Last modified: 28 October 2026
Bolingbroke Grove, Bolingbroke House, Bolingbroke Hospital, Bolingbroke Academy etc
Bolingbroke's badge was a Falcon, hence Falcon pub, Falcon Rd, Falcon Brook etc
From the Dissolution to 1763
When Westminster Abbey was dissolved in 1540, the manor of Battersea and Wandsworth passed to the Crown and was annexed to the Honour of Hampton Court. It was then under lease to Henry Rydon of Battersea, yeoman, for a money rental plus eight quarters of oats and two quarters of barley. The Rydon or Roydon family, who may have lived in the manor house, provides the link between the pre-Dissolution pattern of landholding and the aristocratic manorial tenure of the next two centuries.
[PB: Meaning? That all or part of the land (but not "the manor as a whole") had (pre-Dissolution) been rented out - for a fixed period? largely to farmers who lived locally? in return for money rent and in kind? And that the Crown continued to be in effect "the lord of the manor", and continued to exercise those rights and responsibilities - just as the abbott of the monastery had done previously. But that later, the new landlords became lords of the manor too - perhaps of several of them.
In this case, the manor became in effect the near-London "seat" of the Bolingbrokes of Wiltshire. (Endymion Porter, on the other hand, seems not to have built and inhabited a grand house in Allfarthing Manor, possibly because too small and he had better places elsewhere [check]). Until the mid-C18, "most of Battersea's land was as yet under manorial control. " (Presumably "Battersea" includes Wandsworth, since the manor was Battersea and Wandsworth, but with two distinct parishes. ]
As Barbara Harvey writes: "a member of the late medieval gentry could not regard himself as securely established in that social class unless he held land with manorial rights - leases were not sufficient for this purpose - and for a long period before the 1530s, such land was often difficult to buy in the ordinary land market" (in "The Dissolution and Westminster Abbey").
At a time when land was the chief source and mark of wealth, the Dissolution of the monasteries, nunneries etc redistributed their land to the gentry. And Westminster had a lot of it - The Abbey's great estates were scattered in no fewer than nineteen counties, and it held property in London, too. Initially they had to give up land near Westminster (e.g. La Neyte [future Mayfair), Ebury (Pimlico etc], Hyde [qv Hyde Park?], Teddington) in a forced poor exchange for remote lands (Harvey).
Later, in 1540, Westminster Abbey lost everything. Harvey gives some reason why Henry did not knock the Abbey itself down - a magnificent ceremonial space was needed for coronations etc. See also
https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/benedictine-monastery
https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/dissolution-of-the-london-monasteries/ Battersea not mentioned).
NB William I had the land from Edward/Harold, and exchanged it for Windsor. So the land was coming back into Royal control.]
The lease was renewed in 1541 to his son Henry Roydon junior. In the year of his death, 1568, his daughter Joan married Thomas Holcroft(e), said to have been a client of the Cecil family and perhaps a son of Sir Thomas Holcroft of Vale Royal, Cheshire. Holcroft, a Battersea churchwarden, died in 1591. Next year his mother-in-law and his widow secured from the Crown a renewal of the manorial lease to run from 1613. Soon afterwards Joan Holcroft married Oliver St John (1559 - 1630), from a Wiltshire branch of the prolific St John family. [35]
[11]
It is to the 1590s that the rebuilding of Battersea Manor House beside the parish church is most plausibly ascribed, just before or after this marriage. Oliver St John was living in Battersea early in his marriage, but from 1600, when he was knighted, he was much in Ulster. There he held various official posts, took part in the plantation movement, and served as lord deputy of Ireland in 1616 - 22, becoming Viscount Grandison in 1621. The augmented fortune of this branch of the St Johns probably derived from his Ulster interests. [36]
Oliver St John had no issue, but an older brother, Sir John St John, died in 1594 leaving seven dependent children. Some of these nieces and nephews came to help populate the manor house around 1600.
The household cannot have been entirely easy; in the earliest personal reference to a Battersea resident, Joan St John, Lady Grandison, has gone down to posterity through a remark of Lucy Hutchinson, the daughter of one such niece, that 'her cruelties to my mother exceeded the stories of stepmothers'. [37] Grandison spent some of his last years again at Battersea, and in 1627 secured the manor by sale from the Crown.
On his death three years later it passed formally to his great-nephew John St John (b. 1615), but for all practical purposes to the latter's father and Grandison's nephew and executor, Sir John St John (1585 - 1648), who was created a baronet in 1611. He promptly commissioned the east window in the parish church, commemorating the St Johns' ancestry and asserting their newly bought rights over the parish.
Most of Sir John St John's many sons predeceased him (three, including John, the legal owner of the manor, fighting for the Royalists in the Civil War). His heir was Sir John St John (1636 - 56/7) his grandchild by his oldest son, Oliver. This short-lived 2nd baronet seems to have had little to do with the Battersea property, which next descended to the 1st baronet's oldest surviving son, Sir Walter St John, 3rd baronet (1622 - 1708).
Around the time of their father's death Walter and his brother Henry (1628 - 79) married their cousins Johanna
[12]
and Katherine St John, daughters of yet another and more famous Oliver St John, the leading Parliamentarian and Chief Justice during the Interregnum. Both couples appear to have been at first domiciled in Battersea, but Henry and his wife left for Ireland around 1664. [38] These family alliances and descents confirm that the seventeenth-century St Johns were divided in matters of politics.
It may be added that the vicar of Battersea between 1634 and 1657, Thomas Temple, had Independent leanings, yet was appointed by his cousin the first baronet, whose sons died for the royalist cause.
His successor, Simon Patrick, a noted writer and preacher and later Bishop of Ely, was Sir Walter St John's private chaplain for three years before he was appointed to the living at the urging of Lord Chief Justice St John. Patrick describes Sir Walter as 'a religious gentleman', and Lady Johanna as 'very pious'. A latitudinarian, he reverted to Anglican forms of worship at the Restoration and noted that 'my patron and his lady . . . had no scruple about conformity, but entirely complied with me in all things; which was an excellent example to the parish, where they were much respected'. [39]
Another author and connection by marriage, Lady Mary Rich, lauds the couple as 'eminent for owning and practising religion'. That is borne out by the establishment of almshouses 'near the pound' by Sir Walter around 1675, and by the enduring memorial of Sir Walter St John's School, endowed in 1700 towards the end of its patron's life but perhaps also inaugurated in the 1670s. [40] More pragmatically, there is testimony that Sir Walter looked after Battersea's difficult drainage, or at least the Falcon brook, at his own expense and 'kept it in brave order'. [41] The character and habits of Sir Walter and Lady Johanna come to life from her surviving letters, which show the couple shifting between Battersea and their Wiltshire estate at Lydiard Tregoze, with Sir Walter generally staying near London during parliamentary sessions so long as he sat as a Whig MP.
[13]
Less can be gleaned about Battersea as a whole during their long lives, but it was in transition from the time of the interregnum. Nine Elms, closest to London, had a brewhouse and a whiting works by the 1640s, while sugar refining and brewing had grown up in the Lombard Road area near Battersea village by the 1670s. Altogether 279 houses are recorded for Battersea in the hearth-tax returns for 1663, of which slightly over half were chargeable, in other words of a good standard. [42] The population may therefore have stood at around 1,000. J. G. Taylor interpreted a registration book for the years 1695 to 1705 as showing that most heads of household were gardeners or agricultural labourers, with watermen the next commonest trade, but his conclusions can be questioned. [43]
There was already a definite smattering of 'gentlemen'. Surrey probate inventories of Battersea residents from between 1660 and 1700 include several houses with half a dozen rooms and more, though it cannot always be certain that the house inventorized was in the parish. Richer inhabitants naturally had London connections. Such for instance were Rowland Trapps (1559 - 1616), citizen and mercer, churchwarden of Battersea, and leading contributor to the parish church's north aisle, who built a house probably in the High Street area; [44] and Sir Nicholas Millett, knight 'of Battersey', who died in 1674 leaving a large house with a tapestried parlour. This may have been in Battersea, but equally could have been in Tower Street where he owned '12 ruff dyamonds'. [45]
With Sir Walter St John's death in 1708 ends all sense of a lord of the manor present and active in Battersea. His eldest son, Sir Henry St John, 4th baronet (1652 - 1742), from 1716 1st Viscount St John, though even longer-lived than his father, possessed (in Taylor's words) 'an idle and purposeless temperament' and made no impact on the parish. [46]
His own oldest surviving son and successor was of a different stamp.
[Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke]
This was the celebrated Tory politician Henry St John, from 1712 first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678 - 1751). Bolingbroke's mother died after he was born, so his early childhood was
[14]
spent with his Battersea grandparents. He seldom visited there during his ascendancy under Queen Anne, probably because he did not get on with his father ('Old Frumps'), though he paid a visit when his grandfather died. [47] Unofficially exiled to France following the Jacobite rising of 1715, he passed briefly through Battersea on his return in 1723, but when not in town lived at Dawley Farm, Uxbridge (1725 - 35).
After another spell in France, Bolingbroke came back at the age of 64 to claim his inheritance following his father's death. He found the manor house 'an old and decayed habitation', [48] but had it in good enough order to invite the 3rd Earl of Marchmont and his close friend Alexander Pope for extended stays from November 1743 till just before the poet's death some months later. Pope reported the newly installed Bolingbroke as 'busy about inclosing a Common, & improving his Estate here, about Battersea & Norwood'. [49] These improvements were not sustained, probably because in time he and his French wife both became ill.
On the childless Bolingbroke's death the manor passed to his absentee nephew, Frederick, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke and 3rd Viscount St John (1734 - 87). That profligate and indebted rake married Lady Diana Spencer in 1757. [50] It was during the decade of their marriage (which ended in a notorious divorce) that he sold the manor of Battersea and Wandsworth in 1763 to her cousin, Viscount Spencer.
There is scant sense of direction about Battersea during most of this period. The manor house was let; Sir Walter St John's School stagnated; York House, the archbishops of York's seat further west was also given up for industry.
It cannot be accidental that the Vestry began to stir in this period, setting up a workhouse in 1733 under the new Poor Law Act, and meeting monthly from 1742. But most of Battersea's land was as yet under manorial control. Estate business carried on desultorily. Under the first Viscount St John leases of no more than 31 years were assigned, usually by himself but
[15]
sometimes by his son, Lord Bolingbroke, suggesting that relations between them were not quite broken. [51]
After Bolingbroke inherited there was some effort at renewal, as hinted in Pope's letter quoted above. The idea of replacing Battersea ferry with a bridge was resurrected, and two roads had been laid out by 1746 with that purpose seemingly in view. [52] From about 1755 longer terms of up to 61 years were offered by the 2nd Lord Bolingbroke, perhaps because the City merchants now trickling into the upland areas insisted on more security for the houses they were just starting to build. Meanwhile industry began to accumulate along the Thames foreshore, with mills, malthouses and, notably, the short-lived Battersea enamel works at York House (1753 - 6). But the shaky finances of the St Johns seem to have prevented them from taking advantage of these fresh opportunities, so they decided to sell.
The Crown e.g. Edward, Harold - William I swapped it for Westminster Abbey's Windsor lands
[Westminster Abbey - ? - 1540
After the Dissolution, the Crown 1540 took it back again
Crown leased it to Henry Rydon [or Roydon] of Battersea, yeoman [but did this make him the LoM? probably not, since he was just the lessee.].
[Acc. to the SoL: Battersea: the "lease was renewed in 1541 to his son Henry Roydon junior. In the year of his death, 1568, his daughter Joan married Thomas Holcroft(e), said to have been a client of the Cecil family and perhaps a son of Sir Thomas Holcroft of Vale Royal, Cheshire. Holcroft, a Battersea churchwarden, died in 1591.
The first St John Lord of the Manor
Next year [1592] his [Holcroft's] mother-in-law [i.e. Joan's mother?] and his widow [i.e. Joan] secured from the Crown a renewal of the manorial lease to run from 1613. Soon afterwards [i.e. soon after 1591 or 1613?] Joan Holcroft married Oliver St John (1559-1630), from a Wiltshire branch of the prolific St John family"
No children, but his nephews and nieces eventually come to live in Battersea. Acc. to the SoL: "Joan St John, Lady Grandison, has gone down to posterity through a remark of Lucy Hutchinson, the daughter of one such niece, that 'her cruelties to my mother exceeded the stories of stepmothers'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscount_Grandison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_St_John,_1st_Viscount_Grandison
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/St._John,_Oliver_(1559-1630)
Born the second son of Nicolas St John of Lydiard Tregoz Wiltshire, distantly related to the Grandison family and the first earl of Bolingbroke (another Oliver St John), knew he could not expect any considerable inheritance hence would have to make his own way; BA Trinity College Oxford; becomes [trains to be?] a lawyer; "by nature the child of wrath", he kills explorer George Best in a duel; then a soldier of fortune; becomes MP; becomes a cavalryman in Ireland during Tyrone's rebellion, in charge of increasing numbers of horse (25, then 100); knighted 1601; appointed lord deputy of Ireland 1616; active in the Plantation of Ulster etc; his "intolerable severity" towards recusants made him deeply unpopular, and is recalled to England 1622; becomes Viscount Grandison of Limerick in 1623; lord high treasurer of Ireland 1625; becomes Baron Tregoz of Highworth, Wiltshire in 1626.
1626, buys manor of Battersea and Wandsworth and Battersea, "where he had had a house since 1600" , visits Ireland 1630 to settle his estates there, returns to Battersea, and dies soon after (30 Dec 1630).
St John married Joan, daughter and heiress of John Roydon of Battersea, and widow of Sir William Holcroft; she was buried at Battersea on 10 March 1631; by her he had no issue. The barony of Tregoz became extinct.Grandison's manors Wandsworth and Battersea, [why plural, since they were one? presumably the author didn't realise] passed to his nephew Sir John St John.
[See below - it appears it went to his young grand-nephew John St John (b. 1615), though his nephew Sir John St John (1585-1648) took actual control.]
1590s: Battersea Manor House beside the parish church probably rebuilt
Oliver St John, knighted and becomes Viscount Grandison in 1621, to accommodate the St John family. SoL: "Oliver St John was living in Battersea early in his marriage, but from 1600, when he was knighted, he was much in Ulster. There he held various official posts, took part in the plantation movement, and served as lord deputy of Ireland in 1616-22, becoming Viscount Grandison in 1621. The augmented fortune of this branch of the St Johns probably derived from his Ulster interests.
Sir John St John (1585-1648) - son of Oliver St John's older brother [name?]?
Battersea and Wandsworth manor is passed formally to his great-nephew John St John (b. 1615), but for all practical purposes to the latter's father and Grandison's nephew and executor, Sir John St John (1585-1648), who was created a baronet in 1611.
He [Sir John St John (1585-1648)] promptly commissioned the east window in the parish church, commemorating the St Johns' ancestry and asserting their newly bought rights over the parish.
Most of Sir John St John's many sons predeceased him (three, including John, the legal owner of the manor, fighting for the Royalists in the Civil War).
His heir was Sir John St John (1636 - 56/7) his grandchild by his oldest son, Oliver. This short-lived 2nd baronet seems to have had little to do with the Battersea property, which next descended to the 1st baronet's oldest surviving son,
Sir Walter St John, 3rd baronet (1622 - 1708).
Around the time of their father's death Walter and his brother Henry (1628 - 79) married their cousins Johanna and Katherine St John, daughters of yet another and more famous Oliver St John, the leading Parliamentarian and Chief Justice during the Interregnum. Both couples appear to have been at first domiciled in Battersea, but Henry and his wife left for Ireland around 1664. [38]
[Notice how divided the seventeenth-century St Johns were in matters of politics.]
Walter is credited with
- the school, named after him "Sir Walter St John's School, endowed in 1700 towards the end of its patron's life but perhaps also inaugurated in the 1670s.
- draining land by attention to the Falcon Brook
- building almshouses
establishment of almshouses 'near the pound' by Sir Walter around 1675, and by the enduring memorial of Sir Walter St John's School, endowed in 1700 towards the end of its patron's life but perhaps also inaugurated in the 1670s. [40] [SoL]
there is testimony that Sir Walter looked after Battersea's difficult drainage, or at least the Falcon brook, at his own expense and 'kept it in brave order'. [41] The character and habits of Sir Walter and Lady Johanna come to life from her surviving letters, which show the couple shifting between Battersea and their Wiltshire estate at Lydiard Tregoze, with Sir Walter generally staying near London during parliamentary sessions so long as he sat as a Whig MP. [SoL]
With Sir Walter St John's death in 1708 ends all sense of a lord of the manor present and active in Battersea.
[Sir Walter's] eldest son, Sir Henry St John, 4th baronet (1652 - 1742), [from 1716 1st Viscount St John ], though even longer-lived than his father, possessed (in Taylor's words) 'an idle and purposeless temperament' and made no impact on the parish. [46]
But his oldest surviving son and successor was of a different stamp.
This was the celebrated Tory politician Henry St John, from 1712 first Viscount Bolingbroke .
Bolingbroke's mother died after he was born, so his early childhood was spent with his Battersea grandparents. He seldom visited there during his ascendancy under Queen Anne, probably because he did not get on with his father ('Old Frumps'), though he paid a visit when his grandfather died. [47]
[NB he was a Jacobite, and went to France to plot against Anne!]
Unofficially exiled to France following the Jacobite rising of 1715, he passed briefly through Battersea on his return in 1723, but when not in town lived at Dawley Farm, Uxbridge (1725 - 35).
After another spell in France, Bolingbroke came back at the age of 64 to claim his inheritance following his father's death. He found the manor house 'an old and decayed habitation', [48] but had it in good enough order to invite the 3rd Earl of Marchmont and his close friend Alexander Pope for extended stays from November 1743 till just before the poet's death some months later.
Pope reported the newly installed Bolingbroke as 'busy about inclosing a Common, & improving his Estate here, about Battersea & Norwood'. [49] These improvements were not sustained, probably because in time he and his French wife both became ill.
On the childless Bolingbroke's death [1751] the manor passed to his absentee nephew, Frederick, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke and 3rd Viscount St John (1734 - 87).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_St_John,_2nd_Viscount_Bolingbroke
"That profligate and indebted rake married Lady Diana Spencer in 1757. [50] "
Who she?
It was during the decade of their marriage (which ended in a notorious divorce) that he sold the manor of Battersea and Wandsworth in 1763 to her cousin, Viscount Spencer.
[Which Spencer is this?]
http://www.thepeerage.com/p10614.htm
Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke 2
Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke was born on 21 December 1732.3,4
He was the son of John St. John, 2nd Viscount St. John and Anne Furnese.5 He was baptised on 17 January 1732/33 at St. George's Church, St. George Street, Hanover Square, London, EnglandG.3
He married Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of Lt.-Gen. Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough and Hon. Elizabeth Trevor, on 8 September 1757 at Harbledown, Kent, EnglandG.1
[Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough - http://www.thepeerage.com/p10509.htm#i105089]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Diana_Beauclerk
He and Lady Diana Spencer were divorced on 10 March 1768 by Act of Parliament, with the cause being her criminal conversation with [the splendidly named] Topham Beauclerk (whom she then married.)1
CS died on 5 May 1787 at age 54.1 His will was proven (by probate) in June 1787
He was educated at Eton College.
He succeeded as the 3rd Baron St. John of Battersea, co. Surrey [G.B., 1716] on 19 June 1748.6
He succeeded as the 3rd Viscount St. John, of Battersea [G.B., 1716] on 26 November 1748
He succeeded as the 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, co. Lincoln [G.B., 1712] on 12 December 1751
He succeeded as the 6th Baronet St. John, of Lidiard Tregoze, co. Wilts [E., 1611] on 12 December 1751
He succeeded as the 2nd Baron St. John of Lydiard Tregoze, co. Wilts [G.B., 1712] on 12 December 1751
He held the office of Lord of the Bedchamber between 1762 and 1765.8 He and Nelly O'Brien were associated circa 1763
In 1763 he sold the estate of Battersea, Surrey to Viscount Spencer
He held the office of Lord of the Bedchamber between 1768 and 1780
Lord Chesterfield records that he was "by his talents no way unworthy to bear his uncle's name," and as having "true and solid good sense, real taste and knowing a great deal."8
According to Cokayne and Gibbs, "for the last six years of his life he was out of his mind."
_____________
The Survey summarisesThere is scant sense of direction about Battersea during most of this period. The manor house was let; Sir Walter St John's School stagnated; York House, the archbishops of York's seat further west was also given up for industry.
It cannot be accidental that the Vestry began to stir in this period, setting up a workhouse in 1733 under the new Poor Law Act, and meeting monthly from 1742. But most of Battersea's land was as yet under manorial control. Estate business carried on desultorily. Under the first Viscount St John [i.e. Henry St John (1678 - 1751) ?] leases of no more than 31 years were assigned, usually by himself but sometimes by his son, Lord Bolingbroke [who?], suggesting that relations between them were not quite broken. [51]
After Bolingbroke inherited there was some effort at renewal, as hinted in Pope's letter quoted above. The idea of replacing Battersea ferry with a bridge was resurrected, and two roads had been laid out by 1746 with that purpose seemingly in view. [52] From about 1755 longer terms of up to 61 years were offered by the 2nd Lord Bolingbroke, perhaps because the City merchants now trickling into the upland areas insisted on more security for the houses they were just starting to build. Meanwhile industry began to accumulate along the Thames foreshore, with mills, malthouses and, notably, the short-lived Battersea enamel works at York House (1753 - 6). But the shaky finances of the St Johns seem to have prevented them from taking advantage of these fresh opportunities, so they decided to sell.