ST JOHN, Oliver (c.1583-1646)

In 1602, St John added to his family’s already extensive estates by marrying the stepdaughter of Richard Fiennes^* (subsequently 1st or 7th Lord Saye and Sele), an heiress whose lands lay adjacent to his own.20 C142/249/56; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 139. St John represented Bedfordshire in the Commons in 1601 and 1604 but did not stand for election in 1614, when the senior seat went to his relative Sir Henry Grey^* (later 8th earl of Kent), nephew and eventual heir to Henry Grey^*, 6th earl of Kent, the county’s premier nobleman. Presumably St John did not wish to settle for the junior seat.

St John succeeded his father as 4th Lord St John on 2 Sept. 1618, and was soon appointed to the most important of his father’s offices, the lieutenancy of Huntingdonshire, albeit in tandem with another local landowner, Esme Stuart^*, earl of March.21 C142/376/126; Sainty, 24. Like his father, St John was primarily resident on his main estates in Bedfordshire, where in 1619 he was visited by King James, who promised ‘he will not forget so honourable usage’. Despite this mark of favour, St John apparently inherited his father’s aversion to unparliamentary taxation: in October 1620 he was asked to contribute £100 towards the Palatine benevolence raised by the king, but three months later he was chided for not having made any contribution.22 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 263; SP14/117/2; APC, 1619-21, pp. 291-3, 334-5. An effective parliamentary patron, his eldest son, brothers, cousin and the family lawyer held a stranglehold on both county and borough seats in Bedfordshire during the 1620s. Only in April 1640 did the family cede one of the county seats, to Thomas Wentworth^*, earl of Cleveland.23 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 5-8.

St John regularly attended all the parliamentary sessions of the 1620s (over 80 per cent), and in 1621 he held the proxy of Edward Vaux^*, 4th Lord Vaux.24 LJ, iii. 4b. However, he was nowhere near as active in the House as his father had been. He was named to committees far lest often, and was rarely recorded to have spoken – and this when debates were more fully recorded than those of the earlier parliaments of the reign.

At the start of the 1621 session St John was named to attend two conferences with the Commons for drafting a petition to the king for stricter enforcement of the recusancy laws, and he was later named to the committee for the recusancy bill. On 3 Mar. he was ordered to attend a conference about the flight of the monopolist Sir Giles Mompesson^‡, and on 15 Mar. he was appointed to help investigate Mompesson’s misdeeds as patentee for the licensing of inns. He was also one of the committee for the bill to confirm the earl of March’s sale of the manor of Temple Newsam, Yorkshire to Sir Arthur Ingram^‡.25 Ibid. 17a, 18b, 31a, 34a, 46b, 101a. On 29 May, as the spring sitting came to an end, he was named to the committee to scrutinize all petitions which had not as yet been answered by the Lords, and on 2 June he was one of the delegation sent to inform the king that the Houses desired an adjournment for the summer, rather than a legislative session and a prorogation.26 Ibid. 141b, 155a. He returned for the autumn sitting on 20 Nov., but was granted leave of absence on 4 December. However, he was away for only a few days, being present for most of the final days of the session, although his only mention in the Journal thereafter was a nomination to the committee for the bill for the Merchants of the Staple.27 Ibid. 181a, 184a.

It is likely that St John collected two separates now in the family archive, which recount the foreign policy debates at the start of the 1624 Parliament. These were the ‘Relation’ made to both Houses on 24 Feb. by George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham of alleged Spanish duplicity during the course of marriage negotiations, and the Commons’ reasons for breaking off the treaties with Spain. St John was ordered to attend a conference which cleared Buckingham from the accusation of slandering the Spanish king, and another at which the Commons reported their reasons for a breach with Spain.28 Beds. RO, J.1272-4, 1277-84; LJ, iii. 238a, 242b. He was also included on the committee for munitions, which was required to assess the scale of the preparations required for a war with Spain, and appointed to attend the conferences of 11 and 12 Mar., at which the Lords attempted to persuade the Commons to vote war supply, and that of 22 Mar., at which the Commons relayed their decision to offer three subsidies and three fifteenths.29 LJ, iii. 219a, 237b, 254b, 256a, 273b. After Easter, he attended further conferences with the Commons, to frame a petition for enforcement of the recusancy laws and to draft a petition urging the king to remove officeholders who were recusants or had recusant wives – these being the chief means by which both Houses tested James’s resolve for war with Spain.30 Ibid. 287b, 304a, 393b. However, while all this shows some sympathy for the ‘patriot’ cause, St John played no recorded part in the other part of the patriot agenda, the attacks on Buckingham’s enemies Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, and the lord keeper, John Williams^*, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of York). Most of his other recorded activity in the House involved routine committees, such as that for the informers’ bill, the bill to confirm duchy of Cornwall leases, bills for the manufacture of cloth and of Welsh cottons, the usury bill and the expiring laws continuance bill.31 Ibid. 252b, 263b, 303b, 325a, 384a, 393a, 400b.

In the autumn of 1624 St John attempted to purchase the earldom of Glamorgan, in which county the family held extensive estates, but was stopped from doing so by the lord chamberlain, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, who apparently wished to preserve his family’s monopoly of Welsh peerage titles. However, on 28 Dec. St John secured the alternative title of earl of Bolingbroke, which alluded to his family’s claim to kinship with Henry IV, who had been known as Henry of Bolingbroke before he took the throne in 1399.32 Northants. RO, Montagu 3/121; C66/2338/5. At the start of the 1625 Parliament St John was introduced to the House in his new capacity by the 8th earl of Kent and another kinsman, Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland. He attended most of the session, although with the plague raging in Westminster he departed for the country early, on around 5 July. During the two weeks he was present, he was named to only one committee, for the Sabbath bill. He arrived at the Oxford sitting on 3 Aug., attending every day until the dissolution on 12 Aug., but left no trace on the Lords’ proceedings.33 Procs. 1625, pp. 39-40, 72-3.

The 1626 Parliament was dominated by the attempted impeachment of Buckingham. Bolingbroke’s subsequent behaviour makes it likely that he had misgivings about the favourite’s domination of royal policy, but, like many other peers, he tried to keep a low profile during the session: he made only one recorded speech, and was named to a very small number of committees. On 15 May, following the arrest of Sir Dudley Digges^‡, for exceeding his brief in presenting the Commons’ charges against Buckingham, Bolingbroke joined many of the Lords in entering a protestation that Digges had said nothing ‘which did or might trench on the king’s honour’. On 10 June Bolingbroke was added to the committee for the examination of witnesses on behalf of John Digby^*, 1st earl of Bristol, who had brought his own impeachment charges against the favourite. The committee was finely balanced between Buckingham’s supporters and his enemies, which potentially left Bolingbroke in an awkward position, but the Parliament was dissolved on 15 June, before he was required to make a public declaration of his sympathies.34 Procs. 1626, i. 477, 483, 605.

In fact, Bolingbroke’s hostility to the favourite seems to have been well known in government circles: on the day Parliament was dissolved, he was instructed by Secretary of State Lord Conway (Edward Conway^*, later 1st Viscount Conway) to surrender his copy of the Commons’ justification of their proceedings against the duke, which he clearly failed to do, as a copy of this separate remains in the family papers.35 Ibid. iii. 436-41, 448; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 354; Beds. RO, J.1322. On 8 July he was dismissed as a Bedfordshire magistrate, and only weeks later his family and clients damned King Charles’s appeal for a benevolence with faint praise at a meeting of the county’s taxpayers, which led to a general refusal to offer any contribution at all except in a ‘parliamentary way’.36 Som. RO, DD/PH/210/66; C231/4, f. 210v; R. Cust, Forced Loan, 94-9; S. Healy, ‘Oh, what a lovely war?’, Canadian Jnl. of Hist. xxxviii. 445. Bolingbroke was one of the first peers to refuse to comply with the king’s next revenue raising scheme, the Forced Loan. Although his peerage conferred immunity from arrest, his brother Sir Beauchamp St John^‡ and his cousin Sir Oliver Luke^‡ were summoned before the Privy Council and interrogated. They were eventually incarcerated in July 1627, at which time the earl was also removed as lord lieutenant of Huntingdonshire. Bolingbroke’s opposition nevertheless meant that the Loan failed miserably in Bedfordshire, yielding just over half of its quota, against a national average of 72 per cent.37 T. Birch, Ct. and Times Chas. I, i. 172-3; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 485; HP Commons 1604-29, v. 194; vi. 140; Sainty, 24; Healy, 463.

In January 1628 Bolingbroke received a privy seal ordering him to lend £500 to the crown, but he ignored this demand, which was forgotten with the advent of a fresh Parliament in March.38 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 727. The earl attended almost every day of the session, but, once again, he left little trace on its proceedings. On 20 Mar. he introduced Henry Carey^*, newly created earl of Dover, to the House; on 26 Mar. he was named to the committee for the bill to improve Crown revenues; and on 28 May he was added to the standing committee for petitions. Otherwise, he was named to half a dozen committees for private bills – one of which concerned the earl of Bristol – and economic legislation.39 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 74-6, 103, 473, 550. At the end of the year, following Buckingham’s assassination, Bolingbroke was restored to his local offices. Yet if the court thereby hoped to secure his support in Parliament, the offer made little difference: in 1629 he attended two-thirds of the sittings, but apart from a nomination to the standing committee on petitions, he left no trace on the brief session.40 C231/4, f. 261; Sainty, 24; LJ, iv. 6b.

Bolingbroke remained active in the lieutenancy during the 1630s, and invested in the drainage of the great fens, but he may have been distracted by the vast debts accumulated by his eldest son, Sir Oliver St John^† (who was later summoned to the Lords in right of his father’s barony), which necessitated a restructuring of his finances in order to provide for his other children before his son’s creditors descended upon the estate.41 HMC Lothian, 84; Beds. RO, J.1053; HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 146; C66/2721/23, 97; CSP Dom, 1638-9, pp. 166-7, 170. A reluctant participant in the First Bishops’ War in 1639,42 CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 465, 478. Bolingbroke opposed a grant of supply in the Short Parliament and was one of the 12 peers who petitioned for fresh elections at the height of the 1640 campaign.43 CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 66, 639-40. Appointed lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire under the Militia Ordinance of March 1642, he remained at Westminster during the Civil War.44 A. and O. i. 1. He was last mentioned in the parliamentary ordinances on 5 June 1646, and was dead by 3 July, when administration of his goods was granted to his widow.45 Ibid. 853; PROB 6/21, f. 72. The earldom and family estates went to his grandson Oliver, but neither he nor the 3rd earl, his brother Paulet St John^†, produced male heirs, and after the latter’s death in 1711, the estates and barony passed to a descendant of his brother Sir Rowland St John^‡.46 CP (earl of Bolingbroke, Lord St John of Bletso).