him an earl in 1656. He returned to England with the king in 1660 and was appointed commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland and lord high commissioner to the Scottish parliament, which he opened in January 1661. He was an ardent advocate of the restoration of episcopacy, this being one reason which led to serious dissensions between the earl of Lauderdale and himself, and in 1663 he was deprived of his offices. He was afterwards (1667) governor of Tangier, where he died in June 1674.
His eldest son Charles, 2nd Earl of Middleton (c. 1640–1719), held several offices under Charles II. and James II., being envoy extraordinary at Vienna and afterwards joint secretary for Scotland. In 1684 he became an English secretary of state, and with Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, he had the difficult task of managing the House of Commons for James II. He was loyal to James after the king fled to France, although he remained in England. where, as the leader of the moderate Jacobites, he sought to bring about a restoration by peaceful means. In 1693 the earl joined the exiled king at St Germains, where he became his secretary of state; afterwards he held the same office at the court of James Edward, the old pretender, in Flanders and in Lorraine. He was partly responsible for the unsuccessful expedition of the Jacobites to Scotland in 1707, and he resigned his office as secretary in 1713. Middleton, who had been created earl of Monmouth by the pretender, died in 1719. His titles had been declared forfeited in 1695, but they were claimed by his son John, who died unmarried about 1746. The earl was a Protestant, although a lukewarm one, until 1701, when he yielded to the dying wish of James II. and joined the Roman Catholic Church.
One of Middleton’s kinsmen was Sir Charles Middleton, Bart. (1726–1813). Having served in the navy Middleton was comptroller of the navy from 1778 to 1790, “standing out through that period of inept administration as the pillar of the service.” In April 1805, at a most critical time, he was, although eighty years of age, appointed first lord of the admiralty by Pitt and was created Lord Barham. It has been usual to regard Barham as a cipher at the admiralty board, but more recent research, especially an examination of the Barham Papers, has proved this to be the reverse of the truth. He enjoyed the absolute confidence of Pitt, and it was his experience, industry and energy which made possible the great campaign which ended at Trafalgar. He resigned office in January 1806 and died on the 17th of January 1813. His barony passed through his daughter Diana (1762–1823) to the Noels, earls of Gainsborough, by whom it is still held. The Barham Papers are being edited by Sir J. K. Laughton (vol. i. 1907; vol. ii. 1910). See also J. S. Corbett, The Campaign of Trafalgar (1910).
See A. C. Biscoe, The Earls of Middleton (1876).
MIDDLETON, ARTHUR (1742–1787), American politician
and signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born at
Middleton Place on the Ashley river, South Carolina, on the 26th
of June 1742. His family was one of the most prominent in the
colony. The grandfather, Arthur Middleton (1681–1737), was
president of the Council in 1721–1730 and as such was acting
governor in 1725–1730, and the father, Henry Middleton (1717–1784),
was speaker of the Assembly in 1745–1747 and again in
1754–1755, a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1774–1776,
and its president from October 1774 to May 1775, a member of
the South Carolina Committee of Safety, and in 1775 president of
the South Carolina Provincial Congress. Like most Wealthy
South Carolinians of the 18th century, Arthur Middleton was
educated in England—at Hackney, at Westminster School, and
at St John’s College, Cambridge. He then returned to South
Carolina, but soon afterwards went back to England to live, and
travelled on the Continent. In 1773 he again returned to
South Carolina, and in the controversies between the colonists and
the home government became a leader of the Whigs. He was
a member of the provincial Council of Safety in 1775–1776, and a.
delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776–1777. In 1778 he
was elected governor of South Carolina, but owing to his dissatisfaction
with the new state constitution he declined to serve.
He was captured by the British at Charleston in May 1780, was
exchanged in July 1781, was again a delegate to Congress in
1781–1783, and later served in the state legislature. He died on
the 1st of January 1787 at Middleton Place, near Charleston.
His eldest son, Henry Middleton (1770–1846), was an orator of ability, was governor of South Carolina in 1810–1812, a representative in Congress in 1815–1819, and the United States minister to Russia from 1820 to 1830, negotiating in 1824 a convention “relative to navigation, fishing and trading in the Pacific Ocean, and to establishments on the North-West Coast.” This was the first treaty between the United States and Russia.
MIDDLETON, CONYERS (1683–1750), English divine, was
born at Richmond in Yorkshire on the 27th of December 1683.
He graduated at Cambridge, took orders, and in 1706 obtained a
fellowship, which he soon resigned upon contracting an advantageous
marriage. In 1717 a dispute with Richard Bentley, who
made an extortionate demand on the occasion of Middleton’s being
created D.D., involved him in an acrimonious controversy. He
wrote several trenchant pamphlets, among them the “Remarks”
and “Further Remarks” on Bentley’s Proposals for a New
Edition of the Greek Testament, an endeavour to visit his grievances
upon the text of the New Testament. In 1723 he was involved in
a lawsuit by personalities against Bentley, which had found their
way into his otherwise judicious tract on library administration,
written on the occasion of his appointment as university librarian.
In 1726 he offended the medical profession by a dissertation
contending that the healing art among the ancients was only
exercised by slaves or freedmen. Between the dates of these
publications he visited Italy, and made those observations on the
pagan origin of church ceremonies and beliefs which he subsequently
embodied in his Letter from Rome (1729). This
cogent tract probably contributed to prepare the storm which
broke out against him on his next publication (1731). In his
remonstrance with Daniel Waterland on occasion of the latter’s
reply to Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation,
Middleton takes a line which in his day could hardly fail to
expose him to the reproach of infidelity. He gives up the
literal truth of the primeval Mosaic narratives; and, in professing
to indicate a short and easy method of confuting Tindal,
lays principal stress on the indispensableness of Christianity
as a mainstay of social order. This was to resign nearly everything
that divines of the Waterland stamp thought worth defending.
Middleton was warmly assailed from many quarters, and
retreated with some difficulty under cover of a sheaf of apologetic
pamphlets and a more regular attendance at church. His
next important publication was a Life of Cicero (1741), largely
told in that statesman’s own Words. Though Middleton’s
reputation was much enhanced by this piece of work, there is no
doubt that he drew largely from the scarce book of William
Bellenden, De tribus luminibus Romanorum. The work was
undertaken at the instance of Lord Hervey, in correspondence
with whom also originated his disquisition on The Roman Senate,
published in 1747. The same year and the following produced
the most important of all his writings, the Introductory Discourse
and the Free Inquiry “concerning the miraculous powers which
are supposed to have subsisted in the church from the earliest
ages.” In combating this belief Middleton indirectly established
two propositions of capital importance. He showed that ecclesiastical
miracles must be accepted or rejected in the mass; and he
distinguished between the authority due to the early fathers
testimony to the beliefs and practices of their times, and their
very slender credibility as Witnesses to matters of fact. Some
individual grudge seems to have prompted him to expose, in
1750, Bishop Sherlock’s eccentric notions of antediluvian
prophecy, which had been published 25 years before. On the
28th of July 1750 he died at Hildersham, near Cambridge.
Middleton’s most ambitious work is obsolete from no fault of his, but his controversial 'Writings retain a permanent place in the history of opinion. In his more restricted sphere he may not inappropriately be compared with Lessing. Like Lessing’s, the character of his intellect was captious and iconoclastic, but redeemed from mere negation by a passion for abstract truth, too apt to slumber until called into activity by some merely personal stimulus. His diction is generally masculine and
