CHAP. Charges of corrup tion. that "now the old King being dead, and the son being defeated, he held it necessary to come to a settlement of the nation;" and Desborough having declared for a republic; St. John is supposed to have said, "It will be found that the government of this nation, without something of monarchical power, will be very difficult to be settled so as not to shake the foundation of our laws, and the liberties of the people." Whitelock represents St. John, whom he hated, as having been a tool of Cromwell; but if St. John actually took this side, I suspect that it was to lure Cromwell on to his ruin. Most of the lawyers were sincerely for a mixed monarchical government - but St. John remained a stern democrat; and although, to keep his places, he was ready to conform to what he disliked, he would never have actively assisted in restoring the government of ONE even with a change of dynasty.* About this time he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, having shown a disposition to protect human learning against the attacks of the fanatics, who declared that no books were worthy of being read except the books of the Old and New Testament, excluding the Apocrypha. He was likewise instrumental in preserving some of our venerable ecclesiastical structures from the ruin which then threatened them. "The Cathedral at Peterborough was left in a state of desolation by a party of the parliamentary troops under Cromwell, and so it continued until Oliver St. John, Ch. J. of C. P., on his return from Holland, obtained it of the Parliament, and gave it as a parochial church for the use of the townsmen, their proper parish church being gone much to decay." † The Lord Chief Justice St. John continued to represent against him Totness in the House of Commons, the republicans of the 17th century having no objection to the union of judicial and political functions in the same individual. But, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, and the establishment of the Protectorate, seeing no chance for democracy, he appears to have taken very little part in public affairs. His Whitelock, 516. 487. Bridges' Northamptonshire, 548. XIII. enemies say that "though so greatly attached to his darling CHAP. commonwealth, yet he chose to retain his places under every form of government. The reason of this was his avarice, which got the better of his political sentiments. They in power knew his love for wealth, and gratified him accordingly; he had the granting of all pardons to the delinquent loyalists, which amounted to the enormous sum of 40,0007., nor did he scruple accepting bribes for places under Oliver."* I am unable to corroborate or to contradict these grave charges against him. He certainly was not a member of Barebone's parliament, which met in 1653; nor does his name appear in the list of the House of Commons on the reformed model which met in 1654, nor in that which Cromwell called in 1656. We, therefore, do not know what part he took when the crown was formally tendered to the Protector, but he seems at last to have relented in favour of hereditary power and honours, for in the year 1657 he accepted a peerage, and actually took his seat in Oliver's House of Lords as Lord St. John.+ However, he was still silent and sulky, looking forward to better times. he His con duct on the accession of Richard, He thought that these had arrived when, on the death of A.D. 1658. Oliver, the sceptre was transferred to the feeble hand of Richard. His patent was renewed as Chief Justice ‡, procured himself to be elected a member of the Council of State, and he was in hopes to rule either as minister of the new Protector, or as the president of a pure republic, which had been so long looked for in vain. But he was again disappointed, for Richard instantly fell into universal contempt, and, military violence alarming all parties, the restoration of the exiled royal family was evidently at hand. St. John saw that this event would not only for ever dissipate his republican dreams, but would be very dangerous to him individually; and he made a resolute struggle against it. When the Rump was restored, he again took his seat as member for Totness, by virtue of his election nearly twenty years before; but his reception now was very different from what it had been in the same assembly when he was urging * See Noble's Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, ii. 22. † Whitelock, 666.; 3 Parl. Hist. 1518. Ibid. 678. 688. CHAP. on the impeachment of Strafford, the overthrow of the Church, and the usurpation of military power. The vote having A.D. 1660. passed for the dissolution of the Long Parliament and the calling of a Convention, he retired to his country-house, Long-Thorpe, in Northamptonshire; and, the Cavaliers beginning to vow instant vengeance against the most obnoxious of the Roundheads, he shut himself up in a place of concealment. Although he had not actually sat as one of the late King's judges, it was truly said that no one had more effectually promoted the catastrophe of the King's death. His danger on the restoration of He owed his safety to Thurloe, who had been his clerk, whom he recommended to Cromwell, and who, having enjoyed Charles II. great power under the Protectorate as Secretary of State, was now in favour from having materially promoted the Restoration. It was said that a large bribe contributed to his deliverance; but this is a mere surmise without any authority. From the proposed indemnity twenty were to be excepted, whom it was determined to bring to the scaffold. General Ludlow, in his Memoirs, says, "The news of this resolution being carried to Charles II. by the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham, and Monk, he openly expressed his joy; and when they told him that the Chief Justice St. Johns† had narrowly escaped, he wished he had been added also of which particulars I received information by a person of honour, then present, immediately after they parted."‡ But his life was spared only on condition that he was never to accept any civil, ecclesiastical, or military office, on pain of being liable to the penalties of treason. A free pardon was offered to him if he would assist in bringing the regicides to justice, but he spurned such baseness. He went abroad under pretence of travelling for his health; and, still afraid of the Cavaliers, who repeatedly attempted to assassinate Ludlow and other exiled republicans, he took the name of Montague, and lived several years in great seclusion, first at * Noble's Family of Cromwell, ii. 23. It is curious to observe that in the seventeenth century there were many proper names which were promiscuously spelt, and must have been pronounced, without, and with, a final s; as St. John, St. Johns; Rolle, Rolles; Hale, Hales, &c. &c. + Mem. 356. 66 XIII. Utrecht and then at Augsburg. In 1669 he ventured to СНАР. return to his native country, and he lived quietly at LongThorpe till the 31st day of December, 1673, when he expired. His death. He was supposed to have reached the 75th year of his age. His real character may best be known by the designation generally applied to him in his own time, LANTHORN MAN." From his proud, reserved, and morose disposition, he made himself so unpopular that there was a general disposition to aggravate his misconduct, and we must receive the stories circulated against him with considerable suspicion. THE DARK He did very little for the improvement of jurisprudence; for although he effectually resisted the absurd schemes at once to abolish the Court of Chancery, and to substitute the law of Moses for the common law of England, — absorbed in his ambitious schemes he took no interest in the wise legal reforms which were carried on by Hale, Whitelock, and other enlightened Commonwealth lawyers. Beginning the world without a shilling, he died disgracefully rich, so as to countenance the charges brought against him of cupidity and corruption. His rela to Crom well. He is often mentioned as a cousin of Oliver Cromwellbut this relationship was only by marriage. His first wife tionship was a daughter of Sir James Altham, maternally descended from the Cromwells. By her he had several sons, and a daughter, Joanna, who was married to Sir Walter St. John, of Tregoze in Wiltshire, and was the grandmother of the celebrated Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke.* He had another daughter, Elizabeth, who being about to be united to a Huntingdonshire squire, the Chief Justice, according to the then existing law, not only gave her away, but himself performed the nuptial ceremony which made them man and wife.† • Mallet, in his Life of Bolingbroke, says, "His grandfather, Sir Walter St. John, marrying one of the daughters of L. C. J. St. John, who, as all know, was strongly attached to the republican party, Henry was brought up in his family, and consequently imbibed the first principles of his education amongst the Dissenters." He afterwards goes on to trace his contempt for all religions to the fanaticism and hypocrisy which he witnessed among the Presbyterian clergy under his great grandfather's roof at Long-Thorpe. † Extract from the Parish Register of Enfield: - "The truelie worthy John Bernard of Huntingdon, within the County of Huntingdon Esqre single His chil dren. CHAP. Parallel between St. John well. When Oliver St. John and Oliver Cromwell had respectively reached their fortieth year, the former was by far the more eminent person. He had not only distinguished himself at the bar, but he was the chief adviser of the great political party and Crom- opposed to arbitrary government, who, although depressed for eleven years, were ere long to gain the ascendancy; while the future PROTECTOR, after a licentious youth, was obscurely spending his middle age in the country, occupied with feeding cattle and draining marshes. When the troubles began, St. John preserved his superiority, and swayed the deliberations of the Long Parliament, Cromwell, from his uncouth appearance and embarrassed oratory, being to all, except to a descerning few, a man of no mark or likelihood. Even after the praying colonel of horse had led on his psalm-singing troopers to victory at Edgehill and Marston Moor, the dark, designing lawyer, holding the great seal and presiding in the committee for the management of public affairs at Westminster, still kept military, in subordination to civil, authority, and hoped to make the most renowned captains who had appeared on the side of the Parliament instruments of his own aggrandisement. The "Self-denying Ordinance" was the death-struggle. If Cromwell had perished amidst the perils to which he was then exposed, St. John might have been Lord Protector instead of pining with envy for the rest of his days. He was little inferior to his rival in natural ability, and was far superior to him in intellectual acquirements. Nor would any scruples have obstructed his rise to sovereign sway, for he only loved a republic as he expected to rule it, and at the call of ambition he was always ready to change the religious faith which he professed. It did not suit his purpose to take part in the death of Charles I., but he was the murderer of the Earl of Strafford. Although it is fortunate for the liberties of England that the Parliament triumphed over Charles I., and St. John greatly contributed to this triumph, we cannot honour his memory as a true patriot, for he was crafty, selfish, cruel, and remorseless. man, and Mrs. Elizabeth St. John daughter of the Right Honble Oliver St. John Ch. Justice of C. P., was married before said father and by him declared man and wife Feby 26. 1655-6, coram testibus non paucis venerabilibus et fide dignis." |