MILDMAY, Humphrey Francis (1825-1866), of Shoreham Place, Sevenoaks, Kent

A noted scholar and landed gentleman, Mildmay’s moderate Liberal views were so unexceptionable that a Conservative newspaper described him as ‘very mild’.1Hereford Journal, 27 Apr. 1859. Indeed, Mildmay, who appears to have cast off his family’s additional patronymic of St. John, provides a good example of John Vincent’s ‘gentlemen of liberal views’, the solid, unexceptional, moderate MPs who were gentlemen of leisure or minor landowners, making up the bulk of the parliamentary Liberal party in the late 1850s and early 1860s.2J. Vincent, The formation of the British Liberal party, 1857-68 (1966), 63-5. His father, Humphrey St. John Mildmay, who had married a Barings bank heiress and become one of its directors, owned land in Kent and represented Southampton as a Conservative, 1842-6. Mildmay achieved a first class degree in mathematics from Oxford, and was later awarded a scholarship.3P. Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: A History of One of the Greatest Banking Families, the House of Barings, 1762-1929 (1988), 120, 126; Dod’s parliamentary companion (1860), 248.

In May 1852, when a vacancy occurred at Pontefract, placards were issued for Mildmay, describing him as the farmers’ friend and a supporter of the mercantile and shipping interest, but with no writ issued before the general election that July, he did not appear to contest the constituency.4Morning Chronicle, 20 May 1852.

At the 1859 general election Mildmay accepted another requisition to stand for Herefordshire and was returned unopposed. His connection with the county was through his cousin William Bingham Baring, 2nd Baron Ashburton, who owned the Rudhall and other estates in the county.5Hereford Times, 16 Apr. 1859. At the nomination, Mildmay’s proposer noted that ‘he has been in the United States, and has been able to obtain a knowledge of their institutions, and to see where they are better than ours, and wherein ours are better than theirs’.6Hereford Journal, 4 May 1859. Mildmay called for the church rates question to be ‘brought to a speedy conclusion’, but he condemned Derby’s reform bill. He advocated neutrality in foreign affairs, but asserted that Britain should ‘declare our sentiments in favour of the oppressed nationalities’. He also complained that the Conservative foreign secretary, Lord Malmesbury, ‘sympathised with despotic powers’.7Ibid. In 1861 Mildmay strengthened his connection with the county through his marriage to the daughter of George Clive, Liberal MP for Hereford.8Most standard sources state that Mildmay was a bachelor, but W.R. Williams, The parliamentary history of the county of Hereford, 1213-1896 (1896), 68-9, provides details of this marriage, which is confirmed by IGI.

Mildmay was a party loyalist who sided with the Liberal leadership in all key party votes, dividing in favour of the address and the repeal of paper duties, 10 June 1859, 12 Mar. 1860, and against Disraeli’s censure motion on Danish policy, 8 July 1864. He cast votes in favour of the abolition of church rates and Anglican tests at Oxford University, his alma mater. He backed the county and borough franchise bills of the early 1860s, but opposed the ballot.

On the rare occasions that Mildmay spoke in the chamber, he generally asked questions of ministers. His first intervention, 17 Feb. 1860, was to ask William Gladstone, the chancellor of the exchequer, about whether domestic hop growers, an important part of the Herefordshire economy, had to pay hop duty up front or whether they could defer until the hops had been sold. He later inquired about the planting of shrubs in Hyde Park and the frequent disputes that had arisen between magistrates and coroners in Kent, his native county, 9, 16 Mar. 1860. On 27 April 1860 he called on the government to respond to reports that Indian troops in Egypt had caused great offence by disrespecting a mosque in Cairo. He also questioned the navy’s adoption of a new type of anchor and the compensation to be paid to the inventor, Mr. Trotman, 29 June 1860.

On 23 July 1860 Mildmay successfully struck out £1,200 from the civil service estimates, a sum which was proposed to finance a funeral train carriage for the late duke of Wellington and a building to house it. Mildmay complained that the carriage was in poor taste for a great military hero like Wellington, and that its proper place was in the ‘Chamber of Horrors’. In another rare intervention, he asked Austen Henry Layard, junior foreign office minister, about reports that the British steamer, ‘the Bermuda’, had been seized by a United States warship, but the government had not received any news, 23 May 1862.

The only select committee Mildmay served on was the 1864 inquiry on turnpike tolls chaired by his father-in-law George Clive. Clive’s report, which Mildmay supported, recommended abolishing the turnpike tolls. As through traffic had long since transferred to the railways, the tolls had become a burden borne largely by local communities.9PP 1864 (383), ix. 333-9. Despite the recommendation, the tolls were only gradually abolished in the 1870s.10S. and B. Webb, English local government: the story of the king’s highway (1920), 221.

Mildmay retired at the 1865 general election and died prematurely barely a year later. His death was ‘much regretted’ in his former constituency.11Hereford Journal, 8 Dec. 1866. On his death the 2,500 acre Shoreham Place estate passed to his younger brother Henry Bingham Mildmay.12J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. D. Spring (1971), 310. He also left a personal estate of £300,000.13National Probate Calendar, 17 Jan. 1867.