Rowland Hill

Rowland Hill (c1498-1561)	Thomas Hill (1450-1506)	Humphrey Hill (1404-1484)	Griffith “Gruffithus” Hill (1375-1433)	+
		Humphrey Hill (1404-1484)	Margaret Warrene (c1378-?)	+
		Agnes Bird (1415-?)	John Bird (c1382-1435)
		Agnes Bird (1415-?)	Katherine Malpas (c1390-<1433)
	Margaret Wilbraham (c1460-?)	Thomse Wilbraham (c1431-?)
		Thomse Wilbraham (c1431-?)

Events

Attributes

Notes

Note 1

Sir Rowland Hill of London and Soulton Hall was the first Protestant Lord Mayor of London. He was a merchant, statesman and philanthropist.

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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' . 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]

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

He was one of the City's representatives in the first parliament of Queen Mary's reign . 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]

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]

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,

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]

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]

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]

Jane Hill, who married John Gratewood , 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 of High Ercall; Alice Gratewood , who married the justice Reginald Corbet; and Margaret Gratwood, who married Thomas Jones of Chilton.[3][6][15][16][17]

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:

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.

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]

↑ 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

↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 Wikipedia. Rowland Hill . Accessed Dec 20, 2016

↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Archer, Ian . "Hill, Sir Rowland ". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13296. Cited by Wikipedia.

↑ Burke, John Bernard . A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire . p. 514. Retrieved 19 November 2013. p. 514. Cited by Wikipedia.

↑ 5.0 5.1 Sir Rowland , of London and Hodnet, Shropshire, History of Parliament Retrieved 19 November 2013. Cited by Wikipedia.

↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 Betham, William . The Baronetage of England. III. p. 208. Retrieved 19 November 2013. Cited by Wikipedia.

↑ 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 , 179/251/15v, 144/120. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd

↑ 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, 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

↑ City of London RO, rep. 9, f. 150; 11, f. 397v; 13, ff. 30v-31v, 247; jnl. 15, f. 339. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd

↑ 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

↑ 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 , 245; City of London RO, rep. 12, f. 194; Wriothesley’s Chron. i , 135; DNB. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd

↑ City of London RO, jnl. 16, ff. 36-37v; rep. 12, f. 194; Wriothesley’s Chron. ii , 24-25, 43; Beaven, ii. 170. London Consist. Ct. Wills, 1492-1547 , 142-3. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd

↑ Baker, J.H. . "Bromley, Sir Thomas ". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3512. Cited by Wikipedia.

↑ 8. City of London RO, letter bk. R, f. 295v; rep. 13, 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

↑ Vaughan, H.F.J. . "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.

↑ Keen, Alan; Lubbock, Roger . The Annotator. London: Putnam. p. 217. Cited by Wikipedia.

↑ According to Archer, Margaret Gratwood married Hill's friend, the London alderman Sir Thomas Leigh. Note by Wikipedia.

↑ 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

↑ City of London RO, rep. 12, f. 323v; 13, 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 , 271, 387. Cited by Helen Miller. History of Parliament: Sir Rowland Hill Accessed November 24, 2017 jhd

!Source: The Visitation of Shropshire, TAKEN IN THE YEAR 1623, BY ROBERT TRESSWELL, SOMERSET HERALD, AND AUGUSTINE VINCENT, ROUGE CROIX PURSUIVANT OF ARMS;

Marshals and Deputies to William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms. WITH ADDITIONA FROM THE PEDIGREES OF SHROPSHIRE GENTRY TAKEN BY THE HERALDS IN THE YEARS 1569 AND 1584, AND OTHER SOURCES. EDITED BY GEORGE GRAZEBROOK, F.S.A. AND JOHN PAUL RYLANDS, F.S.A.,OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARR1STER-AT-LAW. PART I. LONDON: 1889. page 242.

argent; 2, Salle, a lion rampant argent, crowned or, letween three crosses formee

fitchee of the second [Longslow] ; 3, Per pale or and argent, an eagle displayed

* The old emblazoned family pedigree contains a copy of a grant by Wm. Hervy, Clarencieux,

dated 3 Nov. 1562, authorizing Alice Corbet, daughter of John Gratewood by Jane Hill,

then married to Reginald Corbet, and William Gratewood, son of the same John, and James

Barker, son of John Barker by Elizabeth, sister of the said Sir Rowland Hill, Knt., late Lord

Mayor, and Rowland Barker, son and heir of James Barker, son and heir of the said John Barker

The manor is associated with William Shakespeare and his play As You Like It,[2] and the existing hall was constructed between 1556 and 1560 by Sir Rowland Hill ,[3] a prominent statesman, polymath, and philanthropist who is remembered as the "First Protestant Lord Mayor of London"[4] serving in 1549-50.

Built during the period of the English Reformation, the house is considered an architectural project that reflects the political and social shifts of its time.[5] The building's architecture has been the subject of scholarly interpretation which suggests that the design incorporates a set of humanist principles, drawing on concepts from classical antiquity, geometry, and scripture.[6]

The house contains several notable features, including a basement chapel,[7] a priest hole,[8] and hidden bookcases.[citation needed] These elements have led to speculation about the hall's role in the religious conflicts of the 16th century and its connection to Hill's work, which include being traditionally named as the publisher of the Geneva Bible.[9]

With a history that predates the Norman Conquest, Soulton is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.[10] A "lost castle" on the grounds, dating to the medieval period, was rediscovered in 2021 and has been the subject of an ongoing archaeological investigation.[11]

The present hall was constructed between 1556 and 1560 by a prominent statesman, scholar, and merchant. Sir Rowland Hill was a leading politician of his time, serving in high offices and on the Privy Councils of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.[12] He held significant institutional power, serving on both the Commissions against Heretics and the Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes, which granted him the right to seize prohibited books and items under both Protestant and Anglican rule.[13]

!Source: Thomas Lodge - of Hawkstone and Soulton and Sir Rowland Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lodge_

Lodge was among the Merchant Adventurers and Merchants of the Staple co-opted as signatories to the Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crown on 21 June 1553.[25] Following the proclamation of Queen Mary on 19 July, he was among the proposers of John Machell as alderman for the Vintry ward, made vacant by the transfer of William Hewett to Candlewick on 18 July, and Machell was sworn on 20 July.[26] Three days later George Barne named Thomas Offley to be a Sheriff for the coming year, and Lodge, who was then in Flanders and not yet an alderman, was chosen by the Commons on 1 August to serve as Sheriff with him.[27] The death of Stephen Kirton made way for Lodge's election as alderman to the Cheap ward on 23 August, but he was not sworn until 24 October, after the swearing of the Sheriffs at Michaelmas and the Coronation of Queen Mary on 1 October 1553.[28] William Hewett therefore served as Sheriff with Offley for the year 1553–54.

Lodge became Master of the Grocers' Company for his first term in 1554–55.[29]

Lodge engaged in foreign trade in Antwerp, and was an enterprising supporter of schemes for opening new markets in distant countries. On 25 November 1553 a sum of £15,426. 19s. 1d. sterling was paid to him and other merchants in consideration of money advanced to the Queen by them at Antwerp.[30] In 1555 he was one of the 24 named Assistants to the Governor and Consuls in Queen Mary's Charter to the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands .[31] He received Mary's thanks in a letter dated from Richmond 9 August 1558, for his willingness to become surety for redeeming Sir Henry Palmer,[32] prisoner in France.[33]

Lodge was principal mourner, and his brother-in-law John Machell second mourner, at the funeral of William Laxton in August 1556,[34] in the late summer of Machell's shrievalty, and both were overseers of Laxton's will.[35] Lodge and Dame Joan Laxton were therefore involved in the making of Laxton's grave in the violated[36] and dis-endowed Keble chantry in St Mary Aldermary, where both were later buried.[37] Lodge and Dame Joan worked with the Grocers' Company for Laxton's will in the foundation of Oundle School, and Lodge continued to occupy under lease a house on the Cornhill, London which was among the school's endowments, into the 1570s.[38]

The manor of Soulton Hall, sold by Lodge to Sir Rowland Hill, publisher of the Geneva Bible, a possible inspiration for setting of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' via Lodge's son Thomas. The hall building shown narrowly post-dates Lodge's ownership

Also in 1556 Lodge sold the manors of Hawkstone and Soulton, near Wem, to Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Thomas Leigh.[39] There are indications that the Lodge family's familiarity with the manor and the statecraft of Sir Rowland Hill who published the Geneva Bible, were memorialized in Shakespeare's play As You Like It, itself inspired by Lodge's son Thomas Lodge's book Rosalynde.[40]

In 1558 Lodge was among the principal overseers for John Machell's will,[41] a duty which occupied him until at least 1568.[42]

The death of Mary and accession of Elizabeth made way for Lodge's election, with Roger Martyn, as Sheriff for 1559–60 in the Mayoralty of William Hewett. In 1559 he headed a commission to survey for the improvement of the river Lea for navigation and water supply between Ware and London .[43] In the same period he served his second term as Master of the Grocers' Company. In 1561 he was Governor of the Muscovy Company, and on 8 May in that capacity signed a 'remembrance' to Anthony Jenkinson on his departure to Russia and Persia.[44] He also traded to Barbary, and on 14 August 1561 he offered, jointly with Sir William Chester and Sir William Garrard, to defray the charges of a Portuguese mariner for a voyage of discovery to that coast, and to present him with one hundred crowns.[45]

As his servant John Wanton was gathering military intelligence in Dieppe,[46] Lodge entered office as Lord Mayor of London on 29 October 1562. Henry Machyn described his inauguration. He went by river to Westminster, with the aldermen and Crafts in barges decked with streamers: so to Westminster Old Palace, attended by drums, trumpets and guns, to take his oath: then he and all the aldermen returned to Baynard's Castle. He was met by the bachelors in St Paul's Churchyard, wearing their crimson damask hoods, with drums, flutes and trumpets blowing, with 60 poor men in blue gowns and red caps, and with targets, javelins, great standards, and four great banners of arms. A goodly pageant with music followed, after which a great dinner was held at the Guildhall, with many of the council, the judges, and noblemen and their wives. Then the mayor and aldermen proceeded to St Paul's, with much music.[47] Lodge was knighted in 1562.[48]

Rowland Hill

Personal and Family Information

Pedigree Chart (3 generations)

Events

Attributes

Notes

Note 1