MELLES, Arthur, ?of Ipswich and Cockfield Hall, Suff.

In the fourteenth century Sir Peter de Melles owned a manor about five miles from Dunwich, and although the property descended through his daughter to another family, the name Melles or Myles remained in that district until the sixteenth century and later. A Thomas Melles was one of the puritan ministers who in the early 1580s drew up objections to Bishop Freake’s demands for subscription to the complete prayer book. All this said, the 1586 MP was almost certainly ‘Arthur Mills of Ipswich’, godson of Anthony Wingfield, the other Member for Dunwich in 1586. In 1593 Wingfield conveyed to him the manor house of Cockfield Hall, Suffolk. This man or his father may have been the Arthur Mylles to whom one of the Hoptons, probably Sir Owen, owed the large sum of £2,000 in 1576. This might suggest that the family was engaged in trade, but further information is lacking.1Suckling, Antiqs. of Suff. ii. 184; W. A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, ii. 120, 184; Collinson thesis, 419 n. 3; Ipswich RO, Blois mss 312/78, 155; HMC Var. vii. 87.