MILDMAY, Henry (1619-92), of Graces, Little Baddow, Essex.

The Mildmays of Graces were a junior branch of the Mildmay family of Essex. Henry’s father, Sir Henry, was knighted in 1605 while serving in Ireland. Mildmay’s neighbour, John Bramston†, who disliked him, wrote that he had been ‘bred a puritan in blood and education’. What Bramston was referring to was the fact that Mildmay was the nephew of the extreme parliamentarian, John Gurdon*, and that he had been educated at Felsted by Martin Holbeach ‘who scarce bred any man that was loyal to his prince’.28Bramston, Autobiography, 123-4. From Felsted, Mildmay proceeded to Gray’s Inn, where he was still a student when his father died in 1639. As he had not yet come of age, his mother paid the substantial sum of £3,333 6s 8d to the crown for his wardship.29Essex RO, D/DPl/15. Within a year however, Henry had reached his majority and soon after his mother transferred to him the right to act as the executor of his father’s will.30Essex RO, D/DPl/16. One of his first public roles as an adult member of the county community was to sign the Essex election return in October 1640.31C219/43, pt. 1, f. 145.

Mildmay had reached adulthood just as the country was slipping into civil war. In common with most of the Essex Mildmays, Henry sided with Parliament. As soon as the war broke out he signed up as a captain in the parliamentarian army and by the summer of 1643 he had been promoted to become a colonel of horse.32SP28/1a, ff. 61, 97, 181, 183; Bramston, Autobiography, 124; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. The motto on his impresa as captain was ‘Sola salus salutis in domino’ – ‘Salvation’s safety lies in the Lord alone’.33A.R. Young, Emblematic Flag Devices of the English Civil Wars 1642-1660 (Toronto, 1995), 228. He combined that role with being one of the Essex deputy lieutenants, a job to which he was nominated by Parliament in August 1643.34CJ iii. 199b, 202b. He was also named to a number of local commissions created by Parliament, including the Essex committee for the sequestration of delinquents. That autumn he helped seize control of the estates of William Petre, 4th Baron Petre, the leading Catholic peer in the county.35A. and O.; CJ iii. 260a, 310b. These committees served as his introduction to the work of the local magistracy. In March 1644 he acted as a messenger between the Committee of Both Kingdoms and the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†).36CSP Dom. 1644, p. 66.

On his return to Cambridge Manchester appointed him as the town’s governor, possibly in succession to Thomas Cooke*.37SP28/20, f. 215; SP28/18, f. 164; SP28/23, f. 218; Bramston, Autobiography, 124. Unsurprisingly, he then became one of the most regular attenders of the Eastern Association committee, which usually held its meetings at Cambridge.38SP2817-21; SP28/23; SP28/25; Add. 19398, f. 172. At some point he was also appointed by Manchester as one of the commissioners to purge the university.39Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 372, 382; CUL, Mm.1.44, p. 454; J.D. Twigg, ‘The parliamentary visitation of the Univ. of Cambridge, 1644-1645’, EHR xcviii. 518. As a member of the Cambridgeshire committee for scandalous ministers, he heard accusations against the vicar of Grantchester in October 1644.40Cambs. Cttee. for Scandalous Minsters, ed. Hart, 80. Attending the meeting of the Eastern Association at Bury St Edmunds on 30 January 1645 to discuss the plans for the New Model army, he mocked the claim by John Spelman* that he was unaware of those proposals; for his own part, Mildmay claimed to know of them because he had been ‘informed at London’ and had ‘read the same in printed pamphlets’.41Suff. ed. Everitt, 85. That July the captain of the garrison, Robert Jordan, tried to get him removed as the governor of Cambridge, in the hope that of being appointed to that position himself. The Committee of Both Kingdoms, however, decided that Mildmay should be continued in post.42CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 28, 45, 74. In late December 1646 he was one of the eight men handed over as hostages to the Scots as security for the payment of the money owed to them by the English Parliament.43CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 499.

The expulsion of Sir John Clotworthy* from the Commons in January 1648 created a vacancy for one of the Maldon seats. Mildmay, as a committed parliamentarian and the major neighbouring landowner, was easily elected in the by-election held there on 10 April.44CJ v. 475a; Essex RO, D/B 3/1/20, f. 163. His difficulties only began after the election. Overlooking Mildmay’s recent return, Clotworthy was readmitted by the Commons on 8 June, creating uncertainty as to which of them had the legitimate claim to the seat. A report from the committee of privileges 18 days later resolved the issue in Clotworthy’s favour on the grounds that the sheriff of Essex had died before Mildmay’s election.45CJ v. 589b, 600a, 601b, 605b, 612b; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 266 (20-27 June 1648), 991 (E.449.45); The Moderate no. 171 (22-29 June 1648), sig. kkkkkkkkv (E.450.8). Mildmay was therefore prevented from taking his seat in this Parliament.

Mildmay’s loyal service to the parliamentarian cause encouraged the Rump to appoint him as a member of the high court of justice created to try the king in January 1649.46A. and O. There is no evidence that he attended any of the proceedings and he certainly did not sign the death warrant. He was, however, willing to serve under the new republic and retained his local offices. In 1651 he is known to have been active as a militia commissioner.47SP28/227: warrants, Sept.-Oct. 1651.

The 1654 elections presented Mildmay with far fewer difficulties than the 1648 by-election had done. With 13 county seats available in Essex, Mildmay probably found it relatively easy to secure his election. This time he was allowed to take his seat. Unfortunately, the election of his cousin, Carew Hervey alias Mildmay, to both the 1654 and 1656 Parliaments creates impenetrable problems of identification. The two of them are variously described in the Journals as ‘Mr Mildmay’, ‘Colonel Mildmay’ and ‘Captain Mildmay’, yet both had held the rank of colonel and it is by no means clear that the clerks had adopted a consistent policy to distinguish between them. On balance, it seems more likely that Henry Mildmay, having had a more prominent military career, would have been referred to by his military rank, but this can only be speculation, not a solid assumption. As it was, neither was particularly active during the 1654 Parliament, at most sitting on a couple of committees.48CJ vii. 378b, 381a.

Mildmay’s re-election for his seat in 1656 ought to have permitted him to sit in the next Parliament, but he then found himself among those MPs who were prevented from doing so by the council of state.49CJ vii. 425a. He may therefore have made the most of his chance to take his seat when this Parliament re-convened in January 1658. On the opening day of the new session ‘Colonel Mildmay’ was among MPs who queried whether the Commons had the right to appoint its own clerk.50Burton’s Diary, ii. 318. He had certainly taken his seat by the following day when he was added to the privileges committee and the committee on the bill for the maintenance on ministers.51CJ vii. 580b. Then on 22 January ‘Mr Mildmay’ joined those who did not want to receive the messengers from the Other House, in case that was construed as recognition of its existence. He was rebuked by the Speaker after calling for a division when it was clear that a majority of the House had agreed that the messengers should be admitted. Not knowing that it was bad form to demand a division when its outcome was not in doubt was no doubt evidence of his inexperience. Later in the debate ‘Colonel Mildmay’, who may well have been the same MP, argued that recognising the Other House amounted to a recognition that they were the same as the old House of Lords. He then acted as teller for those who did not want a reply sent to the message which the messengers had earlier delivered.52Burton’s Diary, ii. 339, 340, 343, 344; CJ vii. 581b. ‘Colonel Mildmay’ also acted as a teller in a division on 11 May 1658 in which he counted those MPs who, in effect, favoured a delay in the discussion on whether the Scottish MPs should be allowed to continue sitting.53CJ vii. 613a.

Following the revival of the old constituencies for the elections to the 1659 Parliament, Mildmay sought and obtained election once again at Maldon. An old issue revived on the opening day of the new Parliament. Contradicting the position he had taken just a year earlier, he backed the decision to proceed immediately with the appointment of a clerk of the Commons, although he did think that the clerk had been presumptuous to have taken his place before being appointed.54Burton’s Diary, iii. 5, 6. When George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, asked to be released from prison, Mildmay was among those who thought it better that this request be investigated by a committee before being granted.55Burton’s Diary, iii. 370. In the debate the following day (22 Feb.) on whether to recognise the Other House, he argued that they should consider its powers first and only then move on to consider its composition.56Burton’s Diary, iii. 417. Once the Commons had moved on to debate whether the Scottish and Irish MPs should be allowed to sit, he forcefully argued that those Members should not sit until their status had been resolved. He even went so far as to suggest that this was ‘the most serious business that ever was’ and that ‘our lives and liberties’ depended on it.57Burton’s Diary, iv. 87, 107. The right of the Irish MPs to sit was the subject of one of the three divisions in which Mildmay served as a teller. In that division on 22 March, which was on a subsidiary motion, his objective may have been to restrict the terms of the debate in order to increase the chances of the Irish MPs being excluded.58CJ vii. 618b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 233. (This tends to confirm the assumption that Henry Mildmay had been the teller in the 11 May 1658 division.) On that occasion the other teller acting with him was Robert Jenkinson* and the two of them again served as tellers in a division on 14 April concerning the exact wording of the proposed declaration on the excise.59CJ vii. 639b. The third division in which he was a teller was on whether candles should be brought in (11 Mar.).60CJ vii. 613a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 139. Five months later the Rump re-appointed him to a commission in the Essex militia.61CJ vii. 772a.

Mildmay’s politics were out of sympathy with the tone of the Restoration and, although he received a royal pardon in September 1660, he found himself largely excluded from local office.62PSO5/8, unf. Having briefly sat for Maldon in the 1660 Convention, he did not regain a seat until the incoming whig tide swept him to a place as knight of the shire for Essex in the three consecutive Exclusion Parliaments. Unlike some other whigs, he avoided becoming a whig ‘collaborator’ under James II and served again as one of the MPs for Essex in two further Parliaments before his death in 1692.63HP Commons 1660-1690. As all four of his sons had died young, most of his estates passed to one of his five daughters, Frances, who had married Christopher Fowler, a London merchant.64Morant, Essex, i. 368, 370, ii. 25.