Bolingbroke, Henry St John, first Viscount

Bolingbroke, Henry St John, first Viscount (1678–1751), was elected to the House of Commons in 1701 and became a leading figure in the Tory party. He was appointed secretary of war in 1704; secretary of state in 1710; and in 1712 was made Viscount Bolingbroke. He took part in negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. After the accession of George I, Bolingbroke fled to France and declared his allegiance to the Pretender, James Stuart; he was convicted of high treason and his peerage was withdrawn. Bolingbroke lived in exile in France for the next decade. In an attempt to justify his conduct in the eyes of his fellow Tories he wrote A Letter to Sir William Wyndham in 1717 (published posthumously 1753). In France, Bolingbroke wrote several philosophical essays which reflect the influence of Locke. These writings provoked the outrage of Dr Johnson and others when they were published, also posthumously (in 1754), because of their scepticism concerning religion. It has often been supposed that Pope's An Essay on Man (1734) was inspired by Bolingbroke's philosophical writings.

In 1723 Bolingbroke received a qualified pardon from the king, and he returned to England in 1725 to a life of political journalism in the company of Pope, Swift, Gay, and Lyttelton. In articles written for the Craftsman he attacked the policies and practices of the Walpole administration, deploring, in particular, the practice of ‘influence’ or ‘corruption’. These articles were collected in two volumes as A Dissertation upon Parties (1735) and Remarks on the History of England (1743). He retired to France in 1735. From his retreat he addressed letters on the need for an active and united opposition to corruption (A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism, written in 1736) and on the role of a monarch in a free government (The Idea of a Patriot King, written in 1738). These essays, like his earlier political writings, reflect the influence of Machiavelli and the classical republican tradition.

Bolingbroke's many posthumous publications excited intense controversy in the decade which immediately followed his death. The political essays published in his lifetime had a more lasting influence: in England, in the movement for parliamentary reform in the 18th and 19th cents; and, in America, on the ideas of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other publicists and statesmen of the revolutionary era.