[2] He was the son of Cornelius van Mildert, a gin distiller, and his wife Martha née Hill.

[3] Loosely attached to the high church party, he was appointed Bishop of Llandaff from 1819 to 1826, a post which he held in commendam with the Deanery of St Paul's between 1820 and 1826, when he was translated to Durham.

Prior to this, he was in 1790 the curate of Witham, Essex, where he met Jane (1760–1837), daughter of General Douglas, whom he married in 1795.

In addition, he donated a large number of buildings on Palace Green, between the castle and the cathedral.

In 1833, he gave 5 acres of land and a lot previously used as a burial pit during the 1831 Cholera Outbreak to the town of Stockton.

[8] Those de jure vestiges of feudal jurisprudence were removed and returned to the Crown after his death in 1836 by the Durham (County Palatine) Act 1836.