William Mitford

William Mitford (10 February 1744 – 10 February 1827) was an English Member of Parliament and historian, best known for his The History of Greece (1784–1810). Youth William Mitford was born in Exbury, Hampshire, on 10 February 1744, into a rural gentry family. The surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin and refers to a place: Mitford (river crossing or ford). The Doomsday Book states that the properties around Mitford Castle belonged to Sir John Mitford in 1066, but by 1086 they belonged to William Bertram, a Norman knight married to Sibella, the only daughter and heir of the previous owner. A hundred years later, the surname appears as Bertram of Mitford Castle as the main branch; but by the 17th century Bertram disappears as a surname to become a name within the family. The Mitfords of Exbury, to which the author belongs, appear as a secondary and minor branch of the family by the 18th century, engaged in trade and independent professions. First-born son of a wealthy London lawyer who amassed a substantial fortune, Mitford did not inherit his father's profession, nor that of his brother, John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale, who was Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His mother, Philadelphia Reveley, heiress to a powerful Northumberland landowner and, at the same time granddaughter of the president of the Bank of England, was to swell the family fortune, but perhaps more importantly, she was a first cousin of Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland, patron of the "rotten borough" in which he and his brother were elected to Parliament at the end of Whig supremacy. In 1766 he married Frances (Fanny) Molloy, the daughter of a wealthy Irish merchant. His father and brother were Barristers of the Inner Temple, the highest dignities of the bar in the United Kingdom, with the power to litigate and advise at The Bar, in cases of higher amounts. It is not equivalent, but it would be something similar to a barrister qualified to litigate in chambers and take cases to the Supreme Court in a republican country. His younger brother's situation is particular: he inherited the position at The Bar on the death of his father, but he was also heir to an entailed estate in Gloucester belonging to Sir Thomas Freeman, and to the fortune of his maternal aunt, and was married to Frances Perceval, daughter of the Earl of Egmont and sister of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. When his father died, William was the sole heir to the family fortune.