so recently. Lord Clarendon, who knew him intimately
from his youth, who practised with him in the Court of King's
Bench, who sat in the House of Commons with him, and who was
both associated with him and opposed to him in party strife,
repeatedly represents him as illegitimate; and states that
he was 'a natural son of the house of Bolingbroke.' Lord Bacon's
account of his origin is equivocal--calling him 'a gentleman
as it seems of an ancient house and name.' By genealogists
and heralds a legitimate pedigree is assigned to him, deducing
his descent in the right male line from William St. John,
who came in with the Conqueror; but some of them describe
him as the son of Sir John St. John, of Lydiard Tregose in
Wiltshire, and others as the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe
in Bedfordshire, and they differ equally respecting his mother.
Lord Clarendon could hardly be mistaken on such a point,
and I cannot help suspecting that the contrary assertions
proceed from a desire to remove the bar sinister from the
shield of a Chief Justice."

Lord Campbell has had diligent search made in the archives
of Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but does not find anything to
change his opinion.

Fortunately we are able to settle the question about which
Lord Campbell and Lord Bacon and Lord Clarendon were misled,
in Old Concord. Peter Bulkeley was the uncle of Oliver St.
John. He speaks of him in his will, and leaves him his Bible.
Bulkeley's Gospel-Covenant, a book the substance of which
was originally preached to his congregation, is dedicated
to Oliver St. John. In the Epistle Dedicatory, he speaks
of the pious and godly lives of St. John's parents, and alludes
to the dying words of St. John's father as something which
he and St. John had heard, but which was not known to other
men. "I speak a mystery to others but not unto your Lordship."

So it is quite clear that St. John could not have been born
out of wedlock, and the son of a man who had seduced the
sister of this eminent and pious clergyman.

In Noble's "Memoirs of the Cromwell Family," published about
seventy-five years after the death of St. John, he is said
to be the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe in Bedfordshire.

When the "Lives of the Chief Justices" was first published,
I wrote to Lord Campbell, telling him these facts, and received
the following letter in reply:

LONDON, July 9th, 1861.

_Sir_

I thank you very sincerely for your interesting letter of
De