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The death of the Earl of Oxford took place at his house in Albemarle Street, London, on the 21st of May, 1724, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. His remains were interred, with those of his ancestors, in the vault of the family, at Brampton Brian, in Herefordshire.

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HENRY ST. JOHN,

VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE.

His birth.

CHAPTER I.

Sketch of his father, and anecdote.. St. John educated among the Puritans.-Is sent to Eton.-Sir Robert Walpole one of his school-fellows. Removed to ChristChurch, Oxford. His alternate fits of idleness and study there. His profligacy on leaving college. His unsuccessful attempts at poetry.-Verses addressed to Miss Clara Atkins. -His visit to the Continent, and subsequent marriage to the wealthy daughter of Sir Henry Winchescomb.-His separation from his wife. Her letters to Swift and Harley.-St. John enters the House of Commons, and distinguishes himself by his eloquence. He unites himself to Harley's party, and is appointed, in his twenty-sixth year, Secretary at War. His respect for the Duke of Marlborough. Duke's kindly feelings towards him. His retirement, with Harley, from office.-His letter to the Duke of Marlborough. -Returns, with Harley, to office, and is appointed Secretary of State.- Extract from Goldsmith's Life of Bolingbroke.-Queen Anne's dislike of St. John.-Extracts from Swift's journal to Stella.-St. John's difficulties in negotiating the Peace of Utrecht.-His visit to Paris.-Ratification of the Peace of Utrecht, and elevation of St. John to the Peerage, by the title of Viscount Bolingbroke.

The

HENRY ST. JOHN, afterwards the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, was born at Battersea, in Surrey, on the 1st of October, 1678, at a seat which had long

been the manorial residence of his family. He was the eldest son of Henry St. John,-afterwards created Viscount St. John,-by Mary, daughter and co-heiress of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick.

Of the father of the statesman little is known. Swift, however, says of him, in one of his letters; -"He is a man of pleasure, that walks about the Mall, and frequents St. James's coffee-house and the chocolate-houses ;" and Mrs. Manley informs us that he was "a professed spark, spruced up in cherry and other gaudy-coloured silk stockings.”* Like his illustrious son, he was probably a person of dissipated habits; for, in addition to the evidence of Swift, we find him tried and convicted for the murder of Sir William Estcourt, Bart., who was slain by him in a sudden quarrel. They were seated together at a social party, when, in the heat of a violent altercation which arose between them, St. John ran his sword through his friend's body before the rest of the party could interfere. The King granted him a reprieve for a long term of years, which the extreme old age he afterwards attained rendered it not improbable that he would outlive. He died in the month of April 1742, on the verge of ninety.

Bolingbroke imbibed his first principles of religion among the Puritans. It must be regarded as an unfortunate circumstance; for not only does it seem to have violently prejudiced him ever afterwards against that sect, but their unpalatable

* New Atalantis, vol. i. p. 192.

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gloom and severity, and their long faces and exhortations, appear to have early sown the seeds of infidelity in his mind. His education had been entrusted to the care of his grandmother, daughter of the celebrated Oliver St. John, Chief Justice under the Commonwealth,-who selected for his tutor her own spiritual adviser, Daniel Burgess, a well-known fanatical preacher of his time. He seems to have been a zealous, and was, probably, a very good man, but his notions of education appear to have extended no further than enforcing on the mind of his pupil the necessity of perusing ponderous folios, and listening to eccentric exhortations. Bolingbroke, some years afterwards, alluding to the Commentaries of Chrysostom,-observes in a letter to Pope,-" He puts me in mind of a Puritanical parson, Dr. Manton, who, if I mistake not, (for I have not looked into the folio since I was a boy, and condemned sometimes to read in it,) made 119 sermons on the 119th psalm." In a letter to Swift, also, we find,

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My next shall be as long as one of Dr. Manton's sermons, who taught my youth to yawn, and prepared me to be a high Churchman, that I might never hear him read, nor read him more." Bolingbroke has underrated the pious labours of Manton, for he actually composed one hundred and ninety sermons on the psalm in question, which were published in one volume, with a portrait of the author prefixed.

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* London, 1681, fol. It is remarkable that Lord Mahon has fallen into the same numerical error as Bolingbroke. "Man

Bolingbroke, at an early age, was sent to Eton, where, among his school-fellows in that classic academy, he numbered Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards his bitterest political opponent. Coxe remarks, in his Life of Walpole,-"The parts of Mr. St. John were lively and brilliant, those of Walpole more steady. Walpole was industrious and diligent, because his talents required application; St. John was negligent, because his quickness of apprehension rendered less labour necessary."

From Eton Bolingbroke was removed to Christ Church college, Oxford, where he miserably disappointed the expectations of his friends, by preferring idleness to exertion, and dissipation to a thirst for academical honours. Bolingbroke, however, was never, at any period, entirely a debauchee. There seem to have been valuable moments, many of them, probably, snatched even in the flush of excitement,-when, in the silence of his own chamber, he applied himself to nobler studies, and more dignified pursuits. It could not, indeed, have been from mere intuition, that he acquired that varied information, which, though on some subjects more showy than substantial, others have spent years of application and anxiety

ton," says his Lordship, "was a non-conforming and most voluminous divine, very worthy, but a little tedious; who, being impressed with some fanciful idea as to the analogy of numbers, wrote 119 sermons on the 119th Psalm!" Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 36. A reprint of these sermons has recently appeared. London, 1840.

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