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From:
Subject: Re: Possible correction to St. John-Whiting ancestry
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 11:34:43 EDT


If its any help, DNB states:
BROWNE, SAMUEL (d 1668) judge, was the son of Nicholas Browne of Polebrooke,
Northamptonshire, by Frances, daughter of Thomas St. John, third son of Oliver
St. John, chief justice of the common pleas during the protectorate. ...

Adrian


In a message dated 06/09/03 05:48:43 GMT Daylight Time,
writes:

> Being lazy, I didn't read all of Craig Muldrew's article on Lord Chief
> Justice Oliver St. John until a couple days ago ...
>
> http://www.quns.cam.ac.uk/Queens/Record/2002/The%20Historical%20Record/oliver
> .html
>
> I was quite excited to notice, far down in the article, Muldrew's
> quote from Lord Clarendon concerning St. John, that "being a gentleman
> of an honourable extraction *(if he had been legitimate)* he would
> have been very useful in the present exigence ..." The evidence
> seemed to be getting quite plausible for Oliver St. John as an
> illegimate descendant of the Earls of Bedford.
>
> Unfortunately, Edward Foss's _Judges of England_ (London, 1857),
> 6:475-76, takes some of the wind out of Muldrew's sails:
>
> "ST. JOHN, OLIVER. From the noble family of St. John of Stanton in
> Oxfordshire, a baron of which has been mentioned as a
> justice-itinerant in the reign of Henry III., a direct descendant was
> created by Queen Elizabeth, Lord St. John of Bletsoe. His grandson
> was advanced in the peerage by James I., with the title of Earl of
> Bolingbroke, and was a commissioner of the Great Seal in the last
> reign. Oliver, settled at Cayshoe in Bedfordshire, another grandson
> through Thomas, a younger son of the first Lord, was the father of the
> chief justice, by his wife Sarah, daughter of Edward Buckley, Esq., of
> Odell in the same county. Clarendon calls him 'a natural son of the
> house of Bullingbroke,' and the writer of 'The Mystery of the Good Old
> Cause' says, that his father 'was supposed to be a bye-blow of one of
> the Earls of Bedford.' The unpopularity of the man, and the
> circumstances of the times, will sufficiently account for these
> reports; but the above is the pedigree given by an unprejudiced
> genealogist, and confirmed by the description in his admission as a
> member of Lincoln's Inn."
>
> In other words, Lord Clarendon thought that the Chief Justice was from
> an illegitimate branch of not the Earl of Bedford's family, but rather
> the family of the Earl of Bolingbroke (the 4th Lord St. John of
> Bletsoe had been created Earl of Bolingbroke in 1624).
>
> Checking the abstract of the 1625 will of the Lord Chief Justice's
> father, Oliver St. John, senior, in NEHGR, 52:255-56, I notice that he
> mentions--
>
> 1. "my sister Frances Weales, to make her a ring, thirteen shillings
> four pence";
>
> 2. "I do humbly desire the Right Hon., my Honorable Lord the Earl of
> Bollingbrook, together with my kind and loving friends Mr. Thomas
> Alleyn of Gouldington my wife's father in law, Mr. Peter Bulkley, Mr.
> William Hasenden and my nephew Mr. Samuel Browne to be my overseers."
>
> Basil D. Henning, ed., _The History of Parliament: The House of
> Commons, 1660-1690_, sketch of Samuel Browne, M.P., says:
>
> "BROWNE, SAMUEL I (1598-1668), of Arlesey, Beds. ...
> b. before 6 Jan. 1598, 1st s. of Nicholas Browne, BD, vicar of
> Polebrooke, Northants. and preb. of Peterborough, by Frances, da. of
> Thomas St. John of Toddington, Beds. _educ._ Queens', Camb. 1614; L.
> Inn 1616, ...
> Browne's father obtained ecclesiastical preferment after a
> distinguished academic career at Cambridge, and acquired property in
> several counties. Browne became a lawyer, purchasing Arlesey in 1646.
> Until Pride's Purge he followed closely in the footsteps of his
> **cousin Oliver St. John**, taking an effective part in the
> prosecution of Archbishop Laud and acting as chairman of the committee
> to investigate allegations of treachery against the leaders of the
> peace party at Westminster. He was made a judge in 1648, but refused
> to act after Pride's Purge and held no office under the Commonwealth.
> Although he had been a Presbyterian elder, he came under the influence
> of Archbishop Ussher during the Interregnum."
>
> Now, if only we can find out more about Thomas St. John of Toddington,
> Bedfordshire, ... and prove that Frances (St. John) Browne had
> remarried to a Mr. Weales before March 1625...
>
>


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