George St John, 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke

Background

He was the elder son of the famously unhappy marriage between Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke and Diana Spencer, daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough. St John was educated at Eton College in Berkshire and Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1777. He succeeded his father as viscount in 1787.

Career

St John entered the British House of Commons for Cricklade in 1782, at the age of 21, representing the constituency as Member of Parliament (MP) until 1784.

Family

On 26 February 1783, he married firstly Charlotte Collins, daughter of his former tutor Thomas Collins. He had by her two sons and a daughter. After the birth of these three children, George embarked on a sexual relationship with his younger half-sister Mary Beauclerk. Mary was a twin from their mother's second marriage to Topham Beauclerk, but born in 1766 before their marriage 1768. George and Mary's child was delivered in Paris but passed off at home as a child of George and Charlotte's for a time. Charlotte was anxious to save her marriage, and hoped by this ruse to preserve the family name from infamy and her marriage from ruin. However, Mary became pregnant for the second time by George in 1788, and delivered their second child, again in France.

In 1789 George abandoned his wife and legitimate children. He and Mary along with their two small children left Britain to live together on the Continent. They travelled under the name 'Barton' and left instructions to their families not to try to find them. The story quickly reached their circle of family and influential friends, and was reported in The Times (7 July 1789). Mary went on to bear him another two sons, all of whom lived to adulthood. By May 1794 George had abandoned Mary and the four boys for a Belgian noblewoman, Isabella Charlotte Antoinette Sophia Hompesch, Baroness von Hompesch. He persuaded her to marry him bigamously and then to live with him in obscurity first on the Continent, then in Britain, and finally in the United States. Their eldest children were all illegitimate.

Mary later (1797) married an Anglo-German Bavarian Count Franz von Jenison-Walworth, by whom she had legitimate issue and descendants. At least one of her sons by St John, Robert St John, called Bob St John, was still alive and much loved by the politician Charles James Fox and his mistress, later wife Elizabeth Armistead.

Charlotte died in 1803, and St John lawfully married Isabella Hompesch on 1 August 1804. He was succeeded in his titles by his oldest surviving son Henry St John, 4th Viscount Bolingbroke,

References

References

1. "Leigh Rayment – Peerage".
2. [[Carola Hicks. Hicks, Carola]]. ''Improper Pursuits: The scandalous life of an earlier Lady Diana Spencer'' 2001. {{ISBN. 0-312-29157-4
3. Burke, John. (1832). "A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire". Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.
4. (February 2013). "ThePeerage – George Richard St. John, 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke".
5. Lodge, Edmund. (1838). "The Genealogy of the Existing British Peerage". Saunder and Otley.
6. "Leigh Rayment – British House of Commons, Cricklade".
7. Debrett, John. (1816). "Debrett's Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". G. Woodfall.
8. Sylvanus, Urban. (1825). "The Gentleman's Magazine". John Harris.
9. Lundy, Darryl. (February 2013). "p. 3515 § 35146 ". The Peerage}}{{Unreliable source?.