Chesterford, Essex, on 10 July 1891, and was buried there. Miles's only daughter was married to M. Richard Waddington, brother of the well-known diplomatist and statesman. He was one of the earliest fellows of the Linnean Society, and wrote a paper on ‘The Marine Zoology of the Clyde,’ in the ‘Annual Report of the British Association.’ Besides editing the correspondence of his father in 1890, he published some religious treatises and pamphlets on Scottish episcopacy.
[Manuscript Biographical Memoir (unfinished) by Rev. C. P. Miles; Correspondence of W. A. Miles on the French Revolution, 1789–1817, ed. C. P. Miles, with Introduction, 1890; Brit. Mus. Cat. The correspondence up to 1789 is unpublished. See also Biog. Dramatica, i. 512; Public Characters, ii. 778; Memoirs of Living Authors (1798), vol. ii.; Dict. of Living Authors (1816); private information; Sunderland Daily Echo, 13 July 1891; Sunderland Herald, 15 and 17 July; Newcastle Daily Journal, 15 July; Luard's Grad. Cantabr.; Brit. Mus. Cat.; private information.]
MILEY, JOHN, D.D. (1805?–1861), catholic divine, a native of co. Kildare, was born about 1805. He was educated at Maynooth and Rome, in which city he resided from 1833 to 1835, devoting himself chiefly to the study of theology and the history of the papacy. On his return to Ireland in 1835 he was appointed curate of the metropolitan parish, Dublin. He was an ardent admirer of Daniel O'Connell, and warmly defended his attitude on certain politico-religious questions, notably national education and the Catholic Bequest Bill in 1838. He attended the Liberator during his confinement in Richmond Gaol in 1844. He was greatly distressed at the rupture between O'Connell and the young Ireland party, and in December 1846 he laboured hard to effect a reconciliation between him and Smith O'Brien. With the permission of Archbishop Murray he accompanied O'Connell as his private chaplain to Italy in 1847, and by his assiduous devotion did much to alleviate his last sufferings. In obedience to O'Connell's injunction he carried his heart to Rome, and having seen it placed with impressive ceremonies in the church of St. Agatha, he returned with his friend's body to Ireland, and on 4 Aug. preached his funeral sermon in the metropolitan church, Marlborough Street. In 1849 he was appointed rector of the Irish college in Paris, and ten years later became parish priest of Bray, where he died on 18 April 1861. He was an accomplished preacher, well read in ecclesiastical history, and the author of ‘Rome under Paganism and the Popes,’ 1848; ‘History of the Papal States,’ 1850; ‘Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes,’ 1856; ‘L'Empereur Napoléon III et la Papauté,’ 1859.
[Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Fitzpatrick's Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell; Freeman's Journal, 7 Aug. 1847, 19 April 1861.]
MILL, HENRY (1683?–1771), engineer to the New River Company, eldest son of Andrew and Dorothy Mill, was born in 1683 or 1684. Betham (Baronetage, i. 175) says that he was of the family of Mill of Camois Court, Sussex, and according to his epitaph in Breamore Church, near Salisbury, he was a relative of Sir Hugh Myddelton [q. v.] It was probably owing to the latter circumstance that he obtained the appointment about 1720 of engineer to the New River Company. It is probable that he was identical with the Henry Mill who in 1706 obtained a patent (No. 376) for an improvement in carriage springs, and also in 1714 another patent (No. 395) for an apparatus ‘for impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print, very useful in settlements and public records.’ The patent contains no description of the apparatus, but it has always been regarded as the first proposal for a type-writer. The engineer's epitaph sets forth that ‘his capacity [was] excellent in … all the branches of the mathematicks, and other liberal sciences,’ and in his will, proved 6 April 1771 (P. C. C. Trevor, fol. 170), he mentions his ‘private fancied toys,’ a phrase which might well include models of his inventions.
The obituary notice in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ states that he erected waterworks at Northampton, and that he received the freedom of the borough in recognition of his services, but there was no regular water supply at Northampton until the present century, and the municipal records of the town show that in 1722 Henry Mill obtained his freedom by purchase. He was employed by Sir Robert Walpole to carry out the water supply for Houghton Hall, and a well sunk by him is still in use. It has the peculiarity of being provided with a flight of steps leading down to the pumps, which are said to show great ingenuity.
Mill died unmarried at his house in the Strand on 26 Dec. 1771, and he was buried in Breamore Church, near Salisbury, where there is a long epitaph to his memory. The epitaph states that he was ‘aged eighty-seven,’ but he is entered in the parish register as ‘aged 88 years.’
