SAINT JOHN, OLIVER

born c. 1598 died Dec. 31, 1673 English politician and one of the leaders of the Parliamentary opposition to King Charles I of England. Born into a family of Bedfordshire gentry, St. John was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1626. He was brought before the Star Chamber in 1630, together with the Earl of Bedford, charged with the publication of a seditious libel, but the case was dismissed. He was a member of the company formed to colonize Providence Island (now Providencia) in the Caribbean Sea in 1630. In 1638 his marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, a cousin of Oliver Cromwell, led to an intimate friendship with Cromwell. A member of Parliament for Totnes, Devon, in both the Short and the Long Parliaments, St. John was closely allied with Bedford, John Pym, and Hampden and led the attack on ship money, an old tax deviously revived by Charles I. In an attempt to win St. John's support, Charles I appointed him solicitor general in January 1641. St. John's political views, however, remained unchanged, and in the same year he took an active and savage part in promoting the impeachment and attainder of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and helped in preparing other bills, such as the Militia Bill, for the opposition. During the English Civil Wars, St. John became a recognized leader of the Independents and supported the army in its quarrel with Parliament in 1647. He was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in October 1648. He retained his seat for Totnes, but his legal office debarred him from sitting in the Commons, and he took no part in the debates and refused to act as a commissioner at the king's trial (1649). In 1652 he was one of the commissioners responsible for bringing about the union between England and Scotland, and he was among those who pressed Cromwell to take the title of king in 1657. After the Restoration of Charles II, he published in 1660 a defense of his past conduct, The Case of Oliver St. John, and his only punishment was exclusion from holding public office. He retired to Northamptonshire until 1662, when he went to the European continent. The place of his death is not known.