The first works which he exhibited there were ‘The Rose of York’ and ‘The Rose of Lancaster,’ with three portraits, and he continued a constant and popular contributor to its exhibitions for nearly forty years. Lady Burdett-Coutts was one of his most constant friends, and he painted for her many portraits and several pictures of horses and dogs. After some years' residence in London he mainly devoted himself to the fancy subjects by which he is best known. These were usually half-length single figures, or at most a couple of figures, studied from life, and with landscape backgrounds painted from nature. Many of the most effective were Irish studies, the earliest of which were painted in 1854, on his first visit to Ireland. Several were purchased by Mr. Ingram, and published as chromolithographs with the ‘Illustrated London News.’ Later in life he again changed his line in art, and devoted himself chiefly to landscape-painting, but not with success equal to that which he had achieved with his rustic figures. He died of bronchitis at Sutton House, West Hill, Highgate, on 27 Jan. 1882, in the seventy-first year of his age.
[Birmingham Daily Post, 31 Jan. 1882; reprinted in Architect, 1882, i. 73; Exhibition Catalogues of the Society of British Artists, 1842–82.]
HILL, JOHN? (d. 1697?), governor of Inverlochy during the massacre of Glencoe in 1692, was lieutenant-colonel of a regiment of foot then not long raised by Archibald Campbell, first duke of Argyll (d. 1703) [q. v.], and which was disbanded about 1697. He was in 1691 governor of Inverlochy, now Fort William, Inverness-shire, where he had been left with fifteen hundred men by General Hugh Mackay to watch the highlands. On 31 Dec. 1691, the last day for the highland chieftains to take the oath of allegiance to William III, Mac Ian, chief of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, a sept of the great Clan Coila, visited Hill, and requested him to administer the oath to him. Hill was not a magistrate, but gave Mac Ian an introductory letter to Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglass, sheriff of Argyllshire. Mac Ian accordingly presented himself to Sheriff Campbell at Inverary on 6 Jan. 1692, five days after the oath should have been taken. Mac Ian showed Hill's letter to the sheriff and was sworn. It was decided by the government in London, however, to make an example of Mac Ian and his people. Hill seems to have been a kind-hearted man, and was not disposed to favour a measure like the Glencoe massacre. The instructions were for that reason sent to his second in command, Lieutenant-colonel James Hamilton. The massacre took place under Hamilton's instructions and superintendence on 13 Feb. 1692. Hill and Hamilton were tried for murder at Edinburgh, but were ‘cleared’ (Luttrell, Relation, iii. 496). Luttrell speaks of some of Hill's men having been killed in the highlands while tax-collecting in November 1695 (ib. iii. 551). In the index to Luttrell's ‘Relation of State Affairs’ Hill of Inverlochy is identified with the Colonel Hill, lieutenant-governor of Montserrat, who died at Pembroke in August 1697 (ib. iv. 261).
[Account of the massacre of Glencoe in Macaulay's Hist. of England, vol. iii.; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, printed 1857), ii. 82, 314, 327, 375, 484, iii. 493, 496, 551, iv. 261. The Home Office (War Office) records afford no materials for the further identification of Colonel Hill of Argyll's regiment. In Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 193, he is confused with Major-general John Hill (d. 1732?) [q. v.]]
HILL, JOHN (d. 1732?), major-general, brother of Queen Anne's favourite, Abigail Hill, lady Masham [q. v.], was a poor relation of the Duchess of Marlborough, who calls him ‘a tall ragged boy that I took and clothed, and the Duke of Marlborough made a colonel of, although he was of no use as a soldier.’ Through the Marlborough influence he became a page to the Princess Anne, and in April 1703 was appointed captain in the Coldstream guards, apparently his first commission. In 1705 he was made colonel of Brigadier Stanhope's late regiment (11th foot), when reformed after its surrender at Portalegre (Home Office Mil. Entry Book, vii. 32). Luttrell says (Relation, v. 572) that Stanhope was his uncle. Hill commanded a brigade at Almanza, where his regiment was all but destroyed; reformed the latter in England, and went with it to Flanders, where he was wounded at the siege of Mons in 1709. The proposal to give him a vacant colonelcy in the following winter was successfully resisted by Marlborough, but he was soon afterwards consoled by a pension of 1,000l. a year (ib. vi. 585). He was made a brigadier-general, and sent to America in 1711 with certain regiments withdrawn from Flanders for an attack on the French settlements. The troops went to Boston, and were encamped for a time on Rhode Island. Reinforced by some provincials, they afterwards attempted to ascend the St. Lawrence (then called the Canada River) to attack Quebec. Ignorance of the navigation and stress of weather caused the loss of eight of the transports, with over a thousand seamen and soldiers, on 20 July 1711, and
