MELLER (MILLER), Sir John (1588-1650), of Little Bredy, Dorset.

According to contemporary popular myth the ancestor of the Dorset Mellers (or Millers) was miller to the abbot of Abbotsbury to the south of the county. By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, however, the family had achieved much greater wealth and status, and John Meller was able to purchase former monastic lands in Winterbourne Came, Little Bredy, Upcerne and other parishes in western Dorset.22Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 185-6, 289-90. John’s son, Sir Robert Meller, sat as MP for Poole in 1601 and for Bridport in 1604, rebuilt the mansion at Little Bredy, and invested in the Virginia Company.23Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 186. Sir Robert also built up strong connections with the county gentry in Dorset, including the Trenchards at nearby Warmwell, and his in-laws, the Freakes. In 1611 he also secured a prosperous match for his son, our John Meller, with the daughter of Sir John Swinnerton, former lord mayor of London. The marriage brought Meller the estate of Phyllis Court, close to Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, held under trust by Sir Thomas Freake and Henry Swinnerton.24C2/CHASI/M45/57.

During the 1630s, Sir John Meller was eager to sell these Oxfordshire lands in order to provide suitably generous portions for his five daughters.25C2/CHASI/M45/57. The prospective buyer, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, conducted his negotiations through the surviving trustee of the estate, John Freake, as ‘no man had more interest with him [Meller] than this great friend and kinsman of his, and who was a very great faithful friend to me likewise’.26Add. 37343, f. 139v. Whitelocke also relied on the influence of Sir John Wolstenholme and the Middle Temple lawyer, Bartholomew Hall, and in July 1635 he had ‘full discourse’ about the same business with Meller and John Trenchard*.27Add. 37343, ff. 140v, 141. The final bargain was struck in 1637, with Whitelocke paying £8,050 over the following years.28Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. VII, ff. 249-50, 251-2; Add. 37343, ff. 152v, 163, 163v. The sale of the Oxfordshire estate may have been part of an attempt by Meller to rationalise his disparate landholdings. He placed all his Dorset holdings into the hands of Sir Thomas Freake and other trustees in May 1641, and in the following July he spent £2,000 on buying land from John Churchill, in the parish of Winterbourne Came, where he already held a substantial estate.29PROB11/214/341; C54/3278/16.

Despite his evident financial prosperity, Sir John Meller’s public career was not especially notable. He sat for Wareham in 1628, possibly on the Trenchard interest, and served as sheriff for Dorset in 1630-1 and for Oxfordshire in 1633-4.30HP Commons 1604-1629; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 39, 109. His consistent refusal to pay ship-money in 1636 and 1637 suggests that he was not a supporter of the Caroline regime.31SP16/319, f. 89; E179/272/54. He was related to other opponents of the crown, including the Trenchards, and would later style Giles Strangways* ‘my worthy friend’, and nominate him overseer of his will.32PROB11/214/341. Meller was no puritan, however, presenting Ralph Ironside and other orthodox ministers to benefices in his gift during the 1620s and 1630s, and he apparently remained aloof from demonstrations of gentry discontent during the bishops’ wars.33IND1/17001, Dorset, pp. 6, 20.

Meller’s election for Bridport on 19 March 1640 was no doubt influenced by his position as a local landowner, although he seems to have had no direct connection with the borough. His fellow-MP was Thomas Trenchard*, John Trenchard’s nephew, and this family’s influence may have been an important factor in securing Meller’s return.34C219/42/89; Dorset RO, DC/BTB/EF3. Meller made no recorded contribution to the Short Parliament, however, and he was not re-elected in October 1640. In 1642 he joined Sir John and Giles Strangways, and other Dorset gentlemen, in supporting the king, and in 1643 he served as royalist commissioner for contributions in the county.35Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 73. In early 1644, as Sir William Waller* was threatening to invade Dorset from Salisbury, Meller was captured trying to raise 1,000 men for Sir Ralph Hopton’s* army.36Bayley, Dorset, 133. Although he later protested that he had been forced to join the king’s forces, and had contributed £500 to the parliamentarian cause, the circumstances of Meller’s capture suggest that he was fully committed to opposing Parliament in the early 1640s.37SP23/175, ff. 567, 573; CCC 933.

The price of Meller’s royalism was sequestration. This proved to be a protracted business. The Committee for Advance of Money fined him £1,500 in October 1645, and he petitioned to compound in the same month.38CCAM 604; CCC 933. The Committee for Compounding seems to have treated Meller with greater leniency, possibly due to the influence of John Trenchard and other Dorset MPs on the committee, such as Denis Bond* and Giles Grene*. The committee imposed a fine of only £693 in February 1646, and ordered the reluctant Dorset county committee to suspend the sequestration of his estates in June and again in August.39CCC 933. But Meller’s problems were not yet at an end. The county committee proceeded against him for withholding rents in 1648, and in March 1649 he was again forced to compound by Parliament, for property omitted (or concealed?) during the previous investigation.40Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 421; CCC 933. After Meller’s death in 1650 his son and heir was pursued for the same debts, and the estate was only discharged two years later.41CCAM 604; CCC 933, 2112. Meller’s will, drawn up in April 1649, reflects his straitened circumstances, as he granted the residue of his chattels to pay off creditors. He appointed his son and heir, Robert Meller, as executor, with his brother, Wolley Meller, overseer alongside Giles Strangways.42PROB11/214/341. His grandson, Edward Meller†, MP for Dorchester in 1685, was the last of the line to sit in Parliament.43HP Commons 1660-1690.