Dr Alex Beeton explores the strained relationship of the earl of Bolingbroke and his wayward son and heir, Lord St John.

Paternal disappointment is not an obvious component of Civil War historiography. Scarcity of evidence relating to personal lives is a common obstacle for historians of the mid-1640s peerage. For example, we know a great deal about the political life of Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, a major player in parliamentary affairs during the 1640s, but we do not know as essential a detail as when his first wife died and when he remarried. Discovering how many children peers had is often a surprisingly tricky business. Yet, occasionally evidence can be found to shine a light on the more personal aspects of the historical subject. One theme which has emerged from recent biographical studies for the House of Lords 1640-60 project is sons failing to live up to their father’s hopes and expectations. In an age of primogeniture and aristocratic obsession with family honour, disappointing sons were an especially strong worry for peers. For several, their fears were realised.

One such example was Oliver St John, 1st earl of Bolingbroke. A major landowner in Bedfordshire and neighbouring Huntingdonshire, Bolingbroke was strongly principled. In the 1620s he disagreed with the policies of Charles I and the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham. A puritan, he objected to the church policies of Charles and William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, which tended towards ceremonialism. Bolingbroke suffered for his resistance and spent much of the 1630s out of favour. During his travails, his son and heir (also called Oliver as, it sometimes feels, was the case for every male in the St John family) Lord St John was a source of support, also opposing the Caroline regime. 

However, although Lord St John had the right ideas he had the wrong lifestyle. According to a disapproving account by Edward Hyde, later 1st earl of Clarendon, St John led a life ‘licentious and very much depraved’ (Clarendon, Hist. ii. 369). By the end of the 1630s, he had managed to accrue debts of somewhere around £50-60,000. Given that his father’s annual income was well below £5,000 p.a., the extent of St John’s spending is very impressive. The cause of St John’s debts is hard to discern now, but Clarendon provided an explanation of how he had managed to get so much credit: though his parts of understanding were ‘very ordinary at best’, St John was ‘well beloved’ because of his ‘courtesy and civility which he expressed to all men’. His ‘civility’ helped to persuade ‘the principal gentlemen of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire to be bound for him’ when contracting debts, including relations and friends (Clarendon, Hist. ii. 369). As the 1630s went on, the heat from his creditors grew more intense. By late 1638, St John realised he was in trouble. Desperate, he decided to play a trick on his father. Bolingbroke was aware of his son’s debts, but not of their true extent. St John managed to persuade his father to discharge all his debts, lying that he owed only around £20,000. Bolingbroke dutifully set in motion a series of land sales and created trusts to raise the necessary money, also deciding to settle his own debts (a little over £15,000) at the same time.

It was only after Bolingbroke had begun this process that St John admitted the truth, telling his father that he had drastically undervalued the amount he owed his creditors. A remarkable note in the Huntingdonshire Record Office written at Bolingbroke’s direction describes what happened next:

All which settlements being performed…the said earl went down into the country, his said son [St John] staying behind him, at which time his said son sent a catalogue of his debts, amounting to a far greater sum then he formerly acquainted him with, or could by any means be drawn to express (out of fear as is conceived to displease his father) (Hunts. RO, M48/4/5).

Bolingbroke must have been staggered by his son’s revelation. St John’s decision to wait until his father was far away before sending him the list of debts is surely revealing of how angry he expected Bolingbroke to be. It is also a humanising detail, with the embarrassed son desperate to avoid breaking the news in person. Despite this betrayal, Bolingbroke did not abandon St John. He tried to raise money to pay off his son’s creditors but could not find the necessary funds immediately. In dire straits, St John tried to flee England at the end of 1638. Travelling under the alias of Tomson he reached the coast but then fell ill at Rye where his real identity was discovered and he was held in custody by the mayor. St John remained in limbo for another year, with his creditors pursuing legal measures against him. Eventually, he decided to try escaping the country again. This time he was more successful and made it into France.

Bolingbroke continued to help St John, negotiating with his son’s creditors and (it seems) persuading the king to summon St John to sit in the Long Parliament in January 1641 as 5th Baron St John. This measure rendered St John safe from arrest, as his furious creditors noted. Both Bolingbroke and St John joined the parliamentarian side in the Civil War. St John was commissioned as a colonel of foot in Parliament’s field army and died at Edgehill, the war’s first serious battle. According to Clarendon (whose account should be taken with a pinch of salt), St John had been wounded ‘in running away’ and expired before the following morning ‘without any other signs of repentance than the canting words that “he did not intend to be against the king, but wished him all happiness”’ (Clarendon, Hist. ii. 370). Bolingbroke’s reaction to his son’s death is unknown but it is notable that he seems to have taken an extended leave of absence from Parliament shortly after the battle, presumably from sorrow and a need to settle his family’s affairs. Bolingbroke would live for another four years, a notably diligent committee man and workhorse who displayed little of his son’s intemperateness or lack of judgment. Despite their differences, the relationship between the two men had clearly been close, with Bolingbroke never willing to cut his son off, even if, at times, he had been very disappointed with his behaviour.

ALB

Further Reading

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. ii.

R. Lee, Law and Local Society in the Time of Charles I: Beds. and the Civil War (Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 1986)

J. Godber, Hist. of Beds. 1066-1888 (Bedfordshire, 1969)