George Mills

George Mills was a Jacobite sympathiser from Penrith. He joined the Jacobite army and enlisted in the Manchester Regiment and was captured at the surrender of Carlise. He was tried at York on 6th October 1746 and pleaded guilty.

No other trace of this man's history has been found until 17.1.49, when Lord Stanhope asked the Sheriff of Yorkshire how he had escaped. .—S.P.D.Entry Book, 85-10,106; S.P.D., 109-8, 110-11.

George Mills,  pleaded guilty at his trial and escaped from York Castle on 10th August 1747. The jailer did not report the matter until eighteen months later, on 17th January 1749, when Lord Stanhope wrote to the Sheriff of the County and asked where the prisoner was. It was then reported that, during the Assizes of August 1747, the outer gate of the Castle had been left open, in accordance with the invariable custom.

Mills had been allowed to go to the "House' in which debtors were confined" to drink with a person being discharged from prison. Seeing a coach driving out of the prison yard "he got behind it . . . and, having a new coat on (obtained from a Catholic Gentleman who liv'd close bye the Prison) , passed out unrecognised" (S.P.Dom., 110-11).

Nothing more was heard of him.