MILLE, Hugh, of Harescombe, Glos. and Bristol and London.

Hugh, one of several younger sons of the Gloucestershire MP Thomas Mille, probably followed his father in gaining a legal education, although no details about his training have been found. Like others of the legal profession, he was usually called ‘gentleman’. There is no record of any settlements of family lands being made in his favour, and he does not appear to have been singled out in 1456 when Thomas made provision for certain of Hugh’s siblings. CPR, 1467-77, p. 453. In the previous year, however, Hugh had been associated with his father in prosecuting a suit for trespass against men of Kineton and elsewhere in Gloucestershire, so it may be that he had been allotted family properties in the county, which for the time being he shared with Thomas. KB27/775, rot. 77. Hugh had been first recorded, on 2 May 1446, receiving a papal indult for a portable altar, in which he was described as ‘lord of the place of the chantry of Philip Hay’ in the diocese of Hereford, CPL, ix. 586. For his later interests in Herefs., at Stretton, see an enfeoffment of 1470: CAD, vi. C6497. but the location of this property and how he had acquired it is not revealed.

Mille hoped to improve his prospects through marriage. He chose as his wife Margaret, a young woman of unknown parentage who had been orphaned at an early age and placed in the governance of John Sharp III*, John Kemys* and Thomas Excestre. They arranged her marriage to Henry Stanshawe, a younger son of the late Robert Stanshawe* (d.1447), taking an obligation in the large sum of 400 marks from Henry’s mother Isabel, uncle Nicholas Stanshawe* and brother Robert that they would make a sure estate on the couple in lands in Gloucestershire to the value of 16 marks p.a. before Christmas 1450, and a reversionary interest in others worth four marks, to fall in on Isabel’s death. This, however, the Stanshawes failed to do, so that after Henry Stanshawe’s death and the ‘spoweselles betwix the seide Hugh’ and Margaret, he and his wife petitioned the chancellor for writs of subpoena to be directed to Sharp and the rest, to force them to hand over the obligation so that the Milles could take legal action against her former in-laws. In January 1453 the couple entered into a covenant with Margaret’s three ‘gouvernours’ and John Sharp V*, in the presence of the mayor, recorder and common clerk of Bristol, which presumably ended their differences. C1/22/149; Little Red Bk. Bristol ed. Bickley, ii. 192 (details of the covenant, being of a private nature, were not entered in the Little Red Bk.). Where Margaret’s inheritance was located is not known, although it may have been in right of his wife that Mille held a tenement at Minchinhampton, and property in Bristol which included a building in Market Street, situated next to a messuage belonging to William Canynges*. Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. liii.214; Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 152; CPR, 1467-77, p. 119.

It was during the 1450s that Mille began to be appointed to local offices, helped no doubt by the links established by his father. In October 1453 he and Thomas Gylmyn were granted the farm of the subsidy and alnage of cloths for sale in Gloucestershire for a period 12 years, although in the event Mille relinquished it less than three years later, in July 1456, then acting as a mainpernor for the new alnager Thomas Kyngescote. CFR, xix. 61, 143. Later that year he was appointed to the first of two peace commissions in the county, as a member of the quorum (which reinforces the supposition that he was a lawyer). In June 1457 he and his father, who had been on the bench for 20 years, presided over sessions of the peace at which they heard the indictment of Robert Stanshawe (the former brother-in-law of Mille’s wife), for having forcibly disseised John Butler* of lands at Tresham and Kilcote. KB27/788, rex rot. 19d. Whether the dispute touched on the interests of Mille’s wife is hard to discover. By this date Hugh’s father had long-established connexions with prominent members of the nobility in their region, notably Humphrey, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham, and the Talbot earls of Shrewsbury. His service to the Talbots was continued by his sons, for the eldest, William, was a receiver of manors in Gloucestershire on their behalf, and although Hugh’s official role in the administration of the Talbot estates is not defined, it was he who delivered the Gloucestershire inquisition post mortem of John, second earl of Shrewsbury, into Chancery in the autumn of 1460. C139/179/58.

Like Buckingham and Shrewsbury, who both fell at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 fighting on the Lancastrian side, the Milles showed a strong commitment to Henry VI and his queen. This commitment provides the context for Hugh’s election to the Parliament summoned to Coventry in the autumn of 1459 for the purpose of attainting the Yorkist lords routed at Ludford Bridge. There is no evidence of any connexion between him and the borough of New Shoreham in Sussex, for which he was returned, nor with the lord of the borough, the duke of Norfolk. The Gloucestershire Milles were not apparently related to the Milles of Sussex, which included another lawyer, Edmund* and his brother Edward*. The explanation for Hugh’s election is most likely to be found in his links with the chancellor, Bishop Waynflete of Winchester, who gave the opening address to the Parliament. Mille had been employed by Waynflete in the late 1450s in conveyances for Waynflete’s endowment of Magdalen College, Oxford, and it may be speculated that his name was not added to the schedule accompanying the Sussex electoral returns until they reached Chancery. V. Davis, ‘Wm. Waynflete and the Wars of the Roses’, Southern Hist. xi. 12-13. At the close of the session, in December he was appointed to a commission of array in Gloucestershire charged with raising forces for the Crown. After the Lancastrian defeat at Northampton, Mille was returned to Parliament again, and for another Mowbray borough, that of Gatton in Surrey, which the duke had made over to John Timperley I*. Once again, no link is recorded between Mille and the borough he represented.

Meanwhile, probably in March 1460, Mille’s father had died. His heir was Hugh’s eldest brother, William, escheator of Gloucestershire at the time. William would receive a knighthood, probably for his service to Henry VI on the battlefield. A member of the Lancastrian army that fought at Towton, he died four days later, on 2 Apr. 1461, perhaps from wounds suffered in combat. Edward IV’s first Parliament posthumously attainted Sir William and the Crown seized his recently inherited estates. Jurors at his inquisition post mortem stated that Hugh had entered the family home at Harescombe on 8 Apr. (just six days after his brother died) and took the revenues of the manor from then until November, when Sir William’s lands were granted by the Crown to Thomas Herbert†. PROME, xiii. 42-44, 49-51, 281, 288; C140/8/22. Hugh’s attempts to keep hold of the family estates proved in vain, although he managed to obtain a royal pardon (described as ‘of London, gentleman, alias formerly of Harescombe’) in September 1462. It is difficult to ascertain the purpose of a tripartite indenture, drawn up on 21 May 1464, between Mille and his wife Margaret, Robert Danby, c.j.c.p. and other lawyers including Thomas Lyttleton and Thomas Urswyk II* the recorder of London, and John Rous the elder, by which if the Milles paid Rous the large sum of 400 marks, Danby and the rest were to be enfeoffed of 40 messuages and two gardens in Bristol to the use of the Milles. If they failed to pay the sum specified, the properties were to be similarly enfeoffed to the use of John Rous the younger. CCR, 1476-85, no. 915. Save that the Rouses were related to the Throckmortons and perhaps to the family of Mille’s grandmother, there are no clues to the background of this convenant. Later that year, and in association with Urswyk, Mille was appointed to a commission of oyer and terminer in Middlesex, but this was not to mark a fresh start to his career. Three years later, in July 1467, he secured another pardon, which was enrolled on the patent roll. C67/45, m. 15; CPR, 1467-77, p. 21.

In view of what was to follow, the Crown’s leniency in pardoning Mille was a serious error of judgement and suggests that it had badly underestimated the persistence of the allegiance of less prominent individuals such as him to the deposed King Henry VI. In Mille’s case such feelings were doubtless accentuated by the death in battle of his brother, and by the attainders and seizures which followed. In his dealings with Bishop Waynflete in the 1450s he had crossed paths with prominent Lancastrians such as Gervase Clifton* and Robert Whittingham II*, and following the deposition of Henry VI these connexions inevitably took on a more political and subversive character. Whittingham was among those who went into exile in France with Margaret of Anjou. Davis, 12-13. Despite numerous rumours concerning possible attempts to restore Henry, including allegations against Clifton in 1465, little concrete evidence of treasonous plots emerged until 1468 when, on 5 June, a certain Cornelius Sutor, one of Whittingham’s servants, was captured at Queenborough and found to be carrying letters on behalf of Queen Margaret. Cornelius was duly imprisoned and under torture implicated Clifton, Sir John Plummer and a number of others, including one John Hawkins, a servant of John, Lord Wenlock*, in a large-scale plot to overthrow Edward IV. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. [790]. Hawkins, in turn, not only incriminated his master but went on to accuse the London draper (Sir) Thomas Cook II* of treason, following an approach made by Mille. By this time, according to one chronicle, Mille was already in the Fleet prison, having been arrested after rumours about his involvement in a conspiracy had come to light. Following Hawkins’s confession, he was rapidly moved to the Tower along with Cook and the others. The stage was set for what was to become, thanks to the charges against Cook, a notorious commission of oyer and terminer, which met at London in July, with the chief justice Sir John Markham presiding. When the commission opened on 4 July it became apparent that Mille’s alleged offences had in fact taken place almost two years before, in the autumn of 1466, when he and Hawkins were said to have approached a number of prominent individuals, including Cook, to secure support for a possible Lancastrian invasion. This was to be achieved with the help of the adherents of the deposed King who still held Harlech castle on the Welsh coast. On 20 Oct., ran the indictment, the two men approached Cook in the London parish of St. Christopher and informed him of Queen Margaret’s invasion plans and the proposed use of Harlech as a port of entry. The same day Mille alone sounded out Thomas Portalyn* who, it was alleged, handed over 100s. as a token of his support. He then met with a group of Londoners in St. Bride’s parish in Fleet Street to canvas further support for the overthrow of Edward IV. As the trials progressed the charges against Mille and Hawkins remained constant; he only changes made to the indictments concerned the degree of complicity of those whom they had approached: most significantly, it became clear that charges of treason against Cook and Portalyn could not be sustained, even though it had originally been alleged that, when asked, the two men had offered both moral and financial support. Consequently, the indictments against Mille and Hawkins were amended to exclude any suggestion that Cook and Portalyn had responded favourably to their approach, thus paving the way for the capital charges of treason to be reduced to lesser ones of misprision. The final judgements rehearsed the accusations made against Hawkins and Mille, that they tried to procure the help of Cook and others for the Lancastrian cause. Hawkins was convicted and hanged, but Mille, despite his clear involvement, went free after he pleaded his charter of pardon (presumably the one granted to him in 1467, less than a year before the plot was finally discovered). Ibid.; A.F. Sutton, ‘Thomas Cook and his “troubles”’, Guildhall Studies in London Hist. iii (2), 93-99; M. Hicks, ‘The case of Sir Thomas Cook’, EHR, xciii. 84-92; KB9/319/15, 17, 19, 28, 29, 34, 37, 38, 40, 43, 44, 49d. Although never directly implicated in the conspiracy it is probable that Bishop Waynflete at least had knowledge of these plots, to which several of his feoffees and associates were privy. Indeed, after the trial, the bishop obtained a general pardon which specifically excluded contact between himself and Mille, Clifton and some of the other conspirators. Davis, 12-13. Likewise, although not able to proceed further against Mille, the Crown excluded him and the rest from the general pardons granted later in 1468. C67/46, m.38.

Soon after this, Mille became involved in controversy closer to home, in the form of the bitter and long-running feud over the estates of the late Thomas, Lord Berkeley, contested between the heir-male, James, Lord Berkeley, and the heirs-general, who included Margaret, the second wife of John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury, who pursued his wife’s claim vigorously until his death in 1453. A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 131-3. A period of calm followed Berkeley’s death in 1463, but after Countess Margaret’s own death in 1467 the dispute flared up again, this time with Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle, pressing the family’s claim against William, Lord Berkeley. Mille, continuing his family’s connexion with the Talbots, became closely associated with Lisle, as is apparent from an angry exchange of letters between Lisle and Berkeley which took place on 19 Mar. 1470, and led to a pitched battle at Nibley Green during which the viscount was killed. In his reply to Lisle’s letter, Berkeley wrote ‘I marveill greatly of thy straunge and lewd writinge, made I suppose by thy false untrue counsell that thou has with thee: Hugh Mull and Holt. As for Hugh Mull it is not unknown to all the worshipfull men of this Relme how hee is attaynt of falsenes and rasinge of the kings records’. J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys ed. Maclean, ii. 110; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. iii. 67, 311-14. This attitude towards Mille, a known Lancastrian supporter who had escaped execution, was not surprising given the rapidly deteriorating political situation which culminated in the rebellion of Clarence and Warwick and the restoration of Henry VI in the autumn of 1470. Mille’s loyalties to the deposed King during this crucial period took him to Wales where, according to one chronicler, he joined the rebels under Jasper, earl of Pembroke. Letters and Pprs. ii. [790]; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 454. Nevertheless, the restoration of Henry VI only provided a temporary boost to Mille’s fortunes, for the return of Edward IV in the following spring of 1471 prompted the appointment of a number of commissions to find and punish the rebels. Mille was clearly seen as an important figure among the Lancastrian forces, and was one of the adherents of the late King Henry specifically excluded from readmission to Edward’s allegiance by those empowered to show mercy to the rebels that August. The failure of the enterprise to which Mille had dedicated a good many years of his life, and the death of Henry VI, gave him little option but to moderate his opposition to Edward’s government. In recognition of this, in April 1475, he was finally granted the pardon that had been denied to him since his trial of 1468. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 283, 512. Nothing is recorded of him after this date, and it is likely that he died soon afterwards. According to a later pedigree he was survived by two sons, Edward and Gawyn. Rawlinson mss, B.429, ff. 6v-7.