CH33. Marble tablet with gold lettering on church column
Facing front: 2nd Lieutenant / Hon. CHARLES THOMAS MILLS, M.P. / 2nd Battn. Scots Guards / Killed in action October 5. 1915 / at / Hulloch / “He greeted the unseen with a cheer” / “So he passed over, and the trumpets / sounded for him on the other side”.
Facing on one side: He was / the eldest / son of the / 2nd Baron / Hillingdon.
Charles Thomas Mills
Charles Thomas Mills, known to his family as Charlie Tom, was born on 13 March 1887. He was the eldest son of Charles William Mills, 2nd Baron Hillingdon and his wife Alice Harbord. He had a younger brother, Arthur Robert Mills. Charles was educated at New Beacon preparatory school, Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. While at university he was a keen sportsman, especially golf.
The Mills family business was banking. Since 1793, members of the family – including Charles Thomas Mills’ father, grandfather and great-grandfather – had been partners in the London banking firm Glyn, Mills & Co and Charles continued the family tradition.
Also in 1910, Mills entered parliament with a resounding majority, as the conservative member for Uxbridge. For his first two years in that office, he was the youngest member, known as the ‘Baby of the House’.
He was an active parliamentarian, speaking frequently on varied matters. When asked how he managed to juggle his duties as a politician and a banker, he explained that he worked 14-hour days; all day at the bank and then all evening in parliament.
He continued to represent Uxbridge until his death and was succeeded by his brother.
For some years before the war Charles Thomas Mills had served as a lieutenant in the Queen’s Own West Kent Yeomanry, but in 1915 he arranged to be reassigned to the Scots Guards so that he would be sent overseas more quickly. Just before his regiment departed for France in June 1915 he was given a send-off by friends and colleagues in his constituency, at which he remarked: ‘I hope you will be good enough to think of me while I am away. I hope that you will pray that, above all things, I shall do my duty, very humbly it may be, and bring no disgrace upon you and upon my friends down here.’
Sadly, on 6 October 1915, during the Battle of Loos, he was struck in the head and killed by a piece of shrapnel. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial and the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall, one of 22 MPs who died fighting in the First World War and one of four who died in a single fortnight.
His memorial plaque in St John’s is above the Vicar’s stall at the chancel entrance. The quotes on the plaque are : “He greeted the unseen with a cheer.” (recalling a line from Robert Browning‘s poem Epilogue); and “So he passed over and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.” (from The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan). The plaque also bears the regimental badge and motto of the Scot’s Guards.
Christine Bartlett