Sir John St John, 1st Baronet
Sir John St John, 1st Baronet (5 November 1585 – 1648) of Lydiard Tregoze in the English county of Wiltshire, was a Member of Parliament and prominent Royalist during the English Civil War. He was created a baronet on 22 May 1611. Biography. St John was the second son of Sir John St John (d. 1594) of Lydiard Tregoze and his wife Lucy, the daughter of Sir Walter Hungerford. Upon his father's death in 1594, most of the family estates, in Wiltshire, went to his elder brother Walter; John received the manor of Garsington , Oxfordshire, and was promised £200 when he came of age. He was first placed in the guardianship of a distant relative, John St John, 2nd Baron St John of Bletso, but Lord St John died in 1596, and guardianship then passed to John's uncle, Sir Oliver St John. Sir Oliver arranged for John's education: he matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 3 April 1601 and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1604. Meanwhile, John's brother Walter drowned near Castle Cornet in August 1597 while staying with Sir Thomas Leighton, Governor of Guernsey. From him, John  inherited Lydiard Tregoze and the rest of the family estates in Wiltshire. His mother died in 1598, leaving him her jointure estates of Purley Park, Berkshire, and Hatfield Peverel, Essex. Sir Thomas Leighton purchased his wardship in 1602, and received permission to settle various estates on his daughter Anne, who married St John on 9 July 1604 at the age of 12. The couple had nine sons, of whom only two survived him, and four daughters, three of whom survived him. Anne died on 19 September 1628. He was knighted at Whitehall, on 2 February 1608, and was created a  baronet at the first institution of that order, on 22 May 1611, being the seventeenth in precedency by creation. In the early 1630s he inherited from Lord Grandison, his uncle, his estates at Battersea and Wandsworth. St John was Member of Parliament for Wiltshire from 1624 to 1625 and High Sheriff of Wiltshire from 1632 to 1633. During the English Civil War, St John and his family supported the Royalist cause. Three of his sons were slain in the service of King Charles I: William, his second son, was killed at the taking of Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, under Prince Rupert ; Edward, the third son, at the Battle of Newbury, in Berkshire; and John, the fifth son, in the north. Only two of his eight sons survived him, and it was his sixth son, Walter, who became his heir. Sir Walter went on to found the Sir Walter St John School at Battersea. Family. He was the third child and eldest son of Sir John St John (1560–1594) and of Lucy Hungerford (1560–1627), daughter of Sir Walter Hungerford (Knight of Farley) and a granddaughter of the attainted and executed Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury. He married twice, first to  Anne Leighton (died 18 September 1628 in childbirth), a daughter of Sir Thomas Leighton of Feckenham in Worcestershire, Governor of Jersey and Guernsey, and Elizabeth Knollys, and secondly Margaret Whitmore, the widow of Sir Richard Grubham. With his first wife, he had thirteen children. He was the brother-in-law of Sir Allen Apsley. St John himself was the ancestor of the Viscounts Bolingbroke and the Viscounts St John, while his uncle, Oliver St John, was created the first Viscount Grandison in 1620. Children. His children were: