The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Sent Iohn : from St. Jean-le-Thomas, near Avranches. "The men of St. Johan," are spoken of at Hastings in the Roman de Rou; and their leader, according to family tradition, had the charge of the transport and munitions of the invading army, or which reason his posterity ever after bore the horse-hemes (or collars) as their cognizance.[1] The name is missing in Domesday; but in the reign of William Rufus John de St. John was one of the twelve knights that invaded Glamorgan with Robert Fitz Hamon, and received the castle of Falmont or Faumont as his share of the conquest. He was the younger son of William de St. John (who first came to England), and succeeded his childless brother Thomas, Lord of Stanton-St. John in Oxfordshire, who was a benefactor of St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, in 1112, and with whom Dugdale commences the pedigree. John had two sons: 1. Roger; and 2. Thomas, who inherited Stanton St. John. Roger married a great Sussex heiress, Cecily, the daughter of Robert de la Haie, who brought him the honour of Halnac (now Halnaker) that had been granted to her father by his kinsman Henry I. He, again, had two sons, with whom his line expired; and a daughter named Muriel, married to Reginald de Orival, whose only child in the end became the heiress of Halnaker. This Mabel de Orival was the wife of Adam de Port, Baron of Basing in Hampshire; the great-grandson of the Hugh de Port who fought at Hastings, and is entered in Domesday as holding fifty-five manors in that county alone. Basing was thus the head of a great barony, and held by the representative of a potent Norman house. Yet the son of Adam and Mabel adopted his grandmother's name and arms as his own, and was the founder of the existing family of St. John. Before continuing their descent, however, I must revert to the male line, represented by Roger's younger brother Thomas.
He was living at Stanton St. John in 1166, and bestowed lands on the monks of St. Peter's, as his father had done. His son, Sir John de St. John, went with Coeur de Lion to the Holy Land, and, at the siege of Acre, was one of the chosen knights whom the King, "on the inspiration of St. George, had distinguished by causing them to tie a thong or garter around the leg." According to another account, the King himself tied on this leathern thong "(for such he had then in hand), whereby being put in mind of the future glory that should accrue to them, with assurance of worthy rewards if they overcame, they might be roused up to behaving themselves stoutly in the wars, &c." Further, "after a long interval of time and divers victories obtained by him, the King, returning to this country, determined to institute this most noble Order of St. George, on whose protection the English so much relied." This account of the origin of the Knights of the Garter was given in 1527 by the Master of the Rolls at the investiture of Francis I.; without vouchsafing a reference to any historical proof, or explaining its application to the mysterious motto, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." It is almost needless to say that it has not been accepted by modern authorities. "Even admitting that Richard I. did make use of this device in the Holy Land, as a signal or distinction of a party going out on some warlike exploit, yet that he thence had occasion to frame a distinct Order of Knighthood afterwards, there is not the least mention, or any ground to imagine."—Ashmole.
The next heir, Sir Roger, took up arms with the barons against Henry III., and was summoned to parliament by them after the victory of Lewes; but was slain at Evesham in the following year. His eldest son John died s. p., but he left another, named Roger, who obtained 46 Hen. III. license to fortify his house at Lageham in Surrey,[2] and to hold it as long as he and his heirs should remain loyal to the King. This obligation was not long observed, for he joined the baronial standard within less than two years of that time, and was one of the Council of Nine appointed to govern the kingdom after the battle of Lewes. His son was summoned to parliament as Lord St. John of Lageham, as were his grandson and great-grandson; but no summons was accorded to the next in succession; with whom the direct line terminated in 1353. There remained a nephew, Peter, who also died s. p., and other collateral heirs, descended from Nicholas de St. John (a younger son of the first Baron) who were seated at Glimpton in Oxfordshire, "and continued," says Burke, "for several generations."
With them expired the male line of the house, and its representation passed to the Barons of Basing. One of these, John de St. John, who was eminent in the Scottish wars of Edward I., was a baron by writ in 1299; and "li preus Johan de St. Johan," to whom, as the oldest and most distinguished commander in the army, the charge of the young Prince of Wales was entrusted at the storming of Carlaverock. His heir, "ki de son pere avoit le nom," succeeded
him two years afterwards, and was followed by Edmund, the last Lord St. John of Basing, who died during his minority in 1347, leaving two sisters as his heirs. Margaret de St. Philibert, the eldest, lost her only child in infancy, and the barony was inherited by the second, Isabel de Poynings, whose husband had summons to parliament in her right in 1368. Her great-granddaughter conveyed it to the Paulets in the time of Henry VI. This heiress, Constance de Poynings, was the grandmother of the first Marquess of Winchester, who built a great palace on the site of the venerable castle of Basing, where Queen Elizabeth was twice entertained, and Philip and Mary spent their loveless honeymoon. It covered more than fourteen acres of ground, but one poor gateway is now all that is left of it, for it was demolished by act of parliament in 1645, after having stood the famous siege that has given it a place in history. John, fifth Marquess of Winchester,
"Ark of his age's faith and loyalty,"
as he is called by Dryden, declared that "if the King had no more ground in England than Basing House, he would defend it to the last extremity," and victoriously kept the rebels at bay for more than two years, two thousand soldiers having fallen before the walls, till Cromwell at last surprised the garrison, and took it by storm.[3] Many of its inmates perished by fire and sword—among them a woman and six priests; and one poor player, who begged hard for quarter, was shot through the heart by Major-General Harrison with the words, "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." A vast amount of booty, computed at £200,000 in jewels, cash, and furniture, was taken; and after having been "slighted" and dismantled, the noble old house was left to perish ignobly as the common stone-quarry of the neighbourhood. The motto Aymez Loyaulte, which the "Loyal Marquess" had adopted, and inscribed with his own hand on his window-pane, and the ancient badge of the house, the crowned Key of Basing, encircled by a knotted cord (the old emblem of troth), are still borne by the family, though the honoured ruin, with the whole of the great Domesday domain, has long since passed into other hands. The barony of St. John of Basing is now in abeyance between the descendants of the two co-heiresses of the last Duke of Bolton; Lady Mary, Countess of Sandwich, and Lady Katherine, the wife of the first Duke of Cleveland.
The name of St. John was carried on by a surviving branch of the Barons of Basing, derived from a younger son named William, who had for his appanage Faumont Castle in Glamorganshire, and lived in the reign of Edward I. His descendant in the sixth generation, Sir Oliver St. John of Penmark in the same county, first became possessed of Bletsoe and Lydiard Tregoze, temp, Henry VI., by taking to wife a great heiress, who was the grandmother of Henry VII. "Margaret, granddaughter of Lord Beauchamp of Bletsoe, who, on failure of male issue, became his sole heir, married Sir Oliver St. John, whose family were already possessed of large estates in Bedfordshire, inherited, by a female heir, from the Paveleys. Her second husband was John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, by whom she had one daughter, Margaret, the wife of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and mother of King Henry VII. This illustrious lady, who was foundress of St. John's and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge, is said to have been born at Bletsoe. That her mother, the Duchess of Somerset, resided there in great state, may be collected from the epitaph of Ralph Lonney, formerly in the church. He is styled Cofferer and Keeper of the most noble Margaret Duchess of Somerset, then married to a third husband, Leo Lord Welles. The greater part of the mansion has been long ago pulled down; but vestiges of the ancient castellated building are plainly discernible."—Lysons' Bedfordshire. Margaret de Beauchamp had two sons by her first husband: 1. Sir John, of Bletsoe, ancestor of the extinct Earls of Bolingbroke and the present Lords St. John of Bletsoe; 2, Sir Oliver, of Lydiard Tregoze, the ancestor of the Viscounts Bolingbroke.
The eldest son, Sir John, was the great-grandfather of Oliver, who received the title of Lord St. John of Bletsoe at the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558. The fourth Lord was created Earl of Bolingbroke by Charles I. on a similar occasion in 1624. He survived his son and heir Lord St. John, who was killed fighting against the King at the battle of Edge Hill, having been, according to Lord Clarendon (who gives him a very evil character) one of the first that received a commission to command a troop of horse in the army of the Parliament. At his own death in 1646, the Earldom passed to his grandson, Oliver, and ended with Oliver's brother Paulet, third Earl, in 1711. The barony then devolved on one of the descendants of Sir Rowland St. John, fifth son of the third Baron of Bletsoe, the immediate ancestor of the present Lord.
Sir Oliver, the second son, described by Leland as "a stout black Man," who inherited from his mother Lydiard-Tregoze in Wiltshire, was the progenitor of several men that have left their mark on the history of their time. Of him, in the fourth generation, came another Sir Oliver, a brave and resolute soldier, who, for his services as Lord Deputy of Ireland, was created Viscount Grandison in that country in 1622, and received an English peerage as Lord Tregoze of Highworth four years afterwards. The latter expired with him in 1630, for he died s. p., but the Viscountcy passed, by special limitation, to the son of his sister Barbara. She was the wife of Sir Edward Villiers, and the ancestress of a distinguished family; for no less than four Prime Ministers are numbered among her immediate descendants. His estate at Battersea went to another nephew, Sir John, the head of the family, who was created a baronet in 1611, and lost three of his seven sons in the King's service during the Civil War.
The two youngest—one of whom, Sir Walter, became his heir, and was the founder of Battersea School—both married daughters of Chief Justice St. John, "that great lawyer over whose birth was the bar-sinister," a scion of the elder branch. Sir Walter was the father of Henry, created Viscount St. John in 1716, and the grandfather of another Henry, the "all-accomplished St. John," who had been raised to the peerage as Viscount Bolingbroke four years before.
There can be no need for me to enlarge upon so threadbare a theme as the "great but ill-regulated genius" of Lord Bolingbroke. All alike admit that he was a man of splendid talents. His intellect was of the rarest and loftiest order: keen, incisive, logical, comprehensive, inexhaustible in fertility and resource; "his penetration resembled intuition;" and he united the two gifts so seldom found together, of writing and speaking equally well. His style is absolutely faultless—a perfect model of pure English diction; and he was pronounced to be the most eloquent man of his day. "I would rather," says Pitt, "have a speech of Bolingbroke's than any of the lost treasures of antiquity." Yet, with all his unequalled powers, his career was a failure. "Ever pursuing fortune, and as constantly disappointed by her," his life was given up to fruitless intrigue, and he has the unhappy fate to be
"Remembered
As one who could do all things but succeed."
His great gifts were marred by a feeble and impetuous character, that left him at the mercy of every passing impulse and emotion; swayed hither and thither by the capricious tyranny of passion. "His head was hot, but his heart was cold;" and his private life was profligate and scandalous. He quickly gained distinction in the House of Commons; was appointed first Secretary of War, and then Secretary of State; and took his new place in the House of Lords in 1712.[4] But, two years later, he was deprived of the seals by George I. for his intrigues with the Court of St. Germains; fled to France to avoid the prosecution that was impending over him, and was attainted. He entered the service of the Pretender, and was for a short time his Secretary of State. Then, being summarily and curtly dismissed, "he resolved to make his peace at home, and obtained promises of pardon. A peerage was accordingly granted to his father, Sir Henry St. John, with remainder to his younger brothers, in 1716; but it was not till 1723 that his pardon passed the Great Seal, without, however, giving him back his forfeited estate, or his seat in the House of Peers."—Coxe's Walpole. He died in 1751. "To the last philosophy was the ornament of his discourses, but ambition the mainspring of his life. Only a few months before, he had been secretly mingling with and in some degree directing the cabals of the Prince of Wales, and eagerly planning his own advancement in the peerage.
His great anxiety seemed to be that he might die an Earl. Yet in the progress of a painful and at length fatal disease he showed a far higher degree of courage and firmness than might have been expected from a spirit which rested not on hopes of immortality."—Stanhope's History of England. He left no heirs, though he had been twice married;—the last time to a niece of Madame de Maintenon, the widowed Marquise de Villette; and by a special provision in the patent, his title passed to his half-brother, Frederick St. John, whose descendant now bears it.