Walter Mildmay

Sir Walter Mildmay (bef. 1523 – 31 May 1589) was a statesman who served as

Mildmay was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, but apparently failed to take his degree.^[4] He later became a student of law at Gray's Inn (1546), and there obtained some employment under his father in the Court of Augmentations.^[5] When the Court of Augmentation was reconstituted, about 1545, Mildmay was made one of its two surveyors-general. During Edward VI's reign, Mildmay extended his official connection.

On 22 February 1546/47 he was

For his services, he received many grants of land in Gloucestershire and Berkshire, some of which he exchanged for manors in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire; other grants of land in Cornwall, Essex and London soon followed. He fixed his country residence at Apethorpe Palace, Northamptonshire, which was granted to him in 1552, and was confirmed to him in 1556. When in London he lived in the parish of St Bartholomew-the-Great.^[6]

Mildmay soon proved himself a skillful financier. In 1550 he was directed, together with the

• On 2 January 1552 he was commissioned to levy the King's debts;
• On 21 November to settle with the Crown accountants the effect of a fall in the value of money;
• In December to audit the funds belonging to the king's officers; and
• In that and the next year he superintended the receipt by the crown of plate, jewels, bells, and the like surrendered by dissolved monasteries or chantries.^[5]

Mildmay was elected MP for

Under Queen Elizabeth, with whom he regularly exchanged New-Year's gifts, his influence steadily grew. On her accession he was at once made treasurer of her household, and was appointed a member of a small committee of ways and means to supply the empty exchequer. He was soon employed in preparing a census of the farms of the royal revenues (22 December 1558), in examining Queen Mary's grants of land, in compounding with those who refused knighthood (28 March 1559), in directing the issue of a new coinage (29 October 1560), and in selling crown lands (May 1563).^[5]

On 21 April 1566, Sir

In 1572 he helped to prepare evidence against Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who, nevertheless, after his condemnation gave him some rich jewels. His nephew Sir Christopher Peyton was appointed Auditor General of Ireland in 1584.

The affairs of Mary, Queen of Scots, also occasionally occupied his attention. When she arrived in England in 1567 he strongly advised her detention.^[9] In October 1577 he and Cecil visited her at Chatsworth, after she had announced that she had important secrets to reveal to Elizabeth.

In 1586, he went to

Mildmay died at Hackney on 31 May 1589, and is buried beside his wife in the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in London, where an elaborate monument exists to his memory. The decorations are heraldic, but the Latin epitaph merely records names and dates. The tomb was restored in 1865 by Henry Bingham Mildmay.^[10]

Epitaphs on Mildmay and Sir

Mildmay displayed his interest in education with much effect. On 23 November 1583 he purchased for £550 the site of Cambridge Blackfriars, a dissolved house of the Dominican Order, which was situated in what was then called Preachers Street, but is now known as St Andrew's Street. On 11 January 1584, he obtained the Queen's licence to set up Emmanuel College there.^[8]

The architect was Ralph Symons, and in 1588 the new building was opened with a dedication festival, which Mildmay attended. He installed in the college a master, Laurence Chaderton, three fellows, and four scholars; but subsequent benefactions soon increased the fellowships to fourteen and the scholarships to fifty. According to Thomas Fuller, Mildmay, on coming to court, after the college was opened was addressed by the Queen with the words: "Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a puritan foundation", to which Mildmay replied: "No, madam; far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof".^[8]

His statutes for the government of Emmanuel College are dated 1 October 1585 and are attested by his sons, Anthony and Humphrey, John Hammond, LL.D., William Lewyn, LL.D., Thomas Byng, LL.D., Timothy Bright, M.D., and Edward Downing. Mildmay deprecated perpetual fellowships, and warned the fellows against regarding the college as "a perpetual abode" — they were to look forward to spreading outside the knowledge they acquired within its walls.^[11]

Mildmay otherwise showed his interest in education by acting as an original governor of Chelmsford Chantry School, now

There are three portraits of Mildmay at Emmanuel College; one with his wife. A fourth painting was at Moulsham Hall, demolished in 1809, near Chelmsford, and a fifth at Knole, Sevenoaks. There are also engravings by J. Faber and E. Harding, and an unsigned plate is known.^[12]

Character and publications

Sidney Lee wrote that Mildmay was a man of cultivation and of great piety, with some popular reputation as a believer in second sight.

Henry Roberts, in his Fames Trumpet Soundinge (1589), mentions a book by Mildmay, and describes it as "in print now extant". It was entitled A Note to know a Good Man. Sir John Harington, in his Orlando Furioso, bk. xxii, p. 175, gives a stanza in Latin with an English translation; the former he says he derived from Mildmay's Latin poems, which are not otherwise known. A "memorial" by Mildmay, written for his son Anthony in 1570, consisting of sensible moral precepts, was printed from a manuscript at Apethorpe by the Rev. Arundell St John-Mildmay in 1893. Many of his official letters and papers are at Hatfield or in the state paper office.^[8]

Marriage and issue

Mildmay married Mary Walsingham (died 16 March 1576), a daughter of William Walsingham by his wife Joyce (or Joice), a daughter of Edmund Denny, a Baron of the Exchequer, and a sister of Sir Francis Walsingham. By his wife he had issue including:

• Sir
  Mary Mildmay
  .
• Humphrey Mildmay of Danbury Place, Essex, father of Sir Henry Mildmay;
• Winifred Mildmay, wife of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Gains Park, Essex;
• Martha Mildmay, wife of Sir William Brouncker;
• Christiana Mildmay, wife successively of Charles Barrett of Aveley in Essex, and Sir John Leveson of Kent, Knight.^[12]

Notes

References

• History of Parliament MILDMAY, Walter (by 1523-89) of Apethorpe , Northants
• Lee, Sidney (1894). "Mildmay, Walter". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900. Vol. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 388–390 . Cites:
  • Visitation of Essex (Harl. Soc.), 1612, pt. i. pp. 251, 452;
  • Charles Henry Cooper, Athenæ Cantabrigienses. ii. 51–5;
  • John Bridges, Northamptonshire, ii. 425;
  • John Strype, Annals;
  • James Froude
    , Hist.;
  • James Bass Mullinger, History of Cambridge University, ii. 310 sq.;
  • Calendar of Hatfield MSS, vols. i-iv.;
  • Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. pt. iv. (Westmorland MSS.);
  • Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. p. 507;
  • Wright's Elizabeth.

Attribution

• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1894). "Mildmay, Walter" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 388–390.

Further reading

• 'Lady Mildmay's Journal: A Study in Autobiography and Meditation in Reformation England', by Retha M. Warnicke in the Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 55–68.