ST JOHN, Francis (c.1634-1705), of Thorpe Hall, St John the Baptist, Peterborough, Northants.

St John was too young to have taken part in the civil war and would make no appreciable mark on public life before the mid-1650s. He owed his return for Tewkesbury in 1654 entirely, it seems, to the influence or reputation of his illustrious father, Lord Chief Justice Oliver St John*, for the family had no known proprietorial interest in the area. On 4 October 1654, the Commons had ordered a new election for the borough after its first choice, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, had chosen to sit for Wiltshire, and – according to a local chronicler – St John was elected in his place. This same source noted that St John never took his seat, however, and there is certainly no evidence of his attendance in the first protectoral Parliament.21Supra, ‘Tewkesbury’; CJ vii. 372b; J. Bennett, Hist. of Tewkesbury, 249.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, St John was returned for Peterborough, a few miles from his father’s newly-built mansion at Thorpe Hall in the village of Longthorpe.22VCH Northants. ii. 458. His name appeared in the records of this Parliament’s proceedings only when he was declared absent at the call of the House on 31 December 1656.23Burton’s Diary, i. 285. Similarly, he appears to have made little, if anything, of his membership from 1656 of the council of state committee for trade and the Bedford Level Adventurers company.24CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 162; Wells, Bedford Level, i. 304, 305; TSP v. 475. Late in 1657, suffering from ‘a consumption’, he went to recuperate in France, where he remained for over a year and probably had contact with royalist exiles.25CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 232. In January 1659, Sir Edward Hyde* was informed that St John had arrived in Paris ‘from the further side of France, with a coach and six horses; he went yesterday to Dieppe, where a frigate is to meet him to transport him to England’.26CCSP iv. 131; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 492.

In his absence, St John was returned for Peterborough again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.27TSP vii. 582. The first appointment of his parliamentary career was to the committee of privileges on 28 January.28CJ vii. 594b. The second appointment was a tellership at the end of a lengthy debate on 18 February in which the republicans – anxious to delay progress towards confirming the protectoral settlement – had argued that the House’s priority should be determining who held the upper hand in the legislative process, the Commons or the protector. St John and Sir John Copleston were tellers for the large majority that opposed a motion for resolving the extent of the protector’s negative voice before the House proceeded to discuss the Cromwellian ‘Other House’.29CJ vii. 605b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 327-45. He was majority teller again on 5 April, this time with Robert Wallop against a republican-backed proviso that a declaration for a day of public humiliation did not preclude the House from limiting the authority of the protector or the Other House ‘as may be requisite for the public safety and welfare of these nations’.30CJ vii. 626a.Burton’s Diary, iv. 341-2. That same month he was named to two further committees – the second of which, on 12 April, was for preparing an impeachment against William Boteler* for his proceedings as major-general in Northamptonshire.31CJ vii. 632a, 637a.

St John’s support at Westminster for the Cromwellian court party was noted by his kinsman, the royalist intelligencer Allen Brodrick†. Writing to Hyde on 25 March 1659, Brodrick claimed that St John and his brothers-in-law Sir Walter St John* and Henry St John*, had recently shifted from being ‘passionate commonwealthsmen [republicans] to violent courtiers’. Brodrick added that Francis was ‘a man of sharp understanding, great industry, temperance and prudence’, although there is little evidence of the second of these virtues in St John’s career at Westminster.32CCSP iv. 167. In May, Brodrick referred to royalist negotiations conducted through St John with his father and his father’s close political allies William Pierrepont* and John Thurloe*.33CCSP iv. 209. St John was elected for Peterborough to the 1660 Convention, but only by means of tampering with the roll of voters; and his return was subsequently declared void.34HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Peterborough’. Although the family was allowed to retain its estate at the Restoration, St John’s father fled abroad in 1662 and would die at Augsburg, Germany, late in 1673.35Infra, ‘Oliver St John’; Bridges, Northants. ii. 571. St John himself was either unwilling or unable to stage a political comeback before 1679, when he was returned for Peterborough to the first and second Exclusion Parliaments. He was also elected to the third Exclusion Parliament in 1681.36HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Francis St John’. A firm if undistinguished whig, he was described on a list of the government’s opponents in Northamptonshire as ‘a dangerous man’.37SP29/421/216, f. 110v. His parliamentary career revived again, briefly, with his return for Peterborough in 1698, but he failed to hold his seat at the 1701 general election.38HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Francis St John’.

St John died on 29 July 1705 and was buried in St John the Baptist, Peterborough, on 8 August.39Add. 25277, f. 105; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 273. In his will, he charged his estate with annuities of £330 and cash legacies totalling £7,150, which included portions of £3,000 apiece to his two daughters.40PROB11/484, ff. 101v-104. He was the last of his branch of the St John family to sit in Parliament.