of September 1801. He received private instruction in the classics, and also acquired proficiency in French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Persian. He obtained a connexion with a Plymouth newspaper, and when, in 1824, James Silk Buckingham started the Oriental Herald, St John became assistant editor. In 1827, together with D. L. Richardson, he founded the London Weekly Review, subsequently purchased by Colburn and transformed into the Court Journal. He lived for some years on the Continent and went in 1832 to Egypt and Nubia, travelling mostly on foot. The results of his journey were published under the titles Egypt and Mohammed Ali, or Travels in the Valley of the Nile (2 vols., 1834), Egypt and Nubia (1844), and Isis, an Egyptian Pilgrimage (2 vols., 1853). On his return he settled in London, and for many years wrote political “ leaders ” for the Daily Telegraph. In 1868 he published a Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, based on researches in the archives at Madrid and elsewhere. He died in London on the 22nd of September 1875.
Besides the works mentioned St John was also the author of Journal of a Residence in Normandy (1830); Lives of Celebrated Travellers (1830); Anatomy of Society (1831); History, Manners and Customs of the Hindus (1831; Margaret Ravenscroft, or Second Love (3 vols., 1835); The Hellenes, or Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece (1842); Sir Cosmo Digby, a novel (1844); There and Back Again in Search of Beauty (1853); The Nemesis of Power (1854); Philosophy at the Foot of the Cross (1854); The Preaching of Christ (1855); The Ring and the Veil, a novel (1856); Life of Louis Napoleon (1857); History of the Four Conquests of England (1862); and Weighed in the Balance, a novel (1864). He also edited, with notes, various English classics.
Of his four sons, all journalists and authors of some literary distinction-Percy Bolingbroke (1821–1889), Bayle, Spenser and Horace Roscoe (1832–1888)—the second, Bayle St John (1822–1869), began contributing to the periodicals when only thirteen. When twenty he wrote a series of papers for Fraser under the title “De re vehiculari, or a Comic History of Chariots.” To the same magazine he contributed a series of essays on Montaigne, and published in 1857 Montaigne the Essayist, a Biography, in 4 volumes. During a residence of two years in Egypt he wrote The Libyan Desert (1849). While in Egypt he learnt Arabic and visited the oasis of Siwa. On his return he settled for some time in Paris and published Two Years in a Levantine Family (1850) and Views in the Oasis of Siwah (1850). After a second visit to the East he published Village Life in Egypt (1852); Purple Tints of Paris: Characters and Manners in the New Empire (1854; The Louvre, or Biography of a Museum (1855); the Subalpine Kingdom, or Experiences an Studies in Savoy (1856); Travels of an Arab Merchant in the Soudan (1854); Maretimo, a Story of Adventure (1856); and Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon in the Reign of Louis XIV. (4 vols., 1857).
ST JOHN, OLIVER (c. 1598–1673), English statesman and judge, was the son of Oliver St John. There were two branches of the ancient family to which he belonged, namely, the St Johns of Bletso in Bedfordshire, and the St Johns of Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire, both descendants of the St Johns of Staunton St John in Oxfordshire. Oliver St John was a member of the senior branch, being great-grandson of Oliver St John, who was created Baron St John of Bletsol[1] in 1559, and a distant cousin of the 4th baron who was created earl of Bolingbroke in 1624, and who took an active part on the parliamentary side of the Civil War, being killed at the battle of Edgehill. Oliver was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1626. He appears to have got into trouble with the court in connexion with a seditious publication, and to have associated himself with the future popular leaders John Pym and Lord Saye. In 1638 he defended Hampden on his refusal to pay Ship Money, on which occasion he made a notable speech. In the same year he married, as his second wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, a cousin of Oliver Cromwell, to whom his first wife also had been distantly related. The marriage led to an intimate friendship with Cromwell. St John was member for Totnes in both the Short and the Long Parliament, where he acted in close alliance with Hampden and Pym, especially in opposition to the impost of Ship Money (q.v.). In 1641, with a view of securing his support, the king appointed St John solicitor-general. None the less he took an active part in promoting the impeachment of Stratford and in preparing the bills brought forward by the popular party in the Commons, and was dismissed from office in 1643. On the outbreak of the Civil War, he became recognized as one of the parliamentary leaders. In the quarrel between the parliament and the army in 1647 he sided with the latter, and throughout this period he enjoyed Cromwell’s entire confidence. In 1048 St John was appointed chief justice of the common pleas; and from this time he devoted himself mainly to his judicial duties. He refused to act as one of the commissioners for the trial of Charles. He had no hand in Pride’s Purge, nor in the constitution of the Commonwealth. In 1651 he went to the Hague as one of the envoys, to negotiate a union between England and Holland, a mission in which he entirely failed; but in the same year he successfully conducted a similar negotiation with Scotland. After the Restoration he published an account of his past conduct (The Case of Oliver St John, 1660), and this apologia enabled him to escape any more severe vengeance than exclusion from public office. He retired to his country house in Northamptonshire till 1662, when he went to live abroad. He died on the 31st of December 1673. By; his first wife St John had two sons and two daughters. His daughter Johanna married Sir Walter St John of Lydiard Tregoze and was the grandmother of Viscount Bolingbroke. By his second wife he had two children, and after her death he married, in 1645, Elizabeth, daughter of Daniel Oxenbridge.
See the above-mentioned Case of Oliver St John (London, 1660), and St John’s Speech to the Lords, Jan. 7th, 1640, concerning Shipmoney (London, 1640). See also Mark Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, vol. ii. (2 vols., London, 1787); Anthony à Wood, Fasti Oxoniensis, edited by P. Bliss (vols., London, 1813); Edward Foss, The Judges of England, vol. vi.(vols., London, 1848); S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (3 vols., London, 1886–1891), and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (3 vols., London, 1894–1901); Lord Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (7 vols., Oxford, 1839); Thurloe State Papers (7 vols., London, 1742); Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs, edited by C. H. Firth (2 vols., Oxford, 1894); Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches; C. H. Firth’s art. in Dict. of Nat. Biog., vol. 1. (London, 1897). (R. J. M.)
ST JOHN, the capital of St John county, New Brunswick. Canada, in 45° 14′ N., and 66° 3′ W., 481 m. from Montreal by the Canadian Pacific railway. Pop. (1901) 40,711. It is situated at the mouth of the St John river on a rocky peninsula. With it are incorporated the neighbouring towns of Carleton and (since 1889) Portland. The river, which is spanned by two bridges, enters the harbour through a rocky gorge, which is passable by ships for forty-five minutes during each ebb and flow of the tide. The harbour level at high tide (see Fundy, Bay of) is 6 to 12 ft. higher than that of the river, but at low tide about as much below it, hence the phenomenon of a fall outwards and inwards at every tide. St John is an important station of the Intercolonial, Canadian Pacific, and New Brunswick Southern railways, and shares with Halifax the honour of being the chief winter port of the Dominion, the harbour being deep, sheltered and free from ice. It is the distributing centre for a large district, rich in agricultural produce and' lumber, and has larger exports than Halifax, though less imports. It is also the centre of fisheries which employ nearly 1000 men, and has important industries, such as saw, grist, cotton and woollen mills, carriage, box and furniture factories, boiler and engine shops. The beauty of the scenery makes it a pleasant residential city.
St John was visited in 1604 by the Sieur de Monts (1560–c. 1630) and his lieutenant Champlain, but it was not until 1635 that Charles de la. Tour (d. 1666) established a trading post, called Fort St Jean (see Parkman, The Old Régime in Canada), which existed under French rule until 1758, when it passed into the hands of Britain. In 1783 a body of United Empire Loyalists landed at St John and established a city, called Parr Town until 1785, when it was incorporated with Conway (Carleton), under royal charter, as the city of St John. It soon became and has remained the largest town in the province, but for military reasons was not chosen as the capital (see Fredericton). Its growth has been checked by several destructive fires, especially that of June 1877, when half of it was swept away, but it has since been rebuilt in great part of more solid materials. (W. L. G.)
- ↑ This title is still held by the family lineally descended from the 1st baron, said by J. H. Round to be the only peerage family descended in the male line from an ancestor living in the time of Domesday Book.
