Michael Robert Van Millingen

In the east cloister of Westminster Abbey, near the Library door, is a marble wall tablet to Michael Robert Van Millingen, a Westminster schoolboy. He was buried on 26th December but his gravestone is no longer readable. The epitaph for the tablet was written by William Cowper and reads: 

Here is deposited the body of Michael Robert Van Millingen a youth of fairest hopes. The eldest and most dearly beloved son of his disconsolate parents he departed from this vale of tears & sorrow with truly Christian resignation on the 22nd of December 1778 aged 13 years 5 months & 5 days. He smil'd in death tho' early snatched from hence Death had no sting for so much innocence

The top of the tablet shows classical ornamentation and the shield below has the coat of arms of Millingen "a fess between a dexter arm issuing from a cloud and wielding a sword, in base a lion passant".

He was born on 17th July 1765 and baptized at St Margaret's Westminster on 16th August, a son of Michael and his wife Elizabeth (Westflaten Coole) daughter of the governor of Batavia in the East Indies. The family came from the town of Millingen in north west Holland and the father was a Dutch merchant. On returning from the East Indies he settled in Queen Street not far from the Abbey. Young Michael attended Westminster School as did his brother James (1774-1845) who became a banker, author and archaeologist and married widow Elizabeth Penny - their child was Julius. Another brother John Gideon (1782-1862) was an army surgeon.

Further reading for James, John and Julius

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004