Bolingbroke
Bolingbroke names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Bolingbroke HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT, an English statesman and political writer, born in 1678. He became Secretary of War in 1704; resigned in 1707; but, in 1710, he was again one of the ministry. For the next four years he assisted in governing the country, and by the treaty of Utrecht, in April, 1713, brought the war with France to a close. In 1712 he was created Viscount Bolingbroke; and, in 1714, Queen Anne died. This was a fatal blow to Bolingbroke, who had quarreled with his old friend Harley, the Earl of Oxford, and been commissioned to form a new cabinet. He was compelled to make his escape to France. On the accession of George I., he was impeached by Walpole, at the bar of the House of Lords. Meanwhile he had entered the service of Charles Stuart, the Pretender, who appointed him his Prime Minister, but who, after his return from Scotland, dismissed him. In 1723 he was permitted to return to England, but he was not readmitted to the House of Lords. This excited his animosity, and he began to write against the ministry, which led to the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole. He resided in France from 1735 until his father's death enabled him to take possession of the family estates at Battersea. Here he passed the remainder of his days, employing his time in writing on nonpolitical subjects. He died in 1751.
Bolingbroke HENRY OF, a Duke of Hereford
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
HENRY OF, a Duke of Hereford, afterward HENRY IV. (q. v.) of England. He figures in Shakespeare's plays, "Richard II." and "Henry IV."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The outline of Bolingbroke's career in Collier's 1921 entry still stands, but two details would now be corrected. The Pretender he served in 1715-16 was not "Charles Stuart" but James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender; Charles Edward was his son, born in 1720. And where Collier's says Bolingbroke's writing "led to the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole," historians now treat Walpole's fall in 1742 as the work of the unpopular Spanish war and a lost election, with Bolingbroke by then a spent force writing from France. What has grown is his reputation as a political thinker: the posthumous "Idea of a Patriot King" (1749) is read today as a source for both Disraeli's Tory tradition and the opposition rhetoric of the American revolutionaries, a side of him the entry dismisses as "nonpolitical subjects."
Written for this edition, 2026.