Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (16 September 1678-12 December 1751) was an English Tory politician and supporter of the Jacobite rising of 1715.
Biography[]
Henry St John was born in Lydiard Tregoze, Wiltshire, England in 1678. St John befriended the Whigs James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope and Edward Hopkins and shared their disposition to liberty, but his Tory friend William Trumball advised him that most Englishmen had neither honesty nor virtue enough to support liberty. He was known for his licentiousness during his youth, once running naked through the park while drunk. He became the Tory MP for Wootton Bassett in 1701, and he attached himself to Robert Harley and oversaw the bill securing the Protestant succession, impeached the Whig lords for their conduct concerning the Treaty of the Hague in 1698, and opposed the oath of loyalty against the Jacobite pretender James Francis Edward Stuart. He went on to serve as Secretary at War from 1704 to 1708, Secretary of State for the Northern Department from 1710 to 1713, and Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 1713 to 1714. St John supported peace with France amid the War of the Spanish Succession, and his relationship with Harley deteriorated. Bolingbroke gradually came to lead the Tories after Harley was elevated to the House of Lords, and Layd Abigail Masham identified herself with St John over Harley. However, he was immediately dismissed from office by King George I of Great Britain on his accession to the throne in 1714, and he fled to Paris and joined the Old PRetender, who made him Earl of Bolingbroke and the Jacobite Secretary of State. In 1716, he switched sides again after King Louis XV of France refused to endorse any further Jacobite schemes, and he lost his titles and property after Parliament voted a bill of attainder for treason. He was able to recover the good graces of King George, and he was pardoned in 1723. He supported an alliance with the Opposition Whigs during the 1730s, but he retired to France in 1735 after Robert Walpole's Whigs won a huge majority in that year's elections. St John showed no sympathy for the Jacobite rising of 1745, and he died in 1751.