Henry St John, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751),
politician, diplomatist, and author.
Related to the draft-article about Horatio’s identity.
The son of Henry St John, Viscount St John (1652–1742), landowner, and Lady Mary Rich (d. 1678), second daughter of Robert Rich, third earl of Warwick, was born on 16 September 1678. […] Henry was often a sickly child and had two serious illnesses which caused his grandfather considerable alarm. His grandmother is always reckoned to have taken a great interest in his education and is reputed to have hired leading dissenting ministers for the purpose. She may even have arranged for him to be educated at the dissenting academy at Sheriffhales in Shropshire, but there is no evidence to confirm this. It has been common practice to claim that St John was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, but there is no evidence to support either claim, though he was awarded an honorary degree by the university in 1702.
The evidence for St John's early life does not become substantial until 1698, when he toured Europe, visiting France, Switzerland, and Italy before 1700. During these months he made friends with such young whigs as James Stanhope, but also corresponded regularly with the experienced and moderate tory Sir William Trumbull, who had recently been secretary of state to William III. Though St John undoubtedly enjoyed the pleasures of a young rake, his letters show that he also spent some time studying and that he took a considerable interest in politics and religion. He expressed his dislike of the absolutism of Louis XIV and considered that only the tyranny of the Catholic clergy was worse. He also noted the threatening situation in Europe, where the problem of the Spanish succession aroused considerable speculation and where it was strongly feared that France was preparing for war. On his return to England St John succeeded his father as one of the members for the family's parliamentary seat at Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, for which he was elected in February 1701. His father, with whom he disagreed in politics, had sat in the Commons only for the duration of the previous parliament and he may have agreed to surrender his seat to his son, in return for the latter's agreement to marry Frances Winchcombe (d. 1718), an heiress with estates in Berkshire. It was to prove an unhappy and childless marriage. Though his wife supported his political career through all its vicissitudes, he treated her shamelessly. This shocked even his friends and damaged his reputation with Queen Anne in particular.
Character and abilities
In the early years of his public career Henry St John gave evidence of those eminent qualities and defects of character that were to surround his name in controversy throughout his life and have done ever since. More than his talents and achievements, it was St John's personality that impressed contemporaries and has intrigued historians. A handsome, well-built man, with graceful manners and a ready wit, he also had a keen intellect, a quickness of perception, a vivid imagination, and a clarity and force of expression that together captivated some of the finest minds and most discerning critics of his age, including Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Voltaire, and the earl of Chesterfield. At least for a time they were all seduced by the force and charm of his personality. Even St John's severest critics, anxious to reveal his faults, could not help acknowledging some of his personal qualities, even though they labelled them as specious or superficial. It was certainly widely accepted that there was a striking contrast between his virtues and his vices. His own professed models were Alcibiades and Petronius, and he earned and accepted the nickname Man of Mercury. The aspect of his character that attracted most contemporary comment in his early years was his flagrant debauchery. He took a positive delight in proving that he could live as a libertine, while also excelling in public affairs. He craved admiration for every facet of his character and achievements. This often led to accusations of affectation in its most obvious form. He never abandoned his image of a man of pleasure even after he had given up the practice.
A frequent and more damaging charge levelled at St John is that his immorality extended to a readiness to betray his friends in order to advance his own career. There is some justification for this charge. Particularly reprehensible was his treatment of his first wife, even though she appears to have been attractive in person and character, and remained devoted to him, even in his worst days in 1715. St John was also accused of basely betraying the duke of Marlborough, Robert Harley, and Alexander Pope, though they deserve to share some responsibility for his subsequent attacks upon them. Moreover, there is also another side of the coin. St John had attractive personal qualities which made him a stimulating and convivial companion, and he formed long attachments to such men as Sir William Wyndham, Lord Bathurst, Pope, and Swift. He also showed considerable devotion to his second wife, particularly during her long, final illness.
More striking was St John's early capacity for hero-worship. Though keen to excel in all things, he was also generous in his recognition of the talents of others. His first hero and model was Sir William Trumbull. He later witnessed and applauded the splendid talents of the duke of Marlborough. The third great influence on his public career was Robert Harley, whose political skills he learned to admire before he turned against him. In later life St John reversed these roles and expected younger men to hero-worship him. He loved to be at the centre of a circle of literary men and he certainly took a great interest in the education of the sons of his political and aristocratic friends.
In his frequent declarations of how much he loved study and learning, St John has been accused of striking a flattering pose. Contemporaries were justifiably suspicious of his frequent claims that he enjoyed the contemplative pleasures of his study as much as the cut and thrust of political life, but it is also true that, when he was debarred from politics, he did pursue his various studies most assiduously. Throughout his life he was genuinely attracted by learning and literary pursuits. From his earliest letters to the end of his life he showed a readiness to study seriously, a great pleasure in writing, and a delight in the company of writers and thinkers.
Affectation is a harmless enough flaw, but in St John's case it appears rooted in a condition of temperamental instability. In his early career he gave evidence of his lifelong conflict: a struggle between his reason and his passions. He had a cool, rational intelligence and a fierce, unbridled nature. While he always aspired to display the former, he was more often betrayed by the latter. Tense, sensitive, and highly strung, he reacted violently to criticism and came near to panic in a crisis. His attempts at philosophic indifference were numerous, but never carried conviction. There was always a contrast between what he hoped to feel and the emotions he actually experienced. The more he protested, the more he attracted attention and damaged his own case. He was undoubtedly a strange and paradoxical mixture of hypocrisy and candour. While not the bravest of men nor the coolest head in a crisis, he displayed immense physical and moral stamina. Though at times he quit the field, he never renounced the battle. He undoubtedly possessed great talents and substantial defects.
A man of wit, intelligence, and learning, it was St John's oratory which commanded most attention in his early political life and his polished written prose that brought him most fame in his later career. Unfortunately, while contemporaries frequently paid tribute to his oratory, no drafts of his speeches have survived and only a few short speeches have been recorded. We have to rely on contemporary testimony to gain some idea of his impact on his listeners. With his prose style we are much better served, since all his major political tracts have survived and we are reasonably sure which essays he contributed to The Craftsman. It is also clear that he could apply himself to business and that he had energy, industry, and organizational ability. His official letters reveal a minister with remarkable skill in instructing his subordinates, following the advice of his superiors, informing his colleagues, and negotiating with allies and opponents. He mastered the details of his official duties and displayed a positive relish for political power. He was always fascinated by politics and the pursuit of power, and sought it by his pen when he was denied access to cabinet and parliament. His frequent claims that he was not interested in power for its own sake do not carry conviction, though there is a streak of principle running throughout his career.
St John's political talents were accompanied by corresponding defects. His chief failing was his inability to manage men, other than his personal friends and closest adherents. He lacked the tact, persuasive arts, and conciliatory skills of which Harley and Robert Walpole were such masters. His imperious spirit could show the tory squires what game to hunt and his spoken and written arguments could sway back-benchers and informed opinion, but he found it difficult to negotiate support by personal contact and shrewd bargaining. While he could offer a bold lead, he could not ensure a large following. Nor was he able to devise a long-term strategy. He reacted to immediate events, but could not decide on his political priorities. Only the pressure of adverse circumstances forced him to develop a coherent political philosophy, but it was based on an interpretation which justified his own conduct and did not necessarily serve the interests of his allies or his party. His personal integrity was always suspect, which made it difficult to secure the unquestioning loyalty of others. In this respect his affectation was of less account than his lack of financial probity. Throughout his life he was dependent on his father or his wives for financial support and he was always anxious to free himself from such irksome restrictions. He several times sought financial gain by unorthodox means and he unwisely associated with men such as James Brydges and Arthur Moore, two experts in purloining government money. With such a record of debauchery, betrayal, and lack of financial probity, it is hardly surprising that he could never gain the full support of his sovereign or his party, however much his talents were admired.
St John's family background and education were probably more whig than tory. His father was reputed to be a whig and gained a peerage from George I in 1716, even though his son was then an attainted traitor. It was certainly claimed that the younger Henry St John joined the tories only because he believed he could more easily force himself to the forefront of that party, which lacked talent in the House of Commons. None the less, it is not true that he lacked all political principles. Whatever his motives for becoming a tory, he served the party for many years and tried to ensure it would hold power as much as possible. Even in his later career, when he tried to break free from the whig–tory disputes which had so long dominated political life, he was trying to serve the interests of toryism by clearing its adherents of the taint of Jacobitism and by advancing its platform by disguising it under country or patriot principles. Throughout his career he believed that the landed squirearchy was the backbone of the political nation and that its interests and those of the country as a whole were best served if such men dominated government at local and national level.
St John and the tory party
St John's first years in parliament witnessed the strong revival of the tory party which had suffered so traumatically after the revolution of 1688–9. Dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of William III, with the rise of the financial interest, and with the threat to the privileged position of the Church of England rallied many of the squirearchy once more behind the tory party, while the accession of Queen Anne gave them the chance to renew their traditional allegiance to throne and altar. In view of the continued divisions within the party, however, St John could never be typically or consistently tory in all his attitudes and actions. He can nevertheless be identified with many tory prejudices and principles. Though opposed to the doctrine of divine right, he remained a staunch supporter of the royal prerogative. He never challenged the monarch's right to choose his or her own ministers and accepted that he or she would have a considerable role in the shaping of government policy. The doctrine of hereditary succession appealed to him only in so far as it had the utilitarian advantage of preventing disputes after the death of every monarch. He was never a Jacobite as a matter of principle, though he was at times tempted to support the Pretender, James Stuart, in order to secure office for himself and power for his party. In his religious policies he was never a pious Anglican like so many tories. He took communion only occasionally, perhaps to qualify himself for office, and in later life he could best be described as a deist. None the less, his private religious views never prevented him from defending the privileged position of the Church of England as the principal institution for the encouragement of private and public morality, and for promoting political harmony. He attacked the dissenters in Anne's reign and tried to restrict the concessions granted to them. When he courted the Pretender, St John insisted that, if he were to have any chance of gaining the throne, he must offer the strongest safeguards to the Church of England. During his years of opposition to Walpole, he avoided deliberately alienating the dissenters, but would countenance no attack on the special status of the established church.
In the disputes over the management of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13), St John did not adopt an intransigent tory line. During the early years of the war he showed a concern for the balance of power in Europe and was won over to the policy of supporting the duke of Marlborough's land campaigns in Europe. He did become increasingly concerned at the enormous cost of the war and at the gradual and unwarranted extension of the war aims of Britain and her allies, and he later came to share the landed interest's determination to achieve peace even at the cost of deserting Britain's European allies. His most rooted political belief was his conviction that the landed gentry were the backbone of the political nation and the natural leaders of society. This stemmed in part from his immense pride in the ancient lineage of his family, but he also shared the tory prejudice against the upstart financiers and stockjobbers, who were accused of corrupting the government, undermining the constitution, and ousting the landed élite from their position as the natural leaders in politics and society. While he was one of the new tories who had accommodated themselves to the revolution and the constitutional balance between crown and parliament, St John shared the widespread tory hostility to the other consequences of 1688–9. He did not, however, have a firm or consistent allegiance to any particular section of the tory party. His ambitions enabled him to swim confidently in tory waters, but to locate himself in different parts of the party at different times, depending on which section would best serve his own interests.
Early career, 1701–1710
St John first entered parliament in February 1701 and was soon engaged in those fierce political disputes which were such a feature of the last years of William III's reign. In these battles he ranged himself alongside the most partisan tory back-benchers. Although there is no evidence that he played a role in preparing the Act of Settlement of 1701, he was actively involved in the attacks on the conduct of the king's recent whig ministers and on their foreign policy in particular. He was returned to parliament without difficulty in the general election late in 1701, though the whigs tried to blacklist him. When Queen Anne succeeded to the throne in March 1702 he was among those tories who thought that her accession would enable the party to regain the political ground it had lost in William's reign. Again returned for Wootton Bassett in 1702, St John was soon prominent in the tory onslaught on the whigs. As a commissioner of accounts he helped investigate the whig misuse of exchequer funds in William's reign and helped to bring charges against Treasury officials. He played an even more important role in the religious disputes which the tories deliberately instigated. In 1702 and 1703 he helped to draft successive bills against the practice of occasional conformity, which allowed dissenters to qualify for office under the crown by taking communion occasionally in the Church of England. Both bills were defeated by the whig-dominated House of Lords. He also played a leading role in disputing with the whig peers over the Aylesbury election case and the investigation of the ‘Scotch plot’ in early 1704. Thereafter, however, St John began to trim his sails and to moderate his conduct in order to secure a government post.
The queen's chief political advisers, the triumvirate of Marlborough, Godolphin, and Harley, had all hoped to be able to secure the support of the moderate tories in parliament, while they endeavoured to prosecute the War of the Spanish Succession against France. They soon began to despair at the factious conduct of the tory majority in the Commons, however, and it was left to Harley, the speaker and the ministry's most able political manager in the lower house, to attempt to moderate their conduct. He had soon detected that St John was one of those partisan back-benchers who might be converted to being a supporter of the ministry's foreign policy and he set about courting him. For his part St John had begun to admire Marlborough's brilliant conduct of the war and he began to moderate his more factious behaviour. He refused to join his friends in obstructing the general's war efforts by delaying a vital money bill and he declined to be re-elected a commissioner of accounts in February 1704.
When the ministry was recast in April 1704 Harley became a secretary of state, St John was appointed secretary at war, and several of his tory friends also took minor office. Once he had accepted a ministerial place St John was anxious to end his association with the extreme tories and was determined to prove himself in office. He vigorously opposed tory plans to bring in a third bill against the practice of occasional conformity. When the tories proceeded with a new bill and even planned to tack this measure onto a money bill in order to drive it through the Lords, since the upper chamber did not usually oppose money bills, St John joined with Harley in defeating the threatened tack on 28 November 1704. This was one of the most crucial party votes of the reign and it rudely shattered the flimsy unity of the tory party. It took nearly six years to patch up this serious breach between the moderate and extreme tories.
St John did not desert his tory principles entirely. Like Harley he was determined that the ministry should not be dominated by the whigs but must continue to seek an accommodation with the more moderate tories. He was relieved when the general election of 1705 allowed the court and the moderate tory ministers to hold the balance between the two parties. Having cut himself off from the bulk of the tory party, he could only hope that Harley would win over more tory moderates and would successfully resist any drift by Marlborough and Godolphin towards the whigs, who were much more committed to the European war than were their tory rivals.
As secretary at war from 1704 to 1708 St John proved himself to be a vigorous and capable administrator in charge of recruitment, billeting, the supply of clothes and equipment, convoys, transport, the care of sick and wounded troops, and a whole complex of logistical details. In many of his tasks he had to work closely with Marlborough, Godolphin, or Harley. He impressed them all with his energy and diligence. Marlborough was particularly appreciative of his efforts, and the general's victories owed something to St John's efforts behind the scenes. The secretary spoke regularly on military affairs in the Commons as he piloted recruiting bills and army estimates through the house. He had a finger in many pies and this allowed him to see at first hand some of the intractable problems thrown up by the war. It brought home to him the enormous difficulties involved in reinforcing the armies overseas and in organizing a military expedition to a distant theatre of war. He certainly learned that the task of securing Spain for the Austrian claimant was beyond the resources of Britain and her allies.
Recruitment for the army began to break down when Britain was required to supply large forces for the war in Spain. By April 1707 the allied army that was defeated at Almanza was seriously undermanned. This was not due to any defect on St John's part as he had worked extremely hard to recruit troops for Spain, but he had to bear the brunt of explaining to an angry House of Commons why there were only 8660 active British troops at Almanza when parliament had arranged to pay for 29,395 men. Despite offering various excuses and explanations, St John was unable to provide a defence that satisfied the house. The ministry now recognized that it could not control the House of Commons without having the firm support of either the whig or the tory party.
Harley and St John had struggled for some time to persuade Marlborough and Godolphin that they needed to win over more tory supporters in the Commons. They had failed to prevent the tories raising the issue of ‘the church in danger’ in December 1705, opposing the Regency Act in 1706, or criticizing the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707. For their part Marlborough and Godolphin, preoccupied as they were with the war in Europe, saw the whigs as the more natural supporters of the ministry and its war policies. They had advised the queen to appoint the whig earl of Sunderland as Harley's fellow secretary of state in December 1706 and to advance a few other whigs to minor office in early 1707. In the parliamentary session of 1707–8, when both the whig and tory parties refused to give the ministry strong backing in the Commons, the leading ministers had to decide which party to buy off. Marlborough and Godolphin believed that it had to be the whig party, as it was more firmly attached to the war against France. Harley and St John had hoped the ministry would prefer to make concessions to the tories. When Marlborough and Godolphin won the battle of wills, Harley, St John, and their closest allies resigned in February 1708.
St John had not been forced to resign. He chose to follow Harley's lead because he accepted his interpretation of the crisis and he preferred to retain his strained links with the tories rather than sever them completely by capitulating to the whigs. His decision cost him dear in the short term. William Bromley and the high tories did not immediately welcome him back into the party fold with open arms. And in the general election of 1708 not only did the tory party suffer its only general election defeat in Anne's reign, but St John himself failed to be re-elected. A rift with his father prevented him contesting Wootton Bassett and he failed to find an alternative seat. He spent the next parliament largely on his wife's estate at Bucklebury in Berkshire, where he enjoyed the life of a rural squire and re-established his contacts with grass-roots toryism. He expressed himself content with his political retirement, but, given his energy, temperament, and ambition, his protestations had a hollow ring.
From his rural retreat St John learned to appreciate the tory discontent with the enormous financial burdens placed on the landed interest by the war, and he regularly urged Harley to ally himself with Bromley and reunite the tory party. Harley was already employed in this effort and after months of negotiations he established a working relationship with the bulk of the tory party. He was also active in winning over a number of moderate court peers, such as Newcastle and Shrewsbury, and in building an influence at court through the queen's new favourite, Abigail Masham. Meanwhile the Godolphin ministry ran into serious difficulties because of its failure to make peace and its unwise decision to impeach Henry Sacheverell for his high-church sermons and so unleash a powerful cry of ‘the church in danger’. By August 1710 Harley had completed the piecemeal destruction of the Godolphin ministry, but he was most reluctant to create a ministry dominated by the high tories.
Secretary of state, 1710–1714
Because of his own usefulness and his adamant refusal to accept a lesser post, St John persuaded Harley to recommend him for promotion to secretary of state for the northern department in September 1710. While he envisaged making greater concessions to the tories than Harley desired, he was prepared for the moment to follow Harley's devious political strategy. A wish to catch the strong tide flowing in favour of the tories, however, persuaded him to write A Letter to The Examiner and to encourage the production and distribution of The Examiner as a party journal (and to enlist Swift as a regular contributor to it). His own strong desire to return to parliament also led him to urge Harley to call an immediate general election. The general election in the autumn of 1710 produced a large tory majority and saw St John elected for both Berkshire and Wootton Bassett. He preferred the more prestigious county seat.
In late 1710 St John had neither reason nor opportunity to challenge Harley's decision not to rely exclusively on the tory party for support. It was not until the spring of 1711 that he first saw an opportunity to strike out in a different direction from his mentor. He was influenced by the appearance of the October Club among tory back-benchers, a pressure group which demanded more partisan policies. He was also flattered with the popularity he gained on the tory back-benches after he had supported the Landed Qualification Act of early 1711 which ensured that candidates for seats in the Commons must possess substantial landed property. When Harley was severely wounded by Antoine de Guiscard, a French refugee, on 8 March 1711, and had to withdraw from politics for several weeks, St John saw an opportunity to direct the ministry's affairs. He proved inadequate to the task, however. He failed to control the tory back-benchers effectively and he secured the vote of adequate supplies only with some difficulty. His plan for an expedition against Quebec also came to grief. He had to admit that Harley was still indispensable to the success of the ministry and he was deeply jealous of the latter's elevation to the peerage, as earl of Oxford, and promotion to lord treasurer.
St John's breach with Oxford widened substantially when he discovered that he had been deliberately excluded from the ministry's tentative peace negotiations with France. These had opened as early as July 1710, but St John only belatedly learned what had been happening behind his back when the cabinet discussed the French proposals on 25 April 1711. Even then he was not allowed to play a major role in these negotiations for several more months. Oxford preferred to conduct all the important discussions himself, with both the allies and the French agents. St John deeply resented Oxford's inveterate secrecy, criticized his frequent contacts with the whigs, and was jealous of his monopoly of the queen's confidence. The strained relations between the two ministers gradually degenerated into bitter rivalry.
It took some time for St John to stamp his vigorous presence on the peace negotiations with France, but even then they never came under his direct control. By September 1711 he was dominating the discussions with French agents, he signed the peace preliminaries of that month, and he was much more prepared than Oxford to agree terms that might be rejected by Britain's allies. He struck out at domestic opponents of peace and he assisted Swift in his celebrated pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies, which claimed that Britain bore an unfair burden of the war. But, when the tory earl of Nottingham joined the whig peers in December 1711 in opposing any peace which allowed Spain to remain in Bourbon hands, it was again Oxford who came to the ministry's rescue. It was he who persuaded the queen to create twelve new tory peers to give the ministry a secure majority in the Lords. Marlborough and other officers were then dismissed from their army commands. Oxford had reasserted his dominance over the ministry, but only by making further concessions to the tories.
St John was aware that Britain could get advantageous terms from France if only the ministry could persuade the allies to reduce their demands. In February 1712 St John tried to intimidate the Dutch by launching an attack on the barrier treaty, by which the whigs had previously agreed to secure them a line of strong frontier fortresses against French aggression, and he also made it clear that he was ready to make a separate peace. In May he and Dartmouth, the other secretary of state, issued the new commander-in-chief of the British forces, the duke of Ormond, with the notorious ‘restraining orders’, which advised him to leave the confederate army and avoid any siege or battle. The French were made aware of these orders. St John's bold efforts received some reward. Several more tories were brought into the ministry and he himself was made Viscount Bolingbroke. He blamed Oxford, however, for what he believed to be an undeserved blow to his ambition and a slight to his family honour because he was not made an earl. It completed the personal breach between them.
Partly to soothe Bolingbroke's ruffled pride, Oxford agreed to send him to France to speed up the peace negotiations. With the encouragement of the French ministers Bolingbroke sought to take a decisive step in the direction of a separate peace. Oxford refused to countenance his conduct. He upbraided Bolingbroke at a cabinet meeting on 28 September 1712 for going beyond his instructions and he put Dartmouth in control of correspondence with the French. He charged Bolingbroke with seeking a separate peace and with making the French such open-handed promises that they would be reluctant to make a general peace with all of the allies. Unsupported by his cabinet colleagues, Bolingbroke had to back down. Oxford also made it clear that he believed that Bolingbroke had met the Pretender in France (they had been to see the same opera) and had allowed the French to believe that the ministry sympathized with the Jacobite cause. Although he had no proof of his charge, Oxford made it clear that he regarded Bolingbroke's behaviour in France as the height of folly. The latter retired to Bucklebury for a few days to lick his wounds.
Although Bolingbroke gradually resumed his role of instructing the British agents negotiating terms in France and of corresponding with the French on the ministry's behalf, the final treaty signed at Utrecht in 1713 was still probably more Oxford's achievement than his. Only in the final stages did he make the running, threatening the French with a renewal of the war and securing the dismissal of more whigs still holding minor places in the government. In spite of some of its provisions and the perfidious nature of some of its implications, the peace proved extremely popular with parliament and with the nation at large. The tories were particularly delighted with it, but this did not prevent Sir Thomas Hanmer leading a revolt in June 1713 against the commercial treaty with France that Bolingbroke had worked so hard to negotiate. The scale of the revolt was so large that Bolingbroke unfairly saw Oxford's hand behind it. In fact the tory rebels feared that the treaty implied Jacobite sympathies within the ministry, and their revolt marked the emergence of a body of Hanoverian tories and heralded a major split in the party on the crucial issue of the succession to Queen Anne.
Bolingbroke's response to this crisis was to urge Oxford to greater boldness and to a more partisan tory party. He protested against Oxford's indecision and urged the removal of all whigs and moderates still in office. When Oxford did recast the ministry in August 1713, however, most of the new appointments went to his allies not Bolingbroke's. The general election which followed actually saw more tories returned than in the previous election, but the tories did not return to parliament as a united force. Bolingbroke strove to widen his own base of support within the party and again urged a vigorous, partisan policy on Oxford. He himself opened negotiations with the Pretender (as Oxford had also done, though more circumspectly) and he urged him to change his religion, warning him that the tories would never unite behind a Catholic claimant to the throne. He also tried to win over Abigail Masham, the queen's favourite, so that he might yet challenge Oxford's influence at court. Meanwhile, however, he had to co-operate with Oxford to resist whig attacks on the ministry's uncertain policy towards the succession.
In June 1714 Bolingbroke successfully curried favour with tory back-benchers by supporting the Schism Bill attacking the existence of dissenting academies, a measure Oxford would not support. His lack of leadership skills, however, was exposed by his failure both to prevent the whig opposition passing anti-Jacobite votes and to pilot votes of supply through parliament as the lord treasurer could do. He also found it difficult to combat Oxford's influence at court, as the lord treasurer warned the queen of the dangers to which she would be exposed if he were dismissed. There would be no money and no credit, and the whole church interest would believe she planned to bring in the Pretender. He could also stress Bolingbroke's notorious treatment of his wife and his lack of financial probity. The last charged gained weight when Bolingbroke narrowly escaped damaging disclosures in parliament when the terms of the commercial treaty with Spain, signed in November 1713, were discussed by parliament in the summer of 1714. Bolingbroke avoided further difficulties when the queen dissolved parliament on 8 July 1714.
Bolingbroke did not give up the struggle, and Oxford's neglect of business and his heavy drinking finally alienated the queen. She was persuaded to dismiss the lord treasurer on 27 July 1714, but there was to be no triumph for Bolingbroke. The queen fell mortally ill within hours of dismissing Oxford and she died on 1 August. Bolingbroke lost his nerve in this crisis. He had insufficient support in the cabinet and his negotiations with the Pretender were not far enough advanced. When Oxford threw his weight behind the Hanoverian tories Bolingbroke meekly followed his example and at once took the oath of allegiance to George I. There is no evidence that he considered declaring the succession of the Pretender. It was too late to model himself as a supporter of the incoming court, however. Bolingbroke was omitted from George I's list of regents or lords justices. At the end of August he was dismissed and his office was sealed up. He tried to put a brave front on his sudden reversal of fortune, and even turned up at George's coronation on 20 October in the hope that the new king would see the advantage of governing with the support of a united tory party. The party remained deeply split, however, and still lacked a generally recognized leader. They faced the general election in early 1715 more disunited than ever and saw the determined and loyal whigs, with firm crown support, win a very significant victory.
The Jacobite cause
Bolingbroke did not immediately panic, but his alarm grew as the triumphant and vindictive whigs began dismissing the supporters of the previous tory administration and were clearly seeking evidence of political misconduct by the late ministers. Bolingbroke attended the new parliament in March 1715 in order to defend his past conduct. When the whig ministers ordered the seizure of Matthew Prior's papers in Paris (where he had helped Bolingbroke to negotiate the peace) and asked Bolingbroke to surrender his own papers, he feared for his life and decided to flee to France. He made his arrangements in great secrecy, borrowing money from James Brydges and conveying his lands to six loyal trustees, who were to hold them for his wife, who acknowledged his debt to Brydges and others. He then fled the country on 27 March, disguised as a servant of one of the French ministers. He was just in time to avoid arrest. He was later condemned in his absence by an act of attainder and lost his estates and title. His flight was an enormous blunder. Once again he had lost his nerve in a crisis and had made the situation worse. Oxford, by contrast, stood his ground, was imprisoned for a considerable time in the Tower, but was eventually released as the ministry failed to find sufficiently damaging evidence against him. The whigs were able to take Bolingbroke's flight as clear proof of his guilt, while the tories were demoralized and dismayed.
At first Bolingbroke sought to justify his actions and to lie low in Bellevue, near Lyons, hoping the storm would pass. He denied that he was intending to betray the Hanoverian succession or had ever planned to do so. When it was clear, however, that the whigs would take firm action against him he accepted an earldom from the Pretender in July 1715 and agreed to become his secretary of state. This was an even greater mistake than his original decision to flee, though he claimed that Jacobitism was the only refuge now that the tories had been virtually proscribed by George I and his ministers. Once Bolingbroke had joined the Pretender he set about his new duties with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. He soon realized that his optimism was misplaced. The whole Jacobite rising of 1715 was dogged by misfortune and mistakes. It was more difficult to gain financial and military assistance from the French than Bolingbroke had ever imagined. When Louis XIV died at the end of August 1715 a vital prop of the Jacobite cause collapsed. The duke of Orléans, the French regent for the young Louis XV, refused to commit himself to the cause, which was doomed by a complete failure to co-ordinate risings in various parts of the British Isles and reinforce them with professional troops from France. Bolingbroke was unable to harness the efforts and energies of the Pretender's various supporters and sympathizers. His own advice and counsel were frequently ignored or opposed in the Pretender's court and he regularly clashed with the Pretender's other advisers. He was adamant that the Pretender must put himself at the head of the tory party in England and he assured him that this could be achieved only if he gave the firmest of undertakings to preserve the privileged position of the Church of England. He also advised the Pretender to accept many of the major constitutional developments that had occurred in Britain since the revolution. He desired to preserve a limited monarchy and a constitution balanced between crown and parliament. Bolingbroke was not the type of Jacobite who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing since 1688.
When the Pretender's expedition to Scotland ended in disaster he blamed Bolingbroke for sending inadequate supplies and reinforcements. He dismissed his secretary of state in March 1716, a decision that soon resulted in mutual and unsavoury recriminations. Bolingbroke was made a scapegoat by other Jacobites for the fiasco of the 1715 rising. For his part, he quickly made contact with Lord Stair, the British ambassador to France, and sought to negotiate a pardon in return for betraying what he knew about the Jacobite cause. He desperately tried to make himself useful to the whig ministers in London. He recognized that the only card in his hand was his influence with some of the tory opposition. He argued that he could strengthen the ministry's position in parliament and the country by counteracting Jacobite propaganda and persuading some of the tories to moderate their opposition. He could not afford to betray his former Jacobite colleagues openly or he would lose all credit with the tories, but he was prepared to tell the king or Marlborough everything he knew and to trust to their discretion. He was concerned that his betrayal of the Jacobites should be secret, but he was willing to make it effective.
Bolingbroke warned Sir William Wyndham, in September 1716, that the Jacobite cause was desperate, its supporters on the continent were miserable wretches, and their measures weak and impractical. He himself was the subject of bitter denunciations by the Jacobites while the Pretender justified his dismissal of Bolingbroke in a personal letter to Wyndham. To combat this successful campaign of vilification, Bolingbroke redoubled his efforts to justify his whole conduct since 1710. He wrote letters to various tory friends and, by the end of 1717, he had prepared for circulation among them private copies of his Letter to Sir William Windham. In this, one of his most powerful works, he sought to justify his conduct since the tory triumph of 1710, to wean the tories from any commitment to Jacobitism, and to reduce the political temperature which threatened his own political future and that of the tory party. He insisted that the Pretender must be abandoned as a religious bigot or he would threaten to ruin the tory party and the Church of England. Yet he also strove to allay any whig suspicion that he was determined to revive the tory party so that it would become a serious rival to the whigs for political power. The tories proved deaf to his exhortations, however, and the whig ministers were not easily persuaded that he had really repented of his former actions. It was to take Bolingbroke several more years before he could work his passage home. Prolonged negotiations with various whig ministers failed to win any significant results for nearly a decade.
Exile and study
During his enforced exile in France, Bolingbroke tried to resign himself to his fate and sought consolation in study. In 1716 he wrote his Reflections upon Exile (in imitation of Seneca). It was a false and puerile description of his state of mind as he stressed the virtue of a stoic resolve in the face of adversity and claimed a courage born of philosophy. He did, however, mix with French aristocrats interested in a wide range of studies, including Matignon, Torcy, and Madame de Ferriol, as well as with genuine scholars such as Voltaire, Pierre Joseph Alary, and Lévesque de Pouilly. In such circles he came into contact with the ideas and notions of those who were playing a crucial role in the development of the French Enlightenment. He also met a widow, Marie-Claire de Marcilly, marquise de Villette (1675/6–1750), whom he married privately in early 1719, within a few months of the death of his first wife in England, though the public marriage ceremony was delayed until 1722. In December 1720 he and his second wife leased the Château de la Source, near Orléans, where he spent much of his time, apart from frequent visits to Paris, until his return to England in 1725.
While in exile Bolingbroke began making a serious study of history. His enlightened scepticism led him to doubt the historian's ability to recover the distant past. He repeatedly expressed his distrust of biblical and ancient history, which he regarded as little more than myths and fables. Nor did he have any patience with antiquaries who simply amassed facts and placed them in chronological order. On the other hand his humanist side led him to argue that the chief value of studying history was the constant improvement it encouraged in private and public virtue. History, he maintained, inculcated moral and practical lessons, promoted social virtues, and provided a guide to future action. It was philosophy teaching by example. This utilitarian view of history encouraged Bolingbroke to use the past for partisan purposes. By 1724 he was planning a study of European history from the mid-sixteenth century to the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. In trying to explain developments over this period, he vacillated between an emphasis on the actions of great men and a belief in the crucial influence of social structure and economic change.
Bolingbroke was also much attracted to the study of philosophy, which increasingly absorbed his attention from about 1720. He gave priority to experimental philosophy rather than to metaphysical speculation, and he rejected both Plato's philosophy and the Cartesian approach to deductive reasoning. He became a disciple of the intellectual approach of Locke and Newton, but he paid particular attention to the study of religion and morality. He was very interested in natural law and natural religion, and gradually developed into a deist. Professing a harmless rationalism, he came to believe in a supreme being, but one that was distinct, even remote, from the world. He rejected the notion of particular providence and of a God actively involved in the affairs of men. Not convinced that the Bible was the revealed word of God, he became critical of much of the Old Testament and he was not entirely satisfied with the New Testament either. He appears to have regarded Christ as a great religious teacher, but not as divine. He also rejected the doctrines of purgatory and eternal punishment, and remained unconvinced of the immortality of the soul. In his Reflections Concerning Innate Moral Principles (written in the early 1720s, but first published posthumously in 1752), he insisted that moral principles were not innate, but were the product of experience and instruction. Reason was not the same in all men and was never perfect in any man. In this and his other philosophical works, Bolingbroke borrowed heavily (but often without acknowledgement) from greater thinkers, failed to create a coherent system of philosophy, and was frequently contradictory and inconsistent.
Although they did not appear until 1754, three years after his death, most of Bolingbroke's philosophical essays were the result of his studies started in France and continued after his return to England in 1725. While he gained in knowledge and experience, he did not radically depart from the views expressed in his earlier works. Nor did he ever lose his dependence on greater minds, though he tried to conceal his debt to particular scholars. His knowledge was large, but less extensive than he claimed and he never succeeded in developing a coherent philosophical system of his own. He strove in particular to erect an ethical and religious system based on reason and natural law. Although he was a critic of organized religion from a theological and philosophical standpoint, he remained convinced of its social and political utility. While he argued that men ought to be guided by reason as far as possible, he acknowledged that reason was never infallible and that it could often be overborne by passion. He confidently affirmed the existence of natural law, but never explained precisely what it was or how human reason derived such laws from the world of nature. The universe, he believed, was one vast linked design, the great chain of being, and man was only one part of this immense structure. There was an infinite gradation of forms of being, both above and below man; and it was impossible for man to realize the significance of them all. Man could not appreciate the entire pattern of the universe nor the significance of the role which good and evil played in it.
In his enquiries into civil government Bolingbroke rejected the doctrine of divine right and the social contract ideas of both Hobbes and Locke. He did not subscribe to the notion of a monarch chosen directly by God or elected by the free choice of all individuals. Nor did he favour a monarch imposed by conquest or outright force. Rather he favoured the notion that civil government was established by the heads of leading families and that rulers owed a duty to those who accepted their rule. Civil government was based on the implied consent of men of property, but must consult the interests of the people. Once established, civil government existed to promote law and order, to defend property, and to promote the welfare of all subjects. Bolingbroke undoubtedly admired England's ancient constitution, based on history, experience, and prescription. He always argued that the revolution of 1688–9 was justified in that it rejected absolute monarchy and restored the benefits of limited monarchy and a proper balance between the monarch and the landed classes through the latter's representatives in parliament.
Opposition to Walpole
After years of uncertainty and bitter disappointment Bolingbroke was finally pardoned on 25 May 1723, but he was not released from all the penalties and forfeitures incurred under the act of attainder of 1715. Robert Walpole, the king's chief minister, refused to countenance further concessions and so Bolingbroke's estates, title, and seat in the Lords could not be recovered. Despite all his efforts to ingratiate himself with the Hanoverian court and the whig ministry, including a bribe to one of the king's mistresses, Bolingbroke failed to gain a complete restoration of his political rights. Walpole did not trust him not to stir up old party passions and so he would only support a reversal of the act of attainder to allow Bolingbroke to own and inherit property in England. This measure received the royal assent on 31 May 1725 and within weeks Bolingbroke had returned to England. He did not receive an ecstatic welcome, though Pope and Swift were delighted and so were a group of tories led by Wyndham and Bathurst. Other tories, especially the crypto-Jacobites and the friends of the late earl of Oxford, were not ready to welcome him with open arms and the whigs in power never trusted him.
Bolingbroke settled at Dawley, near Uxbridge, Middlesex, where he initially gave the impression of retiring from the political scene, but he very soon sought to rally the tory opposition in parliament and to ally it with the discontented whigs led by William Pulteney, who had recently resigned from Walpole's ministry. On 5 December 1726 there appeared the first issue of The Craftsman, a journalistic venture which heralded the birth of a formidable opposition to Walpole and the beginnings of a propaganda campaign of sustained brilliance and of rare political sophistication. Edited by Nicholas Amhurst and printed by Richard Francklin, The Craftsman attracted contributions from Bolingbroke, Pulteney, and other leading thinkers and writers in the opposition camp. Originally published twice weekly, The Craftsman became a weekly of more than twice the length from May 1727. During its period of greatest influence, from 1729 to 1732, at least 8000 copies of each issue were distributed and probably upwards of 12,000 copies in 1731. It was reprinted in several provincial towns, as well as in Amsterdam and New York, and collected editions appeared in 1731 and 1737. The Craftsman aroused such public interest and so embarrassed the ministry that Walpole spent large sums subsidizing a pro-ministerial press to reply to it (and to attack Bolingbroke and Pulteney in particular); and he had Francklin arrested on several occasions in an effort to silence it.
Bolingbroke opened his own political campaign in January 1727, with three essays in The Occasional Writer and ‘The first vision of Camilick’, his first contribution to The Craftsman. He set out to bring down Walpole as the necessary prelude to his own return to power. It was a daunting prospect as Walpole had the confidence of the king, an impregnable majority in the Lords, and a commanding influence in the Commons. To succeed, Bolingbroke had to forge a united and effective opposition from the most unpromising materials. The tories were still split along Jacobite and Hanoverian lines, and they were demoralized and disorganized after more than a decade in opposition. Some of the party's most able members had defected to the court or even joined the whigs and it now had fewer than 200 MPs in the Commons. The opposition whigs, led by William Pulteney, had a few men of talent, but far fewer supporters in the Commons. Moreover these whigs did not differ from Walpole on any issue of basic principle and they had little in common with the tories, whom they suspected of harbouring Jacobite sympathies. Bolingbroke set about finding issues and exploring themes designed to embarrass Walpole and expose his methods of governing as corrupt and unconstitutional. He tried in particular to elaborate ideas and concepts of opposition that would justify his efforts to unite the disparate elements opposed to Walpole and his ministry.
Concerned with the interests of the landed gentry and conscious of the way Walpole abused his power, Bolingbroke devoted his pen to forging a political platform capable of uniting a majority of the political nation. He contributed nearly one hundred essays to The Craftsman. Many of these were individual polemical forays against the ministry that can be properly understood only by appreciating the specific context in which they were written and the debate with ministerial writers in which he was engaged. Some of his essays were part of a more coherent argument that delved below the surface of events and offered a sophisticated analysis of the political situation that resonated long after the death of the main protagonists. In 1730–31 Bolingbroke contributed twenty-two essays to The Craftsman using the persona of Humphrey Oldcastle. Together these formed his Remarks on the History of England. In 1733–4 he contributed a further series of essays which later formed A Dissertation upon Parties. In both of these series he laboured to destroy the old distinctions between whigs and tories and tried to forge a new country party able to defend the constitution and safeguard the liberties of the subject.
While Bolingbroke sensibly refrained from trying to revive the old cry of ‘the church in danger’ (though some of his tory allies still did so), as he knew this would drive a wedge between the tory and whig elements in the parliamentary opposition, he did seek to defend the interests of the landed gentry against the rising influence of the whole financial interest built around the national debt, the stock market, the Bank of England, and the great trading corporations such as the East India Company. He condemned the monied interest not only as a threat to the political influence and social status of the landed classes, but as a weapon which could be used by corrupt ministers to undermine the balance of the constitution, to subvert the liberties of the subject, and to weaken public morality in general. The money generated by the financial interest, together with the vast amount of crown patronage at the disposal of the crown, was condemned as the unconstitutional means by which Walpole and his ministerial cronies corrupted the electorate and influenced the behaviour of a majority of those sitting in both houses of parliament. By using crown patronage to pack parliament and destroy its political independence, Walpole was able to carry through his factious, corrupt, and unpopular policies. To combat this threat, Bolingbroke urged measures which would reduce crown patronage and make parliament more accountable to the landed classes by ending electoral corruption and ensuring more frequent general elections. Landed men alone, he believed, could be trusted to defend the true interests of the nation as a whole. As men of independent means, with a real stake in society, and as men of leisure, education, and the experience of commanding others, they were the natural governing élite of society.
Bolingbroke recognized that the opposition could never unite behind an effective programme while it remained divided by old whig and tory prejudices. He strove to counter the accusations that the tory party was still tainted with Jacobitism and, in the Dissertation upon Parties in particular, he tried to persuade parliament and public that the old whig and tory labels had lost all the real meaning they had once possessed. While admitting that there had once been real distinctions and genuine differences of principle between the two political parties, he now tried to maintain that the differences had all been settled at the revolution, when the two parties had combined to safeguard England's ancient, balanced constitution. It was absurd to continue using the same party labels when the real dispute was between a narrow and corrupt court faction and those honest, patriotic politicians trying to preserve the interests of the nation at large. The majority of the former whig and tory parties needed to unite in defence of liberty and the constitution, and in opposition to a handful of Jacobites on the one hand and Walpole's mercenary detachment on the other. Walpole and his hirelings were not upholding whig principles, as they claimed, but were simply feathering their own nests by corrupt and ignoble means. To defeat them, all men of good will with the true interests of the nation at heart must combine to save the nation. The opposition had to rise above the narrow spirit of the old party labels and create a new country party, which would embrace the interests of the whole nation and eject the corrupt faction now in power.
In his Remarks on the History of England Bolingbroke claimed that England had enjoyed an ancient constitution since time immemorial and that this constitution was based on a delicate balance between crown and parliament. English history had been a perpetual struggle between weak kings and their evil advisers on the one hand and the patriotic endeavours of brave parliamentarians on the other. Bolingbroke ransacked English history for examples of royal favourites and corrupt ministers undermining the constitution by corrupt methods, financial jobbery, crown patronage, continental alliances, and military adventures. The reader was always meant to equate Walpole and his methods with those of previous evil counsellors who had threatened the true interests of the people. The revolution of 1688–9, Bolingbroke insisted, had restored the balance of the constitution that had been disturbed by James II. It had not ushered in a new era of liberty. In recent years, however, Walpole had followed the example of earlier evil counsellors and had exploited crown patronage and the new financial interest in order to undermine the independence of parliament and the liberties of the subject. Walpole's defeat could be engineered only if the tories abandoned all attachment to the Jacobite cause and joined with the opposition whigs in a national, patriotic endeavour. A formed opposition of this kind was legitimate when it abandoned the corrupt aims of a particular faction and the vested interests of a specific party in order to promote the interests of the nation at large. Bolingbroke did not envisage and never advocated that this opposition needed to be a permanent feature of the parliamentary system, always criticizing the existing administration and standing by to replace it as the government at any time. His concept of opposition implied that once the united efforts of honest men had brought down a corrupt regime, then all abuses would be remedied and an age of harmony and virtue would ensue. Opposition would not be needed unless and until the constitution were again threatened by a corrupt faction that monopolized power and promoted its own narrow interests.
Bolingbroke's complaints against Walpole and his political methods were motivated by thwarted ambition and so they cannot be taken at face value. Despite Bolingbroke's claims, Walpole did not survive in power for so long solely because of his exploitation of crown patronage and his abuse of power, important to his success though these were. Walpole also possessed superb administrative abilities and rare powers of persuasion that were widely admired, and he promoted policies that were often willingly supported by independent back-benchers who owed him no particular allegiance. Bolingbroke never did his great rival justice. Nor did he find issues of sufficient gravity or arguments of sufficient weight to unite firmly the tories and discontented whigs into an effective opposition capable of ousting Walpole and replacing him with an entirely new administration based on different principles.
Bolingbroke did help to make The Craftsman the greatest opposition journal of the age and he was also at the centre of a literary circle (including Pope, Swift, and John Gay) that attacked Walpole in verse, plays, and imaginative prose fiction. It is a mistake, however, to see all the opposition writings of the age as being influenced by ideas emanating from the mind of Bolingbroke. There were many different strands in the opposition to Walpole, and Bolingbroke never controlled or inspired them all, and indeed never succeeded in his efforts to pull them together into a coherent political ideology or an agreed platform. Nor was he able in person to lead the opposition campaign within parliament or even to find a steady stream of issues that would enable his political allies to keep Walpole permanently on the defensive. Many leaders of the parliamentary opposition, even close allies such as Wyndham and Pulteney, were considerable political figures in their own right. They were not mere puppets manipulated by the scheming Bolingbroke. Jacobites and malcontent whigs might occasionally ally themselves with him while pursuing their own political agenda. Urban merchants in the opposition often acted quite separately from him, and even the tory party was never his to control and command. Only Wyndham and his followers in the Commons were amenable to his ideas, though they were never under his direct leadership.
All elements in the opposition to Walpole sought issues on which to attack the ministry. Bolingbroke played a significant role not only in condemning Walpole's political methods, but in challenging aspects of his specific policies. He particularly attacked the ministry's foreign policy and tried to drive a wedge between Walpole and Viscount Townshend, who already differed in their responses to the complex problems bedevilling the relations between the great powers of Europe. Bolingbroke encouraged the opposition to attack the treaty of Seville, signed by Britain in November 1729 and hailed by Walpole as a triumph, and also the ministry's employment of Hessian mercenaries. In the autumn of 1729 Bolingbroke toured the Netherlands and north-west France. This visit and his connections in France led him to suspect that the French were rebuilding the harbour and fortifications of Dunkirk, contrary to the terms of the treaty of Utrecht. At his own expense he organized further investigations of Dunkirk itself. He then persuaded Wyndham to open a surprise debate on the subject in the House of Commons in February 1730. The opposition at last had a major issue which temporarily embarrassed the ministry and seriously dented Walpole's large majority. The case of Dunkirk certainly rattled many independent back-benchers. To weaken their attachment to the opposition Walpole made great play of Bolingbroke's clandestine and suspicious role in bringing on the whole debate. He succeeded in turning the debate into a discussion on Bolingbroke's past conduct and he managed to discredit the opposition's legitimate criticism of ministerial negligence. Bolingbroke tried in vain to recover lost ground by writing The Case of Dunkirk Faithfully Stated and Impartially Considered (1730), and followed this up with a justification of his own conduct.
The opposition recovered strongly in 1732–3 as Walpole's plans to extend his excise reforms to wine and tobacco gave it a useful stick with which to belabour him. The Craftsman played a major role in whipping up considerable and widespread opposition to Walpole's proposals, particularly within the merchant communities. Bolingbroke himself was rather slow to join in this attack, but he eventually did see its significance and attempted to rally the landed interest behind the opposition to the excise scheme. Independent opinion in parliament became so alarmed that Walpole, seeing his majority steadily decline, abandoned his reforms in April 1733 before they were actually voted down. It was a major reverse for the ministry, nevertheless, but Walpole soon retrieved the situation. He skilfully exploited the divisions within the opposition and exposed it as an uneasy alliance between tories and discontented whigs. He again brought forward Bolingbroke's previous conduct and his Jacobite past, and quite easily extricated himself from the greatest crisis he had faced in ten years. Bolingbroke's Dissertation upon Parties failed to convince many politicians that the divisions between whigs and tories were obsolete, and his advice to the electorate on how to vote for honest candidates, published in his pamphlet The Freeholder's Political Catechism (1733), failed to prevent Walpole securing a solid majority in the general election of 1734.
Worse for Bolingbroke's political ambitions and public reputation was his rash decision to establish a dangerously dependent relationship with Chavigny, the French ambassador in London. Together they regularly conferred on foreign affairs and domestic issues, and even freely discussed the Pretender's aims. Bolingbroke unwisely suggested ways in which the Pretender might revive the Jacobite cause in England and accepted French advice about the advisability of Britain remaining neutral during the War of the Polish Succession. Worse still, in the summer of 1733 he accepted a substantial pension from the French court in order to help finance the opposition to Walpole. He was clearly providing potentially damning evidence of his unbridled ambition and his political recklessness. In doing so he offered himself as a hostage to fortune. Walpole soon learned of his close relations with Chavigny, though not the precise details of his near treasonable conduct. Walpole used the information he had to set about demolishing Bolingbroke's already dubious reputation with the independent back-benchers. He found a convenient opportunity to attack Bolingbroke when the opposition brought in a bill to repeal the Septennial Act in the spring of 1734. Bolingbroke had recently opposed this act and sought a return to triennial parliaments in The Craftsman Extraordinary; in which the Right of the People to Frequent Elections of the Representatives is Fully Consider'd. Walpole ignored the details of the issue at stake and instead launched into a blistering attack on Bolingbroke in the House of Commons, accusing him of betraying the secrets of every court he had attended and every master he had ever served. This was followed by a savage press campaign designed to destroy the last vestiges of Bolingbroke's credit with the opposition whigs and to drive the wedge between opposition whigs and tories ever deeper. Bolingbroke's Jacobite past and his relationship with Chavigny were fully exploited in such pamphlets as The Grand Accuser—the Greatest of All Criminals (1734) and in a series of essays in the pro-ministerial Daily Courant from January 1735 that urged the necessity of driving Bolingbroke out of the kingdom. Bolingbroke even feared impeachment. This, his precarious financial situation, and his blasted reputation with the opposition whigs persuaded him that a return to France was his best strategy. He pretended to Wyndham that his second retirement from politics in late May 1735 was his own free choice. It was an unconvincing effort to camouflage his political failure. His departure from the political scene left the parliamentary opposition more prone than ever to a split along party lines. He had failed to create an effective country ideology and he had not succeeded in uniting the opposition into a potential governing party.
Patriotism
In June 1735 Bolingbroke settled in Chanteloup, in Touraine, but within a year he had moved to Argeville, near Fontainebleau, where he lived until his final return to England in 1744. In between he did manage to pay several visits to England to settle his financial affairs and to keep in touch with his friends. From July 1738 to April 1739 he stayed with Pope at Twickenham, and he made further visits there in 1742 and 1743–4. In 1744, after the death of his father, he was able to resettle in the ancestral home at Battersea.
In his rural retreats in France, Bolingbroke once more lived the life of a country gentleman and the retired scholar. He hunted regularly and devoted himself again to his studies. He wrote Of the True Use of Retirement and Study, completed his Letters on the Study and Use of History, and revised his philosophical essays. He insisted that the true and proper object of the study of history was the constant improvement of private and public virtue. History should have a practical value to it and hence it was best to study recent history. He himself remained preoccupied with a study of European diplomacy from the sixteenth century to 1713.
Despite all his protestations to the contrary and all his efforts to renew his studies of history and philosophy, Bolingbroke was still captivated by the contemporary political scene in Britain. He did not entirely abandon his efforts to defeat Walpole or to destroy his system of government, even after the great minister had retired. He could never admit that Walpole had the confidence of parliament or of the political nation. Nor could he acknowledge that his own diagnosis of the country's political ailments was in any way at fault. The opposition to Walpole had failed because, he believed, it had refused to adopt the remedies he had prescribed. He tried once more to argue the case for a united opposition based on the patriotic desire to defend the balanced constitution and the liberties of the people. He addressed A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism to Lord Cornbury in 1736, in which he urged all honest politicians to abandon their attachment to whig or tory notions and to unite against the ministerial abuse of crown patronage and the corrupting effects of the monied interest. Corruption must be destroyed by a revival of patriotism and public morality and by a regular, systematic opposition. Bolingbroke looked to a new generation of young politicians to follow his moral exhortations.
When Frederick, prince of Wales, openly quarrelled with his father in 1737, Bolingbroke was quick to see the political opportunity which this breach created. He hoped that the prince might remove Walpole from office when he succeeded his father and bring the opposition leaders into office. He therefore encouraged politicians and literary figures to gather around the heir to the throne and to promote an ideology of the patriot prince who would rescue the constitution from the corrupt gang in power. Bolingbroke himself was encouraged to write one of his most celebrated pamphlets, The Idea of a Patriot King, which was circulating in manuscript form by late 1738. This treatise has been more highly praised and more roundly condemned than any of Bolingbroke's other works. It probably does not merit all the attention lavished upon it. While it is the most philosophical of his treatises on politics and the most high-flown in style, it did not produce a really deep analysis of contemporary politics or an effective solution to the constitutional problems of the day. Bolingbroke confessed that Britain's balanced constitution could be preserved only if the monarch acted on patriot principles, ruling in the interests of the nation at large and choosing as his ministers men of property, probity, and public virtue. If he did so, all political abuses would be remedied, all differences of principle resolved, and the nation would unite in the pursuit of virtue and patriotic harmony. The spiritual and material welfare of the nation would be promoted and a regular, formed opposition in parliament would no longer be necessary. It has been suggested, though not convincingly, that the superficiality of Bolingbroke's political analysis in this tract masked a punitive satire that really urged an appeal to Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender, as the patriot king needed to safeguard the constitution.
Bolingbroke's appeal to the new patriots and to the supporters of Prince Frederick came just as Walpole was at last meeting considerable opposition in parliament and out of doors, and even within his ministry, to his conduct of foreign policy. War with Spain from 1739 and with France from 1740 led to the gradual disintegration of Walpole's administration, but the parliamentary opposition could still not heal the divisions between its whig and tory components or unite behind a country or patriot programme. Bolingbroke no longer had much credit with the opposition's leaders and this declined even further with the death of Sir William Wyndham in 1740. When Walpole finally resigned early in 1742 the opposition was still divided between Jacobites, Hanoverian tories, country whigs, and discontented whigs simply desperate for office. Walpole's political disciples, Henry and Thomas Pelham, easily bought off Pulteney and a handful of other opposition leaders, reconstructed the administration along essentially the same lines, and succeeded in keeping the bulk of the long-standing opposition to Walpole out of office. The fall of Walpole had failed to mark the triumph of a country or patriot programme for which Bolingbroke had striven for so long. His political analysis of the situation had been flawed and his political ideas had been rejected. Not surprisingly he blamed Pulteney's ambition and weakness for the failure to replace Walpole with an administration based on different principles and employing different methods.
Last years
In the last decade of his life Bolingbroke had finally to acknowledge that his political career was over and that many of his cherished hopes had been dashed. He did play a minor role in helping to create a more broadly based administration in 1744, but this ministry failed to live up to the country or patriot ideals which he had been advocating for so long. During the 1745 Jacobite rising he wisely remained a mere spectator of events. Most of his time was now devoted to those writings of his which he hoped might instruct posterity and revive his name and cause in future generations. In 1749 he wrote his last political tract, Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation, which expressed his frustration, his fears for the future of the country, and his lingering hope for a patriot king. Even this faint hope was dashed when Prince Frederick died in early 1751.
Under pressure from Alexander Pope, Bolingbroke did attempt to put his philosophical essays into some semblance of order, though he never completed this task. Four long essays were finished and were prefaced with a dedication to Pope (whose ideas they had influenced), but many of the others remained as mere fragments or minutes of essays. Bolingbroke did allow Pope to print private copies, for the use of their immediate circle of friends, of his Letters on the Study and Use of History, in 1738, and a volume containing The Idea of a Patriot King, A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism, and Of the State of Parties at the Accession of George the First, in 1739. When Pope died on 30 May 1744 Bolingbroke was genuinely grief-stricken, but he was still shocked when he discovered that Pope had secretly printed some 1500 copies of The Idea of a Patriot King, a clandestine edition which Bolingbroke sought to destroy. Unfortunately not all copies were destroyed, because in January 1749 the London Magazine began publishing extracts from this text. Furious at the opening of old wounds, Bolingbroke published an official and revised volume containing the same three texts that had been privately printed in 1739. To this he unwisely attached an ‘Advertisement’, disclosing Pope's earlier betrayal of his confidence. It was the ‘Advertisement’ and not the text of this publication that caused a sensation when it appeared in May 1749. It provoked a storm of criticism as William Warburton and others rushed to defend Pope's reputation. Bolingbroke replied in kind with a scurrilous attack on Warburton and Pope. He failed to survive this unsavoury episode with credit.
Bolingbroke and his wife both experienced regular bouts of ill health during the 1740s. By the end of the decade he was a frustrated and embittered old man. Most of his friends and political contemporaries were dead, and his younger protégés had deserted the political cause to which he had devoted so much effort. After a long and painful illness his wife died on 18 March 1750, at the age of seventy-four. He was at once plagued by a lawsuit filed in France by her relatives seeking to inherit her estate. For the remaining months of his own life Bolingbroke was in almost constant physical pain. In the summer of 1751 a quack doctor failed to cure a painful cancer on his cheek bone. The cancer spread, the pain became intense, and he died in Battersea on 12 December 1751, at the age of seventy-three. He was laid to rest in the same vault as his second wife in St Mary's Church, Battersea. A mural monument records the epitaphs of both of them. This was almost certainly Bolingbroke's last composition. Since he had no children by either of his marriages, his title and property went to Frederick St John, the son of his half-brother, John. His personal estate, apart from a few minor bequests, went to his executors, John Taylor and William Chetwynd.
Bolingbroke's will allowed David Mallet to reprint any of his published works or to publish any of his manuscript works for the first time. In 1752 Mallet published a volume containing Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History, Of the True Use of Retirement and Study, and Reflections upon Exile. The first of these tracts provoked a considerable critical reaction because of Bolingbroke's attacks on Old Testament and church history. In 1753 Mallet published a volume containing A Letter to Sir William Windham, Some Reflections on the State of the Nation, and Letter to Mr Pope, which was Bolingbroke's introduction to his philosophical essays. It attracted little critical attention. By contrast, when Mallet published the collected works of Bolingbroke in March 1754, the response was a positive flood of hostile comment. Bolingbroke was widely condemned, by Samuel Johnson among others, as a scoundrel for attacking religion and a coward for publishing his diatribes posthumously. His works inspired many substantial rejoinders, especially from clergymen. The most famous response was William Warburton's A View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy, published in four parts in 1754–5. Even in France, Bolingbroke's prestige rapidly declined. Voltaire criticized his works, but also used Bolingbroke as a stalking horse for his own more trenchant criticisms of organized religion.
Bolingbroke's reputation as a philosopher was never substantial and, after the publication of his essays, it has never recovered. For nearly 200 years he was also widely condemned as an unprincipled political charlatan. Only in the late twentieth century did historians at last recognize him as a substantial, if flawed, political figure in Anne's reign and as a brilliant, if eventually unsuccessful, political writer in the age of Walpole. Although he supported a losing political cause, his career tells us much about the vicissitudes of the tory party and the divisions over fundamental issues of principle that cast them, a potential majority of the political nation, into the political wilderness after 1714. Although he failed to dislodge Walpole from office, he did write some of the most sophisticated and effective attacks on that great minister and his political methods. Bolingbroke's writings tell us much about the ideological divisions that persisted under the first two Hanoverian monarchs. Although he lacked good sense and political judgement, Bolingbroke was widely read, wrote well, and did make a sincere effort to provide the disparate elements of the parliamentary opposition with a coherent political ideology and a moral platform. All his life he supported the claims of the landed gentry to be the natural rulers of society and he defended the rights of parliament and the traditional features of England's ancient constitution.
H.T Dickinson.
Henry St John,Viscount Bolingbroke