General Notes

Born ABT 1505, first son of John St. John of Lydiard Trego
z by Joan, dau. and heiress of Sir John Iwardby of Farley C
hamberlayne. Married first, by 1526, Margaret, dau. of Si
r Richard Carew of Beddington, Surr.; and secondly, by No
v 1535, Elizabeth, dau. of Sir Richard Whethill of Calais
. Suc. family 1 Sep 1512. Esquire of the body extraordinar
y by 1533; j.p. Wilts. 1554-d.; sheriff 1555-6, 1572-3; com
mr. sewers, Berks., Hants, Wilts. 1564, 1568, oyer and term
iner, western circuit 1564.
When John St. John was about seven years old his father die
d while serving at Fuenterrabia, Spain, leaving him heir t
o the estates of the junior branch of the ancient St. Joh
n family. The freehold property comprised land , Essex, th
e midlands and Wiltshire, and its annual value, excluding t
he income from Essex, was reckoned in his father's inquisit
ions at £78. He was later to inherit from his mother, who w
as still alive in 1549, manors in Hampshire and Surrey. Si
r Richard Carew acquired the wardship of the young St. John
, who by 1526 was married to one of Carew's daughters; th
e two families were already connected, St. John's materna
l grandmother, Sancha Carew, being Sir Richard's first cous
in. Although nothing is known of St. John's education, hi
s connexions suggest that he may have gone early to court
: he shared a common ancestor with Henry VII <../aboutHenry
VII.htm>, for Sir Oliver St. John's wife, Margaret Beaucham
p, had married secondly John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, wh
ile his brother-in-law Nicholas Carew <NicholasCarew.htm> w
as an intimate of the young Henry VIII <../aboutHenryVIII.h
tm>.
It was to this brother-in-law, who owned Bletchingley manor
, that St. John clearly owed his return to the Parliament o
f 1529: his fellow-Member, Nicholas Leigh, was another brot
her-in-law of Carew <NicholasCarew.htm>'s. The names ‘Mr. S
t. John’ and ‘Mr. Lee’ are found in conjunction on a list o
f Members drawn up by Cromwell <ThomasCromwell(1EEssex).htm
> on the back of a letter of Dec 1534. Those listed are tho
ught to have been Members with a particular, but unknown, c
onnexion with the treasons bill then on its passage throug
h Parliament, and with no other clue to their identificatio
n the appearance of these two names together suggests tha
t the bearer of the first was John St. John of Lydiard an
d not the head of the senior branch of the family, Sir Joh
n St. John of Bletsoe, who may by this time have been by-el
ected to the House. In Sep 1533 another namesake had been a
ppointed a serjeant-at-arms, ‘to be specially attendant upo
n the King's person outside the time of Parliament, and i
n the time of Parliament to be attendant on the Speaker ele
cted by the Commons’. It is likely that St. John sat agai
n for Bletchingley in the Parliament of 1536, in accordanc
e with the King <../aboutHenryVIII.htm>'s general request f
or the re-election of the previous Members, but as the retu
rns for Bletchingley to the next Parliament, that of 1539
, have been lost it is not possible to say whether he was r
eturned on that occasion, immediately after Carew <Nicholas
Carew.htm>'s conviction for treason.
In 1533 St. John acted as a servitor at the coronation of A
nne Boleyn <../aboutAnneBoleyn.htm>. At his death in 1535 t
he bishop of Rochester <JohnFisher.htm> owed one John St. J
ohn £20, but no direct connexion has been discovered betwee
n Bishop Fisher <JohnFisher.htm> and the Member, althoug
h a Sir John St. John, presumably the father of Sir John o
f Bletsoe, had been chamberlain to Margaret Beaufort an
d a fellow-executor with Fisher <JohnFisher.htm> of her wil
l. It was probably Sir John of Bletsoe, and not his cousi
n of Lydiard, who was in the household of Princess Mary <..
/aboutMary.htm> at the time of Catalina of Aragon <../about
CatalinadeAragon.htm>'s death in Jan 1536. In the previou
s year St. John had married as his second wife a daughter o
f Si