Benjamin Milgrove

MILGROVE, Benjamin. b. Bath, 1731; d. Bath, 1810. Little is known of Milgrove’s life, except that he was precentor and organist of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel at Bath, and the keeper of a fancy goods shop. Wesley Milgate reports that he was a ‘proprietor’ or investor in John Wesley*’s New King Street Chapel in Bath to the tune of £100, a considerable sum at that time (Songs of the People of God, 1992, p. 293). He ceased to be a proprietor in 1787, perhaps because of the increasing distance between the Countess of Huntingdon and the Wesleyan Methodists. Milgrove was a considerable figure in fashionable Bath music-making. In 1787 there was published The rose has been wash’d, as sung...