MILDMAY, Sir Henry (c.1594-1668), of Wanstead, Essex and Twyford, Hants.

In 1583 the Mildmay family persuaded the Clarenceux king-of-arms, Robert Cooke, to endorse a collection of documents which showed that they were descended in an unbroken male line from Hugh Mildmay who had lived during the reign of Stephen.75Mildmay, Brief Mem. 7-12, 237-41; Vis. Essex 1552, 1558, 1570, 1612 and 1634, 249-52; Essex RO, D/DM/F1; Morant, Essex, ii. 4. These documents were, however, almost certainly entirely bogus.76J.H. Round, Fam. Origins and other Studies, ed. W. Page (1930), 60-72. The reality was much more banal. Sir Henry could in fact only trace his lineage back to his great-grandfather, Thomas Mildmay, a merchant in Chelmsford during the early sixteenth century. Two of Thomas’s sons, Thomas† and Sir Walter† (Sir Henry’s grandfather) had prospered under Henry VIII as officials of the court of augmentations and, in a textbook example of a family which rose from nowhere financed by the spoils of the dissolution of the monasteries, the various branches of the Mildmays had, by the end of the century, established themselves as powerful figures with estates throughout Essex and elsewhere. Sir Walter, who ended his career as chancellor of the exchequer to Elizabeth I and who founded Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had acquired Apethorpe in Northamptonshire as his principal seat. The death of his eldest son, Sir Anthony†, in 1617 leaving only a daughter ensured that those estates passed to her husband’s family, the Fanes of Badsell, helping them to become the earls of Westmorland. It was left to Sir Walter’s second son, Humphrey Mildmay, to maintain the links of this branch of the family with Essex by acquiring an estate at Danbury, five miles to the west of Maldon.77Morant, Essex, ii. 29; PROB11/122/557.

Courtier

Sir Henry, the future MP, was not destined to inherit the Danbury estates, however. As the younger son, he had instead to pursue a career at court. Starting off as a sewer to the king and then gaining modest promotion to become one of his cupbearers, his big break came in 1618 when he bought the mastership of the jewel house. Obtained with the support of the king’s new favourite, George Villiers, 1st earl of Buckingham, this office provided him with a profitable but less onerous position of great prestige.78HMC Downshire, vi. 352; SO3/6, unfol. Mildmay’s successor after the Restoration, Sir Gilbert Talbot*, would claim that Mildmay’s ‘professed ignorance in jewels’ caused the responsibility for their purchase to be transferred to the lord chamberlain.79G. Younghusband, The Jewel House (1921), 240. Mildmay’s friendship with Buckingham was to be crucial to him over the next decade, for on-and-off until 1628 he acted as one of Buckingham’s political clients, providing erratic support for him in Parliament. Buckingham’s backing also helped get him a wife. The deal offered to his prospective father-in-law, the wealthy London merchant, William Halliday, was sweetened by Buckingham’s decision to sell to Mildmay his estate at Wanstead in order that it could be included as part of the jointure. The house there – which Samuel Pepys in 1665 thought was ‘a fine seat, but an old-fashioned house’ – became the couple’s principal residence in the country.80Morant, Essex, i. 30; VCH Essex, vi. 324; Pepys’s Diary, iii. 102. In the long term, however, Mildmay’s marriage to Anne Halliday proved to be of even more importance than anyone could have anticipated at the time. The death of her father, William Halliday, in 1624 opened the way for her mother to marry the leading Essex nobleman, the 2nd earl of Warwick (Robert Rich†). That Warwick was the stepfather of Mildmay’s wife would enhance Mildmay’s political importance within Essex during the civil war. The new countess of Warwick conveyed her own lands at Owslebury in Hampshire to Mildmay in 1626, giving him an interest in that county.81VCH Hants. iii. 333-4.

During the 1630s Mildmay gave every appearance of being a loyal courtier. Edward Hyde* would later claim that, ‘no man [was] more obsequious to the court than he whilst it flourished; a great flatterer of all persons in authority, and a spy in all places for them’.82Clarendon, Hist. iv. 487. On the face of it, this appeared a fair enough assessment. In 1630 Mildmay headed the commission which collected the knighthood fines in Essex.83CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 321. At a meeting of the Essex sewer commissioners in July 1633 he made sure that the king’s nominee for the position of clerk was appointed in face of opposition from Sir Benjamin Ayloffe.84CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 176-7. The privy council used him to investigate the trade in gold thread (a subject in which his court office would have given him some knowledge) and the fees charged by other government officials.85CSP Dom. 1635, p. 71; 1635-6, p. 178; 1637-8, p. 77. He was on sufficiently good terms with the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, in 1636 that he sent him gifts of hares and a sturgeon.86The Household Accts. of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1635-1642, ed. L. James (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. xxiv), 8, 17. He was also among courtiers who accompanied the king on campaign in the spring of 1639. The letters he wrote to the secretary of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*, who had remained in London, were full of praise for their master.87CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 112-13, 221-2, 277-8, 319-20. In June 1639 he told Windebanke that, ‘the king carries himself with as great wisdom and courage as is possible’.88CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 294-5. It was said, however, that Mildmay was one of those around the king who was spreading rumours about the strength of the Covenanter forces.89CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 163-4.

In fact, Mildmay’s true feelings about Charles I’s policies are likely to have been far more hostile than they appeared. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* would subsequently assume that he had pinpointed the crucial motivation behind Mildmay’s actions when he described him as ‘an irritated courtier’.90Harl. 164, f. 388v. It is certainly possible that Mildmay had ambitions at court which had been unfulfilled, although, on the contrary, he may have been happy with his existing, very comfortable sinecure. Marchamont Nedham’s later nickname for him of ‘Whimsey Mildmay’ implies a certain superficiality, that he was someone who preferred surface glamour and perhaps wealth as an end in itself. Yet what D’Ewes interpreted as a grudge may instead have been principled opposition, for the virulence which characterised much of his views later in the 1640s may have been the result not so much of bitterness as of political ruthlessness. Perhaps because of his contact with him, he was not someone who was in awe of the king. The Short Parliament gave him a platform from which to begin expressing his doubts.

Distancing himself from the king, 1640-2

The decision by the Maldon freemen to return Mildmay as their MP for the two Parliaments of 1640 was simply a continuation of their preference in three of the four previous elections.91HP Commons 1604-1629. His success in those elections had owed much to the support he had received from the high steward of the borough, Sir Julius Caesar†, and Mildmay had succeeded to that office following Sir Julius’s death in 1636.92Essex RO, D/B 3/1/20, f. 57. It would have been Mildmay as master of the jewel house who handed the state crown to the king when he arrived at Westminster to open this Parliament on 13 April. His membership of the four preceding Parliaments meant that he entered the Short Parliament with more parliamentary experience than most of his colleagues. On 16 April he objected when MPs indicated their approval (‘humming’) during the speeches of others. As Sir Henry Vane I* subsequently pointed out, many novice MPs were unaware of the practices of the House. Mildmay then successfully moved that a fast day be held, before suggesting that the Speaker, Sir John Glanville*, ought to inform the House of the effects of the king’s speech before they proceeded to other business.93Procs. Short Parl. 143; Aston’s Diary, 5; CJ ii. 4a, 9a. His knowledge of the ways of Parliament was again reflected in later speeches, most obviously when he argued against multiple interventions by individual MPs, clearly believing that this would only delay business.94Aston’s Diary, 20, 34, 59, 74, 91, 114. He was named to a number of committees, including those concerning the events surrounding the dissolution of the previous Parliament and on the bill to reform the ecclesiastical courts.95CJ ii. 4a, 6b, 8a, 17b. He supported the view that MPs’ constituents would be displeased if they did not consider grievances before supply.96Aston’s Diary, 125. All this placed him in the camp of those critical of the king and his ministers.

Re-elected for Maldon later that year, Mildmay would become one of the most active of all MPs in the Long Parliament. The vast number of references to him in the Journals allow his activity to be traced on an almost daily basis. This was despite the fact that he was never much of a debater. From the beginning he benefited from his seniority, both as a courtier – his office entitled him to rank just below a privy councillor – and as a veteran MP. Few other MPs would have dared reprimand Speaker William Lenthall for allowing a debate to get out of control, as Mildmay did on at least one occasion.97Procs. LP ii. 152. In June 1641 he had the experience to warn the Commons that procedural divisions between the two Houses was unwise.98Harl. 479, f. 6. He was also happy to use the procedure of Parliament to his own personal advantage as when, citing parliamentary privilege, he blocked a legal case brought against one of his estate servants.99CJ ii. 236a, 279b; Harl. 163, f. 419. His court office made him a suitable person to send with messages to and from members of the royal family. Whenever possible he used his influence to encourage Parliament to continue and extend the financial assistance paid to Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, and her son Charles Louis, elector palatine.100Procs. LP v. 82, vi. 540; CJ ii. 785b, iii. 141a, iv. 58a, v. 500a. Mildmay was on friendly terms with the elector and later that year he called on Parliament to provide military aid for the re-conquest of the Palatinate.101CJ ii. 199b; Harl. 164, f. 57v. In August 1641 he persuaded the Commons to release a Catholic priest, William Wilson, as a favour to the queen, Henrietta Maria, after she had delayed her decision to travel abroad.102Procs. LP vi. 314, 322; CJ ii. 248b. Conversely, when it came to the issue of whether Henrietta Maria’s mother-in-law, Marie de Medici, should leave England, Mildmay was one of those appointed to raise money to encourage her to do so.103CJ ii. 199a.

Mildmay started the Long Parliament with the same aims he had had in the previous Parliament. The priority was to attack the king’s leading advisers in order to persuade him to adopt different policies. The main problem was the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†). From the outset, Mildmay wanted to see Parliament proceed against him.104CJ ii. 39b. After John Pym* had delivered the additional impeachment articles against the earl on 30 January 1641 to the Lords, Mildmay moved that he be formally thanked.105Procs. LP ii. 323. He was also among the list of witnesses for the trial prepared by the Commons.106CJ ii. 115b; Procs. LP iii. 320. The febrile atmosphere in which the trial took place seems to have affected him as much as his colleagues.107CJ ii. 112a; Procs. LP iii. 109, 110, 113. A squib which circulated in early 1643, The Sense of the House, made the unlikely claim that Mildmay had hid in the Commons’ privy during the key vote against Strafford in May 1641.108Harl. 163, f. 400v. That he seconded Hyde’s attack on the court of chivalry suggests that he had disliked other aspects of the personal rule as well.109Procs. LP i. 249, 250, 254, 258; CJ ii. 34b.

The other advisers Mildmay most wanted to see removed or sidelined as a matter of urgency were the Laudian bishops. Only by doing so would it be possible to reverse the religious policies of the previous decade. Mildmay had no hesitation in naming those clergymen whom he regarded as being implicated in those policies. Rumours that Bishop John Warner of Rochester had hung an idolatrous painting in a church were repeated by Mildmay in the Commons and he was responsible for proposing that the images installed by the former vice-chancellor, John Cosin, at Cambridge should be removed.110Procs. LP i. 378, ii. 247. He also supported the attacks on Bishops Matthew Wren of Ely and William Piers of Bath and Wells.111CJ ii. 56a, 58b, 91a; LJ iv. 117a; Northcote Note Bk. 111; Procs. LP ii. 46, 47, 48. The ecclesiastical courts were another target of concern.112Procs. LP i. 260; CJ ii. 128b. The root and branch petition almost certainly echoed his own views.113Procs. LP ii. 391. By early 1642 he was voicing his opinion that there was no legal authority for the Book of Common Prayer.114Add. 64807, f. 32v.

There was one particular religious issue which he did more than anyone else to promote. The state of Emmanuel College, which had been founded by Mildmay’s grandfather to be the nursery of Elizabethan puritanism, was one of general concern to the godly opinion. On 17 December 1640 Mildmay presented the petition from the rest of the Mildmay family which complained that certain fellows of Emmanuel were retaining their fellowships beyond the tenure which had been specified in Sir Walter’s founding statutes.115Procs. LP i. 633-4; CJ ii. 52a; J. Twigg, The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution 1625-1688 (1990), 55-6. This had long been the subject of dispute, as many of the ex-fellows found it difficult to obtain benefices in the gift of bishops, and in 1627 Charles I had hesitated to revoke the relevant statute only because Sir Henry had promised to grant the college six advowsons for the benefit of those fellows affected by it. The issue had remained unresolved because Mildmay had failed to keep his promise.116The Statutes of Sir Walter Mildmay…for the government of Emmanuel College, ed. F. Stubbings (Cambridge, 1983), 95-8. A bill was introduced by him to remedy this problem.117Procs. LP vi. 321; CJ ii. 709a-b. Going against the opinion of most of his colleagues, he even argued that Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch†) ought to be allowed the opportunity to defend himself before the Commons, apparently because he felt that Finch had been an ally in the dispute over the Emmanuel statutes.118Northcote Note Bk. 85, 98; Procs. LP ii. 6. Mildmay would later be instrumental in having the master of Emmanuel, Richard Holdsworth, who was at this time vice-chancellor of the university, arrested and imprisoned. Holdworth’s offence had been to try to find a middle way between the Laudian and parliamentarian extremes.119CJ ii. 709a-b; iii. 261a, 264a; Harl. 166, f. 19v; Twigg, University of Cambridge, 56-8. Sir Henry naturally supported the reversal of the Laudian innovations in the universities and later approved of the purge of Cambridge University by Edward Montagu†, 2nd earl of Manchester.120CJ ii. 278b, iii. 124a, iv. 312a.

Mildmay’s opposition to the Laudian bishops was linked to his firm dislike of Catholicism. In the opening days of the Long Parliament he seems to have proposed that action be taken against Jesuits.121Procs. LP i. 71. Several weeks later, on 30 November, he supported the moves to dismiss the Catholic army officers, telling the Commons that existing statutes could be interpreted to justify this.122Procs. LP i. 376. His fears found an outlet in his appointment to the committee created to receive information about seditious words spoken by Catholics (14 May 1641).123CJ ii. 147a, 148a; Procs. LP iv. 382, 392, 398. The next day he suggested that no Catholic should be granted wardships and that the children of Catholics should be educated as Protestants.124Procs. LP iv. 397. He was always keen to encourage searches for papists in and around the capital and to disarm them wherever they were.125CJ ii. 24b, 73b, 216b, 261a, 349b, 708b; D’Ewes (C), 163; Add. 18777, f. 52v. Occasionally, this led to embarrassing mistakes, as when the representative of the duc de Lorraine was arrested on the incorrect assumption that he was a priest. It was Mildmay who had to unruffle his feathers.126CJ ii. 223b; Harl. 479, f. 91. It must have given him some pleasure to be able to tell the Commons on 17 June that the Catholic consul to the English merchants at Genoa was willing to assist Parliament.127Procs. LP v. 204, 209, 213. On 3 May 1641 Mildmay took the Protestation, subsequently demonstrating his support for it by re-affirming it in the parish register at Wanstead.128CJ ii. 133a; VCH Essex, vi. 333.

For Parliament, Mildmay’s professional contacts with the London goldsmiths were a useful advantage worth exploiting. He regularly found himself included on those delegations sent to raise money from the London mercantile community. Thus, he was a member of the committee appointed in March 1641 to raise £120,000.129CJ ii. 113a. Eight months later he was once more among those MPs who went to city of London to persuade it to lend £50,000. On 24 December he was able to report that the Merchant Adventurers had indicated that they might willing to raise a loan of that amount for use against the Irish rebels.130D’Ewes (C), 129, 348. By the end of the year the Merchant Adventurers had used him to announce that they would lend £30,000.131CJ ii. 357a, 363b; D’Ewes (C), 348. Once this money had been obtained, he continued to press them for further loans; he and Sir Thomas Barrington* managed to persuade them to lend another £20,000 in the following spring and he continued to encourage them to lend money throughout the subsequent conflict.132CJ ii. 384b, 540b, 542b, 552a, 565b, 574a, 580b, 814b, 897a; iii. 222a, 265b, 586b. Other City merchants probably came under similar pressure from him.133CJ ii. 570b, 572b, 601b, 754b; iii. 62a, 197b, 207b; iv. 71a, 91b, 164a; LJ vii. 289a. He himself lent £1,000 to Parliament in early 1641.134Procs. LP ii. 654. His court position gave him an obvious vested interest when in May 1641 he called for secure funding for the royal household.135Procs. LP iv. 562.

At this stage one of the main purposes for which Parliament needed money was to pay off the Scottish army occupying the north of England. Mildmay was among MPs appointed in June 1641 and again in May 1642 to oversee these payments.136CJ ii. 182b, 555b, 583a, 585a, 657b; LJ v. 78b; Procs. LP v. 274, 279, 281, 283, 287. In August 1641 he moved that Bulstrode Whitelocke* be sent to ask the Lords to make sure that the Scots supplied the names of their nominees for the commissioners to be named in the bill to secure the arrears due to the Scots.137Procs. LP vi. 241-2; CJ ii. 239a, 254a.

Mildmay followed the unfolding crisis in Ireland with alarm. In November 1641, amid the panic at Westminster following the outbreak of the Irish rebellion, he was sent to find out from the lord lieutenant, the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sydney†), who exactly he intended to appoint to military offices in Ireland.138CJ ii. 319b, 353a-b; D’Ewes (C), 165, 167, 168, 333. This was part of a wider concern by him about the state of Ireland once it had become known that the Irish Catholics had rebelled.139CJ ii. 324b, 331a, 348a, 357b, 386b, 394b, 403b, 486a; LJ iv. 460b; D’Ewes (C), 228. On 27 December he lamented to the Commons that, ‘50,000 pounds is spent and not one man as yet gone’.140Add. 64807, f. 17v. He was the MP sent in March 1642 to encourage the peers to subscribe to the Irish Adventure.141CJ ii. 491b; LJ iv. 662b. Rather surprisingly, Mildmay himself does not seem to have invested in the Adventure. That autumn it was envisaged that Mildmay and John Reynolds* would serve as the commissioners to accompany Lord Lisle (Philip Sidney*) to Ireland, although, in the event, Mildmay declined to do so, preferring to remain at the centre of events at Westminster.142CJ ii. 760b, 782b, 835b; LJ v. 353b; Add. 18777, f. 10; Harl. 163, f. 383v.

Rebel, 1642-6

It probably never occurred to Mildmay to follow the king after he left London in January 1642. There had been rumours that Charles was planning to dismiss him, although the fact that Mildmay had obeyed the king’s demand that he lend £2,000 may have helped dissuade the king from doing so just yet.143CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 201; CJ vi. 264b. By the time the king did get round to dismissing him, replacing him with Sir Robert Howard* in 1643, it made little difference.144M. Holmes and H.D.W. Sitwell, The English Regalia (1972), 50, 79. Whatever the king wanted to believe, Mildmay remained as de facto master of the jewel house. That now made him as useful to Parliament as he had ever been to the king. Although Charles had been able take some of his plate with him (Mildmay was later unable to say how much), most of it remained in London and under the control of Mildmay and Parliament.145J.A. Bennett, ‘Account of pprs. relating to the royal jewel-house’, Archaeologia, xlviii. 215. The lead he took in securing control of the Tower of London for Parliament was no doubt primarily motivated by its obvious military importance, but he had his own interest in the matter as the Tower housed part of the jewel office.146CJ ii. 377b, 409a, 410a, 895b, iii. 124a. No one was better placed than he was in March 1642 to establish whether the crown jewels had been removed abroad, the fear being that the king had pawned them to raise money for a war against Parliament.147CJ ii. 495a. What Mildmay did know was that he had been ordered by the king to hand over the plate and jewels in his possession (which did not include the coronation regalia) to Sir Edward Nicholas† so that they could be taken to Holland.148CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 292. Mildmay refused this direct royal command. He was also the obvious person to remind the Commons when the Venetian ambassador was due to leave that it was customary for the monarch to present departing diplomats with items of plate and that, in the absence of the king, it might be appropriate for Parliament to do likewise.149Add. 18777, f. 55.

Despite his appointment as one of the Essex deputy lieutenants in March 1642, Mildmay’s main energies were concentrated on events at Westminster.150CJ ii. 483b. When the various Essex MPs were ordered to return home to ensure that the Militia Ordinance was implemented, Mildmay sought permission to remain in London.151CJ ii. 605b, 607b. That order was reiterated the following October.152LJ v. 382b-384b; Instructions agreed upon by the Lords and Commons (1642, E.121.1). There was certainly much at Westminster to keep him busy. Over the next few years his activity would be matched by few of his colleagues. The Commons would authorise a payment of £225 to him in October 1644 to recompense him for what he termed ‘the great losses and necessities’ which he had ‘incurred for his constant and faithful service to this House’.153CJ iii. 656b-657a. One measure of his importance was that he became one of the regular intermediaries between the two Houses. Once again, the rank conferred on him by his court office may have been thought to make him a particularly suitable person for this task. He spoke with some authority when he berated Sir Robert Harley* in February 1643 for forgetting one of the items of business which he had been supposed to take up to the Lords.154Harl. 164, f. 289.

Part of the reason why his views counted was because he was so closely linked with Warwick. There were times when he was clearly acting in concert with his kinsman. It was no accident that he and Pym had been sent in September 1641 to consult with the earl as to how the money which had been allocated to the navy ought to be spent.155CJ ii. 280b; Procs. LP vi. 659. He may well have arranged for the wardship of the leading Essex Catholic, William Petre, 4th Baron Petre, to be transferred to Warwick and he smoothed the passage of Warwick’s naval commission through both Houses.156CJ ii. 769a, 955a. In November 1643 he acted as Warwick’s spokesman when he asked the Commons to make provision for Dover Castle and the other fortifications along the south coast.157HMC Portland, i. 161-2. (The safety of Dover was a regular concern for Mildmay.)158CJ ii. 146a; Procs. LP iv. 363, 368; Harl. 166, f. 49v. When the Commons wished to relay messages to Warwick, it regularly turned to Mildmay to do so and when Warwick wanted matters raised in the Commons, he did so via Mildmay.159CJ ii. 994a, iii. 311a; Harl. 165, f. 208. Unsurprisingly, the latter supported Warwick’s appointment as lord high admiral.160CJ iii. 329a. Warwick then returned that favour by appointing Mildmay as his vice-admiral for Suffolk.161Sainty and Thrush, Vice Admirals, 45. His links with Warwick also explain his recurring involvement in naval business coming before the House.162CJ iii. 207a, 431b, iv. 57a, 129b; LJ vi. 181b, vii. 347a. Mildmay’s involvement in the scheme to acquire timber from Waltham Forest reflected both his importance in that area and his determination to further the interests of the navy.163CJ iii. 399a, 430b; Harl. 166, f. 33v; A. and O. The letter of thanks sent by the Commons to Warwick in September 1645 was drafted by him.164CJ iv. 265b.

Like Warwick, Mildmay was keen to see the war prosecuted as vigorously as possible. As the king’s army advanced towards London in November 1642, he informed Parliament that the Essex troops were available to defend the capital.165Add. 18777, f. 60. The Commons had previously authorised him to raise these forces on Warwick’s behalf. During this crisis Mildmay acted as one of the crucial links between Parliament and London to ensure that the forces in and around London were fully mobilised.166CJ ii. 845b, 847b, 848b, 849b, 850a, 852b, 860a, 863b; LJ v. 444b-445a, 447b. In March 1643 he persuaded the Commons to agree to grant some horses which had been seized from Catholics in Essex to the troop commanded by Edward Harley*.167Harl. 164, f. 338v. He viewed the burdens of war as a necessary inconvenience. The request from the London militia committee that the levies on the surrounding counties be increased encountered much opposition when Mildmay recommended it to the Commons on 22 December 1643.168Harl. 165, f. 253v. Complaints from Huntingdonshire in the summer of 1644 about overzealous assessment collectors met with no sympathy at all from him.169Harl. 166, f. 74v.

In criticising Henry Marten* in November 1642, Speaker Lenthall referred to Mildmay, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and other, unnamed allies of Marten as ‘the fiery spirits’.170Harl. 164, f. 108v. D’Ewes used exactly the same phrase to describe Mildmay, Cornelius Holland* and Denis Bond* six months later when Mildmay argued that the war should be pursued after the king had failed to agree to a ceasefire. Sir Simonds was all the more appalled by Mildmay’s conduct because he was a royal servant and ‘therefore his treachery to his master was the more odious’.171Harl. 164, ff. 350v-351.

Mildmay’s association with the circle around Marten linked him to some of the most radical of all the MPs in the Long Parliament. That said, relations between Marten and Sir Henry could be stormy. In April 1641 Mildmay had taken the lead in getting the Commons to agree that Marten should not only be expelled from the House but that he should be required to submit to them at the bar and then be imprisoned in the Tower.172Bodl. Rawl. D.1099, f. 17. When Marten suggested in April 1643 that dismissive replies be sent to the latest messages from the king, Mildmay seemed shocked. According to D’Ewes, although Mildmay had been ‘very fierce for the proceeding of the war now kindled amongst us for diverse months past’, he now

took great exception and said that the uttering of such words amongst [us] did only advantage our enemies and hurt ourselves, that it was a very unfit expression, and that he desired that such language might be forborne for the time to come.173Harl. 164, f. 367.

On other occasions, Mildmay worked more closely with Marten. The two of them acted together as tellers in February 1643 to try to prevent the appointment of the commissioners to be sent to Oxford to negotiate with the king.174CJ ii. 985a. Mildmay clearly supported the expulsion of the queen’s Capuchins from Somerset House and may well have encouraged Marten’s attack on Henrietta Maria’s chapel there in March 1643.175CJ ii. 830a, 835b, 885a; iii. 27a; LJ v. 424b. In June 1643, acting on orders from the Commons, the two of them inspected the crown jewels held by Westminster Abbey.176CJ ii. 112b, 114b; The Crown Jewels, ed. C. Blair (1998), i. 344-5. This was intended as a warning that those items could be regarded as popish relics and so might suffer the same fate as the other apparatus of Catholic worship associated with the court.

As these incidents suggest, Mildmay continued to be defined in part by his court office. Sometimes the reasons for assigning business to him were obvious; the Commons almost always turned to him when it wanted a jewel to present as a gift to a favoured individual.177CJ ii. 557a; iii. 517b; iv. 175b, 223b, 309b, 569a; v. 81b. Any tasks relating to the royal household also tended to devolve on to him. Thus, in September 1643, following the expulsion of the Capuchins, Mildmay was ordered to ensure that Somerset House was made ready for the reception of the French ambassador.178CJ iii. 250b, 264a, 264b. Thenceforth Parliament made much use of him as a suitable person to organise the ceremonial welcomes for diplomatic visitors.179CJ iii. 318a, 364a, 368a, 535a, 729b; iv. 8a, 595b, 612b, 623b, 624a, 640b; v. 206b; LJ viii. 437a. This sometimes led to his becoming involved in more substantial diplomatic matters, such as handling the various negotiations with the Dutch ambassadors.180CJ iii. 386a, 432a, 441a, 462b, 568b, 571b, 620a; iv. 21a, 28a, 61a, 164b; LJ vi. 491a, 645b-646a; vii. 139a, 152b, 408b; viii. 382a; Harl. 166, ff. 40v, 100, 101. Other problems were more mundane. In December 1643 he agreed with the suggestion that the furniture at Hampton Court, Whitehall and St James’s should be moved to the Tower to protect it from damage by the troops. This prompted another acid remark from D’Ewes, who noted that Mildmay ‘showed more care of the furniture than of his prince’s honour’.181Harl. 165, f. 251. The care of the royal children who remained at St James’s was another matter Mildmay often found himself asked to deal with.182CJ iii. 377b; LJ vi. 392b; Bennett, ‘Account’, 210. He was also the obvious person to check who exactly was still living within Whitehall.183CJ iii. 410b, 533b. Mildmay still had possession of a considerable stash of royal plate and Parliament ordered a stocktaking of this in early 1644.184CJ iii. 389a. He seems to have been unsentimental about the items in his care, having no qualms about persuading the Commons in May 1643 to melt down the plate of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, as a means of raising money for the war.185Harl. 164, f. 394v. Much of the royal plate in his custody at the Tower of London, worth a total of £3,000, suffered the same fate in October 1644.186CJ iii. 651a, 659b, 665b, 667b. The sale of ecclesiastical vestments and other offensive religious objects seized at Whitehall may have been organised by him.187CJ iii. 463b; LJ vi. 523a-b. In February 1644 he and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd* were given the sole responsibility for deciding which preachers were to preach in the chapel royal at Whitehall.188CJ iii. 410b.

Mildmay’s continuing opposition to Laud was most obvious when he testified against the archbishop at his trial in June 1644. Mildmay was called to explain a remark he had once made to the effect that Laud was ‘the most hateful man at Rome’ to have been archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation. Challenged on this, as it might be thought to weaken the prosecution’s claims of Laud’s pro-Catholic sympathies, Mildmay argued that others in Rome had thought that Laud wanted to improve relations between England and the papacy. Laud cynically judged that Mildmay’s performance on the witness stand had been assisted by ‘good preparation, a flexible conscience, and a fair leading interrogatory’.189State Trials, iv. 484-5.

In the spring of 1643 Mildmay was suspicious that the Lords might do a separate deal with the king. He made sure that the Commons ordered that only correspondence signed by both the Speakers should be sent to the commissioners at Oxford and he made no real secret of his wish that their negotiations there be ended as soon as possible.190Harl. 164, ff. 350v-351, 352; CJ iii. 28a. Before long he was, ‘with much fiery violence’ (again D’Ewes’s phrase), demanding that an oath be introduced ‘so we might distinguish the chaff from the wheat’ (28 Apr.).191Harl. 164, f. 381. It would have been in that spirit that Mildmay may have spread rumours about Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, in October 1643. This confused incident arose from the Commons’ determination to block Wharton’s appointment as governor of Portsmouth so that Sir William Waller* could be appointed instead. In a clumsy attempt to smear Wharton, Mildmay claimed that he had received information from Lord Murray revealing that Wharton had been conducting secret negotiations with the king. Wharton understandably protested, forcing Mildmay and Murray to deny making the claim.192LJ vi. 293b, 294a, 323b, 324b; CJ iii. 300b, 308a, 313a, 317a, 318b, 321a-b, 323b, 327a, 329b, 333a; Harl. 165, ff. 201, 221; G.F.T. Jones, Saw-Pit Wharton (Sydney, 1967), 73-77. Mildmay’s suspicions about some of the peers persisted. Several months later he was accusing William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, of protecting the property of the suspected Catholic peers, Lord Cottington (Sir Francis Cottington†) and Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel.193Harl. 166, f. 17. He opposed the moves to lift the sequestration on the estates of the 5th earl of Bedford (William Russell*).194CJ iii. 560b-561a. Moreover, he almost certainly backed the moves to prevent any peers who had sided with the king from sitting in the Lords; in August 1644 he ‘spake violently’ when arguing that all those peers who had not taken the Covenant should be excluded.195Harl. 166, ff. 43v, 106; CJ iii. 586b; LJ vi. 666a. He was, however, prepared to defend the conduct as lord general of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.196CJ iii. 200a; Harl. 166, f. 3. His suggestion that the elector palatine should be given a military command received little support.197Harl. 166, f. 111v.

His long absences at Westminster did not entirely prevent him finding time to encourage the war effort within Essex. He probably spent the early part of January 1643 in the county helping its mobilisation.198CJ ii. 910a. On his return to Westminster he pressed for the Commons to take action against Sir Thomas Bendish, an Essex gentleman who had taken a petition from the county to the king at Oxford.199Harl. 164, f. 282. That April he may have been the MP who, along with Sir William Lytton*, was given powers to requisition waggons for the Essex troops, although this may have been a clerical error for Sir Thomas Dacres*.200CJ iii. 51a; Harl. 164, f. 373. On several occasions he was asked to write to the leading parliamentarians in Essex to thank them for all their work.201CJ iii. 326a, 549b; Harl. 164, f. 220v. Throughout he was a keen promoter of the work of the Eastern Association.202CJ iii. 167b, 200b, 207a, 250b, 471a-b, 475a, 479a, 481b, 483b, 546b, 549b; iv. 118a, 167b, 267a-b; LJ vi. 174a, 181b, 541b, 610b, 613a; Harl. 166, ff. 203, 203v. Some parliamentarians within the Eastern Association had their doubts about the plans for the New Model; Mildmay however seems to have been more enthusiastic, as he was sent in February 1645 to encourage the Lords to pass the New Model Ordinance.203CJ iv. 47a. He later sat on the committee which obtained an advance on the Essex assessments to facilitate the planned disbandment.204CJ iv. 106a. That summer he was spared by the Commons so that he could return immediately to Essex to raise cavalry to be sent to defend Lincolnshire.205CJ iv. 202a.

Ever since he had helped oversee the payments to them during the early years of this Parliament, Mildmay had seen the strategic advantages of remaining on good terms with the Scots.206CJ ii. 707a, 707b, 737a, 830a; iii. 78b, 132a, 174b; iv. 3b; LJ vi. 136a. This was partly to do with religion. He had been a member of the committee which had prepared the Commons’ letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on the mischief created by episcopacy.207CJ ii. 748a. He had also probably supported the decision to summon the Westminster Assembly of Divines.208CJ ii. 814b, 815a; iii. 109a; LJ v. 407a. On 18 September 1643 he warned the Commons to take action against a petition being collected in London against the Covenant.209Harl. 165, f. 195v; CJ iii. 245b. There was certainly a limit to how far he would support religious innovation, as is indicated by the fact that he was asked in March 1644 to prepare the bill to suppress meetings of antinomians and anabaptists.210CJ iii. 441a. That he played a leading part in the passage of the bill to continue the Committee of Both Kingdoms in May 1644 shows that he remained committed to the Scottish alliance.211CJ iii. 481b, 483b, 485a, 490b, 491a-b, 492a, 493b, 503a, 519b, 531a; LJ vi. 541b, 543a, 551b, 553b, 592a. In contrast to his hostility towards the Oxford negotiations in early 1643, he also welcomed the Uxbridge negotiations two years later.212CJ iv. 62b, 68a. He seems to have been particularly concerned that the religious clauses were acceptable to the Scots.213CJ iv. 179a, 183b, 187a, 189b. In July 1645 he and John Crewe* were the two MPs sent to inform the Scottish commissioners of the contents of the king’s secret correspondence which had been captured at Naseby.214CJ iv. 191b, 194b, 195a, 207b; Harl. 166, f. 232v.

Aftermath of war, 1646-8

On 3 January 1646 Mildmay was temporarily added to the Committee of Both Kingdoms in order to assist in drafting the dismissive reply to the king’s offer to come to Westminster for new negotiations.215CJ iv. 378a, 379b, 395b. By dropping hints that urgent new information had been received, Mildmay made sure that distrust of the king in Parliament did not slacken. That this new information turned out to be the revelation that Edward Somerset, earl of Glamorgan, had been negotiating on behalf of the king with the Irish Confederates meant that those hints had in fact been fully justified.216CJ iv. 398b, 399a, 401a-b, 411a; LJ viii. 93b, 109b. The opportunity was then taken by him to promote the passage of the new militia bill.217CJ iv. 399a, 417a, 435b, 503b; LJ viii. 87b, 122b, 154a, 260a. On the question of how to define ‘tender consciences’ in their request to the king for them to be respected, Mildmay seems to have favoured a more liberal interpretation of that term, possibly because he wanted to discourage the king from conceding the point.218CJ iv. 428a. He remained the principal link between Parliament and the elector palatine.219CJ iv. 500b, 592b; v. 125a, 500a, 545a; vi. 102b; Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 3 (11-18 Apr. 1648), sig. [C3v] (E.435.42).

Mildmay was increasingly associated with the Independents at Westminster. But this did not prevent him assisting Presbyterian clergymen. In February 1646 Mildmay petitioned the Westminster Assembly, asking them to approve the appointment of Humphrey Ellis as the preacher of Winchester Cathedral. He did so as a favour to the Hampshire county standing committee. The Assembly quickly approved Ellis’s appointment.220The Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly 1643-1652, ed. C. van Dixhoorn (Oxford, 2012), iii. 751-2, 758-60.

By late 1646 Mildmay, in common with most of the Independents, was probably privately happy to see the Scots depart. He played his part in trying to ensure that this was achieved as amicably as possible. On 15 July 1646 he had been sent to encourage the Lords to pass a resolution declaring that there was no need for the Scottish army to remain in England.221CJ iv. 618a; LJ viii. 434b. Two days later he and John Gurdon* were sent to check whether they had done so.222CJ iv. 621a. The suspicion was that the peers could not be trusted to do so on terms which would be acceptable to the Commons. It fell to Mildmay on 15 December to obtain the Lords’ approval to the proposal that the Scots be paid £12,000.223CJ v. 14b; LJ viii. 612a. This could be seen either as a final farewell gesture or as an encouragement for them to leave. He had then to help decide how much money was to be spent on the king’s household at Holdenby.224CJ v. 77b. By April 1647 Mildmay may well have been willing to support the offer of the Newcastle Propositions as the basis for a settlement.225CJ v. 142b.

The growing discontent within the army created a new complication. As one of the leading Independent MPs at Westminster, Mildmay was sympathetic to much of what the soldiers wanted. Like them, he distrusted the idea of a treaty with the king and disliked those who wanted to negotiate one. On 12 July 1647 he was sent to reassure the discontented soldiers by explaining what actions the Commons had taken in response to their complaints against the Eleven Members.226CJ v. 240b-241a. Nine days later he asked the Lords to pass the bill disbanding those who had deserted from the army.227CJ v. 253a-b; LJ ix. 341b. Following the Presbyterian coup at Westminster of late July, he was among those MPs who took refuge with the army and signed their declaration of 4 August.228LJ ix. 385b; HMC Egmont, i. 440; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. He therefore subsequently supported the moves to impeach the seven peers who had remained at Westminster throughout.229CJ v. 305b, 306b, 378b; LJ ix. 437a-b, 568a. On his return, he was added to Parliament’s two main naval executives, the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports and the Committee of Navy and Customs.230CJ v. 297b; LJ ix. 430b. Naval affairs therefore retained their interest for him.231CJ v. 505b, 523b, 524a, 545a; LJ x. 168a-b. His exact reaction to the proposal from the Lords in October 1647 suggesting that Presbyterianism should be established for three years is not known, although the fact he was first-named to the committee on the subject suggests that he played a leading part in drawing up the various caveats introduced by the Commons.232CJ v. 336a, 351b, 364a. The escape of the king to Carisbrooke hardly reassured him and he was unenthusiastic about the Four Propositions.233CJ v. 370a-b. He now saw little point in continuing to negotiate with the king and he carried the Vote of No Addresses up to the Lords on 15 January 1648.234CJ v. 434a. Mildmay, in fact, had his own useful connection near the king as his younger brother, Anthony, as his sewer, was one of the few servants retained in attendance on the royal prisoner. While Sir Henry felt he could trust his brother, he was keen to weed out any more questionable servants from around the king.235CJ v. 419b, 420b, 421a, 452b; LJ ix. 639b, x. 15a. Throughout the early months of 1648 Mildmay was kept busy with the investigation into the conduct of the receivers-general for Yorkshire, Thomas and John Bland, possibly because he was seen as an outsider.236CJ v. 429a, 430a, 467b, 514b, 524a; LJ x. 176b-177a; HMC Portland, i. 448.

The spread of the royalists’ uprising to Essex was inevitably Mildmay’s main preoccupation throughout the summer of 1648. He had been as aware as anyone of the tensions within the county even before the royalist rebels took refuge there.237CJ v. 546b, 550b, 563a, However, once it became clear that the rebels were heading towards the county, Mildmay was the one Essex MP who remained at Westminster. This made sense as someone was needed to make sure that the Essex indemnity bill was passed.238CJ v. 585b, 601b. He also made himself useful raising troops in London to be sent to assist Sir Thomas Fairfax*.239CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 105. It was therefore not until after 23 June, when he was ordered to do so and when the siege of Colchester was already underway, that he travelled to Essex.240CJ v. 611b. Once the rebels had surrendered, Mildmay and John Gurdon* were sent to offer Parliament’s thanks to Fairfax.241CJ v. 695a. There were then various related matters requiring Mildmay’s attention as the local consequences of the uprising were sorted out.242CJ v. 695a, 696b, vi. 67a, 99a.

Throughout the latter months of 1648 Mildmay steadfastly opposed all attempts to negotiate with the king. According to Marchamont Nedham in Mercurius Pragmaticus in July 1648, he and Sir Henry Vane II* had opposed the suggestion that the king ought to be moved nearer London because he was ‘a perjured man, and therefore ought in no case to be trusted’.243Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 16 (11-18 July 1648), sig. [Q4] (E.453.11). As the negotiations at Newport progressed, Mildmay was one of the more extreme Independents who attempted to raise any number of side issues in an attempt to obstruct any possible agreement. He opposed the efforts to extend the deadline. The failure of these negotiations was exactly the outcome he wanted.244Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 26 (19-26 Sept. 1648), sig. Mm2v (E.464.45); no. 27 (26 Sept.-3 Oct. 1648), sig. Oo2v (E.465.19); no. 28 (3-10 Oct. 1648), sig. Pp2v, [Pp5] (E.466.11); no. 30 (17-24 Oct. 1648), sig. [Tt4v] (E.468.37); no. 31 (24-31 Oct. 1648), sig. Yyv-[Yy2] (E.469.10); no. 34 (14-21 Nov. 1648), sig. Bbv (E.473.7); no. 35 (21-28 Nov. 1648), sig. [Bbb4] (E.473.35).

Republican, 1648-53

Mildmay’s opposition to new negotiations with the king enabled him to survive the purge of the Commons on 6 December 1648. He had no sympathy with the excluded Members and registered a formal repudiation of the vote of 5 December on 21 December.245Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd2v, [Ddd4] (E.476.35); CJ vi. 97b, 102a; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660, E.1013.22), 21. The problem of what to do with the king may have become a grand constitutional issue but it also had its banal aspects as well; Mildmay had to make the domestic arrangements for him at Windsor, gaining the Commons’s approval for a daily allowance of £10 for this purpose.246CJ vi. 98a-99a. He now found himself added to the Army Committee and the Derby House Committee, confirming his importance within the much-diminished ranks of the Commons.247CJ vi. 96b, 101b, 113b; LJ x. 631b. He was also included on the committee which decided how they were to proceed against the king.248CJ vi. 103a. His appointment as chief steward of the queen’s jointure land on 2 January was an emergency measure, prompted by the realisation that those lands would pass to her on the death of her husband. He replaced the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), who in prison awaiting trial for his part in the second civil war.249Essex RO, D/DM/O2/4. Three months later he appointed Nicholas Lechmere* as his under-steward for some of these manors in Herefordshire and Worcestershire.250E163/24/24.

Once the king’s trial began, Mildmay’s role in it was more controversial than most. Clarendon would single him out for special condemnation because, along with Sir John Danvers*, he was one of only two members of the court who knew the king personally.251Clarendon, Hist. iv. 487. For some, his decision to attend two days of the trial was shocking.252The Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, ed. Ld. Braybrooke (Cam. Soc. xxxii), 28. There can, however, have been few surprised at his apparent willingness to sit in judgment on his master. The real surprise was rather that he then declined to appear for the later stages of the trial and that he did not sign the death warrant. That decision, whether because of a last-minute pang of conscience or hard-headed pragmatism, was to save his life after the Restoration, at least in the short term. What doubts, if any, he may have had about the regicide did not extend to serving under the commonwealth and his appointment to the council of state secured for him a place at the heart of the policy-making of the new republic.253CJ vi. 141a; A. and O. He took the Engagement several days later to qualify himself for that position.254CJ vi. 146b. Over the next three years he would be one of the more active council members.255CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. xlviii-lxxv; 1650, pp. xv-xli; 1651, pp. xxv-xxxv. To his royalist brother, Sir Humphrey, he was now ‘the great man’.256Harl. 454, f. 99v.

Unsurprisingly, the council turned to him in its early days to help dismantle and disperse the remaining physical traces of the Stuart court. During the course of 1649 he sat on the various council sub-committees that decided which royal palaces, parks and possessions should be retained for the use of the new regime.257CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 136, 239, 276, 300. Everything else was then transferred to the trustees for the late king’s goods or the trustees for the royal lands and sold off. The jewel house was one of the most lucrative targets in their sights. The king’s death had terminated all Sir Henry’s remaining duties as master of the jewel house and made the jewel house itself redundant. His salary continued to be paid, however.258Add. 34195, f. 51. In July 1649 the trustees for the king’s goods ordered him to hand over the departmental archives. Mildmay apparently refused to do so and in 1651 some of the records were still in his hands (he may have wanted to retain them in order to support his case for compensation).259HMC 7th Rep. 595. The inventory of the jewel house compiled by the trustees in August 1649 showed that he still held plate and jewels worth £6,771 0s 4d, including the state crowns, at the Tower. These were broken up and sold off.260Inventories King’s Goods, 26-48. The following month, in accordance with the order by the Commons that the crown jewels be destroyed, he seems to have made no effort to prevent the seizure of the coronation regalia from the Tower (they had only recently been transferred there from Westminster Abbey) and he then ordered his relative, Carew Hervey alias Mildmay*, to hand over the remaining pieces of royal plate in his possession.261Inventories King’s Goods, 49-50; HMC 7th Rep. 595; Bennett, ‘Account’, 203-4, 212-17; MacGregor, The Late King’s Goods, 268; Blair, Crown Jewels, i. 345-6. The trustees also stripped the furnishings from Mildmay’s apartment at Whitehall.262Inventories King’s Goods, 335-6. Perhaps unfairly, Mildmay was held by many to be directly responsible for the destruction of the crown jewels. At the Restoration William Prynne* would suggest that he therefore ought to pay for the replacement set which had to be commissioned for Charles II’s coronation.263The Old Parliamentary or constitutional History of England (1751-62), xxiii. 54. In the early 1650s Mildmay was claiming that he was owed £4,000 in salary arrears as master and that he had lost a further £5,000 through the abolition of his department. Some of these sums were promised to (Sir) John Reynolds* as part of the agreement for him to marry Mildmay’s daughter, Susan, several years later.264Essex RO, D/DM/T3/1. This money did not include the £2,000 which Mildmay had been forced to lend to the king and which the Rump agreed to repay in July 1649.265CJ vi. 264b.

Other business undertaken by Mildmay on behalf of the council of state also reflected his former experience as master of the jewel house. The mint had always been closely linked to the jewel house, its methods of operation were similar and it had taken over some of the jewel house’s residual functions. Mildmay was the most obvious person on the council to oversee its administration.266CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 173, 284, 333, 374, 430; 1652-3, p. 48; CJ vi. 138b, 305a. He continued to look after the affairs of the two royal children, Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth, for as long as they remained in Parliament’s custody.267CJ vi. 149b, 195a, 446a, 465b-466a; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 344, 366, 428. His links with the elector palatine and Elizabeth of Bohemia were as strong as ever.268CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 37; 1651, p. 219; CJ vi. 154b-155a, 163b, 205a. He was still expected to help out with the formal courtesies accorded to visiting diplomats.269CJ vi. 149b, 202a, 511b, 516b, 576b. The council and Parliament were probably acting on his advice when they decided that the Speaker should receive the marks of respect formerly due to the king when he visited London in June 1649.270CJ vi. 226a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 175.

The council regularly used Mildmay to report business to Parliament, although these were almost invariably rather minor matters. Thus, he took responsibility for the bill concerning those prisoners captured at sea.271CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 287; CJ vi. 290a. The bill to ban delinquents from London, presented to the Commons in January 1650, was another council-approved bill introduced by him.272CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 488-9; CJ vi. 349b. In June 1650 he laid the correspondence from Walter Strickland* on the murder of Anthony Ascham at Madrid before the House.273CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 194, 209-10, 211, 218-19; CJ vi. 421a, 434a. He was also acting for the council when he raised the question of the illegal Christmas celebrations in Parliament on 27 December 1650.274CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 484-5; CJ vi. 516a.

Mildmay took the lead in taking action against the negligent governor of Dover.275CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 105, 143; CJ vi. 553a, 562b-563a. His colleagues doubtless saw him as a dependable appointment when they included him as one of the judges for the high court of justice which tried James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton.276CJ vi. 152b. He still had little sympathy with delinquents.277CJ vi. 130a, 162a, 167b, 201a, 330b, 393a, 442a, 458b-459a, 527b, 528a, 566a, 573b, 588b-589a; vii. 106b, 166b, 217a. He was also keen to promote a godly preaching ministry (on 5 September 1649 he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers).278CJ vi. 152b, 213a, 218a, 287a, 290a, 336a, 352a, 382b, 416a, 420b, 447b; vii. 6a, 13a, 173b. For that reason, the affairs of Cambridge University remained one of his perennial concerns.279CJ vi. 201a, 382b-383a, 388a; vii. 35a. He even saw in one matter dealt with by the House’s committee on the universities an opportunity for personal gain. In August 1649 Mildmay was among visitors nominated by that committee nominated to purge Winchester College.280CJ vi. 219a; Kirby, Annals of Winchester College, 336. It was later suggested that Mildmay and the warden of New College, Oxford, George Marshall, had been the prime movers behind this as a ploy to get Mildmay appointed as the new warden of Winchester College, but that his appointment was then blocked by two other visitors, Nicholas Love* and Nathaniel Fiennes I*.281Winchester College muniments, no. 445. Meanwhile, in September 1651 Mildmay was teller for the minority who tried to block the introduction of the bill to legislate for new elections.282CJ vii. 20b.

In February 1650 and February 1651 Mildmay had been re-elected to the council of state.283CJ vi. 362b, 532a-b. (He favoured the use of open ballots in those elections.)284CJ vi. 363a-b, 368a-b. He was not so lucky in November 1651. Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, for one was puzzled that Mildmay and Thomas Harrison I*, ‘who were so active and painful the last year’, were not re-elected.285Sydney Pprs. ed. R.W. Blencowe (1825), 126. So for the following 12 months Mildmay was once again an ordinary backbencher. This did not result in any obvious diminution in his activity. For one thing, there were still ambassadors for him to receive.286CJ vii. 53a, 54a, 64b, 86a, 130a, 141a, 146a, 147b, 187a. The incorporation of Scotland into full union with England and Wales was now a major issue and was one which seems to have had Mildmay’s full support. In May 1652 he was appointed to offer the thanks of the Commons to John Lambert*, George Monck* and Robert Tichborne* for their conduct in Scotland.287CJ vii. 56a, 118b, 132b. He helped make sure that the proviso which would have made it explicit that the Act of Oblivion did not pardon those who had acted as purveyors for Charles I during the civil war was dropped; he was perhaps aware that some might draw a comparison between those purveyors and Mildmay’s insistence that he had remained master of the jewel house throughout the 1640s.288CJ vii. 95a. Mildmay re-joined the council of state in November 1652, receiving 58 votes in the second round of the ballot.289CJ vii. 220b-221a; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 505. He now took the lead in promoting the bill which was intended to give relief to tender consciences while suppressing popish recusancy.290CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 28-9; CJ vii. 244a-b. The sale of the royal parks and forests and the conduct of the trustees for the sale of the late king’s goods continued to detain him.291CJ vii. 222b, 245a, 250b. As a member of the council’s sub-committee on foreign affairs, he seems to have supported the continuing war against the Dutch.292CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 37, 47, 266. He was said to have joked that, as the Dutch could outsmart the devil, they should send Sir Henry Vane II to negotiate with them.293A. Clark, ‘Dr. Plume’s notebook’, Essex Review, xv. 12.

Retirement, 1653-60

The dissolution of the Rump by Oliver Cromwell* in April 1653 ended Mildmay’s political career for the time being. From that point he ceased to attend the meetings of the Essex quarter sessions.294Essex QSOB ed. Allen, 25. There is every reason to believe that he was deeply dissatisfied with the successive regimes which emerged in the aftermath of that dissolution. This feeling was probably reciprocated. In the spring of 1654, after a prolonged struggle, the new council of state finally ejected him from his rooms at Whitehall.295CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 397, 412, 424, 425; 1654, p. 70. He ceased to act as custos rotulorum for Essex the following year.296Essex QSOB ed. Allen, p. xxxviii. Under the protectorate, he was still appointed to the local commissions for oyer and terminer, but it is striking that none of the protectoral Parliaments appointed him to any of the commissions within their gift. There is no evidence that Mildmay sought election to those assemblies.

The recall of the Rump in May 1659 allowed Mildmay to re-enter public life. He made the most of this opportunity. Between May and September 1659 he was once again one of the pre-eminent figures in the Commons, sitting on dozens of committees. Many of the issues in which he took an interest, such as naval business, the furnishings of the royal palaces, the reception of ambassadors, the militias, the expulsion of suspicious persons from London and the management of the former royal forests, were familiar enough.297CJ vii. 656b, 663a, 691b, 693a, 705b, 708b, 709a, 710b, 718a, 720b, 727a, 757b, 759b, 769a. He supported the appointment of Charles Fleetwood* as commander-in-chief.298CJ vii. 672b. Everything suggests that he remained committed to the idea of a republic. His colleagues favoured him by re-appointing him as custos rotulorum.299CJ vii. 693b. At some point he also regained his lodgings at Whitehall.300Ludlow, Mems. ii. 215; The Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend 1640-1663, ed. S. Porter, S.K. Roberts and I. Roy (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s.xxv.), 285. One contemporary satire claimed that the Commons had granted special outfits to those relatives of Cromwell who had sided with the ‘Good Old Cause’ and that Mildmay ‘the bauble keeper’ had been appointed to organise this.301Several Resolves Prepared by the Commanding Junto (1659), 6 (E.986.11); Clarke Pprs. v. 303-4.

He seems to have been absent from Parliament in late September and early October, but was present in the Commons on 12 October to act as teller in the division which paved the way for John Lambert and his allies to be suspended from their military commissions, an action which prompted them to act against the Rump the following day.302CJ vii. 785b, 796a. Mildmay was back in Parliament when the Rump resumed its sittings in late December and he remained there throughout January 1660 as they waited for George Monck* to make his way south. He may well have been open-minded (or cynical) about Monck’s intentions as he sat on the two committees which prepared the substantial land grant for him.303CJ vii. 813a, 827a. But the readmission of the secluded Members on 21 February was a step too far and he probably led the walkout by the diehard Rumpers when those Members were allowed to take their seats.304Lttrs. of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, ed. L. M. Baker (1953), 300. It is unlikely that he ever sat again. Many would not have regretted his absence. On 10 March the Commons voted (by 76 votes to 29) not to include him among the Essex militia commissioners named in the new militia bill.305CJ vii. 869b.

Disgrace

The Restoration left Mildmay with very few friends. On 15 May 1660 the Commons issued orders for Mildmay, Cornelius Holland and Nicholas Love* to appear before the committee for the king’s reception to account for the destruction of the crown jewels.306CJ viii. 26. Four days later Mildmay was arrested at Rye while trying to flee the country.307Lttrs. of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, 312, 313; Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 279; Mildmay, Brief Mem. 131. The new master of the jewel house, Sir Gilbert Talbot, visited him in prison at Dover Castle in order to secure Mildmay’s formal surrender of his court office. Mildmay offered Talbot half of his estates in return for his assistance in obtaining a pardon; Talbot declined the offer, but promised to help him secure the pardon anyway.308Younghusband, Jewel House, 236-7. Those hopes of a pardon were now unrealistic. Parliament made Mildmay one of the principal exceptions to the rule that only those who had signed the death warrant or had otherwise played a direct part in the regicide should be punished. Few had any sympathy for him as the servant who had betrayed his royal master and the destruction of the crown jewels was regarded as the symbolic equivalent of regicide, which may indeed have been how the perpetrators themselves had seen it. To one satirist, he was the ‘knave of the diamonds’ who ‘ate the king’s bread, and drank the king’s wine,/So long till at last he drank of his blood.’309A. Brome, Rump (1662), i. 367. Mildmay escaped the death penalty but lost everything else. Under the terms of the Act of Indemnity his estates were confiscated to the crown. Charles II subsequently granted them to the duke of York who was able to sell them back to Mildmay’s son-in-law, (Sir) Robert Brooke†.310LR2/266, f. 4v; Morant, Essex, i. 30; VCH Essex, vi. 324. When Mildmay appeared at the bar on the House of Lords on 23 July to be told his fate, ‘he confessed he sat once in that court [the high court of justice], and no more, and was heartily sorry for the same; and begged for mercy’.311LJ xi. 320b.

On 27 January 1662, the thirteenth anniversary of the judgment by the high court of justice, Mildmay, Lord Monson (Sir William Monson*) and Robert Wallop* were taken by sledge from the Tower of London. At the gallows at Tyburn nooses were place around their necks and they were declared to have forfeited all their titles.312The Traytors Pilgrimage (1662); Pepys’s Diary, iii. 19; Add. 10117, ff. 9v-10; Soc. Antiq. MS 283, f. 9v; The Jnl. of William Schellinks’ Travels in England 1661-1663, ed. M. Exwood and H.L. Lehmann (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. i.), 72; Lttrs. and Pprs. of Robert Baillie, ed. D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1841-2), iii. 471; ‘The Mather pprs.’, Collections of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc. 4th ser. viii. 187. Confined thereafter to prison serving a life sentence, Mildmay then largely disappeared from the historical record. On 31 March 1664 an order was issued to transfer him from the Tower to Tangier, an even bleaker place to suffer permanent imprisonment.313Bayley, Tower of London, ii. 624; Add. 10117, f. 100. He must have died in late 1668, because that December the lieutenant governor of the English garrison, Henry Norwood†, ordered an investigation into claims that Mildmay’s gaoler had stolen some of the possessions left by him at the time of his death. That investigation revealed that Mildmay had died owning some clothes, a few personal possessions, £19 in gold and £58 in sterling.314Sloane 3510, ff. 27, 31, 38. News of his death reached London in late January 1669, when it was reported that he had ‘died full of his venom to his Majesty and interest’.315Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas, PFORZ-MS-0497, MS.103c; Box 5, Folder 4. He was survived by his son, William, but the disgrace exacted on the family had been designed to endure beyond Mildmay’s death. As had been intended by the Convention, this branch of the Mildmays was ruined in perpetuity.