George Richard Street John, 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke and 4th Viscount Street John, styled The Honourable from birth until 1787, was a British peer and politician.
Background
He became famous in his own lifetime for embarking on an extra-marital relationship with his own half-sister, Mary Beauclerk (his mother"s daughter by her second marriage), that produced four sons. He was the elder son of the famously unhappy marriage between Frederick Street John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke and Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough. He succeeded his father as viscount in 1787.
Education
Street John was educated at Eton College in Berkshire and Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1777.
Career
The two lovers had to leave England and live on the continent for a time. The first child was delivered in Paris but passed off at home as a child of George and Charlotte"s for a time. He and Mary along with their two small children left England to live together on the Continent.
They travelled under the name "Barton" and left instructions to their families not to try and find them.
The story quickly reached their circle of family and influential friends, and was reported in The Times (7 July 1789). Mary went on to bear him another two sons, all of whom lived to adulthood.
By May 1794 George had abandoned Mary and the four boys for another woman, Isabella Hompesch, a Belgian noblewoman. He persuaded her to marry him bigamously and then to live with him in obscurity first on the Continent, then in Britain, and finally in the United States.
Their eldest children were all illegitimate.
Charlotte, Lady Bolingbroke died in 1803, and Street John married secondly Isabella Charlotte Antoinette Sophia Hompesch, Baroness von Hompesch on 1 August 1804. Street John died, aged 63, at Pisa in Italy on a journey to regain his daughter"s health and was succeeded in his titles by his oldest surviving son Henry Street John, 4th Viscount Bolingbroke, as the oldest son George had died in 1804 just before his mother.
Membership
15th Parliament of Great Britain]
Street John entered the British House of Commons for Cricklade in 1782, at the age of 21, representing the constituency as Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) until 1784.