other works of art, which were advertised for sale at Somerset House on 14 May 1677 (London Gazette).
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum; Bathoe's Cat. of James II's Collection; Law's Cat. of the Pictures at Hampton Court; Rombouts and Lerius's Liggeren der St. Lukas Gild te Antverpen; Vertue's Diaries (Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 23071, &c.).]
VAN LEMENS, BALTHASAR (1637–1704), painter, born at Antwerp in 1637, came over to England, and had some slight success in painting small pieces of history. Meeting, however, with misfortunes, he was reduced to working for other people, drawing and making sketches to assist the work of both painters and engravers. Among the latter he was chiefly employed by Paul Van Somer [q. v.], the mezzotint-engraver. He also copied portraits by Van Dyck and others. He had a brother who practised in Brussels, and painted Balthasar's portrait. Van Lemens died in Westminster in 1704.
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum; De Piles's Lives of the Painters (Suppl.); Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits.]
VAN MILDERT, WILLIAM (1765–1836), the last bishop of Durham to exercise the palatine dignities, belonged to a family formerly resident at Mildert or Meldert in North Brabant, but the first of them to settle in England came from Amsterdam about 1670. Some documents from the archives of the Dutch church in Austin Friars were communicated to Strype by Daniel Van Mildert, one of its ‘ancient elders’ (Annals, ed. 1826, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 422; cf. also Moens, Dutch Church Registers, pp. 51, 210, 212). The bishop's grandfather, Abraham Van Mildert (b. December 1680), a merchant first at Thames Street and then at Great St. Helen's, was a deacon of the Dutch church in 1711. His father was Cornelius Van Mildert, a distiller, of St. Mary, Newington, Surrey (d. 1799), who married Martha (1732–1818), daughter of William Hill of Vauxhall.
William, their second son, was born in Blackman Street, London, on 6 Nov. 1765 and baptised at Newington church on 8 Dec. by Samuel Horsley [q. v.] When about eight years old he was sent to St. Saviour's school, Southwark, and from 1779 to 1784 he was at Merchant Taylors' school, where he was much influenced by Samuel Bishop [q. v.] His first wish was to be apprenticed to the trade of a chemist, but he soon determined upon becoming a clergyman. At Merchant Taylors' he was friendly with (Sir) Albert Pell and Thomas Percy (1768–1808) [q. v.], and he contributed to Percy's ‘Poems by a Literary Society’ in 1784. He matriculated as a commoner from Queen's College, Oxford, on 21 Feb. 1784, graduating B.A. on 23 Nov. 1787, M.A. on 17 July 1790, and B.D. and D.D. in 1813 (cf. Nichols, Illustr. of Lit. iv. 787–8).
On Trinity Sunday 1788 Van Mildert was ordained deacon and licensed to the curacy of Lewknor, which he served from Oxford. Next year, when he was serving a curacy in Kent, he was ordained priest, and in 1790 he was appointed to the curacy of Witham in Essex. There he remained until 1795, and during those years he travelled in Holland and Belgium. On 24 April 1795 he was instituted, on the nomination of Cornelius Ives, his cousin and brother-in-law, to the rectory of Bradden, near Towcester. He was chaplain to the Grocers' Company, and through the influence of his uncle, Mr. Hill, was instituted in October 1796 to the rectory of St. Mary-le-Bow, London, on the nomination of the company, which had the presentation for that turn. As there was no parsonage-house suitable for his habitation, he lived for the most part until 1812 at 14 Ely Place, Holborn. He had not long been in possession of the living before he was sued for non-residence ‘by a qui tam attorney,’ or common informer, and his claim for exemption, through the want of a parsonage-house, was not held to exempt him from penalty; but he and several other city incumbents in similar circumstances were relieved from the consequences by an act of parliament.
Van Mildert was appointed Lady Moyer's lecturer at St. Paul's about 1797, and from 1802 to 1804 he preached the Boyle lectures. Their subject was ‘An Historical View of Infidelity, with a Refutation’ (London, 1806, 2 vols; 5th edit. 1838). They were received with great favour, although their value now lies in the information contained in the notes. In 1807 he was one of the editors of ‘The Churchman's Remembrancer,’ a collection in two volumes of tracts in defence of the church of England. By the gift of Archbishop Manners-Sutton he was collated on 10 April 1807 to the vicarage of Farningham in Kent; this benefice he held until late in 1813; he retained the rectory of St. Mary-le-Bow until August 1820.
In 1812 Van Mildert was elected by a large majority of the benchers to the preachership at Lincoln's Inn, which he held until he was raised to the episcopal bench. One of his earliest sermons preached in this new situation was ‘On the Assassination of Mr. Spencer Perceval,’ and it was printed in 1812. Two volumes of his scholarly ‘Sermons
