March they almost all had it, and several died.’ ‘In twenty years,’ wrote Middleton in June 1742, ‘that I have used this voyage, I never heard of, or knew any afflicted with this or any other distemper, before the last and this year.’ It does not, however, appear that he had ever before wintered there; and Mr. Barrow has pointed out that the supply of brandy to the men was excessive.
On 20 March, by the observation of an eclipse of Jupiter's satellite No. 1, he calculated the longitude of his position to be 97° W., the true longitude of Fort Churchill being 94° 10′. The error was thus nearly 3°, which, though it would be now considered monstrous, was a mere trifle compared with the enormous errors which were at that date the rule [cf. Legge]. On 1 July 1742 the ships left the river and examined the coast to the northward. On 12 July they were off a cape which Middleton named Dobbs; and on the 13th they entered ‘an inlet or strait which makes a fair opening.’ A short experience of the tides convinced Middleton that it was only a river, and he named it Wager River. The tides showed him that the Frozen Strait was the passage to the sea; but this was choked with ice, and his men were very sickly. On 15 Aug. he held a council, which determined that they ought to bear away for England. On 15 Sept. they arrived at the Orkney Islands, where several of the sick men were put ashore. But most of both crews were ‘very much afflicted with the scurvy and otherwise distempered.’ After recruiting them as much as possible, Middleton pressed men to take the ships to the Thames, where he arrived on 2 Oct. 1742.
The results of the voyage were mainly negative; but though more might perhaps have been done had not the ships been, as Middleton put it, ‘pestered with such a set of rogues, most of them having deserved hanging before they entered with me,’ and had not the scurvy raged so terribly among them, Middleton still felt warranted to express a strong opinion that there was no passage to the westward in that direction; that Wager River was a river and not a strait, and that the flood tide came from the eastward through the Frozen Strait. Dobbs took on him to controvert this opinion. Middleton, he alleged, had taken no pains to assure himself whether Wager River was a river or not; or rather, he had in reality found it to be a strait, but concealed the discovery in the interests of the monopolists, his old masters of the Hudson's Bay Company. The admiralty called on Middleton to answer the charges laid against him, which he did publicly in ‘A Vindication of the Conduct of Captain Middleton’ (1743, 8vo). Dobbs's personal interest, however, was considerable, and the admiralty hesitated as to accepting Middleton's statements; so that, although the war was calling for the services of every capable officer, he was left unemployed for nearly two years. It was not till 8 June 1745 that he was appointed to command the Shark sloop of war. In her he was stationed on the coast of Scotland during the rebellion, and claimed to have rendered exceptional service by his intimate local knowledge. When Scotland was quieted he was sent to the coast of Flanders, under the orders of Commodore Matthew Michell [q. v.] At the peace he was put on half-pay; and though in his memorial he represented the great loss to which he had been subjected, he received neither compensation, nor promotion, nor employment, but remained on the half-pay of his rank, 4s., till his death, 12 Feb. 1770 (Half-Pay List).
[Coats's Geography of Hudson's Bay, with an Appendix containing Extracts from the Log of Captain Middleton … in 1741–2, edited for the Hakluyt Society by John Barrow; the Vindication and Memorial referred to in the text; the official letters in the Public Record Office, several of which are published by Barrow; see also Phil. Trans. vols. xl. xli. xlii. Besides these there are the pamphlets alternately by Dobbs and Middleton in their controversy. Sir John Barrow, in his Voyages into the Arctic Regions (1818), inclined to the belief that Dobbs was right, and that Middleton was either deceived or was deceiving. But Middleton's correspondence with the admiralty has every appearance of honesty; and his good faith was proved by Moor's subsequent voyage described by Henry Ellis [q. v.], and still more fully afterwards by Sir William Edward Parry [q. v.]]
MIDDLETON, CONYERS (1683–1750), divine, born at York or at Richmond, Yorkshire, on 27 Dec. 1683, was son of William Middleton, rector of Hinderwell, near Whitby, Yorkshire, by his second wife, Barbara Place. He was named after his father's friend, a Conyers of Boulby Hall. The father had some independent means, kept a curate at Hinderwell, and lived at York, where his wife died 8 Aug. 1700, and he on 13 Feb. 1713–14. His other children, one son by the first marriage and two by the second, were extravagant, and he passed his later years in terror of bailiffs. Conyers Middleton is said to have been a good son, and was kind to an old woman who had been his father's only servant for some years. He was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, 19 Jan. 1700, graduated B.A. 1702–3, M.A. 1707, and was
