HILL, Thomas I

Hill’s name was a common one in early fifteenth-century Devon, and it is indeed possible that the same man represented both Barnstaple and Totnes in the successive Parliaments of 1429 and 1431. One candidate for identification with the Barnstaple MP is a man who held various lands and tenements in East Buckland in northern Devon. This Thomas Hill enfeoffed one Walter Whetlegh of his holdings, but found that his feoffee, once seised of the lands, was extremely reluctant to re-grant them as originally intended, and was forced to petition the chancellor for redress.1 C1/11/187.

Hill may have had some legal training, and is periodically found acting as an attorney in the Westminster law courts for men and women as important as the influential esquire Robert Hill I* of Shilston, the busy royal servant Thomas Gille I*, the widow of Edward Burnebury*, and the Exeter merchant John Shillingford*,2 CP40/682, rots. 114, 119d, 306; 689, rots. 121, 403d, 447; 691, rots. 116, 325; KB27/686, rot. 80. and it is possible that it was this professional qualification to which he owed his return.