Francis Mylles and Philippa Mylles Packer: Walsingham Office, Chilton Foliat, and the Packer Marriage

Topic: Francis Mylles and Philippa Mylles Packer

Source-control findings

• The 1613 marriage licence directly identifies Philippa as Francis Mylles's

daughter and records his consent.

• The 1598/9 Hatfield calendar page directly controls Mylles's Burghley,

Southampton, Court of Requests, and Privy Seal claims.

• Folger X.c.62 is used through an institutional human transcription; the

original manuscript image remains a separate retrieval target.

Why This Family Matters

John Packer’s 1613 marriage was not simply a landed match. Philippa Mylles was the daughter of Francis Mylles, a clerk of the Privy Seal and former secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham. Packer himself had served Henry Neville in France and owed his Privy Seal reversion to Sir Thomas Lake, another former member of Walsingham’s office. The marriage joined Packer to an older secretarial and record-keeping family and brought Chilton Foliat into the Packer estate geography.

This topic should therefore be used for three distinct lines of research:

1. the continuity of Walsingham-trained administrative personnel into the

Neville, Lake, and Packer networks;

2. the transmission of Chilton House and its local patronage through Philippa;
3. Philippa’s later role as executor and estate administrator, not merely as

the daughter and wife of office-holders.

Identity and Family Table

1. Francis Mylles in Walsingham’s Office

The Folger Shakespeare Library’s public transcription of Thomas Norton’s letter of 31 August 1581 identifies Mylles as Walsingham’s employee. Norton addresses him as the intermediary to “your master,” asks that Walsingham retain his opinion of Norton’s readiness to serve, and answers Mylles’s request for information about the dissolution of the monasteries.

The letter is unusually revealing about secretarial research. Norton says that he has no notes or writings on which to ground formal instructions, then sets down what he has “red & heard,” identifies men and records Mylles might consult, and promises to come to London for conference. Mylles was therefore not only copying outgoing papers: he was soliciting historical intelligence and organizing expert knowledge for Walsingham.

British Library Harley MS 6035 provides a second institutional control. Its catalogue describes Walsingham’s office journal for 1583–1585 as being in the hands of Walsingham, Francis Mylles, Thomas Lake, Robert Beale, and others. That single volume places Mylles and Lake in the same working record system before Packer’s career began.

2. A Surviving Correspondence and Signature Trail

The Hatfield calendar adds a much more precise office biography. In a signed letter to Sir Robert Cecil of 28 February 1598/9, Mylles described the late Lord Burghley as “my late master, your father.” He recalled that Burghley had asked Hugh Allington more than two years earlier to let Mylles execute the clerkship of the Court of Requests as deputy if the office fell to Allington. The plan had been obstructed by Allington's promise to Mr Kerry, whom Mylles described as:

“a clerk of the Privy Seal, under which all the processes of that Court are

passed.”

Mylles now asked Cecil to help clear that obstacle because Kerry was old and occupied with Privy Seal business for the loans. This is valuable for more than a frustrated office suit. It directly connects Mylles to Burghley, demonstrates his pursuit of work in the Court of Requests, and explains from an office-holder's perspective how that court depended upon Privy Seal process. The letter is dated from “God's house in Southampton,” sharpening the Southampton identity preserved in Philippa's 1613 marriage licence.

The checked witness is the printed HMC calendar page, which describes the original as signed and sealed and gives the reference (176. 108.). The original letter has not yet been inspected, so the calendar's spelling and compression should not be represented as a diplomatic transcription.

The British Library catalogue for Cotton MS Titus B VII identifies three letters from Toby Matthew, dean of Durham, to Francis Mylles concerning preferment, with the second dated 9 January and the third 23 December 1587. Those letters are a concrete manuscript-retrieval target for Mylles as an access point to Walsingham-era patronage.

A public Christie’s catalogue record for a royal privy-seal letter of 3 January 1605/6 identifies Francis Mylles among the signatories. The document concerns payments following the Gunpowder Plot and shows that the former Walsingham secretary remained active in Jacobean Privy Seal business. The sale catalogue is not a substitute for an archive edition, but its image and document description provide a publicly inspectable signature witness.

3. Chilton Foliat and the Walsingham-to-Packer Property Line

VCH Wiltshire states that Chilton House passed from Sir Francis Walsingham to his secretary Francis Mylles in 1590. This property history explains why History of Parliament describes John Packer’s Chilton Foliat estate as acquired through marriage.

The sequence is important:

Walsingham → Francis Mylles → Philippa Mylles Packer → the Packer household.

It is a property and family succession, not proof that Walsingham’s official papers travelled with the house. The 1590 conveyance and Mylles probate papers are needed before making any claim about books, documents, or movable goods.

4. The Packer Marriage: 1613, Not 1614

Foster’s printed marriage licences give the controlling entry:

“Packer, John, gent., of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, bachelor, 41, and

Phillippa Mills, of the city of Westminster, spinster, gentlewoman, 23,

daughter of Francis Mills, of Southampton, esq., who consents—at St.

Catherine Creechurch, London. 13 July, 1613.”

This fixes the licence and intended church. It also supplies ages, marital status, Philippa’s father, his consent, and his Southampton association. The occasion is sometimes dated 1614 in secondary accounts; that date should no longer be used.

5. Philippa as Executor and Estate Administrator

The Westminster Abbey register edition summarizes John Packer’s will as dated 20 July 1645, with a codicil of 2 May 1648, proved 27 November 1649 by his relict Philippa. It also records Packer’s statement that royalist forces had sequestered his lands except Groombridge.

Philippa therefore inherited an administrative problem created by war: multiple estates, charitable obligations, children’s portions, and land under or emerging from sequestration. A full biography should follow her through probate, estate recovery, and her burial in 1665. Calling her only “Packer’s wife” misses the part of the family history in which she actually controlled the testamentary process.

6. Neville-Project Significance

The Mylles family deepens Packer’s biography without turning a family connection into an authorship assertion. It demonstrates:

• continuity between Walsingham’s Elizabethan office and the Jacobean

secretaries around Neville, Lake, Packer, Somerset, and Buckingham;

• Mylles's own movement through the Walsingham and Burghley households and his

attempt to enter the Court of Requests;

• a direct administrative explanation linking Court of Requests process to

the Privy Seal;

• a marriage inside the Privy Seal world;
• a property route from Walsingham to Packer through Philippa;
• a woman executor responsible for preserving and distributing a politically

exposed estate.

The next creative research question is documentary custody: did any Mylles office papers, correspondence, or books remain at Chilton? That question must be answered from inventories, wills, deeds, and surviving manuscripts, not from the property succession alone.

Quoted Source Text

Thomas Norton to Francis Mylles, 1581

Folger X.c.62:

“Mr Milles I am your Masters, yours and all his”

and:

“But what I am hable I will set downe as I have vnderstoode by that which I

have red & heard.”

The Folger’s public transcription identifies the document and preserves the letter’s research-request context. The original image should still be inspected before preparing a diplomatic edition.

Packer/Mylles marriage licence

“daughter of Francis Mills, of Southampton, esq., who consents”

The line identifies the family edge directly and fixes the date at 13 July 1613.

Francis Mylles to Robert Cecil, 28 February 1598/9

HMC Salisbury, volume 9, page 85:

“My late master, your father, more than two years past desired Mr. Hugh

Allington ... that I might execute the same as his deputy.”

and:

“From God's house in Southampton, the last of February, 1598.”

The calendar dates the item 28 February 1598/9 but prints the letter's closing date as the last of February 1598. Both forms are preserved rather than silently regularized.

Citations

• Historical Manuscripts Commission, *Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most

Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury*, vol. 9 (London, 1902), p. 85: https://archive.org/details/calendarofmanusc09grea/page/85/mode/1up

• Folger Shakespeare Library, “Letter from Thomas Norton to Francis Mylles,”

X.c.62, 31 August 1581: https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Letter_from_Thomas_Norton_to_Francis_Mylles

• Joseph Foster, ed., London Marriage Licences, 1521–1869 (London, 1887),

col. 1005: https://archive.org/details/londonmarriageli00fost/page/n532/mode/1up

• “Chilton Foliat,” A History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. 16, British

History Online: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol16/pp88-109

• British Library, Cotton MS Titus B VII, ff. 424r–427v:

https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/040-001103525

• British Library, Harley MS 6035, *Journal of Sir Francis Walsingham’s

office, 1583–1585*: https://searcharchives.bl.uk/?q=%22Harley%20MS%206035%22&search_field=reference

• Christie’s, James VI and I, letter under the Privy Seal, 3 January 1605/6:

https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6118866

• Paul Hunneyball, “PACKER, John (1572–1649),” History of Parliament:

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/packer-john-1572-1649

Notes on Access

• The Mylles-to-Cecil item was read from the checked printed HMC calendar page;

the signed and sealed original at the Hatfield archive was not inspected.

• Folger X.c.62 was used through the Folger’s institutional transcription, not

an AI transcription.

• Cotton MS Titus B VII and Harley MS 6035 were used at catalogue-description

level. No manuscript wording from them is quoted.

• The full Mylles probate and Chilton conveyance chain remains to be retrieved.

Source-Fact Audit — 8 August 2026 (Round 7)

The packet's strongest contribution is identity control. Francis Mylles is the Walsingham-office and Chilton Foliat man whose wife was Philippa; their family then intersects the Packer household. Office references, property references, signature evidence, and the marriage chain are cumulative identifiers, not interchangeable citations. A same-name “Mills” hit should not be imported without at least one matching office, place, spouse, or associate.

The Walsingham service establishes access to a secretarial and intelligence environment. The Packer marriage establishes a later family route. Neither fact proves that Mylles transmitted Neville papers. Wills, conveyances, and estate-administration documents remain the best next sources because they can name books, papers, debts, kin, and executors directly.