HILL, Richard (1607-59), of Salisbury and Stratford Dean, Wilts.

Hill’s immediate family came from the parish of St Thomas, Salisbury, where his mother was baptised in 1580 and his parents were married in November 1599.15St Thomas par. reg. His father, Thomas Hill, listed in 1612 as belonging to the highest status company in the city, was described in 1619 as a linen draper at the marriage of his second daughter, Isabell, to a grocer and member of the leading local family, the Eyres.16Mar. Lics. Salisbury 1615-1682, 35; Wilts. RO, G23/1/264, f. 1. A churchwarden at St Thomas in 1622, Thomas was active in the various ambitious schemes for poor relief and social regulation in the city spearheaded by godly members of the corporation.17Poverty in early Stuart Salisbury ed. P. Slack (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxxi), 70, 87, 91; Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 310. A longstanding councillor, he served as mayor in 1631-2 and was still attending council meetings in the month of his death, October 1635.18Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, esp. f. 393; Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 314. In May 1637 his widow, Sibill (probably his second wife Sibill Greene), was licensed to marry Christopher Willoughby, rector of nearby Baverstock.19Mar. Lics. Salisbury 1615-1682, 157. Her younger step-son, Thomas Hill (bap. 1613), who had attended the same puritan-dominated Oxford college as Willoughby – Magdalen Hall – became curate at Baverstock in 1638.20Al. Ox.; Clergy of the C. of E. database, ID 31378.

Meanwhile Richard had taken his place in civic life. In March 1632 he and another future MP, linen-draper William Stone*, were presented by the Company of Merchants to receive their freedom.21Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, f. 369. His rapid rise to become an assistant, one of the outer council of Forty-Eight, in October 1635 is testament to his connections.22Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, f. 393. These may already have stretched considerably wider than Salisbury, although Hill’s career was to be focussed within his county. By this time he had married Sara, perhaps daughter of the ‘father-in-law’, John Hill of London, merchant, referred to two decades later in his will; their own daughter Sarah was baptized at St Thomas in April 1635.23St Thomas par. reg. John Hill was conceivably a member of the leading London mercantile family and a kinsman of the Cheapside draper Richard Hill who appears frequently in state papers and Commons Journals. Often acting with a partner, William Pennoyer, the latter Richard Hill was to be an adventurer for Ireland in 1642 and subsequently a commissioner for the navy, for customs and for prize goods.24A. and O; CSP Ire. Adventurers for Land 1642-59, 71, 72, 78; R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (1993), 165, 168, 191, 403-4, 406, 435, 521, 553, 587.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Hill of Salisbury served as auditor of civic accounts, participated in the administration of the brewhouse for the poor, and collected for charitable relief and for the expenses of weekly lectures.25Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, ff. 398, 410, 411v-412v, 420. In November 1640 he associated with Stone and Humphrey Ditton* in signing the petition presented by former mayor and puritan activist John Dove* against the election to Parliament of the city’s recorder, Robert Hyde* – a clear indication of disaffection from the policies of Charles I’s personal rule as refracted through the prism of confrontation between the corporation and the cathedral close.26Harl. 541, f. 91v; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. vi (Old and New Sarum), 391. Two months later Hill was among councillors delegated to peruse the city’s charters with a view to asserting its rights in relation to the chapter, while at Easter he began an unprecedented three-year stint as churchwarden in St Edmund’s parish (in the last phase with Stone as his partner).27Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 1v; Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 214, 384. He was thus almost certainly one of the most influential backers of the steps taken by John Dove and his brother Francis Dove to secure Salisbury for Parliament on the outbreak of the civil war. However, it is not until 1 July 1644, when he was appointed by Parliament to the Wiltshire county committee, that unequivocal evidence emerges.28A. and O. In due course he served as the committee’s treasurer, while Jonathan Hill, doubtless a kinsman and definitely an associate of Stone, was its clerk from 1649.29Waylen, ‘Falstone Day Bk.’ 345, 372, 379.

Like most of his colleagues, Hill remained on the corporation as the city changed hands according to the fortunes of the conflict. In his case it may have helped that his brother Thomas, who was admitted as curate at St Thomas in August 1643, evidently did not share his allegiance. In December 1645 the Committee for Plundered Ministers admitted in Thomas’s stead the well-known Presbyterian minister John Conant the elder, the Committee for Compounding having already sequestered Thomas for delinquency. He did not actually resign until February 1646, perhaps only then convinced of Parliament’s victory.30Walker Revised, 374; Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 323-4. In contrast, Richard gained from the ending of the conflict: having occupied a very modest ranking among the assistants, by October 1647 he had joined the inner council of Twenty-Four and become an alderman.31Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 33, 33v Still pre-eminent with Stone among the laymen of St Edmund parish, in 1649 and 1650 he was engaged in the campaign to obtain enhanced maintenance for, and thus retain the services of, its eminent Presbyterian minister, John Strickland, as well as for Conant.32Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 217, 221, 324; Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 54; Calamy Revised, 467-8.

Shortly afterwards, however, Hill moved out of Salisbury and established himself as a country gentleman, although he continued to attend council meetings until a charter was obtained in 1656 for a smaller and more radical corporation on which he was not included.33Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 57 seq.; Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 227. In October 1651 he took advantage of his place on the county committee to acquire a lease of the sequestered property of Mawarden Court in Stratford sub Castle, or Castle Dean, a couple of miles to the west of the city adjacent to the site of Old Sarum. He subsequently obtained the freehold, as he also did of the manor, formerly belonging to the cathedral chapter.34PROB11/292/214; CCC 504; VCH Wilts. vi. 201, 206. He was made a captain of foot in the militia under Colonel John Dove in August 1650 and was added to the militia commissioners a year later, having in the meantime become an assessment commissioner.35CSP Dom. 1650, p. 508; 1651, p. 322; A. and O. Placed on the Wiltshire commission of the peace in July 1653, he attended sessions at Salisbury, Warminster and Marlborough.36C231/6, p. 263; C193/13/5, f. 117; Wilts. RO, A1/160/2. In his capacity as magistrate he conducted several marriages at Stratford sub Castle in 1654.37Stratford sub Castle par. reg.

When Wiltshire experienced royalist rebellion in March 1655, Hill was a key figure in its suppression. Writing to Secretary of state John Thurloe* from Dorchester, where he had gone to initiate prosecutions, Attorney General Edmund Prideaux I* singled out Hill and his friend Francis Swanton, also of Salisbury, who ‘have been very faithful and active in this business, and were very much assisting unto me, and I had great help and directions from them’. Unlike Dove, however, Hill was prepared to recommend mercy in individual cases.38TSP iii. 378. With a swathe of recent and prospective local MPs – Dove, Nicholas Greene*, Edward Scotton*, Thomas Eyre*, James Hely* and William Ludlowe* – Hill was appointed to the Wiltshire commission to assist John Disbrowe* as major-general for south-west England. In December the commissioners wrote to the protector, declaring their readiness to execute Disbrowe’s commands.39TSP iv. 295, 300.

It may thus have been as much because of support from some faction in London as through any (undetected) endorsement from the traditional influence at Old Sarum, the Cecil family, that Hill was elected with William Ludlowe to sit for the borough in the 1659 Parliament. He was ‘in good health’ when he made his will on 10 November 1658 and he attended the quarter sessions in Salisbury on 11 January 1659.40PROB11/292/214; Wilts. RO, A1/160/2, f. 135. The balance of probability is that he travelled to Westminster to take his seat when Parliament opened on 27 January, but that he succumbed to illness or accident shortly afterwards: his sole appearance in the Journal was posthumous, when the by-election arising from his death was announced on 12 February.41CJ vii. 603a. After an interval suggesting the return of his body from London, he was buried at Stratford sub Castle on the 18th.42Stratford sub Castle par. reg.

Hill’s will revealed a somewhat precarious prosperity and continuing links with his native city. In addition to his brother Thomas (who had clung on to a replacement living at Wylye near Warminster despite failure to read government orders) his executors included Swanton and William Pecode, a Salisbury clothier; William Hunt, Presbyterian master of the city’s free school and minister at Stratford, was a beneficiary. Hill’s four surviving daughters were each to have £400 portions, his younger son a farm worth £50 a year, and his second wife Prudence another at Tollard Royal, but (as he recited) his property was based on former ecclesiastical land and much of it was tied up in a £2,000 mortgage.43PROB11/292/214; Walker Revised, 374; Calamy Revised, 285. None the less, the family weathered the Restoration moderately well. The cathedral chapter regained the freehold of the Stratford land but leased it in the 1660s to Hills of London, apparently close relatives of the MP.44VCH Wilts. vi. 201, 206. Richard Hill, probably the MP’s younger son, was with Hely among Nonconformist assistants purged from the Salisbury corporation in December 1687, while John Hill, probably the MP’s elder surviving son, was chosen mayor when the changes made by James II were overturned in October 1688.45Hatcher, Hist. Wilts. vi. Old and New Sarum, 485, 487. Their uncle Thomas, on the other hand, became a canon of Salisbury, and was probably the originator of the gentry family established in the cathedral close.46Clergy of the C. of E. database, ID: 31378; Salisbury par. regs. None served as MPs.