BOLINGBROKE, HENRY ST. JOHN English statesman and writer, son of Sir Henry St. John, Bart. (afterwards 1st Viscount St. John) and of Mary Rich, daughter of the 2nd earl of Warwick, was educated at Eton, and travelled abroad in 1698 and 1699. In 170o he married Frances Winch combe. Notorious in youth for his dissipation and extravagance, he desired, according to his friend Swift, to be thought the Alcibiades or Petronius of his age. When he entered Parliament in 1701 he declared himself a Tory, attached himself to Harley (after wards Lord Oxford), then speaker, and soon gained an ex traordinary ascendancy over the House of Commons. In May he had charge of the bill for securing the Protestant succession; he took part in the impeachment of the Whig lords for their conduct concerning the Partition treaties, and opposed the oath abjuring the Pretender. In March 1702 he was chosen commis sioner for taking the public accounts. After Anne's accession he supported the bills in 1702 and i 704 against occasional conform ity, and took a leading part in the'disputes which arose between the two houses. In 1704 St. John took office with Harley as sec retary at war, thus being brought into intimate relations with Marlborough, by whom he was treated with paternal partiality. In 1708 he quitted office with Harley on the failure of the latter's intrigue, and retired to the country till 171 o, when he became a privy councillor and secretary of state in Harley's new ministry. The first business of the new Tory ministry was to make peace with France. In 1711 St. John began negotiating with Torcy, the French foreign minister, in secret, for a separate peace, and mil itary pressure was slackened in the Netherlands. Marlborough was dismissed in Dec. 1711, and in June 1712 the duke of Or monde, who had succeeded him in command, was ordered to with draw the English troops from the field, leaving the Dutch and Austrians to be defeated at Denain. In August St. John, who had been created Viscount Bolingbroke, went to France, to conduct negotiations, and on March 31, 1713, the treaty of Utrecht was signed by all the allies except the emperor.
From the moment he came into office, realizing that the only hope of the survival of the Tory party after Anne's death lay in its putting the old Pretender, James III., on the English throne, St. John had set to work to bring about the repeal of the Act of Settlement by which the succession passed to Sophia, electress of Hanover, and her descendants. In 1710 Anne was persuaded to create 12 new Tory peers; the Whig influence of the dissenters in Parliament was undermined by the Act of Occasional Con formity; and Bolingbroke made an unsuccessful attempt to pro pitiate the Whig merchant interest by negotiating, at the Treaty of Utrecht, for commercial concessions from France and Spain. By 1712 he was corresponding with James, though he was never able to persuade him to become Protestant—a necessary step before the Tories would turn Jacobite. Meanwhile the friendship between Bolingbroke and Harley had been gradually dissolved; the former had been disappointed, in July 1711, at receiving only his viscountcy instead of the earldom lately extinct in his family, whereas Harley had been made earl of Oxford and lord treasurer, in May; Lady Masham quarrelled with Oxford, and identified herself with Bolingbroke's interests in 1714, and the latter grad ually superseded Oxford in the leadership of the party. Finally there was a split in the cabinet on July 27, and Oxford was forced to resign. Bolingbroke now thought his triumph had come, and that it was time to press for the repeal of the Act of Settlement. All important military and civil posts were placed in the hands of Tories, and a new ministry was projected. But on July 28 Anne was taken ill, and on Aug. 1 she died. The Act of Settle ment had not been repealed, the Tory plans were confused, and the privy council, in which Bolingbroke had never troubled to procure a Tory majority, met and proclaimed George king. On the accession of George I. the illuminations and bonfire at Lord Bolingbroke's house in Golden square were "particularly fine and remarkable," but he was immediately dismissed from office. He retired to Bucklebury, and is said to have now written the answer to the Secret History of the White Staff accusing him of Jacobitism. In March 1715 he in vain attempted to defend the late ministry in the new parliament; and on the announce ment of Walpole's intended attack upon the authors of the Treaty of Utrecht he fled in disguise (March 28, 1715) to Paris, where he was well received, after having addressed a letter to Lord Lansdowne from Dover protesting his innocence and challenging "the most inveterate of his enemies to produce any instance of his criminal correspondence." Bolingbroke in July entirely iden tified himself with the interest of the Pretender, whose secretary he became, and on Sept. 10 he was attainted. But his counsel was neglected for that of ignorant refugees and Irish priests. The expedition of 1715 was resolved upon against his advice. He drew up James's declaration, but the assurances he had inserted concerning the security of the Church of England were cancelled by the priests. He remained at Paris, and endeavoured to establish relations with the regent. On the return of James, as the result of petty intrigues and jealousies, Bolingbroke was dismissed from his office.
In March 1716 he declared his final abandonment of the Pre tender and promised to use his influence to secure the withdrawal of his friends; but he refused to betray individuals. In 1717 Bolingbroke formed a liaison with Marie Claire Deschamps de Marcilly, widow of the marquis de Villette, whom he married in 1720 after the death in 1718, of Lady Bolingbroke, whom he had treated with cruel neglect. He bought and resided at the estate of La Source, near Orleans, studied philosophy, criticized the chro nology of the Bible, and was visited amongst others by Voltaire, who expressed unbounded admiration for his learning and polite ness. In 1723, through the medium of the king's mistress, the duch ess of Kendal, he at last received his pardon, returned to London in June or July, and placed his services at the disposal of Walpole, by whom, however, his offers to procure the accession of several Tories to the administration were received very coldly. During the following winter he made himself useful in France in gaining information for the Government. In 1725 an act was passed en abling him to hold real estate, but without power of alienating it. But Walpole succeeded in maintaining his exclusion from the House of Lords. He now bought an estate at Dawley, near Ux bridge, where he renewed his intimacy with Pope, Swift and Voltaire, took part in Pope's literary squabbles, and wrote the philosophy for the Essay on Man. On the first occasion which offered itself, that of Pulteney's rupture with Walpole in 1726, he tried to organize an opposition in conjunction with Pulteney and Windham; and in 1727 began his celebrated series of letters to the Craftsman, attacking the Walpoles, signed an "Occasional Writer." He won over the duchess of Kendal with a bribe of L i i,000 from his wife's estates, and with Walpole's approval ob tained an audience with George. His success seemed imminent, and Walpole prepared for dismissal. But by the king's death in June Bolingbroke's projects and hopes were ruined once more. Further papers from his pen signed "John Trot" appeared in the Craftsman in 1728, and in 173o followed Remarks on the History of England by Humphrey Oldcastle, attacking the Walpoles' pol icy. The assault on the Government prompted by Bolingbroke was continued in the House of Commons by Windham, and great efforts were made to establish the alliance between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs. But the whole movement col lapsed after the new elections, which returned Walpole to power in 1735 with a large majority.
Baffled and disappointed, Bolingbroke retired to France in June, residing principally at the château of Argeville, near Fon tainebleau. He now wrote his Letters on the Study of History (printed privately before his death and published in 1752) and the True Use of Retirement. In 1738 he visited England, became one of the leading friends and advisers of Frederick, prince of Wales, who now headed the opposition, and although he was excluded from Parliament, was the real chief of the party of Patriots. He exercised great influence over the education of Prince George, afterwards George III., who was brought up on his Patriot King. This work, together with a previous essay, The Spirit of Patriot ism, and The State of Parties at the Accession of George I., was entrusted to Pope and not published. Bolingbroke returned to France in 1739, and subsequently sold Dawley. In 1742 and he again visited England and quarrelled with Warburton. In 1744 he settled finally at Battersea with his friend, Hugh Hume, 3rd earl of Marchmont, and was present at Pope's death in May. The discovery that the poet had printed secretly 1,500 copies of The Patriot King caused him to publish a correct version in 1749, and stirred up a further altercation with War burton, who defended his friend against Bolingbroke's bitter aspersions, the latter, whose conduct was generally reprehended, publishing a Familiar Epistle to the most Impudent Man Living. In 1744 he had been very busy assisting in the negotiations for the establishment of the new "broad bottom" administration, and showed no sympathy for the Jacobite expedition in About 1749 he wrote the Present State of the Nation, an unfin ished pamphlet. He died on Dec. 12, 175 1.
The writings and career of Bolingbroke make a far weaker im pression upon posterity than they made on contemporaries. His genius and character were superficial. Burke wrote his Vindica tion of Natural Society in imitation of Bolingbroke's style, but in refutation of his principles ; and in the Reflections on the French Revolution he exclaims, "Who now reads Bolingbroke, who ever read him through?" His most brilliant gift was his elo quence, which, according to Swift, was acknowledged by men of all factions to be unrivalled. None of his great orations has sur vived, a loss regretted by Pitt more than that of the missing books of Livy and Tacitus. His political works, in which the ex pression is often splendidly eloquent, spirited and dignified, are for the most part exceedingly rhetorical in style.
A life of Bolingbroke appeared in his lifetime, 1740, entitled Authen tic Memoirs (in the Grenville Library, Brit. Mus.), which recounted his escapades; other contemporary accounts were published in 1752 and 1754, and a life by Goldsmith in 1770. The standard biography of Bolingbroke is that by Walter Sichel (1901-02) .