ST JOHN, Sir Beauchamp (1594-1667), of Tilbrook, Beds.

Sir Beauchamp St John was a younger son of a distinguished Bedfordshire family which had been granted the barony of St John of Bletso in 1559. Margaret Beauchamp, the mother of the 1st baron, Oliver St John†, was the heiress to the estates of the Beauchamps of Bletso, an ancient family ennobled by Richard II in 1363 (though none of this Lord Beauchamp’s descendants had subsequently claimed the title).1CP ii. 44-5; ix. 333-4. This MP was named Beauchamp to commemorate this illustrious lineage. The family had been major local officeholders in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire (where they also owned land) since the mid-sixteenth century, and the 3rd Baron St John had served as sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1585-6 and as lord lieutenant of Huntingdonshire from 1596 until his death in 1618.

Beauchamp St John was admitted to Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1610, aged 16. The college had a strong reputation for godliness, second only to Emmanuel, and it is likely that St John received a thorough Calvinist education there. Like other members of the family, including his cousin, Oliver St John*, he entered Lincoln’s Inn in May 1613, though there appears to be no evidence that he went on to practise as a lawyer. His marriage to the daughter and heiress of the Bedfordshire gentleman, William Hawkins of Tilbrook, provided him with an adequate estate following Hawkins’s death in 1625.2VCH Beds. iii. 172; Beds. N and Q i. 211, 216; Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 291. Through the Hawkins family, he may also have acquired lands at Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire which he held as a tenant of the earl of Manchester.3Beds. RO, J856-7; SJ81.

From his mid-twenties St John served as a justice of the peace and later as a sewers commissioner in both Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire. However, with the accession of Charles I, he made no secret of his opposition to the regime’s fiscal policies. Although he was named as a commissioner for the Forced Loan in 1627, he refused to serve and was imprisoned for setting a subversive example by refusing to lend.4Rushworth, Hist. Collns. i. 473; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 44; Beds. RO, J1319. In December 1639 he told his brother Sir Rowland St John that, although he ‘never esteemed an overworldly man a firm friend’, he was pleased that Sir Rowland was maintaining their friendship with ‘my lord’, but who this person might have been remains unclear.5Beds. RO, J1458.

St John’s parliamentary experience was substantial. He had served as knight of the shire for the county in 1621 and then for the less prestigious constituency of Bedford borough in 1626 and 1628.6HP Commons 1640-1660. A figure of commanding prestige in Bedford, where his stance against the policies of the personal rule of Charles I had won him many admirers, he was elected unopposed to both the 1640 Parliaments, notwithstanding the contests for the second of the two available places (which went to his cousin Sir Samuel Luke*).7HMC 7th Rep. 554; Vis. Beds. 194. The return to the Short Parliament was disputed, a matter that was not dealt with until 1 May 1640, when the Commons ordered that, since Sir Beauchamp was named in both returns, he should be admitted to the House forthwith.8CJ ii. 17b. He was named to no committees in the brief time which remained before the Parliament was precipitately dissolved on 5 May and there is no record of him having spoken; it is therefore possible that the House’s determination of his return came too late for him to take his seat.

He was again returned for Bedford in the October elections to the Long Parliament, being elected on his own interest. His recorded activity in the first months of the Long Parliament was relatively slight. He took no part in the proceedings against the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) and in the first six months of the Parliament was named to only four committees.9CJ ii. 43a, 60b, 85a, 129a. He was more active from the end of April 1641, when he was named to the committee on the bill to fine and punish the members of the northern and southern Convocations which had passed the controversial Canons of 1640.10CJ ii. 129a. In the aftermath of the first army plot, he was among the first to take the Protestation when it was proffered to MPs on 3 May 1641.11CJ ii. 132b-133a. In the three months which followed, however, he was active intermittently on committees charged with bringing to book those responsible for the supposed illegalities of the personal rule. When legislation was introduced in June 1641 to declare Ship Money illegal, St John was among those named to the committee to which the bill was referred on second reading.12CJ ii. 181b. The same month, he was appointed to the committee of 24 peers and 48 commoners set up at the request of the House of Lords to consider the Ten Propositions.13CJ ii. 190b. In July 1641 he was included on the committee which considered the bill to settle the estates of his Bedfordshire neighbours, the Russells of Woburn.14CJ ii. 215a.

Thereafter, St John’s parliamentary record is distinctly patchy. Between the beginning of August 1641 and April 1642, he is noticed only three times in the Journal: on committees to consider charges levelled against Sir William Bryars by James Beverly (11 Aug.), and to look into the Tuscan ambassador’s complaints that his diplomatic privileges had been breached by priest-hunters acting in the name of the Commons.15CJ ii. 250b-251a, 314a, 526b-527a; PJ ii. 173, 176. However, one appointment during this period did carry with it major responsibilities. In the aftermath of the Irish rebellion, St John was appointed on 2 November to the newly-established standing committee on Irish affairs: a powerful joint-committee of 7 peers and 14 Members of the Commons, including John Pym*, Denzil Holles* and Sir William Brereton*.16CJ ii. 302a. Despite the limited scale of St John’s involvement in the day-to-day legislative business of the Commons, he remained a figure of considerable standing in the House. In April 1642, for instance, he was the messenger between the two Houses when the Commons requested a conference on the bill that became the Militia Ordinance, which had been sent down by the peers.17CJ ii. 536a; LJ v. 7b.

With the beginning of mobilisation for war, set in train by the Militia Ordinance in June 1642, St John and the knight of the shire, his cousin Sir Oliver Luke*, were sent down to Bedfordshire to see that the ordinance was put into effect.18CJ ii. 628b; PJ iii. 92. He also promised to supply Parliament with two horses for the war effort.19PJ iii. 472. He was back at Westminster by 28 October 1642, when he was named to the re-constituted Committee for Examinations.20Supra, ‘Committee for Examinations’; CJ ii. 825b. There is no Journal reference to suggest he took any further part in either standing committee. Remaining at Westminster at least until December 1642, he was again concerned with questions of Parliament’s security, being named to a six-man committee (with Holles, Oliver St John and John Glynne* among its members) charged with seeing that no soldiers entered or left London without proper authority.21CJ ii. 874a.

With the outbreak of war, however, St John’s greatest influence was in the locality, galvanizing support for Parliament and placing his considerable local standing behind the fledgling parliamentarian committees upon which the government of the county increasingly devolved. His relatively few appointments at the order of the Commons (a mere seven for the whole of 1643) were almost all concerned with furthering the prosecution of the war: examining the sums of money which had been advanced for the army (22 Mar. 1643);22CJ iii. 12a. joining with his fellow Bedfordshire MPs Sir Roger Burgoyne* and Sir Oliver Luke to see that the weekly assessment books were sent down to Bedfordshire (24 Mar. 1643).23CJ iii. 16a. He appears to have been a supporter of the military alliance with the Scots in 1643 and was one of the first MPs to take the oath affirming the Solemn League and Covenant on 6 June.24CJ iii. 118a. On 3 July he was again a messenger to the Lords, delivering a request for a joint conference.25LJ vi. 118a. On 7 August he spoke in the debate on the crowds which had threatened the coaches of some of the peers.26Add. 18778, f. 12.

During 1644 and 1645, St John’s responsibilities in the county made his appearance in the record at Westminster still more intermittent. During late 1643 and the spring of 1644 he was kept busy by military affairs relating directly to Bedfordshire, and it is likely that his apparent absence from Westminster that summer was due to his work supporting the war effort back in the county.27CJ iii. 311b, 405a, 481b, 489b. That August he and Sir William Bryars were given the job by the local county standing committee of adjudicating on the dispute over how the county’s assessment should be divided between the individual hundreds.28‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 9.

About that time he probably returned to London, for he was then named to the committee to consider the dispute between Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, and the county committee of Staffordshire (21 Aug. 1644).29CJ iii. 602a. Three months later he and a number of other MPs left a conference with the Lords which was discussing Denbigh, to the annoyance of those who wanted to defend the earl.30Harl. 166, f. 160. During the long parliamentary struggle during the winter of 1644-5 for the creation of the New Model army, the tenor of St John’s parliamentary activity suggests that he was a supporter of military reform. In January 1645, he was named to the heavyweight committee, headed by Samuel Browne*, charged with investigating the charges against a controversial Scottish officer in Manchester’s army, Colonel Lawrence Crawford, an officer with whom Oliver Cromwell* had conducted a prolonged feud during 1644.31CJ iv. 28b. While none of these appointments, taken on its own, is conclusive, the overall pattern of his appointments suggests that he was among MPs who were in broad sympathy with the group within the Committee of Both Kingdoms who were seeking to curtail the influence of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and to reform the organization of Parliament’s existing forces.

On the creation of the New Model army under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax* in March 1645, the Commons turned to St John to goad the Bedfordshire county standing committee into action to see that the money to be levied on the county for the support of the new force was promptly collected.32CJ iv. 84b; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 16-17. St John’s expertise in matters of army finance seems to have been the reason for his appointment on 20 May 1645 to consider the settlement to be made to the aristocratic commanders displaced by the Self-Denying Ordinance, and to investigate the arrears claimed by the Scottish officers similarly affected by the military reforms (23 Aug. 1645).33CJ iv. 148b, 249b-250a. In December 1645, he seems to have taken a prominent role in the proceedings of the committee of the whole House deliberating on the revision of the peace propositions to be offered to the king. In this regard, he was on the Commons’ delegation (appointed 4 Dec.) sent to confer with the City government on the state of the proposals as they then stood.34CJ iv. 364b-365a.

After December 1645, St John’s parliamentary activity dwindles almost to nothing, with no mention of his name for almost 15 months between the beginning of December 1645 and the end of February 1647 (when he was named to a committee to consider one of the bills for the sale of bishops’ lands), and then again until he was given leave to go into the country on 8 July 1647.35CJ v. 99b-100a, 236b. He may still have been involved in public affairs at a local level, for he was among Bedfordshire committeemen said in late 1646 to favour the demolition of the fortifications at Newport Pagnell.36‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 31-2. This may mean that he wanted as swift a return to peacetime conditions as possible. The most likely reason for his inactivity at Westminster is ill health, as that was the basis for his excusal when the House was called on 9 October 1647.37CJ v. 329b. Thereafter, he was named to only a single committee, dealing with jurisdiction of the court of admiralty (20 Mar. 1648).38CJ v. 505b. He had probably stopped attending the House well before the purge of 6 December 1648.

St John took no part in the proceedings of the Rump and it appears clear from his withdrawal from public life between 1649 and 1660 that he disapproved of the purge and of the regicide. He was named by the Rump to the assessment commission for Bedfordshire in April 1649, but it is unlikely that he served and he was named to no further commissions until 1660.39A. and O. In 1650 he complained when the sequestrators confiscating the estates of Sir George Benyon seized control of Bedford Castle.40CCAM 346. His interest in this matter lay in his guardianship of the two daughters of his nephew, Lord St John (Oliver St John†), who had borrowed money from Benyon. Sir Beauchamp refused to cooperate when the Bedfordshire county committee tried to question him about this.41CCAM 346-7; CCC 580. He was later one of the parties to the agreement by which the dowries of one daughter, Arabella, was paid to her husband, Edward Wise*.42Cornwall RO, RD/1355. Sir Beauchamp himself may have been experiencing his own financial difficulties as he had already mortgaged some of his lands at Tilbrook.43Beds. RO, J84. In March 1660, with the Restoration a virtual certainty, he was re-appointed to the local militia commission.44A. and O. His appointment as an assessment and poll tax commissioner shows that, in contrast to his attitude toward the commonwealth, he was willing to serve under the restored monarchy.45SR.

With no children of his own and with no wife to survive him, St John agreed in 1661 that his nephew, Sir Oliver St John of Woodford, would be allowed to purchase Tilbrook following his death. Sir Oliver probably took possession of the estate immediately, for Sir Beauchamp moved in with Lord St John’s widow at Welby in Leicestershire.46Beds. RO, J125. When he died six years later, Lady St John and her children were the principal beneficiaries of his will.47Leics. RO, Wills 1667/73. His nephew Paulet St John† continued to represent the family interest in Bedford, serving as the town’s MP from 1663 to 1681; he succeeded his brother as 3rd earl of Bolingbroke in 1688, but the earldom became extinct on his death in 1711.48HP Commons 1660-1690. Not until 1780 was the family’s record of parliamentary service in Bedfordshire resumed.49HP Commons 1754-1790.