John Mitford (clergyman)

John Mitford (1781–1859) was an English clergyman and man of letters.

Related to Attorney General and politician Lord Redesdale, who became a patron, and to the historian William Mitford, he was born at Richmond, Surrey, on 13 August 1781. He was the elder son of John Mitford (died 18 May 1806), commander of a vessel engaged in the China trade of the East India Company, by his second wife, Mary, eldest daughter of J. Allen of Clifton, Bristol. Early in life he went to school at Richmond, and for a time he was at Tonbridge school, under Vicesimus Knox. But he was mostly brought up in the diocese of Winchester, where the Rev. John Baynes of Exton, near Droxford, Hampshire, was his tutor.

After a brief experience as clerk in the army pay office, Mitford on 6 March 1801 matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, under the tutorship of Edward Copleston, with Reginald Heber as a close friend, and graduated B.A. on 17 December 1804.

On 22 December 1808 he was ordained as a Church of England priest by Henry Bathurst, the bishop of Norwich, and was licensed to the curacy of Kelsale in Suffolk, though he was not a natural cleric. Within months he obtained through Lord Redesdale's interest the vicarage of Benhall, near Saxmundham, to which he was instituted on 17 February 1810, and in August 1815 he became domestic chaplain to Redesdale. In the same month he was appointed to the rectory of Weston St. Mary, and a few years later he was nominated to the rectory of Stratford St. Andrew, both in Suffolk, and then in crown patronage. All these livings were united, during his incumbency, in 1824, when he was reinstituted, and he retained them until his death.

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