William Van Mildert (1765-1836), bishop of Durham (1826-1836), was born 6th November 1765 in Southwark, the son of Cornelius Van Mildert (1722-1799), gin distiller, and his wife, Martha, née Hill (1732-1804). Cornelius Van Mildert was the great-grandson of an Amsterdam merchant who migrated to London around 1670, Martha the daughter of William Hill of Vauxhall, Surrey, merchant and financier. Van Mildert studied at the Merchant Taylors' School, and Queen's College, Oxford, 1784-90. Ordained priest in 1789, in 1790 he became curate of Witham, Essex were he met Jane (1760-1837), daughter of General Douglas, who he married in 1795.
In 1795 Van Mildert was given the living of Bradden, Northamptonshire, by Cornelius Ives, his cousin and brother-in-law; in 1796, he became chaplain to the Grocers' Company and rector of St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, London. In London he joined the high-church campaigning group the Hackney Phalanx, served as treasurer of the SPCK 1812-15, gave the Boyle lectures of 1802-5, was preacher of Lincoln's Inn, 1812-9, Bampton lecturer in 1814, and in 1823 published a ten-volume edition of the works of Daniel Waterland. In 1813 he became regius professor of divinity at Oxford and a canon of Christ Church, bishop of Llandaff May 1819, declined the archbishopric of Dublin in 1820, instead becoming dean of St Paul's in commendam with Llandaff, and in 1826 Van Mildert became bishop of Durham.
Charles Thorp, Archdeacon of Durham, and Van Mildert worked towards the creation of a university at Durham: The Durham University Bill passed in July 1832 and the university admitted its first students in October 1833. Van Mildert's wife suffered a stroke in 1833 and died in 1837. Van Mildert died at Auckland Castle, 21 February 1836. Shortly afterwards the bishopric was stripped of its palatine status and the remnant of its ancient secular powers, leaving Van Mildert with the common soubriquet last of the prince bishops .
From the guide to the Van Mildert Papers, 1639-1883, (Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections)
