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 preached at Lincoln's Inn from 1812 to 1819’ were printed in 1831, and passed into a second edition in 1832. In 1813 he was appointed Bampton lecturer at Oxford. His discourses—‘An Inquiry into the General Principles of Scripture Interpretation’—were printed in 1815 and reprinted in 1832. In October 1813 he became regius professor of divinity at Oxford; to the professorship a canonry at Christ Church and the rectory of Ewelme were annexed.

Van Mildert was consecrated at Lambeth on 31 May 1819 to the bishopric of Llandaff. In the following January he declined the offer of the archbishopric of Dublin, but on 20 Aug. 1820 he was nominated to the deanery of St. Paul's. From midsummer 1821 he engaged Coldbrook House, near Abergavenny, and was the first prelate of Llandaff for many years to reside within the diocese. In 1826 he was translated to the rich see of Durham (confirmed 24 April), and he was the last count (often styled ‘prince’) palatine of Durham. His income was princely, and his generosity was equal to it. In conjunction with the dean and chapter he founded the university of Durham in 1832 (the university was opened in October 1833). The main part of the endowment came from the capitular revenues; but the bishop gave his Durham residence (The Castle), and 2,000l. a year until his death. He made very extensive alterations, not always in the best taste, in the chapel at Auckland Castle (, Auckland Castle, pp. 95–6). During the assize week he entertained at dinner at Durham Castle upwards of two hundred guests, and on his four public days at Auckland Castle he feasted nearly three hundred persons. He gave the Duke of Wellington a sumptuous banquet at Durham Castle on 3 Oct. 1827, when Sir Walter Scott and Sir Thomas Lawrence were among the company. Scott gives a pleasant account of the entertainment, which exhibited ‘a singular mixture of baronial pomp with the grave and more chastened dignity of prelacy,’ and of the demeanour of the host, who showed ‘scholarship without pedantry and dignity without ostentation’ (, Memoirs of Scott, vii. 71–4).

The bishop was an impressive preacher and speaker. ‘The substance of his speech in the House of Lords on 17 May 1825’ against Roman catholic claims was printed in that year, and he resisted them to the last. He assented, though with some hesitation, to the repeal of the Test Act, but he opposed the Reform Bill. He was seized with low fever on 11 Feb. 1836, and on 21 Feb. he died at Auckland Castle. His funeral sermon, afterwards printed, was preached by the Rev. Canon Townsend in the cathedral on 28 Feb., and he was buried immediately in front of the high altar on 1 March, the place being marked by a small slab with his initials. At the north end of the nine altars stands a full-sized statue by John Gibson, R.A., of the bishop, a lithograph of which, by R. J. Lane, was printed subsequently. A portrait of Van Mildert by Sir Thomas Lawrence hangs in the drawing-room at Auckland Castle; it was engraved by Thomas Lupton (published by M. Colnaghi, May 1831). He married at Witham, on 22 Dec. 1795, Jane, youngest daughter of General Douglas. She died at Harrogate on 19 Dec. 1837, and was buried in the same vault with the bishop in Durham Cathedral. An auction catalogue of his library was printed in 1836; the sale lasted ten days in June. He presented to Durham University a fine set of the St. Maur Benedictine Fathers.

The bishop was the author of many single sermons, a charge to Llandaff diocese (1821), and charges to the diocese of Durham (1827 and 1831). A volume of his sermons and charges was edited, with a memoir of him, by Cornelius Ives, rector of Bradden, in 1838. From 1823 to 1828 he was engaged in passing through the Clarendon press an elaborate edition of ‘The Works of Daniel Waterland’ [q. v.]

[Gent. Mag. 1836 i. 425–7, 1838 i. 221; Annual Biogr. and Obit. 1837, pp. 20–9; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors (1816), p. 361; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Baker's Northamptonshire, ii. 38; Robinson's Merchant Taylors' School, ii. 146; Le Neve's Fasti, ii. 257, 317, 526, iii. 298, 511; Churton's Joshua Watson, passim; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, viii. 148; information from Dr. Kitchin, dean of Durham.] 

VANNES, PETER (d. 1563), dean of Salisbury, born at Lucca in Italy, was son of Stephen de Vannes of that city. In one of his letters Erasmus calls him Peter Ammonius, and Cooper in his ‘Athenæ Cantabrigienses’ (i. 220) states that Vannes was son of a sister of Andrea Ammonio [q. v.] Vannes, however, is styled by himself and his correspondents more vaguely as ‘consobrinus’ or kinsman of Ammonio. It was through the influence of Ammonio, who was Latin secretary to Henry VIII, that Vannes was brought to England, and he became assistant to Ammonio in 1513 (Letters and Papers, ii. 3602–3). In the following year he seems also to have become secretary to Cardinal Wolsey. Ammonio died on 17 Aug.