William Mitford
Encyclopedia
William Mitford English
historian
, was the elder of the two sons of John Mitford, a barrister
(died 1761) and his wife Philadelphia Reveley.
near Beaulieu
, at the edge of the New Forest
. Here, at Exbury House, his father John's property, Mitford was born. He was educated at Cheam School
, under the picturesque writer William Gilpin
, but at the age of fifteen a severe illness led to his being removed, and after two years of idleness Mitford was sent, in July 1761, as a gentleman commoner to Queen's College, Oxford
. In this year his father died, and left him the Exbury property and a considerable fortune. Mitford, therefore, being "very much his own master, was easily led to prefer amusement to study." He left Oxford (where the only sign of assiduity he had shown was to attend the lectures of Blackstone
) without a degree, in 1763, and proceeded to the Middle Temple
.
his hobby and occupation. After ten years his wife died, and in October 1776 Mitford went abroad. He was encouraged by French scholars whom he met in Paris
, Avignon
and Nice
to give himself systematically to the study of Greek history. But it was Edward Gibbon
, with whom he was closely associated when they both were officers in the South Hampshire Militia, who suggested to Mitford the form which his work should take. In 1784 the first of the volumes of his History of Greece appeared, and the fifth and last of these quartos was published in 1810, after which the state of Mitford's eyesight and other physical infirmities, including a loss of memory, forbade his continuation of the enterprise, although he painfully revised successive new editions.
member of the House of Commons
, with intervals, from 1785 to 1818, but it does not appear that he ever visited Greece. He was for many years a member of the Court of Verderers of the New Forest
, a county magistrate and a colonel in the Hampshire
Militia
. After a long illness, he died at Exbury. In addition to his History of Greece, he published a few smaller works, the most important of which was an Essay on the Harmony of Language, 1774. The style of Mitford is natural and lucid, but without the rich colour of Gibbon. He affected some oddities both of language and of orthography, for which he was censured and which he endeavoured to revise.
Typical for such a man, Mitford was an impassioned anti-Jacobin
from the 1790s, and his partiality for a monarchy led him to be unjust to the Athenians
. Hence his History of Greece, after having had no peer in European literature for half a century, faded in interest on the appearance of the work of George Grote
. Clinton
, too, in his Fasti hellenici, charged Mitford with "a general negligence of dates," though admitting that in his philosophical range "he is far superior to any former writer" on Greek history. Byron, who dilated on Mitford's shortcomings, nevertheless declared that he was "perhaps the best of all modern historians altogether." This Mitford certainly was not, but his pre-eminence in the little school of English historians who succeeded Hume
and Gibbon would be easier to maintain.
William Mitford's younger brother John
(1748–1830) was a lawyer and politician who became Speaker of the House of Commons
and Lord Chancellor of Ireland
. Mitford's cousin, the Rev. John Mitford (1781–1859), was editor of the Gentleman's Magazine
and of various editions of the English poets. He was distantly related to the novelist Mary Russell Mitford
(1787–1865).
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, was the elder of the two sons of John Mitford, a barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
(died 1761) and his wife Philadelphia Reveley.
Youth
They lived at ExburyExbury
Exbury is a village in Hampshire, England. It lies just in the New Forest, near the Beaulieu River and about a mile from the Solent coast. It is best known as the location of Exbury House, built by the Rothschild family, and the famous Exbury Gardens...
near Beaulieu
Beaulieu, Hampshire
Beaulieu is a small village located on the south eastern edge of the New Forest national park in Hampshire, England and home to both Palace House and the British National Motor Museum.- History :...
, at the edge of the New Forest
New Forest
The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily-populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire....
. Here, at Exbury House, his father John's property, Mitford was born. He was educated at Cheam School
Cheam School
Cheam School is a preparatory school in Headley in the civil parish of Ashford Hill with Headley in the English county of Hampshire. It was founded in 1645 by the Reverend George Aldrich in Cheam, Surrey and has been in operation ever since....
, under the picturesque writer William Gilpin
William Gilpin (clergyman)
The Reverend William Gilpin was an English artist, clergyman, schoolmaster, and author, best known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque.-Early life:...
, but at the age of fifteen a severe illness led to his being removed, and after two years of idleness Mitford was sent, in July 1761, as a gentleman commoner to Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...
. In this year his father died, and left him the Exbury property and a considerable fortune. Mitford, therefore, being "very much his own master, was easily led to prefer amusement to study." He left Oxford (where the only sign of assiduity he had shown was to attend the lectures of Blackstone
William Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone KC SL was an English jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England. Born into a middle class family in London, Blackstone was educated at Charterhouse School before matriculating at Pembroke...
) without a degree, in 1763, and proceeded to the Middle Temple
Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...
.
Historian of ancient Greece
He married Miss Fanny Molloy in 1766, the daughter of James Molloy of Dublin. He retired to Exbury for the rest of his life, and made the study of the Greek languageGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
his hobby and occupation. After ten years his wife died, and in October 1776 Mitford went abroad. He was encouraged by French scholars whom he met in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
and Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
to give himself systematically to the study of Greek history. But it was Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
, with whom he was closely associated when they both were officers in the South Hampshire Militia, who suggested to Mitford the form which his work should take. In 1784 the first of the volumes of his History of Greece appeared, and the fifth and last of these quartos was published in 1810, after which the state of Mitford's eyesight and other physical infirmities, including a loss of memory, forbade his continuation of the enterprise, although he painfully revised successive new editions.
Later life and legacy
While his book was progressing, Mitford was a ToryTory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
member of the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
, with intervals, from 1785 to 1818, but it does not appear that he ever visited Greece. He was for many years a member of the Court of Verderers of the New Forest
New Forest
The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily-populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire....
, a county magistrate and a colonel in the Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
Militia
Militia (United Kingdom)
The Militia of the United Kingdom were the military reserve forces of the United Kingdom after the Union in 1801 of the former Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland....
. After a long illness, he died at Exbury. In addition to his History of Greece, he published a few smaller works, the most important of which was an Essay on the Harmony of Language, 1774. The style of Mitford is natural and lucid, but without the rich colour of Gibbon. He affected some oddities both of language and of orthography, for which he was censured and which he endeavoured to revise.
Typical for such a man, Mitford was an impassioned anti-Jacobin
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
from the 1790s, and his partiality for a monarchy led him to be unjust to the Athenians
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
. Hence his History of Greece, after having had no peer in European literature for half a century, faded in interest on the appearance of the work of George Grote
George Grote
George Grote was an English classical historian, best known in the field for a major work, the voluminous History of Greece, still read.-Early life:He was born at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent...
. Clinton
Henry Fynes Clinton
Henry Fynes Clinton was an English classical scholar and chronologist.-Life:He was born in Gamston, Nottinghamshire; for some generations his family bore the name of Fynes, but his father resumed the older family name of Clinton in 1821...
, too, in his Fasti hellenici, charged Mitford with "a general negligence of dates," though admitting that in his philosophical range "he is far superior to any former writer" on Greek history. Byron, who dilated on Mitford's shortcomings, nevertheless declared that he was "perhaps the best of all modern historians altogether." This Mitford certainly was not, but his pre-eminence in the little school of English historians who succeeded Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
and Gibbon would be easier to maintain.
William Mitford's younger brother John
John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale
John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale PC, KC, FRS , known as Sir John Mitford between 1793 and 1802, was a British lawyer and politician. He was Speaker of the House of Commons between 1801 and 1802 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland between 1802 and 1806.-Background:Born in London, Mitford was the...
(1748–1830) was a lawyer and politician who became Speaker of the House of Commons
Speaker of the House of Commons
Speaker of the House of Commons can refer to:*Speaker of the House of Commons *Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada*Speaker of the Northern Ireland House of Commons...
and Lord Chancellor of Ireland
Lord Chancellor of Ireland
The office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland was the highest judicial office in Ireland until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. From 1721 to 1801 it was also the highest political office of the Irish Parliament.-13th century:...
. Mitford's cousin, the Rev. John Mitford (1781–1859), was editor of the Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
and of various editions of the English poets. He was distantly related to the novelist Mary Russell Mitford
Mary Russell Mitford
Mary Russell Mitford , was an English author and dramatist. She was born at Alresford, Hampshire. Her place in English literature is as the author of Our Village...
(1787–1865).
Mitford sisters
Mitford was the great-great-great-grandfather of the Mitford sisters, who came to public notice in Britain from the 1930s, as follows:- William
- Capt Henry Reveley Mitford RN (1769–1804) (see HMS York (1796)HMS York (1796)HMS York was a 64-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 24 March 1796. She had originally been laid down at Barnard's Deptford yard as an East Indiaman named Royal Admiral, but the shortage of naval shipping caused by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War with France...
) - Henry Mitford (1804–84)
- Algernon, 1st Lord RedesdaleAlgernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron RedesdaleAlgernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale GCVO, KCB , of Batsford Park, Gloucestershire, and Birdhope Craig, Northumberland, was a British diplomat, collector and writer...
(1837–1916) - David, 2nd Lord RedesdaleDavid Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron RedesdaleDavid Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, , was an English landowner and was the father of the Mitford sisters, in whose various novels and memoirs he is depicted.-Ancestry:...
(1878–1958) - The sisters