MILLE, John

This MP is very difficult to pin down, especially as there is no record of a Dorchester burgess of this name. He may have been the man who at some point in the late 1420s sued a chaplain from Chideock in Dorset for wrongful detention of a book worth four marks. The chaplain was pardoned his outlawry for failing to make answer in November 1430.1 CPR, 1429-36, p. 89. Of greater interest is the case that could be made to identify the MP with John atte Mille, an associate of the wealthy Thomas Cheddar, the brother and heir of Richard Cheddar* (d.1437), five times knight of the shire for Somerset. Atte Mille acted as a feoffee of estates in Dorset, Somerset and Gloucestershire which passed on Thomas Cheddar’s death in 1443 to his two daughters.2 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 108-9. Yet other parts of the Cheddar inheritance, most notably the manor of Ubley and a moiety of that of Midsomer Norton in Somerset, were subject to an entail in the male line made long before (in 1380), and as Thomas died without legitimate male issue, as had everyone else named in the entail, the property was claimed by the Crown. The matter was still undecided when Parliament was summoned to meet on 12 Feb. 1449. It may be conjectured that atte Mille, as one of the feoffees, sought election so as to be at Westminster to respond to the Crown’s claim, but on whose behalf is not clear. On 11 May, during the second session, Ubley and the moiety of Midsomer Norton were committed at the Exchequer to him and his co-feoffee John Denys, only to be removed from them just a month later in favour of Cheddar’s sons-in-law, John Talbot, Viscount Lisle, and John Newton II*, since inquiries had found that the original enfeoffment had been made without royal licence. A number of further inquiries were held later in the year, including one on 16 Nov. which confirmed that owing to lack of male issue the property should pass to the King. Atte Mille and Denys contested these findings, and on 31 Dec. they secured custody of the property once more, along with that of other landed holdings of substance. On 12 Feb. 1450 Lisle and Newton were summoned to Chancery to show cause why their letters should not be revoked, and as they failed to come their grant was cancelled two months later. But this was not the end of the matter, for although in the following December another commitment was made to atte Mille and Denys, they were required to answer at the Exchequer for the profits if they were adjudged to the King.3 Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xvii), 106-7; CFR, xviii. 115, 119, 150, 203; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 327-8. It would appear that Newton and the widowed Lady Lisle eventually made good their claim. Atte Mille continued to be associated with the latter, notably as her co-defendant in a plea of entry regarding lands elsewhere on the estate in Somerset, in Michaelmas term 1463. He was then described as a ‘husbandman’ of Winscombe.4 E328/49.

The only factor linking this John atte Mille with the Dorchester MP is the coincidence of dating, in that while the Parliament of February-July 1449 was in being the Cheddar inheritance was subject to litigation in the courts at Westminster. It may also be significant that John atte Mille was named a collector in Somerset of the subsidies granted by the Commons in that same Parliament; and while MPs were generally successful in avoiding appointment as collectors in the constituencies they were representing, it was more difficult to escape appointment elsewhere.5 CFR, xviii. 125. Mille the tax collector later obtained a pardon, on 1 July 1462.6 C67/45, m. 18.