HILLER, Richard (?1593-1667), of Stoke next Guildford, Surr.

Hiller’s origins are obscure. He may have been the third son of Richard Hiller or Hillar baptized in 1593 at Beddington, where he was bequeathed a tenement in 1603 by his grandfather, Robert.10LMA, X32/6/449. But Hillers may be found in various parts of Surrey at this period, including in the two central parishes of Guildford. The man who in April 1614 married Anne Christmas at St Mary’s in the town was almost certainly the MP. If his bride was the daughter of Thomas Christmas of Carshalton, who had died 11 years earlier, then her inheritance had been a mere £5, with a copper kettle and some pewter. Their daughter Anne was baptized at St Nicholas’s on 21 November and buried at St Mary’s on 12 December.11St Mary and St Nicholas, Guildford, par. regs.; LMA, X32/7.

Hiller had presumably served an apprenticeship and set himself up in trade. At some point before 1630, when he first held civic office in Guildford, he became a freeman of the town. In the 1640s he served twice as its mayor and was a local justice of the peace.12Surr. RO (Guildford), BR/OL/1/2, ff. 107, 111-12, 117-20, 122-6; Hist. Guildford, 232-3. In 1641 he was assessed at £4, placing him in the middle ranks of the town’s leaders.13Hist. Guildford, 239. However, after 1651 he seems to have retired from corporation affairs: perhaps it was about this time that he purchased the property at Stoke, just to the north of the town, which he mentioned in his will.14LMA, X32/52/48

Elected for the borough to the first protectorate Parliament in 1654, he made no recorded contribution to proceedings. Unless this was some kind of retrospective honour related to his election, he was unlikely to have been the Richard Hiller, gentleman, once apprenticed to Thomas Christmas, who was admitted a freeman of Guildford on 15 January 1655.15Guildford Freemen’s Bks. 29. It is possible that this was his kinsman, or even a son or grandson. His wife – after over forty years, not necessarily the former Anne Christmas – was buried at St Mary’s in 1656.16St Mary, Guildford, par. reg.

In 1662 Hiller contributed £5 to the ‘free and voluntary’ payment to Charles II.17E179/257/28/26. ‘Aged and weak in body’, he made his will a few weeks before his death in 1667. There was no mention of descendants, the heir to his lands in Stoke being his ‘son-in-law’ (or perhaps stepson) John Horsenail of Guildford. Other beneficiaries, kin from the Westbrooke, Lee and Longhurst families, received bequests totalling £90.18LMA, X32/52/48. No other member of the family appears to have sat in Parliament.