This eBook was produced by Les Bowler St Ives DorsetLETTERS TO SIR WILLIAM WINDHAM AND MR POPEBY LORD BOLINGBROKEContents   Introduction By Henry Morley   Letter To Sir William Windham   Letter To Alexander PopeINTRODUCTIONHenry St John who became Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712 was born onthe 1st of October 1678 at the family manor of Battersea then acountry village  His grandfather Sir Walter St John lived therewith his wife Johannadaughter to Cromwells Chief Justice OliverSt Johnin one home with the childs father Henry St John whowas married to the second daughter of Robert Rich Earl of WarwickThe childs grandfather a man of high character lived to the ageof eightyseven and his father more a man of what is miscalledpleasure to the age of ninety  It was chiefly by his grandfatherand grandmother that the education of young Henry St John was caredfor  Simon Patrick afterwards Bishop of Ely was for some years achaplain in their home  By his grandfather and grandmother thechilds religious education may have been too formally cared for  Apassage in Bolingbrokes letter to Pope shows that he was requiredas a child to read works of a divine who made a hundred andnineteen sermons on the hundred and nineteenth PsalmAfter education at Eton and Christchurch Henry St John travelledabroad and in the year 1700 he married at the age of twentytwoFrances daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Winchescomb aBerkshire baronet  She had much property and more in prospectIn the year 1701 Henry St John entered Parliament as member forWotton Bassett the family borough  He acted with the Tories andbecame intimate with their leader Robert Harley  He soon becamedistinguished as the ablest and most vigorous of the youngsupporters of the Tory party  He was a handsome man and a brilliantspeaker delighted in by politicians who according to his own imagein the Letter to Windham grow like hounds fond of the man whoshows them game  He was active in the impeachment of SomersMontague the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Oxford for theirnegotiation of the Partition Treaties  In later years he said hehad acted here in ignorance and justified those treatiesJames II died at St Germains a pensioner of France aged sixtyeight on the 6th of September 1701His pretensions to the English throne passed to the son who hadbeen born on the 10th of June 1688 and whose birth had hastened onthe Revolution  That son James Francis Edward Stuart who was onlythirteen years old at his fathers death is known sometimes inhistory as the Old Pretender the Young Pretender being his sonCharles Edward whose defeat at Culloden in 1746 destroyed the lastfaint hope of a restoration of the Stuarts  It is with the youngheir to the pretensions of James II that the story of the life ofBolingbroke becomes concernedKing William III died on the 8th of March 1702 and was succeededby James IIs daughter Anne who was then thirtyeight years oldand had been married when in her nineteenth year to Prince George ofDenmark  She was a good wife and a good simpleminded woman amuchtroubled mother who had lost five children in their infancybesides one who survived to be a boy of eleven and had died in theyear 1700  As his death left the succession to the Crown unsettledan Act of Settlement passed on the 12th of June 1701 had providedthat in case of failure of direct heirs to the throne the Crownshould pass to the next Protestant in succession who was Sophiawife of the Elector of Hanover  The Electress Sophia was daughterof the Princess Elizabeth who had married the Elector Palatine in1613 granddaughter therefore of James I  She was more thanseventy years old when Queen Anne began her reign  For ardent youngTories who had no great interest in the limitation of authority orenthusiasm for a Protestant succession it was no treason to thinkthough it would be treason to say that the old Electress and hermore than fortyyearold German son George grossminded and clumsydid not altogether shut out hope for the succession of a more directheir to the CrownIn 1704 St John was Secretary at War when Harley was Secretary ofState and he remained in office till 1708 when the Whigs came inunder Marlborough and Godolphin and St Johns successor was hisrival Robert Walpole  St John retired then for two year frompublic life to his country seat at Bucklersbury in Berkshire whichhad come to him through his wife by the death of his wifes fatherthe year before  He was thirty years old the most brilliant of therising statesmen impatient of Harley as a leader and of Walpole ashis younger rival from the other side both of them men who in hiseyes were dull and slow  St Johns quick intellect though eagerand impatient of successful rivalry had its philosophic turnDuring these two years of retirement he indulged the calmer love ofstudy and thought whose genius he said once in a letter to LordBathurst On the True use of Retirement and Study unlike thedream of Socrates whispered so softly that very often I heard himnot in the hurry of those passions by which I was transportedSome calmer hours there were in them I hearkened to himReflection had often its turn and the love of study and the desireof knowledge have never quite abandoned meIn 1710 the Whigs were out and Harley in again with St John in hisministry as Secretary of State  I am thinking wrote Swift toStella what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Templebecause he might have been Secretary of State at fifty and here isa young fellow hardly thirty in that employmentIt was the policy of the Tories to put an end to the war withFrance that was against all their political interests  The Whigswished to maintain it as a safeguard against reaction in favour ofthe Pretender  In the peace negotiations nobody was so active asSecretary St John  On