Statutory Declaration to House of Lords by Viscountess Bolingbroke, 1917

In her Statutory Declaration to the House of Lords in 1917, Lady Bolingbroke gives evidence under oath to support her younger son Vernon St.John's right to claim the family titles following his coming of age in March that year.

This is the fullest and most revealing account of what became an aristocratic scandal brought about by the duplicitous behaviour of Mary's husband, Henry 5th Viscount Bolingbroke.

'I knew nothing of Miss Medex with whom the late lord had relations in London until her death when Lord Bolingbroke told me about her and unfolded his plan of burying her as Viscountess Bolingbroke and trying to pass my two sons Henry and Charles as her children so that they might be legitimate and Henry would be the heir to the title...'