Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/73

 the czar's request, appointed to attend on him during his stay in this country, and to command the squadron which convoyed him back to Holland. In this connection several anecdotes of doubtful authenticity are related (, iii. 426). It is also said that the czar invited him to Russia, with the offer of a very lucrative post, which Mitchell declined.

In June 1699 he was appointed one of the lords commissioners of the admiralty, in which post he remained till April 1701, when the Earl of Pembroke was made lord high admiral. He was afterwards usher of the black rod; and on the accession of Queen Anne, when Prince George became lord high admiral, Mitchell was appointed one of his council, in which office he continued till April 1708. It was apparently in 1709 that he was sent to Holland ‘to negotiate matters relating to the sea with the States-General.’ He died at his seat, Popes in Hertfordshire, on 1 June 1710, ‘about the 60th year of his age’ (inscription on his tombstone). He was buried in the church at Hatfield beneath a slab, on which a lengthy inscription summarises his services. It also bears the arms of Mitchell of Tillygreig, Aberdeen (1672). Le Neve (Pedigrees of the Knights, p. 461), says, ‘He bears arms but hath no right,’ and tells an absurd story how, as ‘a poor boy from Scotland,’ he was pressed from a Newcastle collier, and was pulled out from under the coals, where he had hidden himself. The arms on an escutcheon of pretence which he assumed were by right of his wife Mary, daughter and coheiress of Robert Dod of Chorley in Shropshire, by whom he had one son, died an infant. Dame Mary died 30 Sept. 1722, aged 62, and was also buried in the church at Hatfield; but the slab, bearing the inscription, ‘Heare lyes the body,’ &c., is now in the churchyard (information from the sexton of Hatfield; cf., Hist. of Commoners, i. 298).

 MITCHELL, HUGH HENRY (1764?–1817), colonel, was appointed ensign in the 101st regiment in January 1782, and was promoted to be lieutenant in June 1783. He served with that regiment in India and until it was disbanded in 1784. In May 1786 he was gazetted to the 26th, and served with it in the latter part of the campaign of 1801 in Egypt. He rose in the 26th to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in December 1805. In June 1811 he exchanged to the 51st light infantry, and commanded that regiment in the Peninsula War till its conclusion in 1814. He obtained the rank of colonel in June 1813, and the order of companion of the Bath on 4 June 1815. In the Waterloo campaign Mitchell commanded a brigade consisting of the 3rd battalion of the 14th, the 23rd fusiliers, and the 51st light infantry.

Wellington was sparing—almost niggardly—in his expressions of praise, and never mentioned an officer in his despatches merely because he commanded a brigade or division, or was on the staff. Mitchell was the only commander of a brigade at Waterloo under the rank of general officer who was thus honoured. For his services in the campaign he received from the Emperor of Russia the order of St. Vladimir of the third class, and also the Russian order of St. Ann.

Mitchell died 20 April 1817, in Queen Anne Street, London.

 MITCHELL or MITCHEL, JAMES (d. 1678), fanatic, was the son of obscure parents in Midlothian. He graduated at Edinburgh University on 9 July 1656, and at the same time signed the national covenant and the solemn league and covenant. He attached himself to the party of remonstrator presbyterians, and studied popular divinity under (1583?-1663) [q. v.] He was refused by the presbytery of Dalkeith on the grounds of insufficiency, and appears to have become ‘a preacher, but no actual minister,’ in or near Edinburgh. In 1661 he was recommended to some ministers in Galloway by Trail, a minister in Edinburgh, as suitable for teaching in a school or as private tutor. He entered the house of the Laird of Dundas as domestic chaplain and tutor to his children, but was dismissed for immoral conduct. Returning to Edinburgh he made the acquaintance of Major [q. v.], who procured for him the post of chaplain in a ‘fanatical family, the lady whereof was niece to Sir Archibald Johnston’ of Warriston. He quitted this post in November 1666 to join the rising of the covenanters in the west at Ayr. He was in Edinburgh on 28 Nov., when the rebels were defeated at Pentland, but was pronounced guilty of treason in a proclamation of 4 Dec. 1666, and on 1 Oct. 1667 was excluded from the pardon granted to those engaged in the rising. Mitchell effected his escape to Holland, where he joined a cousin, a factor in Rotterdam. After wandering in England and Ireland he returned to  2em