MILDMAY, Anthony (d. 1682), of Danbury, Essex, and Steyning, Suss.

Anthony Mildmay was a younger brother of Sir Henry Mildmay, the master of the king’s jewel house from 1618 and a prominent parliamentarian politician after 1640. Sir Henry was the dominant influence over Anthony’s career. In 1624, when James I visited Cambridge University, Anthony Mildmay was one of those awarded an honorary MA, presumably as a compliment to his brother; and by the early months of 1625 he had been made one of the king’s gentleman pensioners, taking his place in the funeral procession in the same year.15Al. Cant.; LC2/6, f. 47v. His term as gentleman pensioner ended on 8 June 1626, when the captain of the pensioners, the earl of Suffolk, replaced him with his own candidate, but this did not mark the end of Mildmay’s association with the court of Charles I.16Badminton, Beaufort archives, Fm H2/4/1, f. 17v. According to his own later account, Mildmay was sworn as a gentleman of the privy chamber in or around 1630, ‘and so continued’; in October 1634 and June 1635 the king twice recommended him to the Levant Company as a possible consul at Aleppo, although the appointment does not seem to have taken place; and in September 1637 he was at Narbonne in France, reporting on the war between France and Spain.17Clarke Pprs. ii. 268; CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 243; 1635, p. 145; HMC Cowper, ii. 166-7. It may have been during this time that Mildmay acquired the title ‘captain’, which persisted throughout his career – although he should not be confused with the naval captain of the same name who died in 1653.18CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 213-14. There is no doubt that Mildmay’s election for the borough of West Looe in the Short Parliament elections in the spring of 1640 was also the result of court patronage, although he was the candidate sponsored by the duchy.19DCO, ‘letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 44v. He played no recorded part in proceedings at Westminster, and was not found another seat in the November elections.

The 1640s saw Sir Henry Mildmay’s rejection of the king’s cause in favour of that of Parliament, and Anthony was drawn away from the royal orbit as a result. Through the Committee for Revenue, Sir Henry retained a degree of control over the income from royal estates now in Parliament’s hands, and was involved in the payment of some allowances and annuities owed to court servants, and Anthony seems to have benefited from this. In March 1647, for example, Anthony Mildmay wrote to the receiver-general, Thomas Fauconberge*, asking that the £10 allowance assigned to him (as gentleman of the privy chamber?) by the committee would be delivered to his servant instead.20HMC 9th Rep. 439. A year later, and again through his brother’s influence, Mildmay was attending Charles I once again, as one of the attendants allowed to the king during his captivity at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. In a letter to Sir Henry, Anthony makes clear that his relations with the courtiers were far from good. ‘I will not stay upon the terms I am now’, he complained, ‘for you may very well conceive that the malignant party will be still practising against me, to make me suspected by the Parliament and their army, hoping to remove me by all means’. Some at Whitehall were already suspicious of him, leading Mildmay to protest about ‘the discouragements I have, when strangers are placed before me’, and he told his brother that he was innocent of any dealings with the king, adding that ‘he is the most perfidious man that ever lived; and if ever he gets power, he will make no more difficulty to hang you then I will do to eat my dinner this cold day’.21Clarke Pprs. ii. 267-8. Mildmay’s concerns were not founded merely on paranoia: in July 1648 the Derby House Committee issued a warrant to bring him into safe custody, although any charges were apparently not pursued.22CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 178. Mildmay was again receiving pay as one of the four gentlemen attending the king on the Isle of Wight in November, and remained in the royal entourage when it moved from Carisbrooke to Windsor Castle in December.23SC6/ChasI/1666, m. 10. On 21 December Mildmay wrote to Fauconberg to claim part of his allowance, which had grown to £200 p.a.24HMC 9th Rep. 440. Oliver Cromwell* seems to have been happy to keep him on, saying to the officer in charge of the king, Colonel Thomas Harrison I*, on 22 December that ‘Captain Mildmay (we presume) will be one of those you’ll find to retain’.25Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 714.

Mildmay was still part of the household during the trial and execution of Charles I, and he was one of those put in charge of the king’s burial, which was originally planned to take place at Westminster Abbey. He was ordered to arrange the removal of the body, the payment of troops attending it, the opening of Henry VII’s vault, the interment and the modest supper that followed it, and he continued to be involved in the obsequies when the king’s body was eventually buried at Windsor.26CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 69-70. In this he was again working under Colonel Harrison, with a budget of £400.27SC6/ChasI/1666, m. 10. Meanwhile, on 27 February 1649 Mildmay was licensed to marry – at St Martin in the Fields or Durham House chapel – Anne, daughter of David Murray of St Clement Danes, who was probably Charles I’s tailor of that name, and thus a fellow courtier; a portion of £1,500 was specified in Murray’s will of 1653.28Mar. Lics. Fac. Office, 41; PROB11/246/514; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 318; 1648-9, p. 15.

After the king’s funeral, Mildmay was involved in the disposal of the royal goods. On 4 April 1649, the Rump Parliament referred to the council of state the ‘proposition’ sent in by Mildmay, concerning the pictures and statues in the royal collection; in July he was appointed one of the trustees for the sale of the king’s goods; and in the same month, he provided a detailed inventory of the 102 horses in the king’s stables at Tutbury.29CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 70, 170, 251; A. and O. In the spring of 1650 Mildmay was loosely attached to the council of state’s staff, and was paid £120 on account for the entertainment of the Dutch ambassador in May 1650.30CSP Dom. 1650, p. 170. In July of the same year he received another important appointment, as attendant on Charles I’s younger children, Henry duke of Gloucester and Princess Elizabeth, when they were moved to their father’s old prison at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.31CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 256-7. Mildmay was given charge of the two children, with an annual allowance of £3,000 paid from the Committee for Revenue.32CSP Dom. 1650, p. 441.

Mildmay seems to have been particularly sensitive to accusations of corruption (possibly because of a guilty conscience, as he may have already embezzled goods from the late king’s collections).33CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 200. In August 1650 he asked the Committee for Revenue to examine an inventory of the goods belonging to the royal children; during the princess’s illness he made a point of employing a London physician to avoid being seen as negligent, and on her death in September he sent a full report of her jewels.34CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 295, 331, 376. Mildmay attended the duke of Gloucester for a further two and a half years, until, in February 1653, the council of state decided to let the duke go abroad.35CSP Dom. 1651, p. 33; 1651-2, pp. 18, 30, 64, 383; 1652-3, pp. 142, 146. During this time, Mildmay’s relations with the military governor of the Isle of Wight, Colonel William Sydenham*, seem to have deteriorated, possibly because it was unclear who held principal responsibility for the royal prisoner. When permission came for the duke to leave, Mildmay made a scene, insisting that the duke should not be taken, refusing to allow his goods to be carried to the ship, and locking him inside his chamber. An exasperated Sydenham complained to the council of state, which sent a curt note ordering Mildmay to release the duke, and to obey Sydenham’s orders.36CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 142, 146.

After February 1653, Mildmay was not employed by the state, and this probably reflects not only the ignominious end to his career as royal attendant but also the rift that had grown between Sir Henry Mildmay and Oliver Cromwell, which became a gulf with the forced closure of the Rump Parliament in the following April and Cromwell’s appointment as protector in December. Unlike his father he lost his place on the Essex commission of peace in 1653, although he retained his office as a magistrate for Sussex.37Essex QSOB ed. Allen, p. xxxviii. His contacts with the post-Rump regimes at Whitehall were less than cordial. In August 1653 he petitioned the council of state begging for the money owed to him from the Committee for Revenue, and his case was referred to the Irish and Scottish committee in October, although there is no record that anything was decided.38CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 85, 205. In August 1654 he petitioned Protector Oliver, claiming £269 in arrears for his allowance when attending the duke of Gloucester, and this was referred to the council, which decided to lay the claim aside, ‘not thinking it fit to make any order’.39CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 284, 355. Recompense of a sort was allowed in August 1656, when it was decided that Mildmay and his fellow household official, Thomas Herbert, were not to be held to account for £229 left unspent from the £400 allowed for the king’s funeral in 1649.40CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 69-70.

The short-lived restoration of the Rump in 1659-60 brought little joy to Anthony Mildmay, and the Restoration was an unmitigated disaster. Sir Henry, although not strictly speaking a regicide, was still put on trial by the authorities, imprisoned, and his estates were confiscated. As a former royal servant who had joined Parliament, and then been intimately connected with the king’s imprisonment and execution and the incarceration of his children, Anthony could expect equally rough treatment. In 1661 he faced prosecution for £1,950 in plate and goods embezzled from Charles I when at Carisbrooke, and he was duly convicted in July.41CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 200, 492. In May 1663 it was reported that Mildmay had paid a third of this sum, and he was being pressed to produce the remainder.42CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 139. At this stage, Mildmay was living at Newington Green, Middlesex, and he later moved to Richmond in Surrey; but when he drew up his will, in March 1682, he had crossed to Ireland and was living with the Ormsby family at Tobervaddy, co. Roscommon, perhaps hoping to avoid his creditors. The document is very short, and mentions no property except for a general reference to ‘my whole real and personal estate, goods and chattels, lands and tenements’ which he left to his wife and executrix, Anne. Mildmay was dead by August 1682, when his probate was passed in England. He left no descendants.43PROB11/370/462.