Mar. 1670 he chaired sessions of the committee considering the wool bill and on 16 and 19 Mar. that concerning the Admiralty bill. Ibid. 308, 310, 312, 320. In the midst of this he was one of the principal speakers to voice his opposition to the bill allowing John Manners, styled Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland) to remarry, and on 5 Apr. 1670 he entered his dissent at the resolution to agree with the Commons’ insistence on the clause within the conventicles bill allowing peers’ houses to be searched. Harris, Sandwich, ii. 318-24. Following the adjournment, on 9 and 11 Nov. he again presided over the committee considering the bill for preventing frauds in the exportation of wool and he reported the bill to the House on 11 November. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, pp. 350-1. Bolingbroke chaired the committee considering Sir Philip Howard’s^‡ bill on 9 Jan. 1671 and was named to a further five committees during the ensuing month. Ibid. 398. On 28 Feb. he seconded the notorious speech made by John Lucas, Baron Lucas, in response to the subsidies bill, but he was then absent from the House from 4 Mar. until the close of the session. Add. 36916, f. 212.

Bolingbroke attended the prorogation day on 16 Apr. 1672. He was present for 73 per cent of the first session of 1673 during which he was named to 18 committees. On 24 Mar. he was named a reporter of the conference for the popish recusants bill. Following the death of John Gardiner, Bolingbroke’s deputy in Bedford, the corporation petitioned him to accept Thomas Christie^‡ (an agent in the Bruce interest) as the new deputy recorder, but was unsuccessful. M. Mullet, ‘The Internal Politics of Bedford, 1660-88’, Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. lix. 13.

Bolingbroke resumed his seat for the brief four-day session of October-November 1673 and was named to the sessional committees for privileges, petitions and the Journal. Returning to the House for the 1674 session, he was again named to the sessional committees and on 7 Feb. to the committee considering the bill for the preservation of wood and timber. Named a reporter of the conference considering the address to the king on 11 Feb., he was named to a further four committees before the prorogation. Bolingbroke was present for 88 per cent of first session of 1675. Added to the sessional committees on 15 Apr., he was nominated to a further ten committees during the session as well as being named a reporter of the conference considering the case of Sherley v. Fagg on 17 May and of that considering the privileges of the House of Commons on 27 May. The following day he submitted a petition on behalf of himself and the inhabitants of Bedford concerning a proposal to make the river Ouse navigable.

Bolingbroke proved to be an assiduous attender of the session of October 1675. Present on 19 of the 21 sitting days, during which he was named to seven committees in addition to the sessional committees, on 20 Nov. he voted in favour of drawing up an address requesting the dissolution of Parliament. Thereafter, Bolingbroke all but retired from the House, attending just four days of the one hundred and seventeen-day session of 1677 and two of the 68 days of the first Exclusion Parliament. Despite this decline he was assessed thrice worthy by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, in May 1677. The sudden decline in his attendance was probably due to ill health. Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), estimated Bolingbroke as one of his opponents in or about March 1679; at about the same time a letter (probably from one of Bolingbroke’s kinsmen, Dr John St John) to William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, declared his cousin to be ‘a true servant’ of the archbishop. Bodl. Tanner 38, f. 54.

Bolingbroke was absent from the divisions for the exclusion bill in November 1680. Early in 1681 a pre-sessional forecast for a possible division on Danby’s bail again listed him as an opponent. Although absent from the Oxford Parliament, Bolingbroke received news of its proceedings from his mother and, presumably, from his brother who visited him shortly after the dissolution. Beds. Archives, SJ 49, Elizabeth Lady St John to Bolingbroke, 30 Mar. 1681. Local rivalries also came to the fore during the year when he was put out as custos rotulorum of Bedfordshire in favour of Robert Bruce, earl of Ailesbury. Three years later, following accusations that the town of Bedford had failed to respond with sufficient zeal over the Rye House Plot in which one of the town’s freemen, William Russell^‡, Lord Russell, had been prominently involved, he was also displaced from his recordership by Ailesbury. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 127.

Bolingbroke was mistakenly reported to have died ‘in a boat, as he lived’ in March 1686. Lady Russell Letters, 94. The following year, he was noted as an opponent of the repeal of the Test, and he was included in a list of those opposed to James II’s policies in January 1688. By that time he had all but retired from political life. Premature reports of his death were already current by 15 March. Longleat, Bath mss Thynne pprs. 43, f. 50. He died on 18 Mar. and was buried ten days later at Bletsoe. In his will Bolingbroke named his brother, Paulet St John, who succeeded him in the peerage, as joint executor with his cousin Sir St Andrew St John^‡. However there is some reason to suspect that by the end of his life Bolingbroke had lost command of his faculties; shortly after his death Sir St Andrew lodged a complaint in chancery against the new earl over allegations that the will was invalid. TNA, C9/117/41.