Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope — A Closer Reading

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Authors: Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 1678-1751, Morley, Henry, 1822-1894 [Author of introduction, etc.] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Windham, William, 1750-1810; Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744 Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 51,319

Reading time 224 min

Text sections 4

For Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope — A Closer Reading, the stored edition analysis reports 51,319 words, 3 hr 44 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 31.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Windham, William, 1750-1810,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #5132

Bolingbroke's letters to Windham and Pope reveal a disillusioned Tory statesman recounting his service to the Pretender, marked by sharp character sketches and a sardonic tone, though the excerpts offer only partial views of his political reflections.

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File: pg5132

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ood, simple-minded woman; a much-troubled mother, who had lost five children in their infancy, besides one who survived to be a boy of eleven and had died in the year 1700. As his death left the succession to the Crown unsettled, an Act of Settlement, passed on the 12th of June, 1701, had provided that, in case of failure of direct heirs to the throne, the Crown should pass to the next Protestant in succession, who was Sophia, wife of the Elector of Hanover. The Electress Sophia was daughter of the Princess Elizabeth who had married the Elector Palatine in 1613, granddaughter, therefore, of James I. She was more than seventy years old when Queen Anne began her reign. For ardent young Tories, who had no great interest in the limitation of authority or enthusiasm for a Protestant succession, it was no treason to think, though it would be treason to say, that the old Electress and her more than forty-year-old German son George, gross-minded and clumsy, did not altogether shut out hope for the succession of a more direct heir to the Crown.

In 1704 St. John was Secretary at War when Harley was Secretary of State, and he remained in office till 1708, when the Whigs came in under Marlborough and Godolphin, and St. John’s successor was his rival Robert Walpole. St. John retired then for two year from public life to his country seat at Bucklersbury in Berkshire, which had come to him, through his wife, by the death of his wife’s father the year before. He was thirty years old, the most brilliant of the rising statesmen; impatient of Harley as a leader and of Walpole as his younger rival from the other side, both of them men who, in his eyes, were dull and slow. St. John’s quick intellect, though eager and impatient of successful rivalry, had its philosophic turn. During these two years of retirement he indulged the calmer love of study and thought, whose genius he said once, in a letter to Lord Bathurst “On the True use of Retirement and Study,” “unlike the dream of Socrates, whispered so softly, that very often I heard him not, in the hurry of those passions by which I was transported. Some calmer hours there were; in them I hearkened to him. Reflection had often its turn, and the love of study and the desire of knowledge have never quite abandoned me.”

In 1710 the Whigs were out and Harley in again, with St. John in his ministry as Secretary of State. “I am thinking,” wrote Swift to Stella, “what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment.”

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Bolingbroke's letter to Sir William Windham opens with a vivid, sardonic account of his dealings with the Pretender, whom he depicts as indecisive and theatrical. He describes the Pretender's 'air of mystery and business' while lurking in a 'little house in the Bois de Boulogne' with his 'female Ministers,' a detail that underscores Bolingbroke's contempt for the Jacobite court's amateurishness. The narrative is punctuated by precise observations of character: the Duke of Ormond's 'awkward artifice' and the Pretender's 'kingly laconic style' in a dismissal note. These excerpts, however, cover only a fraction of the correspondence, leaving the broader political argument and Bolingbroke's later reflections on exile and philosophy largely unseen.

A Statesman's Disillusionment

The letter to Windham, written after Bolingbroke's fall from power, is less a policy treatise than a bitter character study. He portrays the Pretender as a man who 'pleased himself with the air of mystery and business' while neglecting real affairs. The tone is one of weary irony: Bolingbroke notes that 'no Italian ever embraced the man he was going to stab with greater show of affection and confidence.' This theatrical betrayal, complete with backdated documents and a staged departure, becomes a microcosm of the Jacobite movement's dysfunction. Bolingbroke's own role is that of a knowing participant who 'scorned the trick' and refused to appear piqued, a stance that reveals his pride even in defeat.

The Texture of Court Intrigue

Bolingbroke's account is rich with concrete details that ground his narrative in the physical world of early 18th-century diplomacy. He mentions specific locations—the 'little house in the Bois de Boulogne,' the Regent's bedroom—and objects like 'a note to himself and a little scrip of paper drawn in the style of a justice of peace's warrant.' These details lend authenticity to his story while also serving as props in his critique of the Pretender's pettiness. The 'Seals and some papers' he surrenders, and the 'letter-case of a moderate size' that could hold all the office's documents, underscore the trivial scale of the conspiracy. Bolingbroke's refusal to ask for his own papers back is a pointed gesture of contempt.

Voice and Self-Presentation

Bolingbroke's prose is marked by a controlled, ironic detachment. He describes himself as 'far from being angry' and takes 'a sort of pride' in not seeking the return of his papers. This self-portrayal as a man above petty resentment is central to his rhetorical strategy. He also employs a simile drawn from hunting—politicians 'grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shows them game'—which appears in the introduction by Henry Morley, not in Bolingbroke's own text, but it captures the earthy, cynical register of his political observations. The excerpts show a writer who is acutely aware of his audience, shaping his narrative to cast himself as the clear-eyed realist amidst fools and knaves.

Readers should note that the excerpts focus on a single episode of betrayal and dismissal, leaving Bolingbroke's broader philosophical reflections—particularly his letter to Pope, which engages with religious and moral questions—unrepresented. The introduction by Henry Morley provides biographical context but should not be mistaken for Bolingbroke's own voice. To appreciate the full range of these letters, one must read beyond the dramatic narrative of Jacobite intrigue into the meditative passages that have earned Bolingbroke a place in the history of English prose.

That Bolingbroke voice stayed with me, all that sharpness wrapped in regret. I kept thinking how a man’s convictions can feel so solid, then turn to ash under time’s weight. It reminded me of quieter reflections in Literary values, and other papers — Themes and Context, where the same ache for meaning lingers, gentler somehow.