Mylles’s father abandoned an academic career at Oxford to enter the service of Sir Francis Walsingham, represented Poole and Winchester under Elizabeth and became clerk of the privy seal. His brother James succeeded to the office, and was chiefly responsible for the administrative arrangements for the forced loan in 1627. But the family was puritan in tendency, and Mylles himself, a civil lawyer, became a Presbyterian. Although not in orders, he was made a canon of Christ Church as one of the parliamentary visitors, but he was removed and forbidden to practise for refusing to take the engagement to the Commonwealth. He represented the university in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, and was restored to his military post by George Monck and to his canonry. An avowed supporter of the Restoration, he was re-elected to the Convention. But his time was fully occupied in administering the oath of allegiance to the soldiers of the disbanded army and he was inactive in Parliament, though doubtless a court supporter. He was named only to the elections committee and those for confirming civil marriages, settling the Dunkirk establishment, considering the petition of the financier Martin Noell about the Vaudois relief fund, and drafting the instructions for the disbandment commissioners. On 20 Dec. 1660, he offered a proviso to the post office bill to exempt the university letter carriers from nationalization, which, despite sneers at a scholar’s drafting, was accepted in an altered form.4Ibid. 1627-8, p. 440; 1673, pp. 34-35; Old Parl. Hist. xxiii. 60.
Mylles was obliged to conform to the Church of England in order to continue the exercise of his profession, and was made chancellor of Norwich by another Presbyterian convert, Bishop Reynolds, although he was ostracized by the cathedral chapter. He died in March 1676, the last of his family to sit in Parliament.5Information from Dr Amos Miller; HMC 7th Rep. 468.