and challenging “the most inveterate of his enemies to produce any instance of his criminal correspondence.” Bolingbroke in July entirely identified himself with the interests of the Pretender, whose secretary he became, and on the 10th of September he was attainted. But his counsel was neglected for that of ignorant refugees and Irish priests. The expedition of 1715 was resolved upon against his advice. He drew up James’s declaration, but the assurances he had inserted concerning the security of the Church of England were cancelled by the priests. He remained at Paris, and endeavoured to establish relations with the regent. On the return of James, as the result of petty intrigues and jealousies, Bolingbroke was dismissed from his office. He now renounced all further efforts on the Pretender’s behalf.[1] Replying to Mary of Modena, who had sent a message deprecating his ill-will, he wished his arm might rot off if he ever used pen or sword in their service again![2]
He now turned to the English government in hopes of pardon. In March 1716 he declared his final abandonment of the Pretender and promised to use his influence to secure the withdrawal of his friends; but he refused to betray any secrets or any individuals. He wrote his Reflexions upon Exile, and in 1717 his letter to Sir W. Windham in explanation of his position, generally considered one of his finest compositions, but not published till 1753 after his death. The same year he formed a liaison with Marie Claire Deschamps de Marcilly, widow of the marquis de Villette, whom he married in 1720 after the death in 1718 of Lady Bolingbroke, whom he had treated with cruel neglect. He bought and resided at the estate of La Source near Orleans, studied philosophy, criticized the chronology of the Bible, and was visited amongst others by Voltaire, who expressed unbounded admiration for his learning and politeness. In 1723, through the medium of the king’s mistress, the duchess of Kendal, he at last received his pardon, returned to London in June or July, and placed his services at the disposal of Walpole, by whom, however, his offers to procure the accession of several Tories to the administration were received very coldly. During the following winter he made himself useful in France in gaining information for the government. In 1725 an act was passed enabling him to hold real estate but without power of alienating it.[3] But this had been effected in consequence of a peremptory order of the king, against Walpole’s wishes, who succeeded in maintaining his exclusion from the House of Lords. He now bought an estate at Dawley, near Uxbridge, where he renewed his intimacy with Pope, Swift and Voltaire, took part in Pope’s literary squabbles, and wrote the philosophy for the Essay on Man. On the first occasion which offered itself, that of Pulteney’s rupture with Walpole in 1726, he endeavoured to organize an opposition in conjunction with the former and Windham; and in 1727 began his celebrated series of letters to the Craftsman, attacking the Walpoles, signed an “Occasional Writer.” He gained over the duchess of Kendal with a bribe of £11,000 from his wife’s estates, and with Walpole’s approval obtained an audience with George. His success was imminent, and it was thought his appointment as chief minister was assured. In Walpole’s own words, “as St John had the duchess entirely on his side I need not add what must or might in time have been the consequence,” and he prepared for his dismissal. But once more Bolingbroke’s “fortune turned rotten at the very moment it grew ripe,”[4] and his projects and hopes were ruined by the king’s death in June.[5] Further papers from his pen signed “John Trot” appeared in the Craftsman in 1728, and in 1730 followed Remarks on the History of England by Humphrey Oldcastle, attacking the Walpoles’ policy. The assault on the government prompted by Bolingbroke was continued in the House of Commons by Windham, and great efforts were made to establish the alliance between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs. The Excise Bill in 1733 and the Septennial Bill in the following year offered opportunities for further attacks on the government, which Bolingbroke supported by a new series of papers in the Craftsman styled “A Dissertation on Parties”; but the whole movement collapsed after the new elections, which returned Walpole to power in 1735 with a large majority.
Bolingbroke retired baffled and disappointed from the fray to France in June, residing principally at the château of Argeville near Fontainebleau. He now wrote his Letters on the Study of History (printed privately before his death and published in 1752), and the True Use of Retirement. In 1738 he visited England, became one of the leading friends and advisers of Frederick, prince of Wales, who now headed the opposition, and wrote for the occasion The Patriot King, which together with a previous essay, The Spirit of Patriotism, and The State of Parties at the Accession of George I., were entrusted to Pope and not published. Having failed, however, to obtain any share in politics, he returned to France in 1739, and subsequently sold Dawley. In 1742 and 1743 he again visited England and quarrelled with Warburton. In 1744 he settled finally at Battersea with his friend Hugh Hume, 3rd earl of Marchmont, and was present at Pope’s death in May. The discovery that the poet had printed secretly 1500 copies of The Patriot King caused him to publish a correct version in 1749, and stirred up a further altercation with Warburton, who defended his friend against Bolingbroke’s bitter aspersions, the latter, whose conduct was generally reprehended, publishing a Familiar Epistle to the most Impudent Man Living. In 1744 he had been very busy assisting in the negotiations for the establishment of the new “broad bottom” administration, and showed no sympathy for the Jacobite expedition in 1745. He recommended the tutor for Prince George, afterwards George III. About 1749 he wrote the Present State of the Nation, an unfinished pamphlet. Lord Chesterfield records the last words heard from him: “God who placed me here will do what He pleases with me hereafter and He knows best what to do.” He died on the 12th of December 1751, his wife having predeceased him in 1750. They were both buried in the parish church at Battersea, where a monument with medallions and inscriptions composed by Bolingbroke was erected to their memory.
The writings and career of Bolingbroke make a far weaker impression upon posterity than they made on contemporaries. His genius and character were superficial; his abilities were exercised upon ephemeral objects, and not inspired by lasting or universal ideas. Bute and George III. indeed derived their political ideas from The Patriot King, but the influence which he is said to have exercised upon Voltaire, Gibbon and Burke is very problematical. Burke wrote his Vindication of Natural Society in imitation of Bolingbroke’s style, but in refutation of his principles; and in the Reflections on the French Revolution he exclaims, “Who now reads Bolingbroke, who ever read him through?” Burke denies that Bolingbroke’s words left “any permanent impression on his mind.” Bolingbroke’s conversation, described by Lord Chesterfield as “such a flowing happiness of expression that even his most familiar conversations if taken down in writing would have borne the press without the least correction,” his delightful companionship, his wit, good looks, and social qualities which charmed during his lifetime and made firm friendships with men of the most opposite character, can now only be faintly imagined. His most brilliant gift was his eloquence, which according to Swift was acknowledged by men of all factions to be unrivalled. None of his great orations has survived, a loss regretted by Pitt more than that of the missing books of Livy and Tacitus, and no art perishes more completely with its possessor than that of oratory. His political works, in which the expression is often splendidly eloquent, spirited and dignified, are for the most part exceedingly rhetorical in style, while his philosophical essays were undertaken with the chief object of displaying his eloquence, and no characteristic renders
- ↑ Hist. MSS. Comm., Stuart Papers, i. 500; Berwick’s Mem. (Petitot), vol. lxvi. 262.
- ↑ Coxe’s Walpole, i. 200; Stuart Papers, ii. 511, and also 446, 460.
- ↑ Hist. MSS. Comm., Onslow MSS. 515.
- ↑ Bolingbroke to Swift, June 24th, 1727. He adds, “to hanker after a court is below either you or me.”
- ↑ Sichel’s Bolingbroke, ii. 267; Stanhope, ii. 163; Hist. MSS. Comm., Onslow MSS. 516, 8th Rep. Pt. III. App. p. 3. This remarkable incident is discredited by H. Walpole in Letters (ed. 1903), iii. 269; but he was not always well informed concerning his father’s career.
