Portrait of Ralph Bates (1688-1754), aged 63, half-length, in a brown suit

Ralph Bates, was the son of Ralph Bates Senior and his second wife Anne. Ralph suceeded to the Halliwell and Milburn (later Milbourne) estates in Northumberland, when his older half-brother died in 1734. After the death of his first wife, Mary, in 1722, he married Isabel in 1725, with whom he had two children: Mary and Ralph, who went on to become High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1762. Milbourne Hall, as it stands today, was built by the latter's son, another Ralph, in 1810 to a design by Edinburgh architect John Patterson.