BOLINGBROKE 207 influence over the Prince of Wales from 1737 till that Prince's death. He w., istly, 22 May 1701, at St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, Frances, ist da. and coh. of Sir Henry Winchcombe, 2nd Bart. [1661], of Bucklebury, Berks, by his ist wife, Elizabeth, da. of ( — ) Hungerford. She d. s.p., 25 Oct. i7i8.(^) Will dat. 31 Mar. 1718. He m., 2ndly, May 1720, at Aix la Chapelle, Marie Claire, widow of Philip le Valois de Villette, Marquis de Villette,() and da. of Armand des Champs, Seigneur de Marcilly, by Elisabeth Indrot. She, who was b. 9 Dec. 1675, ^• 18 Mar. 1749/50, aged 74, and was bur. at Battersea.(=) He d. s.p.s., in his 74th year, 12, and was bur. 15 Dec. 175 1, at Battersea, as "Henry St. John, late Lord Viscount Bolingbroke."('^) M.I. Will dat. 22 Nov. 1751, pr. 5 Mar. 1752. II. 1751. 2. Frederick. (St. John), Viscount Bolingbroke, Viscount St. John, i^c., nephew and h., being s. and h. of John, 2nd Viscount St. John, by his ist wife, Anne, da. of Sir Robert Furnese, Bart., which John was 2nd s. (but h. to the Peerage) of Henry, 1st Viscount St. John, being a yr. br. of Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke abovenamed. He, who was b. 1734, and ed. at Eton, sue. his father as Viscount St. John, fffc, in Feb. 1748/9, and sue. his uncle as Viscount (*) "The Lady Bullingbroke who died very lately was wonderful handsome, as indeed my Lord himself is one of the handsomest personages I ever saw." (T. Hearne, 19 Nov. 1718). V.G. C") She was not niece of the celebrated Mme. de Maintenon as has been stated, but de Villette and de Maintenon were cousins. V.G. {^) She was largely engaged in privately " treating " with King George's Govt., but, as Lord Lansdowne writes to the Chevalier, 10 July 1724, "She has not the luck to please at Court: 'elle parle trop et sans respect,' was the character given her by the master of the house [the King]. You can tell, sir, whether this is just, she is your old acquaintance." V.G. (^) A powerfully written character of him is given by Earl Stanhope in his History of England, 1 7 13-83, who styles him the modern Alcibiades, and as such he is referred to in Lord Lytton's St. Stephen s : — "Bright as the Greek to whom all toil was ease Flash'd forth the English Alcibiades. He for whom Swift had not one cynic sneer, Whom hardiest Walpole honour'd with his fear, Whose lost harangues a Pitt could more deplore Than all the gaps in Greek and Roman lore." "Lord Bolingbroke's father said to him on his being made a lord, 'Ah, Harry, I ever said you would be hanged, but now I find you will be beheaded.' " (Dr. Young). " To see him in a true light we must neither regard all the incense offered to him by Tories, nor credit all the opprobrium cast on him by Whigs. We must see him compounded of all those vices and virtues that so often enter into the nature of a great genius, who is not one of the greatest." (H. Walpole, George II, vol. i, p. 221). " This strange product of a revolutionary age, so brilliant as a writer, so disappoint- ing as a thinker, so famous as an orator, so shifty as a statesman, so profligate as a man." Lord Cobham called him " that tawdry fellow." V.G.
