ST JOHN, Henry (1628-79), of Battersea, Surr. and Ballymore, co. Armagh.

Since they had settled at Lydiard Tregoze in the fifteenth century, the St Johns had emerged as one of the leading families of north Wiltshire, regularly serving as MPs for boroughs in the county. St John’s father, Sir John, had sat for Wiltshire in 1624.13HP Commons 1604-1629. A gentleman of pronounced piety, he married his eldest son Oliver to a daughter of Sir Horace Vere and was close to his godly half-brother, Sir Edward Hungerford*, parliamentarian commander in Wiltshire from 1643.14PROB11/205/365; Aubrey, Wilts. Top. Collections ed. Jackson, 179. Nonetheless, he attempted to remain neutral in the civil wars, while three of his sons were killed fighting for the king. It was the death of one of them, John (1616?-42) which, by the terms of the will of Oliver St John, viscount Grandison (d. 1630), brought land in Ireland to his youngest brother, Henry.15Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 69.

Like John, Henry was sent to the University of Leiden, matriculating on 19 July 1645.16Index to English-speaking students…at Leyden University, 86 In his will drawn up on 3 July Sir John expressed the desire that Henry should continue there ‘for some time’, and arranged for his maintenance an annuity of £100, to be increased to £150 if necessary.17PROB11/205/365. It is unlikely that he stayed to graduate since he was admitted to Gray’s Inn in November 1647.18G. Inn Admiss. 246. Following Sir John’s death in the summer of 1648 Henry and his only surviving brother Walter St John* were responsible for a funeral from the family home at Battersea which provoked a prosecution from the College of Arms for alleged excessive pomp.19CB. Since their young nephew John inherited the baronetcy and Lydiard Tregoze, their father had given them a 30-year lease on the Battersea house and its contents. Here both settled and fulfilled the exacting charitable and other responsibilities left to Sir John’s trustees; they were assessed jointly for the poor rate.20PROB11/205/365; Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 74. Marriage to the daughters of their kinsman Oliver St John* strengthened family, religious and political ties. Writing to Oliver Cromwell* on 7 January 1651 the judge expressed satisfaction at having ‘lately married my two daughters to two brothers of my own name’. ‘The youngest’, he explained, ‘is concerned in Ireland; they are both such as feare God, and such as myself and their wives, I hope, shall find a blessing in’.21Noble, Mems. of House of Cromwell, ii. 31. Oliver, son of Henry and Catherine St John, was baptised at St Mary, Battersea, on 15 October 1651; three other children were christened there in the next few years.22Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 74.

Commissioned as a captain of foot raised in Surrey on 20 August 1651, the same day as his brother received a captaincy of horse, it is likely that St John fought at the battle of Worcester.23CSP Dom. 1651, p. 532. He appears to have held positions of authority in St Mary’s parish: the churchwardens’ accounts reveal that payment to a widow in 1652 was by his consent; he signed the accounts at the 1655-6 audit, and the same year presided over the meeting to elect overseers of the poor.24Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 76. St John was elected on his family’s interest to sit for Wootton Bassett in the third protectorate Parliament, while his brother, who had by this time succeeded their nephew to the baronetcy, sat for the county. It was probably their brother-in-law Francis St John* rather than Henry who was named to the committee of elections and privileges on 28 January 1659, but both men were nominated on 12 April to the committee to prepare the impeachment of Major-general William Boteler*.25CJ vii. 594b, 637a. According to a letter addressed to Edward Hyde* on 25 March, by this time all three St Johns had ‘changed from passionate commonwealth’s-men to violent courtiers’.26CCSP iv. 167.

Although St John was assessed by the Battersea overseers for the last time in April 1659, he lingered several years in England before taking possession of his Irish inheritance, probably testing the political waters in both countries.27Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 81. In the spring of 1660 he seems to have been as vulnerable as his brother to (perhaps malicious) allegations of subversive action. It was probably he of whom his sister-in-law Johanna St John wrote in May that ‘one Angel of Highworth an innkeeper will swear that Mr St John writ to him and offered him an excellent horse and case of pistols to go into [John] Lambert’s rising’. One Wiltshire cousin ‘did desire we would stop the man’s mouth’, but Lady St John’s instruction to her steward was that he should ‘put [Mr St John] on buying a rich riding coat to meet the king’.28Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 79.

In March 1664 Lady St John reported that Henry and his wife intended ‘going to Ireland this spring without fail’, but a pass for them and their horses was not sought or granted until November, and they were not certainly living there until 1665.29Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 81. Early in September 1679 St John was robbed near Knockbridge by a gang of ‘tories’, who shot him fatally in the head. At the turn of the year the heads of his killers were brought to Sir George Rawdon at Lisburn, where Henry had already been accorded a public funeral.30CSP Dom. 1679-80, pp. 241, 368. He was survived by one daughter, Ann or Catherine, who married Anthony Bowyer of Camberwell, Surrey.31Taylor, Our Lady of Batersey, 31. Other branches of the family continued to serve at Westminster.32HP Commons 1660-1690.