ST. JOHN MILDMAY, Paulet (1791-1845), of Hazlegrove House, Queen Camel, Som. and 21 Edwards Street, London

Mildmay continued to sit for Winchester on the family interest controlled by his mother Lady Jane Mildmay. An active committee man and a ‘moderate’ Whig, increasingly at odds with both the city’s radicals and Tories, his main contribution in the reformed Commons was as a critic of the procedure for conducting election trials. His sympathy for those accused of bribery made him unpopular locally, but it was his unwavering support for the corn laws which ended his political career in 1841: a poignant reminder that not all Liberals backed free trade.

Mildmay’s father had sat for the ‘close borough’ of Winchester as a Pittite from 1802-7, on the Eastgate House interest he had purchased from Henry Penton MP.1HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 89. Following his death in 1808, his estates, including Dogmersfield Park, Hampshire, had passed to Mildmay’s eldest brother, the notorious rake Sir Henry Carew St. John Mildmay (1787-1848), MP for Winchester, 1807-1818.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 87-88. However, Hazlegrove House, a 4,000 acre Somerset estate inherited from Mildmay’s maternal ancestors, was earmarked for Mildmay on his coming of age. After his brother’s scandalous elopement to the continent with a married sister-in-law in 1814, Mildmay’s mother (d. 1857) had assumed control of the family estates and interest at Winchester, where Mildmay was returned as his brother’s replacement in 1818. A freeman of Winchester since 1811, Mildmay had adopted his brother’s Whiggish line in politics and supported Catholic relief and the Grey ministry’s reform bill.3HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 9-11; Hampshire RO, W/B8/1/1. Rumours that he would resign his seat in order to contest a Hampshire by-election in June 1831 came to nothing, and at the 1832 general election he was re-elected for Winchester in first place.4Hampshire Telegraph, 4 June 1832; Examiner, 16 Dec. 1832.

A ‘moderate reformer’, who attended regularly, Mildmay was more active in the committee rooms than on the floor of the Commons.5Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 140. He served on the inquiries appointed into municipal corporations, 14 Feb. 1833, the buildings of the House of Commons, 7 Mar. 1833, agriculture, 3 May 1833, and sinecures, 28 Feb. 1834, and on the trial of the Limerick election, 14 May 1833.6PP 1833 (344), xiii. 2; (269), xii. 2; (612), v. 2; CJ lxxxix. 78; CJ, lxxxviii. 385. In the lobbies he generally sided with the Whig ministry, opposing radical motions for pension cuts, 14 Feb. 1833, inquiry into distress, 21 Mar. 1833, currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, and adoption of the secret ballot, 25 Apr. 1833. However, he was in the radically-inclined minority for the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr. 1833, when he spoke briefly on the issue, and again, 14 Mar. 1834. On 21 Feb. 1833 he obtained leave to introduce a private bill for a road from Bishop’s Waltham to Winchester, which received royal assent, 29 Mar. 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 17).7CJ, lxxxviii. 99, 238. Welcoming an inquiry into venal practices in the 1832 Hertford election, in a rare Commons speech, 24 May 1833, he observed that ‘no distinction could properly be drawn between bribery and treating; the one poured into the stomach, and the other into the pocket of the individual, whose vote was the inducement’.8Hansard, 24 May 1833, vol. 18, cc. 87-8. He voted against any alteration of the corn duties, 7 Mar. 1834, and presented petitions for the better observance of the Sabbath, 29 Apr. 1834, and against any separation of Church and state, 25 June, 30 July 1834.

At the unexpected dissolution at the end of that year Mildmay offered again for Winchester, where it was anticipated that he would secure the second votes of the Tories, being the more ‘moderate’ of the two Liberal contenders. His insistence on publicly voting for his more radical colleague, however, ‘lost him the election’ after the Tories withdrew support and solicited plumpers and his colleague, realising that only one of them could succeed, broke ranks and did the same.9Morning Post, 10 Jan. 1835; Hampshire Advertiser, 10, 17 Jan. 1835. Determined not to be ‘squeezed out’ again in 1837, Mildmay used his father’s Tory connections to bring about an ‘unnatural coalition’ with some of the city’s Conservatives.10Sherborne, Dorchester and Taunton Journal, 29 May 1845. Stressing his ‘moderate principles’, and aided by the ‘extensive means’ available to the new Liberal town council, he was returned in second place, amidst allegations of unprecedented corruption.11The Standard, 22 July 1837; Hampshire Advertiser, 12, 26, 29 Aug. 1837.

In his final Parliament Mildmay continued to support the Whig ministry on most major issues, including Irish municipal reform, church and tithe reforms, and the poor law amendment bill, although he was among those who voted for allowing discretionary outdoor relief, 29 July 1838. He chalked up a string of votes against alteration of the corn laws, 15 Mar. 1838, 19 Feb. 1839, 15 Mar. 1839, 3 Apr. 1840, 26 May 1840, and remained firmly opposed to the ballot, much to the irritation of Winchester’s radicals.12Hampshire Advertiser, 29 June 1839. He also divided against the reception of the Chartist petition, 12 July 1839, and the abolition of church rates, 11 Feb. 1840. He was an active questioner of witnesses on the turnpike inquiry, to which he had been appointed, 25 Mar. 1839, and spoke briefly in the House in support of the county constabulary bill, 30 Mar. 1840, and to protest against barristers requesting leave of absence to perform their professional duties, 9 Mar. 1841. Rumours that he would be posted with Lord Durham’s mission to Canada in 1838, and reports of his being appointed governor of the Ionian Islands, all came to nothing.13Hampshire Advertiser, 31 Mar. 1838.

On 9 Apr. 1838 Mildmay, a veteran of various election committees, had unsuccessfully urged the House to investigate further before considering penalties against John Sayer Poulter MP, who had accused the Shaftesbury election committee of incompetence and bias after it unseated him.14The most recent was the Carlow election committee, which he chaired, 14 Mar. 1838: Freeman’s Journal, 17 Mar. 1838. His ‘screen of Mr. Poulter’, noted one local observer, gave ‘considerable dissatisfaction to some of his supporters here’.15Hampshire Advertiser, 14 Apr. 1838. His attitude towards Peel’s 1839 reform of election petitions procedure (2 & 3 Vict. c. 38) is not recorded, but his doubts about the way the Commons handled the trial of election petitions resurfaced in 1841, following his appointment to the St. Alban’s election committee, 23 Mar. 1841.16PP 1841 (219), ix. p. iv. Claiming that ‘no-one looked with greater disgust than himself’ on bribery, but stressing the need for it to be ‘proved in a legal manner’, he warned that ‘there was an inherent difficulty in calling upon Members of that House who had not received a legal education to give decisions on legal points’, especially as they could not help but be influenced by political bias, 2 Apr. 1841.17Hansard, 2 Apr. 1841, vol. 57, cc. 816-18. Speaking again in similar terms, he noted the ‘lack of opportunity’ for accused witnesses to defend themselves, 27 May 1841, and refused to support the prosecution of Richard Webster for bribery in the last St. Alban’s election, observing that if the House prosecuted ‘upon half a case, they would go before the country as one of the most unjust assemblies that had ever sat’, 8 June 1841.18Hansard, 27 May 1841, vol. 58, cc. 888-9; 8 June 1841, vol. 58, cc. 1329-30. He voted with ministers in the confidence motion that led to their resignation, 4 June 1841.

In his speech against convicting Webster, Mildmay had admitted that his unpopular stance on this matter ‘might be the last act of his political life’.19Hansard, 8 June 1841, vol. 58, c. 1330. In the event, however, it was not this issue that forced his retirement at the 1841 general election, but his support for agricultural protection. His ‘scandalous desertion’ by the local Liberals, because he ‘would not go the whole hog’ on the corn law question, was said to have ‘disgusted the majority of the Reform Club’, which nevertheless lost little time in supplying replacement candidates.20Hampshire Advertiser, 12, 19 June 1841. He is not known to have sought re-election elsewhere.

Mildmay, who had already maimed his left hand in a shooting mishap in 1824, died in May 1845 following an accident at his mother’s seat of Dogmersfield Park.21The Times, 15 Feb. 1825; Hampshire Telegraph, 24 May 1845. Riding across the estate, a foal with its mother ‘playfully ran round’ his pony, ‘when suddenly the mare advanced in front and commenced most viciously kicking, striking Mr. Mildmay off his pony and causing a compound fracture of the shin’. Although the family doctor successfully reset the bone, lockjaw (tetanus) set in, from which he died ten days later, despite an attempt to save him by amputating his leg.22Western Flying Post, 24 May 1845; Sherborne, Dorchester and Taunton Journal, 29 May 1845. By his brief will, penned on his death-bed and proved under £25,000, all his personal estate passed to his widow. The family property of Hazlegrove was inherited in succession by his three eldest sons Paulet Henry (1814-58), Hervey George (1817-82), a naval captain, and Charles Arundell (1820-1904), a clergyman and Oxford don.23PROB 8/238 (11 Sept. 1845); PROB 11/2024/724. It is now a Grade 2 listed boarding school.