LETTERS TO SIR WILLIAM WINDHAM AND MR. POPE
BY LORD BOLINGBROKE




Contents
Introduction By Henry Morley
Letter To Sir William Windham
Letter To Alexander Pope



INTRODUCTION



Henry St. John, who became Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712, was born on
the 1st of October, 1678, at the family manor of Battersea, then a
country village. His grandfather, Sir Walter St. John, lived there
with his wife Johanna,--daughter to Cromwell's Chief Justice, Oliver
St. John,--in one home with the child's father, Henry St. John, who
was married to the second daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick.
The child's grandfather, a man of high character, lived to the age
of eighty-seven; and his father, more a man of what is miscalled
pleasure, to the age of ninety. It was chiefly by his grandfather
and grandmother that the education of young Henry St. John was cared
for. Simon Patrick, afterwards Bishop of Ely, was for some years a
chaplain in their home. By his grandfather and grandmother the
child's religious education may have been too formally cared for. A