MILLER, Edmund (?1660-1730), of Petersfield, Hants.

Miller acted as counsel for the fellows of Trinity in their proceedings against their master, Richard Bentley, till 1720, when he is said to have sold them to Bentley in return for a sum of £528.1J. H. Monk, Bentley, ii. 82; R. C. Jebb, Bentley, 84. Returned as a Whig on his own interest for Petersfield, where he had purchased property, he spoke on 22 Jan. 1714 in support of the army estimates; on 12 Feb. 1725 moved the bill of pains and penalties against Lord Chancellor Macclesfield; and on 17 Mar. seconded a motion designed to restrain the universities of Oxford and Cambridge from purchasing new advowsons and presentations to benefices. On 20 Mar. 1724 he described Bolingbroke’s pardon as ‘the melancholiest news that ever came to England’,2Knatchbull Diary. and on 20 Apr. 1725 he spoke against the return of Bolingbroke’s estates. At the by-election in 1727, caused by his appointment to office as a baron of the Exchequer in Scotland, he succeeded on petition, but did not stand at the ensuing general election. He died 21 May 1730, leaving 5s. to every Petersfield voter for each vote cast for him and describing the high church clergy as the ‘vermin of the nation’.3PCC 169 Auber.