Rowland Hill MP (abt. 1498 - 1561)

Born about 1498 in Hodnet, Shropshire, England

Ancestors

Died 1561 at about age 63 in London, England

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Biography

Rowland Hill MP is Notable.

Sir Rowland Hill of London and Soulton Hall (ca. 1495–1561) was the first Protestant Lord Mayor of London. He was a merchant, statesman and philanthropist.

1498 Birth and Parentage

He was born by 1498, the son and heir of Thomas Hill of Hodnet by his wife Margaret, daughter of Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, Cheshire. ^[1]

Rowland Hill was born at Hodnet, in north-east Shropshire, the eldest son in a cadet branch of a family which derived its name from the village Court of Hill in the south of the county. ^[1]

Rowland Hill was born at Hodnet, Shropshire about 1495. ^[2]

He was the eldest son of Thomas Hill and Margaret Wilbraham. His mother was the daughter of Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, Cheshire.^[3][4]

He had a younger brother, William, and four sisters, Agnes, Joan, Jane and Elizabeth.^{[5] [6]}

1519 Mercer

He was apprenticed to the London mercer Sir Thomas Kitson and admitted to the freedom of the company in 1519. He had already begun to trade to the Netherlands and in 1519-20 he imported customable goods, mostly linens and fustians, to the value of £426. He soon became an important merchant adventurer, treasurer of the company in 1523, and a very rich man: his subsidy assessment rose from £150 in goods in the mid 1520s to 5,000 marks in goods in 1541. ^[7]

He was apprenticed to a London mercer, Thomas Kitson, obtaining his freedom of the Company in 1519. ^[3]

He then became a leading merchant adventurer, with the centre of his business operations being in the parish of St Stephen Walbrook, where he owned a property fronting onto Walbrook. He was churchwarden of St Stephens between 1525 and 1526.

Hill was prominent in the affairs of the Mercers' Company. He was warden between 1535–6, and between 1543–4 and 1550–51 and 1555-6.

1520 Residence

In the 1520s Hill was assessed in two parishes, St. Pancras Cheapside and St. Stephen’s Walbrook: he was apparently then living in the first of them but he eventually made his home in the second. ^[1]

1535 Offices Held

• Warden, Mercers’ Co. 1535-6, master 1542-3, 1549-50, 1554-5, 1560-1;
• sheriff, London 1541-2; alderman 1542-d., mayor 1549-50, auditor 1550-2;
• j.p. Salop 1543-54, Mdx. 1547-54, Surr. q. 1557-d.;
• commr. of Admiralty in Nov. 1547. ^[8]

1536 Parliamentary Business

He had some experience of parliamentary business before sitting in the House himself. He was one of a number of commoners appointed by the court of aldermen on 27 Jan. 1536, before the final session of the Parliament of 1529, to discuss ‘such matters as shall be profitable for the commonwealth of this City’. In 1547, by then an alderman, he was nominated by the common council of London to draw up the City’s answer to a bill for the river Thames introduced into the Lords, and by the court of aldermen to join with three others in scrutinizing bills devised by the garbler of spices, Thomas Norton, the father of the Member of that name. In March 1553 he was appointed to accompany the mayor to the Parliament chamber, to solicit the Lords’ support for a bill put in by London concerning fuel, and to Chancellor Goodrich to request his ‘lawful favour’ in the same matter. Similar commissions followed his own Membership: thus on 12 Jan. 1555 he was sent to Chancellor Gardiner and Treasurer Winchester about parliamentary matters ^[9]

1539 Purchase of Monastic Property

Hill also retained substantial in the Welsh marches, and acquired extensive estates in Shropshire, Cheshire, Flintshire, and Staffordshire; between 1539 and 1547 he purchased large quantities of former monastic property including Haughmond Abbey. His power in his native county was reflected in his appearance on the Shropshire commission of the peace between 1543 and 1554.^[2]

1541 Public Office

In 1541–2, he was elected sheriff of the City of London.

1542 Imprisoned Tower of London

From 28–30 March 1542, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on the orders of the House of Commons, as a result of his 'abuse' of the Sergeant of Parliament sent to secure the release of George Ferrers, a member of parliament imprisoned for debt in the Bread Street Counter. ^[2]

The King, Henry VIII, took the side of the House of Commons in this case of member's privilege; however, he showed favour to Hill shortly after the affair by knighting him on 18 May 1542. This was during the prorogation of the parliament.^[2]

1542 Marriage

The identity of Hill's wife, whom he had married by 1542, is unknown. She died during the year of his mayoralty, and there were no children of the marriage. ^[2]

1542 Court of Aldermen

Hill was elected to the Court of Aldermen on 9 November 1542 and elected a Sheriff of the City of London for the same year.^[2]

1542 Ferrers Case

As sheriff of London, Hill was involved in the privilege case of George Ferrers. On 28 Mar. 1542 he and his fellow-sheriff and their officers were committed to prison by order of the House of Commons for arresting Ferrers, ‘being one of the burgess of the Parliament’, and resisting the serjeant at arms sent to liberate him. The next day the mayor and aldermen sued to the Lords and Commons for the sheriffs and on 30 Mar. they were released from the Tower by order of Parliament ‘without paying any fine saving fees and other charges, which stood them in £20’. It was probably to compensate him for the indignity that Henry VIII knighted Hill later in the year while the Parliament stood prorogued. ^[10]

1542 Knighted

He was knighted 18 May 1542. ^[11]

1549 Fall of Somerset

A few days after Hill’s election as mayor at Michaelmas 1549 came the fall of the Protector Somerset. On 7 Oct. two letters were read to the common council of London, both written on the previous day; one was addressed to Sir Henry Amcotes, the retiring mayor, by the lords of the Council in London, the other to Amcotes and Hill by the King and the Protector at Windsor. This letter asked for 1,000 men to defend the King, but as the Earl of Warwick had already talked with the mayor and aldermen at Ely Place this demand could not be complied with. Hill’s own preference was probably for Warwick, at least in respect of religion; he has been called ‘the first Protestant lord mayor’. At the end of his year of office he went to a communion service in Guildhall chapel ‘sung like parish clerks according to the King’s proceedings’, and during his mayoralty the usual procession to St. Paul’s on Candlemas day was cancelled, although this was said to be ‘by reason of the late departure of my lady mayoress to the mercy of almighty God’, one of only two references found to Hill’s wife. ^[12]

1549 Lord Mayor of London

In the wake of the coup d'état against Protector Somerset, Hill took over as Lord Mayor for the year beginning in November 1549 and was the first Protestant to hold that office. This was a period of substantial religious uncertainty, but he oversaw some of the critical changes in the direction of godly Protestantism, including the removal of altars. His mayoralty witnessed a determined campaign against moral offences, the wardmote inquests being required in April 1550 to make fresh presentments of ill rule, 'upon which indictments the lord mayor sat many times' (Hume, 167–9). The crusade was controversial because of Hill's readiness to punish wealthy offenders. Perhaps because of this determined moralism, which seems to have owed something to pressure from the Protestant pulpits, and perhaps because of the coincidence of his mayoralty with a decisive turn in the English Reformation, Hill is often described as the first Protestant lord mayor of London, but this tradition seems to date from no earlier than 1795, when a descendant, Sir Rowland Hill, Bt, erected an obelisk to his memory in Hawkstone Park, Shropshire.^[2]

1552 Bequest of Sir Thomas Bromley

He was left a piece of gold in the 1552 will of Chief Justice Sir Thomas Bromley (d.1555) ‘for a token of a remembrance for the old love and amity between him and me now by this my decease ended’.^[13]

1553 Parliament under Queen Mary

He was one of the City's representatives in the first parliament of Queen Mary's reign (October–December 1553). He endured a short spell of disfavour under Mary and was dropped from the commissions of the peace for Middlesex and Shropshire in 1554. He had, however, recovered the regime's confidence by 1557, when he was nominated as a commissioner for the investigation of heretics.^[2]

He was a committed member of the court of aldermen, and attended nearly two-thirds of the meetings in the reigns of both Edward VI and Mary.^[2]

1553 Member of Parliament

He represented London in Parliament, October 1553.^[1]

1553 Edward VI Parliament Summons

Shortly before the death of Edward VI writs were sent out summoning a Parliament for 18 Sept. 1553. This Parliament never met but the four Members elected to it by London were re-elected to the first Parliament of Mary’s reign which met three weeks later, Hill being one of them. He had two bills committed to him, one for London tallow chandlers and the other for imported hats and caps, but his Protestantism did not move him to join those who ‘stood for the true religion’ against the Catholic restoration. He was none the less dropped from the benches in Middlesex and Shropshire on the issue of new commissions in 1554, although appointed to the Surrey one three years later after the lord mayor had invoked a privilege entitling all ex-mayors of London to be justices of the peace. It was perhaps as a quid pro quo that in 1557 he was also commissioned to inquire into heresies and seditious books. At the close of the same year he was one of those who heard the indictment of Sir Ralph Bagnall for treason. After the accession of Elizabeth he had the less uncongenial task of helping to put into execution the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. ^[14]

1555 Charities: School at Market Drayton; London Hospitals

Hill had a reputation for charitable virtue. In 1555 he established a school at Market Drayton in Shropshire. He was also closely involved with the establishment of the London hospitals. He was the president of Bridewell and Bethlehem hospitals from 1557 to 1558 and again between 1559 and 1561, and he held the post of surveyor-general of the London hospitals from 1559 until his death.^[2]

His charity had a stern edge, for his epitaph states that he also enjoyed a reputation as 'a foe to vice and a vehement corrector': ^[6] ::A friend to virtue, a lover of learning,

A foe to vice and vehement corrector,

A prudent person, all truth supporting,

A citizen sage, and worthy counsellor,

A love of wisdom, of justice a furtherer,

Lo here his corps lieth, Sir Rowland Hill by name,

Of London late Lord Mayor and Alderman of same.

1555 Hospital Leadership

In 1555-7 Hill was a governor of Christ’s Hospital and St. Thomas’s, Southwark, from 1558 surveyor general of all the city’s hospitals and from 1559 governor of Bridewell. ^[1]

1560 Will

By his will, dated 12 Nov. 1560, he made bequests to these three hospitals and to the poor of three parishes, St. Stephen’s Walbrook ‘where I dwell’, Hodnet ‘where I was born’, and Stoke upon Tern, Shropshire, where his brother William was parson. ^[1]

He had already founded a grammar school at Market Drayton at an estimated cost of £300, the salary of the school master and usher being paid by the city of London under an agreement sealed on 9 Apr. 1551. His heir was his brother William but he left most of his lands to his sisters’ children, one of whom married Reginald Corbet. His property lay in Shropshire and the neighbouring counties of Cheshire, Flint and Staffordshire: much of it he had acquired between 1539 and 1547 in a series of purchases of monastic land. He also had a house at Hoxton, Middlesex, left to him for life by Sir Thomas Seymour I. ^[1]

1561 Death and Heirs

He died 28 October 1561 of the strangury, according to the diary of Henry Machyn, and was buried at St Stephen Walbrook on 5 November. ^[3]

Since there were no children of the marriage, his heir was his brother, William, parson of Stoke on Tern; however he left most of his property to the children of his four sisters:^[5][6]

1. Agnes Hill, who married John Cowper, esquire.^[6]
2. Joan Hill, who married George Dormayne, esquire.^[6]
3. Jane Hill, who married John Gratewood (d. 8 August 1570), esquire, of Wollerton, Shropshire, the son of William Gratwood by Mary Newport, daughter of Thomas Newport of High Ercall, Shropshire, by whom she had a son, William Gratwood, who married Mary Newport, the daughter of Sir Richard Newport (d.1570) of High Ercall; Alice Gratewood (d.1603), who married the justice Reginald Corbet; and Margaret Gratwood, who married Thomas Jones (born 1550) of Chilton.^{[3][6][15][16][17]}
4. Elizabeth Hill, who married John Barker of Haughtmond in Shropshire, esquire.^[6]

George Ormerod in his account of Malpas, Cheshire, ^[18] seconds the distribution of Hill's "immense property" among his four sisters and coheirs:

• Agnes, the eldest, married John Cowper
• Johanna, the second sister, wife of John Gratewood, had issue two daughters, Alice, wife of sir Reginald Corbet, a justice of the Common Please, and Mary, wife of sir Richard leveson, the first of whom had Dernhall and a portion of the barony of Malpas.
• Jane third sister, had issue two daughters, who brought considerable estates to their husband, sir Hugh Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley, and John Leche, of Carden, esq.
• The fourth sister, Elizabeth, wife of john Barker, had two sons and a daughter, wife of sir Thomas Leigh, merchant, called the favourite niece of sir Rowland, whose hand is said to have been the reward of her husband's fidelity and industry, as the foreign factor of hur uncle, and to have grought with it the wealth and estate which supported the honours of the peerage of Leigh of Stoneleigh, granted to her descendants.

1561 Death

Hill died on 28 or 29 Oct. 1561 and was buried on 5 Nov. in St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, where an inscription later commemorated him as ‘a friend to virtue, a lover of learning’. ^[19]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6} Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9} Wikipedia. Rowland Hill (MP). Accessed Dec 20, 2016
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} Archer, Ian (2004). "Hill, Sir Rowland (c.1495–1561)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13296. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Cited by Wikipedia.
4. ↑ Burke, John Bernard (1852). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (14th ed.). p. 514. Retrieved 19 November 2013. p. 514. Cited by Wikipedia.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Sir Rowland (by 1498-1561), of London and Hodnet, Shropshire, History of Parliament Retrieved 19 November 2013. Cited by Wikipedia.
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6} Betham, William (1803). The Baronetage of England. III. p. 208. Retrieved 19 November 2013. Cited by Wikipedia.
7. ↑ Vis. Salop, 242-5; PCC 33 Loftes; List of Freemen, T/S Mercers’ Hall, 223; Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van den Handel met Engeland, Schotland en Ierland, ed. Smit, i. 316, 392; O. de Smedt, De Engelse Natie te Antwerpen, ii. 341, 343-6, 428; Acts Ct. of Mercers’ Co. ed. Lyell and Watney, 537 seq.; E122/81/8, 82/7 (ex inf. Peter Ramsay), 179/251/15v, 144/120. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
8. ↑ Mercers’ Co. acts of ct., 1527-60, ff. 82, 154v, 232v, 268v; 1560-95, f. 1; City of London RO, jnl. 14, f. 273; 16, ff. 86v, 117v; rep. 10, f. 290v; 12(1), f. 161; Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 91, 147, 218; ii. 31; HCA 14/2. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
9. ↑ City of London RO, rep. 9, f. 150; 11, f. 397v; 13(1), ff. 30v-31v, 247; jnl. 15, f. 339. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
10. ↑ Holinshed’s Chron. iii. 824-5; Wriothesley’s Chron. i. 135; H. H. Leonard, ‘Ferrers’ case: a note’, Bull. IHR, xlii. 230-4. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
11. ↑ Date of birth estimated from admission to Mercers’ Company. According to the memorial erected at Hodnet in 1795 he was ‘nearly 70 years’ at death. D. Hughson, London , ii. 25; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 245; City of London RO, rep. 12(1), f. 194; Wriothesley’s Chron. i (Cam. Soc. n.s. xi), 135; DNB. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
12. ↑ City of London RO, jnl. 16, ff. 36-37v; rep. 12(1), f. 194; Wriothesley’s Chron. ii (Cam. Soc. n.s. xx), 24-25, 43; Beaven, ii. 170. London Consist. Ct. Wills, 1492-1547 (London Rec. Soc. iii), 142-3. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
13. ↑ Baker, J.H. (2004). "Bromley, Sir Thomas (d. 1555)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3512. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Cited by Wikipedia.
14. ↑ 8. City of London RO, letter bk. R, f. 295v; rep. 13(2), f. 518v-19; CJ, i. 28, 31; CPR, 1555-7, pp. 281-2, 318; 1558-60, p. 118. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd
15. ↑ Vaughan, H.F.J. (1881). "The Family of Jones of Chilton and Carreghova". Collections Historical & Archaeological Relating to Montgomeryshire and Its Borders: 43–70. Retrieved 19 November 2013. p. 58. Cited by Wikipedia.
16. ↑ Keen, Alan; Lubbock, Roger (1954). The Annotator. London: Putnam. p. 217. Cited by Wikipedia.
17. ↑ According to Archer, Margaret Gratwood married Hill's friend, the London alderman Sir Thomas Leigh. Note by Wikipedia.
18. ↑ George Ormerod. The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester; compiled from Original Evidences in Public Offices, the Harleian and Cottonian Mss, Parochial Register, private Muniments, Unpublished Ms. Collections of Successive Cheshire Antiquaries, and a personal survey of every township in the county...Second edition, revised and enlarged by Thomas Helsby, Esq. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1882. Volume II Malpas page 596. Accessed December 8, 2018 jhd
19. ↑ City of London RO, rep. 12(2), f. 323v; 13(2), f. 331; 14, ff. 72v, 216v-17, 391v-2; PCC 33 Loftes; W. K. Jordan, Charities of London, 225-6; LP Hen. VIII, xiv, xvi, xvii, xix-xxi; C1/783/7, 142/132/18; Reg. St. Stephen’s Walbrook, i. 78; Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 271, 387. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd