John, 1st Lord Redesdale (1748-1830), son of John Mitford Esq. of Newton House and Exbury, Co. Hants, was M.P. for Beeralston from 1788 to 1789 and then for East Looe from 1799 until 1802. He was knighted in 1793 and became a Privy Councillor in 1801. He served as Solicitor General (1793-1799) and then as Attorney General from 1799 until he became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1801, a post he held for only one year as in 1802 he was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland. In the same the year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Redesdale of Redesdale. He married Frances (d. 1817), daughter of the 2nd Earl of Egmont, who bore him a son and three daughters. The son John Thomas Mitford (1805-1886), inherited the Barony on his father's death and was later created 1st Earl of Redesdale in 1877. He died unmarried in 1886 when both the Barony and Earldom became extinxt, the estates passing to his cousin Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, later created 1st Baron Redesdale, of the 2nd creation