page_title: Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
section_title: Pardon and return
hierarchical_section_title: Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke / Pardon and return
caption_attribution_description: English: (Bolingbroke) St.John's Dawley, (previously Ld Arlington's) a Lysons repro of Kip's c1707 original. Scan of Lyson's c1800 version (R. de Salis, Oct. 2007).Rodolph 10:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC). Henry Jerome de Salis' parents (or brother Peter) bought this property in Dawley, Harlington in 1772. The mansion was soon demolished but the building on the left (east) remained until 1929
context_page_description: Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology. He supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for the Pretender. He was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman by adopting the formerly Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle."
context_section_description: In 1723, through the medium of the king's mistress, Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal and Munster, he received a pardon and returned to London. Walpole reluctantly accepted his return. In 1725, Parliament enabled him to hold real estate but without power of alienating it. But this had been effected in consequence of a peremptory order of the king, against Walpole's wishes, who succeeded in maintaining his exclusion from the House of Lords. He now bought an estate at Dawley, near Uxbridge, where he renewed his intimacy with Pope, Swift and Voltaire, took part in Pope's literary squabbles, and wrote the philosophy for Pope's An Essay on Man (1734), which, at Epistle I, begins: "To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke:
  Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
  
  To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
  
  Let us (since life can little more supply
  
  Than just to look about us and to die)
  
  Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
  
  A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
  On the first occasion which offered itself, that of Pulteney's rupture with Walpole in 1726, he endeavoured to organize an opposition in conjunction with the former and Wyndham; 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 £11,000 from his wife's estates, and with Walpole's approval obtained an audience with the king. His success was imminent, and it was thought his appointment as chief minister was assured. In Walpole's own words, "as St John had the duchess entirely on his side I need not add what must or might in time have been the consequence", and he prepared for his dismissal. But once more Bolingbroke's "fortune turned rotten at the very moment it grew ripe", and his projects and hopes were ruined by the king's death in June.
  He wrote additional essays signed "John Trot" that appeared in the Craftsman in 1728, and in 1730 followed Remarks on the History of England by Humphrey Oldcastle, attacking Walpole's policy. Comment prompted by Bolingbroke was continued in the House of Commons by Wyndham, and great efforts were made to establish the alliance between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs. The Excise Bill in 1733 and the Septennial Bill in the following year offered opportunities for further attacks on the government, which Bolingbroke supported by a new series of papers in the Craftsman styled "A Dissertation on Parties"; but the whole movement collapsed after the new elections, which returned Walpole to power in 1735 with a large majority.
  Bolingbroke retired baffled and disappointed from the fray to France in June, residing principally at the château of Argeville near Fontainebleau. 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 wrote for the occasion The Patriot King, which together with a previous essay, The Spirit of Patriotism, and The State of Parties at the Accession of George I, were entrusted to Pope and not published. Having failed, however, to obtain any share in politics, he returned to France in 1739, and subsequently sold Dawley. In 1742 and 1743, 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 1500 copies of The Patriot King, caused him to publish a correct version in 1749, and stirred up a further altercation with Warburton, 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.
caption: Engraving showing Dawley House, before Saint John's improvements.
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