Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/160

 dren by her second husband, Luke de Poynings. From the Poynings they passed to the Paulets (a pedigree is given on page 365 of, Brocas Family of Beaurepaire).

Besides the confusion with his son, John de Saint-John, lord of Basing and Halnaker, is often confused with another John de Saint-John of Stanton or Lagham, the son of Roger de Saint-John, an adherent of Simon de Montfort, who was slain at Evesham. These knights represented an Oxfordshire house, whose chief seat was at Stanton Saint-John, four miles east of Oxford, and who also owned the fortified house of Lagham, situated at Godstone in Surrey, of which they possessed half the manor. John de Saint-John ‘of Lagham’ was also summoned to parliament in 1299, and died in 1317, leaving a son and heir, John, aged 40, who died on 8 April 1349, and was the last of his stock summoned to parliament.

[Calendars of Patent Rolls of Edward I, 1281–1292 and 1292–1301; Rymer's Fœdera, Record edit. vol. i.; Parl. Writs, i. 819–20; Calendarium Genealogicum; Historic Documents relating to Scotland, 1286–1306 (the documents in ii. 158, 181, 296, and 305 are either misdated or refer to the younger John); Rishanger, Flores Historiarum, Knighton, Annals of Worcester and Osney (all in Rolls Series); Trivet and Hemingburgh (both in English Hist. Soc.); Guillaume de Nangis (Soc. de L'Histoire de France); Nicolas's Siege of Carlaverock, pp. 42, 46, 50 (with short biographies of both father and son, pp. 244–8 and pp. 281–3); Wardrobe Accounts of Edward I, 1787; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 463–5, 539; Burrows's Family of the Brocas of Beaurepaire.]

 ST. JOHN, JOHN (1746–1793), author, born in 1746, was third son of John, second viscount St. John, by Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Furness of Waldershare, Kent. He was nephew of the first viscount Bolingbroke and brother of the second. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 13 Dec. 1763, but did not graduate. Both John and his brothers Frederic, second viscount Bolingbroke, and Henry (afterwards a general, but in early life known as the ‘baptist’) were known as young men to George Selwyn. Selwyn spoke well of John's abilities in 1766, but described ‘the personal accomplishments of the most refined Macaroni’ as the limits of his ambition. In 1770 he was called to the bar from the Middle Temple. He represented Newport (Isle of Wight) in the House of Commons from 1773 to 1774, and again from 1780 to 1784, and in the intervening parliament sat for Eye. From 1775 to 1784 he held the office of surveyor-general of the land revenues of the crown. In 1787 he published ‘Observations on the Land Revenue of the Crown,’ 4to; octavo editions were issued in 1790 and 1792. In 1791 he assailed Paine's ‘Rights of Man’ in a vigorous pamphlet, addressed to a whig friend (‘Letter from a Magistrate to Mr. Will. Rose of Whitehall’). He was also the author of ‘Mary Queen of Scots,’ a tragedy in five acts, produced at Drury Lane on 20 March 1789, and acted nine times. Mrs. Siddons took the title rôle and Kemble the part of Norfolk. Genest thought some of Norfolk's speeches good, but the rest of the play dull. The published tragedy reached a third edition within the year, and was reprinted in Mrs. Inchbald's ‘Modern Theatre’ (vol. viii.). St. John's other piece, ‘The Island of St. Marguerite,’ an opera in two acts, produced at Drury Lane on 13 Nov. 1789, was successful largely owing to its allusions to current events, especially the taking of the Bastille; some excisions were made by the censor.

St. John died at his house in Park Street, Grosvenor Place, on 8 Oct. 1793. There is a monument to him, with inscription, erected by his brother, General Henry St. John (1738–1818), in the church of Lydiard-Tregoze, Wiltshire.

[Collins's Peerage; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Britton's Beauties of Wilts, iii. 31; Gent. Mag. 1793, ii. 962; Biogr. Dramatica, i. 623, ii. 335, iii. 24; Genest's Hist. of the Stage, vi. 535–6, 586; Allibone's Dict. Engl. Lit. ii. 1914; Haydn's Book of Dignities; Jesse's G. Selwyn and his Contemporaries, ii. 44, 384–8, &c.]

 ST. JOHN, OLIVER, and  (1559-1630), lord deputy of Ireland, born in 1559, was the second son of Nicholas St. John (d. 1589) of Lydiard-Tregoz (or Liddiard Tregoze, as it is now spelt), Wiltshire, by his wife Elizabeth (d. 1587), daughter of Sir Richard Blount of Mapledurham, Oxfordshire. His mother was distantly related to Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire [q. v.], and on the father's side he was descended through a female line from the Grandisons (see G.E.C.'s Complete Peerage), and was related to the St. Johns, barons of Bletsho [see, first of ]. The future lord deputy was educated at Oxford, matriculating from Trinity College on 20 Dec. 1577, and graduating B.A. on 26 June 1578. He adopted the legal profession, and in 1580 was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn. But about March 1583-4 he killed George Best [q. v.], the