MILL, Sir John 1st bt. (1587-1648), of Newton Bury and Southampton, Hants

Mill’s great-grandfather, John Mill†, who was from a Sussex family, served as town clerk and recorder of Southampton, and represented the borough in Parliament in 1523 and 1529; his great-uncle, Thomas Mill†, also recorder and town clerk, was one of its MPs in 1547 and 1553.31Berry, Hants Genealogies, 26-7; Hants RO, 23M58/64-77; HP Commons 1509-1558. Following the deaths of his father and elder brother in rapid succession in November and December 1587, at only just over eight months old, Mill succeeded to an extensive estate in Hampshire and Sussex.32VCH Hants, iv. 552-3; C142/217/129; C142/217/121. His guardian was John Goldwell†, son-in-law of Bishop Thomas Cooper of Winchester, who gave him a staunch Protestant education.33HMC Hatfield xiv, 278; PROB11/206/14. In June 1605 he was admitted to Gray’s Inn, but he was not called to the bar.34G. Inn Admiss. 109.

Although still only 18, Mill was already married and thus technically out of wardship, a factor which may have influenced his (probably symbolic) appointment as a burgess of Southampton a year later.35Southampton RO, SC 3/1/1, f. 162. The status of his family was reflected in his marriages. His bride in February 1605 was a daughter of Sir George More†, the wealthy Surrey MP, and when she died a little over a year later, he quickly married a daughter of Sir Thomas Fleming I†, recorder of Southampton and Member for the borough (1601, 1604), who became in 1607 chief justice of king’s bench; his eldest son John seems to have been born in 1608.36CB; Al. Ox. A justice of the peace for Hampshire from 1614, Mill was sufficiently wealthy to be created a baronet in 1619, and to be rated at £40 for the purposes of the Forced Loan.37CB; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 340; Add. 21922, f. 16.

Mill succeeded his deceased brother-in-law, Thomas Fleming II†, to whom he was executor, as Member for Southampton in the Parliaments of 1624, 1625 and 1626.38PROB11/143/545; Hants RO, 27M74A/DBC1, p. 123; HP Commons 1604-1629. He satisfied in both particulars the borough’s requirement that members should be resident burgesses: although his seat was some four miles away, he also had a town house in the borough.39CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 416. A loan commissioner in 1626 and sheriff of the county in 1627-8, by 1630 Mill was one of the senior figures on the commission of the peace.40Rymer, Foedera, viii (2), 145; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 317, 330; APC 1629-30, p. 274.

Although Mill appeared to be a staunch supporter of the crown, in September 1630 he refused to compound for his knighthood, offering the usual excuses. He also claimed to have lent money to the king upon a privy seal, to have spent money billeting soldiers, and to have incurred many expenses as sheriff, including the transportation to London of John Felton, assassin of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham. Having appealed for his fine to be respited, he had failed to pay by March 1631 and, summoned to attend the privy council, was fined and removed from the commission of the peace; he paid the substantial sum of £105 in June.41Add. 21922, ff. 178v, 183; E401/2450. He was reappointed as a magistrate in 1633, but in 1639 he was listed as having failed to respond to a solicitation for contributions towards the king’s military campaign against the Scots.42Coventry Docquets, 69; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 139; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 914.

In the spring of 1640 Mill was again returned to Parliament as a Member for Southampton, this time despite recommendations to the corporation on behalf of ‘strangers’, especially that by the joint lord lieutenants of the county, James Stuart, 1st duke of Lennox, and Jerome Weston†, 1st earl of Portland, in favour of Robert Reade*, nephew of Secretary of State Sir Francis Windebanke*. By 6 January the mayor, Nicholas Pescod, considered that Mill and the town’s recorder, Thomas Levingston*, had procured the support of a strong party within the town and expected them to secure the seats.43CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 307. However, when Parliament assembled Mill made no impression on its records. At the autumn elections two local merchants, Edward Exton* and George Gollop*, were returned to Westminster.

Nominated as a commissioner of array for Hampshire in 1642, Mill supported the royalist cause.44Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. That November it is plausible that it was he who spearheaded an attempt to secure Southampton for Charles I.45Godwin, Civil War in Hants (1904), 29-30; Davies, Hist. Southampton, 485-7. He seems to have been the ‘Sir John Mills’ captured by parliamentarian forces with other ‘gentlemen of the county’ at Winchester on 17 December and possibly the man who escaped from the parliamentarian garrison at Portsmouth with Sir Henry Knollys shortly before 1 April 1643.46J. Sterly, The List of Names (1642, 669.f.6.98); I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/474. He received commissions from the king at Oxford in December 1643 and June 1644 and claimed to have loaned over £5,000 to the royalist war effort.47Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 107, 218; PROB11/206/14. His eldest son John, who had been knighted in 1628, served as a colonel in the royalist forces until his capture by Sir William Waller* in April 1644.48Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 194; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 102; P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers (New York, 1981), 256.

When a sick Mill drafted his will in August 1646 his eldest son was dead. In a testament which vehemently proclaimed his life-long attachment to ‘the true Protestant religion according to the doctrine of the Church of England’ and his hatred of ‘the papists’ religion’, he proposed the removal of his grandson and heir from the latter’s Catholic mother Philadelphia, and upbringing by his paternal aunts. Sir John asserted that his ‘personal estate hath been violently taken away from me by the soldiers’ and that his annual income had been sequestered for the previous three years.49PROB11/206/14. In March 1648 Parliament issued an order which appeared to rest on his prior sequestration, but on 19 April the Committee for Compounding certified that he was among delinquents who had not yet compounded; perhaps he had benefited from confusion with his son and namesake, who had.50CJ v. 507a, 509b; LJ x. 132b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 47; SP23/118, pp. 1013-15; CCC 105, 1833. Proceedings then went ahead, but that July Mill died, leaving his second son Thomas, also a delinquent, to pay a composition fine (set in November 1650 at £1,350) and preside as executor over the settlement of a complicated estate.51CJ v. 561b; CCC 1831-4. The infant grandson succeeded as 2nd baronet; his grandson Sir Richard Hill†, 5th bt. sat in four Parliaments between 1721 and 1747.52CB; HP Commons 1715-1754.