The other chief of the Tory party was Henry St. John, so well-known under the name of Bolingbroke.[43] He descended from an old Norman family allied to the royal house of Tudor. His grandfather, as though he had foreseen the future, had bequeathed him the greater part of his property, and Bolingbroke began the world under the happiest auspices of birth and fortune. At twenty-six, after a career of youthful licentiousness, he married and entered parliament. He had all the necessary qualifications for playing a distinguished part therein: a noble countenance, ready eloquence, an incredible capacity for work, a mind which later astonished Voltaire, a memory so retentive that he avoided reading mediocre books from the fear of retaining their contents. At thirty, his lofty and copious oratory, unceasingly fed by study of the ancient models, captivated both Lords and Commons. His powerful and versatile genius embraced at once poetry and jurisprudence, history and the _belles lettres_. He was associated, like Harley, with the first writers in England--Pope, Prior, Swift, Dryden, even with Addison himself, the Whig poet and essayist. He was one of those consummate orators who, joining grace to eloquence, was the foremost alike in pleasure or business. He was in the habit of saying that only fools were unable to find or enjoy leisure. He possessed, in short, the peculiar talents and vices which were destined later to immortalise as well as disgrace Mirabeau. [43] He was only created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712, but we give him the name by which he is best known in history. Uniting their talents and their rancour against the imperious and uncompromising woman who had compassed their disgrace, Harley and Bolingbroke, in their turn, had set about overthrowing the sway of the Duchess. They craftily endeavoured to undermine, therefore, that friendship which constituted her strength, and sought for a rival who might supplant her in the Queen's heart. There was then at court a young lady named Abigail Hill, the daughter of a bankrupt merchant of London, who, when in poverty, had been taken by the hand by the Duchess of Marlborough, to whom she was cousin, and through her influence appointed bedchamber-woman to the Queen. By a singular chance, Abigail Hill was also a cousin of Harley, who during his administration married her to Masham, a dangling official of the royal household, who had been indebted for his post rather to his birth and connections than any personal merit.