Jeremiah Milles

British, 1751 - 1797

BiographyJeremiah Milles (1751-1797) was the eldest of five children of Edith Potter (c.1726-1761), and the Very Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Milles (1714-1784), Dean of Exeter, an eminent antiquarian, collector, and president of the Society of Antiquaries from 1768 to 1784. His mother died when he was ten years old, and he and his siblings were raised in a relaxed manner by their distinguished father, whom they reportedly viewed "only as an Elder Brother, to whom they owe more respect, but not less Openness." At the age of twelve, Milles enrolled at Eton where he remained until 1768, the year of a student rebellion which he documented in a manuscript account. He received a bachelor's degree from Oxford in 1772 and the following year won the Chancellor's Prize for the best English prose composition on the subject of Ars Musica. Fanny Burney saw much of him in late-summer 1773 and reported that Milles had "a very good Figure & [was] extremely handsome, but rather too much of the embonpoint [i.e. plumpness]--he seems polite, mild, sensible & amiable." In 1775 Milles was elected a fellow of Merton College, and in 1776 he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn. On June 9, 1780 he married a wealthy heiress, Rose Gardiner. He became the subject of scandalous newspaper reports and gossip in early May 1781 after allegedly making sexual overtures toward a Scotsman by the name of Macartney at the Royal Academy exhibition. His father dismissed the incident as simply "an Eton trick," but Milles reportedly considered fleeing to the Continent. Instead he retreated to Pishobury, the manor house in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, recently inherited by his wife. He was appointed Sheriff of Hertfordshire in February 1786 and served as a Member of Parliament. He died on April 22, 1797 in Harley Street, London.

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