Mitford, William

William (1744-1827), an English historian. He was a native of London and was educated at Oxford. On the advice of the historian, Gibbon, then a fellow officer in an English regiment, he undertook the preparation of A History of Greece. He was a Tory in politics. This so colored his views that he wrote of the Athenian democracy as though it were a treacherous rabble, and elevated Philip to the rank of a great statesman and military commander. His history has been superseded largely by that of Grote, a more accurate and trustworthy treatise.