MIDDLETON, Dr Conyers, a celebrated English divine, was the son of a clergyman in Yorkshire, and born at Richmond in 1683. He distinguished himself, whilst fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, by his controversy with his master Dr Bentley, relative to some mercenary conduct of the latter in that station. He had afterwards a controversy with the whole body of physicians upon the dignity of the medical profession, concerning which he published De medicoum apud veteres Romanos degentium conditione Dissertatio ; qua, contra viros celeberrimos Jacobum Sponium et Richardum Meadium, servilem atque ignobilem eam fuisse ostenditur. In the course of this dispute much resentment was manifested, and many pamphlets appeared. Hitherto he had stood well with his clerical brethren; but in 1729 he drew upon himself the resentment of the church, by writing a Letter from Rome, showing an exact conformity between Popery and Paganism; as this letter, although politely written, yet attacked Catholic miracles with a gaiety which appeared dangerous to the cause of miracles in general. Nor were his Objections to Dr Waterland’s manner of vindicating Scripture against Tindal’s Christianity as old as the Creation, looked upon in a more favourable point of view. In 1741 appeared his great work, entitled History of the Life of Μ. Tullius Cicero, in two vols. 4to, which is indeed a fine performance, and will probably be read as long as taste and polite literature subsist amongst us. In 1748 he published a Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church from the earliest ages, through several successive centuries. He was now-attacked from all quarters; but before he took any notice of his antagonists, he supplied them with another subject, in an Examination of the Lord Bishop of London’s Discourses concerning the Use and Extent of Prophecy. Thus Dr Middleton continued to display talents and learning, which arc highly esteemed by men of a free turn of mind, but by no means in a method calculated to invite promotion in the clerical profession. In 1723 he was chosen principal librarian of the public library at Cambridge; and if he rose not to a high station in the church, he was at least in easy circumstances, which permitted him to assert a dignity of mind that is often forgotten in the career of preferment. He was one of the best writers of his age; and he displays a degree of skill and beauty in the structure of his long sentences, which has but rarely been equalled. He died in 1750, at Hildersham, in Cambridgeshire, an estate which he had purchased; and in 1752, all his works, except the life of Cicero, were collected in four vols. 4to. A second edition, in five vols. 8vo, was published in 1755.

Middleton, Sir Charles, Island, one of the Fejee Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean. It is fertile, and situated in long. 181. W. lat. 17. 2. S.

Middleton Cheyney, a town of the county of Northampton, in the hundred of King’s Sutton, seventy miles from London. It is situated in a fertile district on the borders of Oxfordshire, and contained a population in 1801 of 1153, in 1811 of 1172, in 1821 of 1398, and in 1831 of 1415 persons.