ton Milnes (1784-1858) of Fryston Hall, near Wakefield, by the Hon. Henrietta Maria Monckton, second daughter of the fourth Viscount Galway. The family, originally from Derbyshire, was in the eighteenth century largely interested in the cloth trade. The father achieved some distinction. Born in 1784, eldest son of Richard Slater Milnes, M.P. for York, by Rachel, daughter of Hans Busk of Leeds, he was educated at a private school in Liverpool and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had a brilliant career, proceeding B.A. in 1804. In 1806, at the age of twenty-two, he became M.P. for Pontefract, and on 15 April 1807 he defended the Duke of Portland's administration in a remarkable speech, which was long remembered. In October 1809 he declined the offer of a seat in Mr. Perceval's administration, and retiring to Yorkshire as a country gentleman led the politics of the county, supporting catholic emancipation and opposing the repeal of the corn laws. After paying a brother's debts he found himself forced to reside abroad, chiefly at Milan and Rome, for several years from 1829. In 1831 he travelled in southern Italy, and afterwards printed the journal of his tour for private circulation. He was highly popular in society, but of a fastidious nature, and he refused a peerage offered by Lord Palmerston in 1856. He died on 9 Nov. 1858.
Monckton Milnes, who was delicate as a child, was educated at Hundhill Hall school, near Doncaster, and then privately, until in October 1827 he was entered as a fellow-commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he owed much to the influence of his tutor, Connop Thirlwall [q. v.], afterwards bishop of St. Davids, and without great academic success he won notice. A conspicuous member of the association known as the ‘Apostles,’ he was intimate with Tennyson, Hallam, Thackeray, and other promising men of his time; he spoke often and well at the Union Debating Society, and was a fair amateur actor. He also contributed occasional reviews and poems to the ‘Athenæum.’ In December 1829, on the invitation of F. H. Doyle and W. E. Gladstone, he went with Hallam and Thomas Sunderland as a deputation from the Cambridge to the Oxford Union Society, to argue the superiority of Shelley as a poet to Byron.
On leaving Cambridge, where he proceeded M.A. in 1831, Milnes went to London, and attended classes at the recently founded University College, Gower Street, and associated with Thomas Campbell, F. D. Maurice, John Sterling, and others. After travelling in Germany, where he spent some time at the university of Bonn, he went to Italy and became popular in Italian society. He visited Landor at Florence. With Christopher Wordsworth he made a tour in Greece, and afterwards described it in a volume of poetical ‘Memorials’ (London, 1834), which drew praise from Christopher North. Returning to England in 1835, he began his life in London society in the following year. In spite of certain foreign manners which at first made him enemies, his social and literary qualities, the number and variety of his friendships, and a kind of bland audacity, obtained him an entrance into the best circles, in particular to Lansdowne, Holland, and Gore Houses, then recognised salons. He was a constant guest at Samuel Rogers's breakfast-parties in St. James's Place, and he began himself to give parties of a similar but more comprehensive nature in the rooms he took at 26 Pall Mall in the spring of 1837. Both then and afterwards it was notoriously Milnes's pleasure to bring together men of widely different pursuits, opinions, and social position, and no one was unwelcome who had any celebrity, or was likely to attain it.
In the general election in June 1837 Milnes became conservative M.P. for Pontefract, and in the following December made a successful maiden speech. But he afterwards adopted a serious and at times pompous vein which was not appreciated; and although he was a warm advocate of several useful measures, he failed to make any mark as a politician. In 1839 he published a speech he had delivered on the question of the ballot, and a pamphlet on ‘Purity of Election.’ He often visited the continent, and increased his acquaintance with men of note, meeting in 1840 King Louis-Philippe, De Tocqueville, Lamartine, and others. With Guizot he kept up a correspondence on English politics. His interest in foreign affairs led him to expect office, and he was disappointed at not receiving a place in Peel's ministry in 1841. He did much to secure the passing of the Copyright Act, and he introduced a bill for establishing reformatories for juvenile offenders. In Irish questions he urged a scheme for endowing catholic concurrently with Anglican clergy, as likely to aid in averting a repeal of the union. On Peel's conversion to free trade, Milnes, who had hitherto supported him, unlike the other Peelites who formed a separate party, joined the liberals. In 1848 he went to Paris to see something of the revolution, and to fraternise with both sides. On his return he wrote, as a ‘Letter to Lord Lansdowne,’ 1848, a pamphlet on the events of that year, in which he offended the conservatives
