The Guardian, 19 August 2006: Henrietta St John (later Lady Luxborough) was brought up like so many girls of her class in the early 18th century. Surrounded by comfortable wealth and with no care for the wider world, she spent much of her time at the family's ancient mansion in Battersea and their estate, Lydiard, in Wiltshire, interrupted only by spells in fashionable London. But as she reached womanhood she was surrounded by politicians, poets and thinkers, acquaintances of her beloved older half-brother, the 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, who made "half a scholar of her". His circle included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Voltaire, and though Henrietta was neither a celebrated beauty nor immensely rich, she was as, Jane Brown explains, "mistress of her own mind".
In 1715, just before Henrietta's 16th birthday, her brother was impeached for supporting the claim of James Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, to the British throne. Accused of the "most treacherous confederacy", he escaped the scaffold by fleeing the country. Without her brother, Henrietta found solace in rural gardening and the company of her best friend, Frances Hertford, later the Duchess of Somerset. They wrote verses to each other which described "rural nymphs" and "flaunting woodbines", poetic letters that evoked pastoral scenes.