Family and Education

b. c.1717, 1st s. of Sir Richard Mill, 5th Bt., M.P., by Margaret, da. of Robert Knollys of Grove Place, Nutshelling, Hants.  educ. New Coll. Oxf. 1735.  m. Aug. 1760, Dorothy, da. and h. of Richard Warren of Redcliff, Som., 2da.  suc. fa. 16 May 1760.

Offices Held

Biography

On 2 Sept. 1764 Lord Chancellor Northington, lately appointed lord lieutenant of Hampshire, wrote to George Grenville:1

Having ... in pursuance of my new department prepared a candidate to succeed Mr. Legge, it is proper to inform you of the particulars. He is Sir Richard Mill, a very worthy and respectable person in this county, possessed of a very noble property, of an ancient Whig family, and professeth great attachment to the King’s person, family, measures and government. You have heard me mention this gentleman with an apprehension that he would not be prevailed on to offer his service. I must desire you to signify to the friends of government in this county ... its approbation and desired support of this gentleman ... For though I am not apprehensive of any opposition, yet I think it for the interest of government that this gentleman and my first essay should be cordially adopted.

Grenville in reply congratulated Northington on having ‘fixed upon a gentleman so highly proper and unexceptionable in all respects’, and gave him the desired support.2

But Hans Stanley, who would have liked to supply that vacancy himself, wrote to Hans Sloane from Paris, 2 Oct. 1764:3 ‘From a paragraph in yours, I conceive that Lord Northington is no admirer of Sir Richard Mill. The subject is a little barren for panegyric, and unfortunately his Lordship knows the Knight as well as we do; so far I can assure him that he will not overturn the state. I will add any other motives of approbation that I can collect or invent, of which you will please to assure Mr. Grenville.’ Mill was returned unopposed. No vote or speech by him in the House is on record. In Rockingham’s list of November 1766 he was classed as ‘doubtful’; in Charles Townshend’s of January 1767 as ‘country gentleman, doubtful; in Newcastle’s of March 1767 as ‘Administration’. He did not stand again in 1768: by that time Lord Henley, Northington’s son, was of age and Mill ‘agreed to decline’ nomination4—presumably he had been put in by Northington as stop-gap for his son.

Mill died 17 Mar. 1770.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: Sir Lewis Namier

Notes

• 1. Grenville mss (JM).
• 2. Grenville letter bk.
• 3. Sloane-Stanley mss at Paultons.
• 4. Sir Simeon Stuart to Bedford, 14 June 1767, Bedford mss 55, f. 116.