HILL, Roger I (1586-by 1661), of Taunton, Som.

There is a slight doubt surrounding the identity of this MP. Two men named Roger Hill had strong links with the town of Taunton at the time when one of them represented it in the Short Parliament of 1640 – Roger Hill I, who was usually described as being ‘of Taunton’, and his nephew, Roger Hill II* ‘of Poundisford’ (or ‘Poundsford’). Either could easily be the Short Parliament MP and some historians have confused them.15Som. Assize Orders 1629-1640, 7n. However the election indenture describes the winning candidate as ‘Roger Hill of Taunton’, which does point to the elder man.16C219/42, pt. 2, f. 10.

The Hills were by the sixteenth century one of the leading mercantile families in Taunton. Since the time of Roger Hill, Roger Hill I’s great-grandfather, they had leased Poundisford Park to the south of the town from the bishops of Winchester; his grandfather, William Hill, had built a substantial house there. Roger Hill I’s father, Roger†, was MP for Plympton Erle in 1571 and for Taunton in 1572 (succeeding his uncle, Robert Hill†). The Elizabethan MP had three sons. The eldest, William (father of Roger Hill II*), inherited the leases on the Poundisford estates. The youngest, John†, became an ironmonger in Dorchester, and also one of its leading godly magistrates. He sat for that town in the 1628 Parliament. Their brother, Roger Hill I, after completing his education at Oxford, probably also became a merchant, basing himself in Taunton. On the death of his father in 1608, he inherited £100, plus a life interest in a house in East Street, Taunton, at an annual rent of £1 6s 8d to be paid to his elder brother.17PROB11/113/448.

Some hints as to Hill’s business interests can be found in a letter he wrote to his local MP, Thomas Brereton†, in 1624. The king of France, Louis XIII, had issued letters of reprisal against English pirates operating in the English Channel. Hill told Brereton that this was disrupting trade between the south west and Brittany, a serious matter given the extensive commercial links between the ports of the Severn estuary and north-west France. Hill therefore asked that this be raised in Parliament.18CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 173. Whether Brereton acted on this remains unknown. As a merchant living in the town, it would have been unsurprising if Hill had sought admission to the ranks of the Taunton corporation. However, the earliest indication of Hill’s interest in local politics hardly suggests cordial relations with the town’s civic leaders. In July 1630 the Somerset assizes received information that Hill had ‘used divers offensive speeches in depraving and scandalising the justice and government of the said town [Taunton] to the evil example of others’. Lord Chief Justice Richardson ordered that he was to be bound over to appear at the next assizes.19Som. Assize Orders 1629-1640, 7. However, nothing more was heard of this matter. In what was presumably an unrelated incident, Hill was among those accused of hoarding corn at the Ivelchester quarter sessions in April the following year.20QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 152-3. Any breach between Hill and the Taunton corporation was clearly not permanent. It is even possible that in 1633 he served as the town’s mayor.21Som. Assize Orders 1629-1640, 7n.

Even if he had not served as mayor, Hill must already have been a prominent member of the Taunton corporation by 1640 and this would probably have counted in his favour when he stood for the Taunton constituency in the Short Parliament election. He and another local man, Sir William Portman*, were elected for the borough’s two seats on 25 March 1640. Nothing is known of Hill’s activities in this Parliament. That autumn Hill probably did not seek re-election, instead standing aside in favour of another member of the corporation, George Serle*. One reason Hill may have done so was because of an expectation that he would soon be asked to serve again as the town’s mayor. The one duty he is known to have perform during that term was to assist in the subscription to the 1641 Protestation by the Taunton inhabitants.22Som. Protestation Returns, 118.

In 1642 Hill invested £200 in the Irish Adventure.23Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 184; CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 48. Many contemporaries viewed events in Ireland as a dire warning about the future in England, so any fears Hill may have had about Ireland possibly played their part in his decision to support Parliament when civil war broke out later that year. There is no doubt that Hill quickly emerged as one of the leading parliamentarians in Taunton. In January 1643, perhaps through his nephew’s influence, he was named by Parliament as one of its joint treasurers for the Somerset contributions, as well as being appointed as a Somerset assessment commissioner.24A. and O. Two months later Parliament issued an ordinance granting powers to the Taunton corporation to raise trained bands for the defence of the town. It was also specified that, if the local deputy lieutenants were unavailable, those forces were to take their orders from the mayor and Hill.25A. and O. As it turned out, Taunton would be hit particularly hard by the subsequent fighting. Hill is more than likely to have been one of those Taunton inhabitants who found themselves trapped in the town by the besieging royalists for much of the latter half of 1644 and the first half of 1645. Only from the summer of 1645, when Parliament established firm control over the county, could life there begin to return to normal.

Having said that, the civil war seems to have permanently damaged the Hills’ financial position. In 1648 Roger Hill II, in partnership with his younger brother, John Hill, and his father-in-law, Brampton Gurdon†, purchased the former episcopal manor of Taunton for £9,210 17s 0½d.26Som. RO, DD/X/WA/2. Hill had raised £3,000 of that purchase price by borrowing it from his uncle, Roger I, so a year later he assigned to Roger I his one-third share of the manor’s profits.27Som. RO, DD/X/WA/4.

At some point, possibly in the late 1640s, Hill served as the treasurer for the Somerset sequestration commissioners. In August 1650, by which time he had ceased to hold the office, he was ordered by the Committee for Compounding in London to submit his accounts, whereupon he argued that the former commissioners would be better placed to do so, as they still had the records, and that, in any case, being old, he would find the journey to London difficult. The Committee for Compounding agreed that he could instead present them to the Somerset sequestration commissioners, although Hill later claimed that when he met with them there was insufficient time for them to receive the accounts.28CCC 289, 298, 300, 315. As late as February 1653 the county committee was complaining that Hill had still not submitted those accounts.29CCC 630. Behind all this lay the faction disputes between John Pyne* and John Ashe*. Hill was probably associated with the Pyne allies who had formerly dominated the Somerset sequestration commission and who now wished to obstruct all efforts to investigate their management of its affairs.

Hill had no difficulty in agreeing to serve as a county officeholder under the protectorate. From the spring of 1654 he served for a year as the Somerset treasurer for maimed soldiers.30QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 233, 261, 264, 268. Such an office was sometimes a step towards the commission of the peace, but Hill, who may have been considered too local a figure, was never placed on it. However, he continued to be appointed as a sewers commissioner.31C181/6, pp. 74-269. His attitude towards the Restoration in 1660 is uncertain.

By early 1661 Hill was dead, leaving a widow, Elizabeth, about whom nothing else is known. They had no children. There are indications from the mid-1650s that, mindful that he had no immediate heir, Hill had already begun to plan on how to settle his estates. Under the Irish land settlement, he had been allocated lands in the barony of Rathconrath. In April 1654 he transferred these to his nephew, William Hill, younger brother of Roger Hill II.32CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 48. Moreover, in June 1655, Hill entered into an agreement with his brother John, William Sym and Samuel Boardman of London whereby he agreed that they would receive an annuity of £70 for 60 years following his death, payable on certain properties in and around Taunton, including two houses in Fore Street.33PROB11/303/357. Both these arrangements were then confirmed by the will which Hill drew up in 1657. Under that will, his nephew William was also allocated part of his share in the profits of the manor of Taunton (although by the time of Hill’s death those lands would have been reclaimed by the bishop of Winchester). Hill left the rest of his property to his other nephews Roger and John Hill; the latter became his sole executor.34PROB11/303/357.