MYLLES, Dr John (c.1604-76), of Christ Church, Oxford, and Doctors’ Commons, London.

Although much of Mylles’ career is obscure, his presence in university and public life is readily explicable. His father, who had been a fellow of All Souls 40 years before John’s birth, relinquished college life to become a valued servant of Sir Francis Walsingham†, and sat three times in Elizabethan Parliaments, bequeathing to his descendants traditions both of officeholding and of puritanism.19HP Commons 1559-1603. John’s elder brother James was a clerk of the privy seal under Charles I, while one sister married William Hawkins, secretary for Ireland, and another John Packer† of the signet office, a one-time follower of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham.20Bodl. Tanner 257, f. 253v. The next generation, nearer to John Mylles in age, were to continue the trend in the 1640s and 1650s.

One of a cohort of Westminster scholars including the future poet clergymen Jasper Mayne and William Cartwright admitted to Christ Church around 1621, Mylles went on to study civil law.21Al. Ox. Shortly before taking his bachelor’s degree in that discipline, on 12 July 1631 he was elected as a ‘student’ to the dean and chapter, equivalent to the fellowship at other colleges; his particular position was normally held by a physician.22Christ Church, Oxford, archives, D&C i.b.2, p. 266. It was later claimed, in the course of a diatribe against the parliamentary visitors to the university, that Mylles had ‘been from his infancy a rebel to his governors in Christ Church, and was expelled by the king’s express command’.23R. L’Estrange, The Reformation Reformed (1681), 31-2. There may have been some confusion: his elder brother Richard (d. 1633) was reprimanded on 31 December 1631 for ‘most intemperate language and most notorious drunkenness’. However, a ‘Myles senior’, probably the future MP, was accused of a similar offence in 1640.24Christ Church, Oxford, archives, ‘Black Book’. As a future Presbyterian it is plausible that he would have found continuing in an academic environment more congenial than practice in the ecclesiastical courts, but there are also indications of potential friction with the college establishment. In February 1641 Mayne and Cartwright admitted that they had briefed him discreetly to proceed against the dean and chapter, probably in connection with their attempt to preserve the particular privileges of old Westminsters.25CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 460; ‘Jasper Mayne’, Oxford DNB. Yet there is no evidence that Mylles was ejected before 1644, when there is a break in the record.

His whereabouts in the early months of the civil war are unknown, but while Mayne and Cartwright stayed in Oxford, it seems likely that Mylles left the city around the time it became the royalist headquarters. It is plausible that he was the John Mylles who subscribed the Covenant on 7 February 1644 with other assistants and attendants of the House of Lords, including John Browne, clerk of the Parliaments, who married our Mylles’ niece Elizabeth Packer.26LJ vi. 414a. Such a step would have made him the more acceptable to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, commander in chief of the parliamentary army. On 19 November 1644, as advocate of the court martial, he delivered his verdict at the trial of Sir Alexander Carew*, former governor of the island of St Nicholas, near Plymouth, accused of attempting to yield it to the enemy.27England’s Black Tribunall (1660), 66. On 3 January 1645 he was the signatory of a certificate from the commissioners for martial law to the House of Lords relating to their proceedings against Roger L’Estrange for his attempt to deliver King’s Lynn to Charles I.28LJ vii. 122b-123a. By this time, as Edward Bayntun* reported on 28 January, the commissioners were persuaded that Mylles had served the House with such ‘great fidelity and industry’ that he deserved a reward. That reward was recommendation as judge-advocate of the embryonic New Model army.29CJ iv. 34b-35a. He duly obtained that post; besides formal court business it also entailed correspondence relating to the issue of passes to the enemy, as is revealed by a letter of 7 November 1645 to Dr George Morley at Exeter.30CCSP i. 286. On 3 April 1646 he gained complementary responsibility as a commissioner for courts martial in London and Westminster.31A. and O.

It was as judge-advocate that Mylles was nominated by General Sir Thomas Fairfax* in May 1646 as a commissioner to treat for the surrender of Oxford.32Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 483. Nine months later, on 10 February 1647, he was voted a commissioner for the proposed visitation of the university (confirmed 1 May), and he was increasingly drawn into its affairs thereafter, but for a few months at least his presence was needed around London.33CJ v. 83a; A. and O. On 13 February he was to be found among witnesses to a grant for the Scottish army, while on 3 March, after reading an affidavit from Mylles’ nephew Philip Packer, the Lords accepted that he was so fully employed in the service of Parliament that he would be unable to appear in a case at Kent assizes, and the trial was consequently postponed until the summer.34CJ v. 88a; LJ ix. 56a. At the end of May Mylles was present at the debates at Putney, signing the day’s proceedings on the 29th, although according to William Clarke’s papers, Mylles’ radical clerk, Thomas Margetts*, was a significantly more visible participant.35Clarke Pprs. i. 111. In July Mylles successfully petitioned for the transfer of a Kent case to common pleas, ‘it being concerning title of land and matter of law’, not only for the avowed reason that witnesses could not be made to travel ‘in this time of distraction and the army’s dispersing’, but also presumably because it not only came in a context of considerable pressure of business but also went outside his usual area of competence.36LJ ix. 361b.

It is conceivable that over the summer and autumn agitation in the army and the failure of the Presbyterian coup at Westminster encouraged Mylles to seek refuge in duties at Oxford. By October he had apparently reclaimed his place at Christ Church. Anthony Wood noted as a particular feature of the failure of Samuel Fell to appear before the visitors on the 7th that Mylles, ‘being one of the students of Christ Church, and so consequently under his lash … he did not think fit as dean of that House, and especially as vice-chancellor, to stand bare to his scholar.’37Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 522. Two days later, having informed Fell that it was improper for him to retain the records relating to the government of the university, Mylles spearheaded the visitors’ seizure of them from the rooms of its register (registrar), John French.38Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 526; Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, 7-8. On 30 March 1648 the committee in London endorsed the visitors’ recommendation that Mylles, ‘a civilian’, somewhat unprecedentedly replace the ejected clergyman Dr Robert Payne as a prebendary of Christ Church.39Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 555. Having taken possession of his place on 1 April, he soon emerged as a leading Presbyterian in the university and city, forming, or more probably continuing, a longlasting association with a fellow visitor, the new dean and vice chancellor (from 12 April), Edward Reynolds, nephew and namesake of a close friend and colleague of his father, Francis Mylles.40Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 564; Wood, Life and Times, i. 145; ‘Edward Reynoldes (d. 1623)’ and ‘Edward Reynolds (1599-1676)’, Oxford DNB. Over the next two years Mylles was a regular, if not necessarily assiduous, attender at visitors’ meetings and served as a public delegate of the university in such matters as negotiations over privileges with Oxford city and landholding business.41Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, 102, 189, 190, 192, 208, 219, 267-9; Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, pp. 25-6, 33, 35, 40-1, 47-9, 59, 75, 103, 108, 111, 121; WPγ/16/1/53. On 5 January 1649 he was admitted to a doctorate in civil law, thus enhancing his academic status.42Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, pp. 25-6. Included on the commission of the peace for Oxfordshire on 25 June, he was still there, as one of the quorum, in 1650.43C231/6, p. 159; The Names of the Justices, 44.

In the meantime, however, while Mylles became increasingly alienated from the army, splits in the new regime at Oxford were already opening up. In October 1648 Mylles was enlisted by Gerard Langbaine, university archivist and provost of Queen’s College, to help protect the positions of fellows resisting reform.44‘Gerard Langbaine’, Oxford DNB. Writing to John Selden* in mid-November, Langbaine considered that Mylles’ presence at convocation could have prevented the election of inadequate scholars to fellowships.45Bodl. Selden supra 108, f. 16. According to Anthony Wood, this month visitor Francis Cheynell (himself later a resister) held ‘a packed committee’ at his London lodgings to secure a requirement to prompt subscription to the Covenant and the Negative oath. ‘So detestable it was to most persons, that some of their brethren, particularly Dr Mills, cried shame upon them to one of the royal party’. One witness of Mylles’ frustration, expressed during an encounter in Palace Yard, Westminster ‘two or three days after the orders were passed’, was Wood’s informant, Thomas Barlow of Queen’s, a notable royalist survivor and later bishop of Lincoln.46Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 612. Twenty-five years later John Rushworth* testified that, presumably around the same time, Mylles had openly criticised the army’s designs on Parliament and had warned some eminent Members of the plan to bring the king to trial; this had drawn such opposition against him that he had been forced to quit his position as advocate general.47CSP Dom. 1673, p. 35; cf. HP Commons 1660-1690. The lack of direct evidence of any activity by him in this role after a review of Roger L’Estrange’s case earlier in the year tends to support this; he was probably not the John Mill who wrote to Fairfax from Oxford in September 1649 about the mutiny in the garrison.48R. L’Estrange, L’Estrange his vindication (1649) n.p., and L’Estrange his apology (1660), 3 (E.187.1); Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 99.

Along with other leading members of the university, both Reynolds and Mylles evaded taking oaths to the commonwealth longer than might have initially seemed possible. With Langbaine (another surprising survivor) and civil lawyer Richard Zouche, Mylles was involved in July 1650 in the reconstitution of the vice chancellor’s court.49Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, p. 114; Wood, Life and Times, i. 164; ‘Gerard Langbaine’, Oxford DNB. He attended a meeting of delegates on 4 November.50Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, p. 121. By 16 January 1651 he had lost his canonry, but, in response to an enquiry, the visitors affirmed his student’s place at the college with its attendant privileges.51Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, 317. But he was clearly living on borrowed time. On 8 March, the more pliable Zouche joined Langbaine and others, ‘in the rooms [instead] of Dr Cheynell and Dr Mills to be principal treaters with the City about articles of difference now depending betwixt them’. In the interim Mylles had followed Reynolds and Arabist Edward Pococke in being ejected from Christ Church for refusing the Engagement.52Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, p. 130; Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 629.

By this juncture Mylles must have severed completely his links with the army. In July 1650 he had been admitted to Doctors’ Commons, but it is not clear how much employment there would have been for a Presbyterian civilian who had made himself conspicuous.53Squibb, Doctors’ Commons, 177. It is possible that he received some assistance from the university’s excluded MP, John Selden*, or from Nathaniel Fiennes I*, a noted supporter of civil lawyers, although neither would be natural allies of a religious Presbyterian. By 1653 he had been removed from the commission of the peace and perhaps for a few years he was in the political wilderness.54C193/13/4, f. 77v. It seems unlikely that the John Mill (thus signed) who was appointed to the Oxfordshire commission for securing the peace of the commonwealth, and who signed their letter of March 1656 to the protector, was the ejected canon. This man was most probably the lieutenant-colonel admitted freeman of Oxford in September 1651 and deprived of the place in March 1663 for his interregnum activities.55Bodl. Rawl. A.36, ff. 340, 392; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 184, 306. On the other hand, discreet royalist connections were no bar to the prominence of some men in 1650s Oxfordshire – among them Robert Jenkinson* and Sir Francis Norreys*, the latter significantly through Queen’s College. Mylles’ nephew Robert Packer*, also a Presbyterian, participated, enthusiastically or otherwise, in local government during this period. In this context it is less surprising to find the doctor of civil laws once again added to the commission of the peace in July 1656.56C231/6, p. 340.

By whatever means, Mylles maintained a sufficiently high profile in the university at least to be elected to Parliament by majority vote on 4 December 1658 as one of its burgesses.57Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives NEP/supra/Reg. T, pp. 333. Perhaps he retained respect in the army or had good personal relations with leading moderate Independents in convocation like former military physician Jonathan Goddard*; perhaps he was promoted by some as a potential guardian of civil law; perhaps he was seen as a champion of legality or political compromise by more than just the voices from Queen’s. As it was, he was nominated to only two committees, both on 13 April 1659. The first (in company with his old deputy, Margetts) was to address the payment of arrears to some of Fairfax’s former officers; the second (with Jenkinson) was to prepare a declaration on the excise.58CJ vii. 638a.

Around this time, according to Rushworth, Mylles, who had consistently used his position in the army to promote favours to the king’s friends, was advising Fairfax and others on their strategy to effect a restoration. Recognising his potential usefulness in this direction, General George Monck* reinstated him as judge-advocate after the army marched from Scotland in early 1660.*59CSP Dom. 1673, p. 35. On 12 March he reappeared as a prebendary of Christ Church in the registers of convocation, and the next day he and Reynolds were again entered in the buttery book.60Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. Ta. p. 8; Wood, Life and Times, i. 307. Despite strong pressure from Monck in favour of William Lenthall*, and an appeal from the former Speaker himself, in April the university returned Mylles to Parliament for a second time.61Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. Ta. pp. 10-12; CCSP iv. 643, 664. As the general might have foreseen, distracted by his duties of administering the oath of allegiance to disbanding soldiers, Mylles made a rather modest contribution to the Convention.62HP Commons 1660-1690.

The price of pursuing his legal career was conformity to the Church of England. Following Reynolds’ acceptance of a bishopric, Mylles accompanied his friend to Norwich, where he was made chancellor on 13 September 1661.63CSP Dom. 1673, p. 34. The appointment outraged at least one of those who had encountered the justice of the judge-advocate and there was lingering hostility in the diocese.64R. L’Estrange, A Modest Plea both for the caveat and the author of it (1661), 27; Truth and Loyalty Vindicated (1662), 37. Secretary of state Sir Henry Bennet†, 1st earl of Arlington, learned in February 1673 from Dean Astley that ‘diverse persons of great honour, integrity and interest’ had advised withholding Mylles’ patent, ‘principally’ because ‘his hand had been in blood, having condemned to death diverse of the king’s friends’. This Mylles had denied, countering ‘that he condemned none, but Parliament soldiers and spies’. Arlington’s enquiries, of Rushworth and others, corroborated this. He obtained ‘not only a fair report of his behaviour therein, with much favour to all that were loyal to his Majesty but that he was deprived of his office for withstanding and contradicting as much as in him lay, the army’s bloody intention upon the person of his late Majesty’. None the less, Arlington’s pious reminder that ‘the gospel as well as the law bids us forgive and forget’ appears to have fallen on deaf ears locally, and the chancellorship to have remained in contention.65Bodl. Tanner 134, f. 144; CSP Dom. 1673, p. 34-5.

Mylles made his will on 28 February and 1 March 1676 leaving, among other legacies, £100 each to his sisters Lady Molett and Elizabeth, and £30 to his nephew Dr Packer. His residual estate, vested in trustees Robert Packer, Alexander Denton of the Middle Temple and (another nephew) Edward Hooper of Hurne Court, Hampshire, was left to James Mylles, son and heir of his eldest brother. Both testator and nephew must have died shortly afterwards, for the will was proved on 8 April by James’s widow, Martha.66PROB11/350/471. Robert Packer had been elected to the Cavalier Parliament, but neither Packers nor Mylles sat thereafter.