Bolingbroke

This book was written in 1970, and perhaps the convention of the times prevented some of the more `tabloid' details of the main characters life from being detailed. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolinbroke, attained high political office during the reign of Queen Anne, with Robert Harley, Lord Oxford, he led the Tory faction in the court and eventually persuaded Queen and parliament to conclude a peace with France, thus isolating Britain's European allies in the War of the Spanish Succession. This made Bolinbroke no favourite of the incoming Hannovarian monarchy. On Anne's death, Bolinbroke, fearing arrest and worse, fled to France where he eventually he joined forces with the Jacobites and was a high-counseller to the pretender during the abortive uprising of 1715. He was blamed by the Jacobites in the recriminations following the failure of this rising, and appealed to George I for clemency. At the time it was said of him that he had ` managed to betray two monarchs within two years and still live to tell the tale'. This is a measure of both the impetuosity and talent of the man. Throughout the rest of his long life (he died in 1751), he tried to justify his extraordinary activities on the ascent of George I, and tried to regain the political influence he had in the later days of Queen Anne. He did not really succeed in either, though his writings and personality, strongly influenced some of the eras greatest writers - Swift, Pope, Voltaire, and his political commentaries influenced the (admittedly bereft) Tory party during the Walpole era. The book is excellent on political developments and analysis - particularly so on the provenance of Pulteney , Cateret and the `broad bottom' regime which followed Walpole. He also follows (and is critical of) Bolinbrokes foray into philosophy. The book has two drawbacks, in my view, the more minor one is a curious disappearance of some characters - e.g. Lord Oxford, a major influence and rival of Bolinbrokes during his early political career, disappears without trace in this volume. Like Bolinbroke, he fell from power on the ascension of the Hanovarians, however he did not flee to France, and lived out the rest of his years in political isolation. However after 1715, nothing is mentioned of him, it would be useful to compare Oxford's wilderness years with those of Bolinbroke. Robert Walpole, the object of much of Bolinbroke's frustrations disappears from view. A second, perhaps greater weakness is a lack of detail on Bolinbroke's lifestyle. His early brilliance, was tempered by distrust on the part of most of the political class. Queen Anne is said to have been averse to him because of his dissolute lifestyle, Dickinson mentions that he was promiscuous and unfaithful to his first wife, but devoted to his second. However this is not illustrated, and so a flavour of the man and his times is lost. The great strengths of the book are its various analyses on the impact Bolinbroke had on the emergence of a British nationalism, which gave a `clear blue' philosophy to the emergent Imperial Brition. His clear view the Whig-Tory factions which emerged dated back to Cromwell, had now disappeared and that the purpose of politics was to serve the new British nation (and consequently to take no side in European conflict, save to defeat any European nation which might challenge British trade and influence) gradually emerged as the philosophy of Pitt and succeeding generations - there are echos of it in the term `Splendid isolation' which guided Victorian foreign policy.