While I am delighted to see that conservation work is underway on the Farley Mount monument, I feel that I should point out an error in your report on April 25. 

Sir Paulet St John (1704-80), who commissioned the monument, was not the 3rd Earl of Bolingbroke, and, indeed, no such person existed. The St John family had owned Farley since the late 16th century, and the Bolingbroke viscountcy (not earldom) was created in 1712 for a junior branch of the family, seated at Lydiard Tregoze, Wiltshire. 

Sir Paulet was thus their distant cousin. He was a son of Ellis Mews, himself maternally a St John, who assumed that surname in 1699, when he married his cousin, Frances St John, heiress of Farley.

Ellis's second wife, Martha Goodyer, mother of Paulet, was also an heiress, in her case of Dogmersfield Park, near Winchfield, which Paulet was to rebuild as his family seat.

Created a baronet in 1772, Sir Paulet was MP for Winchester from 1734-41, for Hampshire 1741-7, and again for Winchester from 1751-4.

High Sheriff of Hampshire in 1764, he was also Mayor of Winchester 1772-3.

Roger Chatterton-Newman,

Strettons Copse,

Milland,

Liphook

 

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