Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/28

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Milroy
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Milroy

historically important, as evidence of the absorption of small monasteries by episcopal churches, and of the growth alongside St. Peter's, the old cathedral church of Worcester, of the newer monastic foundation of St. Mary's, which afterwards became the church of the see (Green, History and Antiquities of Worcester, i. 24, 25; Monasticon, i. 567, and specially Bishop Stubbs sub ‘Milred,’ ap. Dictionary of Christian Biography). Some of the following charters are marked as spurious by Kemble, but Bishop Stubbs considers that they represent actual grants. From Offa Milred received for himself as hereditary property land at Wick, ‘to the west of the Severn’ (Codex Diplomaticus, No. 126), and at ‘Pirigtun’ (ib. No. 129), and from Eanbert and his brothers, under-kings of the Hwiccas, lands for the church of St. Peter's (ib. No. 102); he attests a grant of Uhtred, one of these under-kings, in 770, giving Stoke in Worcestershire to the monastery of St. Mary's at Worcester (ib. No. 118), and another by which Uhtred gave lands on the Stour ‘at the ford called Scepesuuasce (Sheepwash),’ now Shipston in Worcestershire, to the same monastery (ib. No. 128). He also attests a grant by Abbot Ceolfrith, who had inherited his abbey or abbeys from his father Cynebert, of the monasteries of Heanburh or Hanbury, and Sture in Usmorn, now Kidderminster, in Worcestershire, to St. Peter's (ib. No. 127). A monastery had been founded at Withington in Gloucestershire by Oshere [q. v.] (comp. ib. No. 36), and had been left to his daughter, the abbess Hrothwara, who had made it over to Mildred. In 774 Milred made over this monastery to Æthelburga, an abbess who appears to have inherited from her father Alfred a monastery at Worcester, on condition that at her death these monasteries at Withington and Worcester should pass to the church of St. Peter (ib. No. 124). Milred died in 775 (Florence; 772, A.-S. Chronicle), and was succeeded by Weremund.

[Kemble's Codex Dipl. i. 114, 123, 145, 152-155 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); A.-S. Chron. ann. 744, 772; Flor. Wig. ann. 743, 774 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Will. of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontiff, p. 9 (Rolls Ser.); Mon. Moguntina, pp. 267, 268, ed. Jaffé; Symeon of Durham's Hist. Reg. ap. Op. ii. 39 (Rolls Ser.); Hoveden, i. 6 (Rolls Ser.); Green's Hist. and Antiq. of Worcester, i. 24, 25; Dugdale's Monasticon, i. 567; Bishop Stubbs's art. ‘Milred’ ap. Dict. Chr. Biog. iii. 915.]

W. H.

MILROY, GAVIN (1805–1886), medical writer and founder of the ‘Milroy lectureship’ at the Royal College of Physicians, was born in Edinburgh, where his father was in business, in 1805. He received his general education at the high school, and conducted his professional studies at the university. He became M.R.C.S. Edin. in June 1824, and M.D. Edin. in July 1828. He was one of the founders and active members of the Hunterian Society of Edinburgh, but soon settled as a general practitioner in London. He made a voyage as medical officer in the government packet service to the West Indies and the Mediterranean, and thenceforth chiefly devoted himself to writing for medical papers. From 1844 he was co-editor of Johnson's ‘Medico-Chirurgical Review’ till it was amalgamated with Forbes's ‘British and Foreign Medical Review’ in 1847. In October 1846 (iv. 285) he wrote in it an elaborate review on a French report on ‘Plague and Quarantine,’ by Dr. Prus (2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1846), and published an abridged translation, with preface and notes, as ‘Quarantine and the Plague,’ 8vo, London, 1846. He recommended the mitigation or total abolition of quarantine, and at the same time the dependence on sanitary measures alone for preservation from foreign pestilences. He at once became an authority on all questions of epidemiology, and was employed in several government commissions of inspection and inquiry. In 1849-50 he was a superintendent medical inspector of the general board of health; in 1852 he was sent by the colonial office to Jamaica ‘to inspect and report on the sanitary condition of that island,’ and gave the results in an official report. During the Crimean war in 1855-6 he was a member of the sanitary commission sent out to the army in the east; and when the commission was recalled at the end of the war, Milroy joined Dr. John Sutherland [q. v.] in drawing up the report of its transactions. In 1858 he was honorary secretary of the committee appointed by the Social Science Association to inquire into the practice and results of quarantine, and the results of the inquiries were printed in three parliamentary papers. Milroy belonged to the Medical and Chirurgical Society, and took a very active part in the establishment and management of the Epidemiological Society. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 22 Dec. 1847, and was elected a fellow in 1853. In 1862 he was a member of a committee appointed by the college at the request of the colonial office for the purpose of collecting information on the subject of leprosy. The report was printed in 1867, and in the appendix (p. 230) are some brief and sensible ‘Notes respecting the Leprosy of Scripture’ by Milroy. He never received from government any permanent medical appointment,