ciety of Antiquaries on 3 Jan. 1721–2 it was resolved to attempt a complete history of British coins, Hill undertook to describe the Saxon coins in Lord Oxford's possession, while his own collection was to be catalogued by George Holmes (1662–1749) [q. v.] (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iv. 543 n., v. 454 n., vi. 156 n.) During the same year he exhibited to the society an accurate survey of Ariconium and of Hereford (Gough, i. 417). A few years before his death, in December 1727 or in January 1728, Hill went to reside permanently in Herefordshire, but still maintained a correspondence with his brother-antiquaries, especially with Roger Gale and William Stukeley. To the latter he sent his picture, drawn by himself, in profile (Stukeley, Diaries and Letters, Surtees Soc., i. 132). At his dying request his father forwarded his Herefordshire collections to Gale for his perusal in March 1728. Gale found that although Hill had done more than was supposed, his work was ‘a mere embryo of what he had promised’ (ib. i. 204–5), and therefore unfit for publication. In 1752 Isaac Taylor of Ross bought the papers of Hill's brother, a schoolmaster in Herefordshire, for John Roberts, M.B., also of Ross, who indexed the volumes and made many additions in six duodecimo volumes. After Roberts's death in 1776 the whole collection, now increased to about twenty volumes of various sizes, again passed to Taylor, who sold them in 1778 to Thomas Clarke, F.S.A., principal registrar of the diocese of Hereford (Gough, i. 418*). On Clarke's death in March 1780 they came to the Rev. James Clarke, who still owned them in 1821. Clarke offered to sell them to John Allen the younger of Hereford, but they could not agree about the price. A collection of thirty-five ancient Herefordshire deeds, most of them marked with Hill's name, was given by Joshua Blew, librarian of the Inner Temple, a native of the county, to Andrew Coltee Ducarel [q. v.] Isaac Taylor had ‘a beautiful soliloquy of Hill's on hearing a parent correct his child with curses’ (Gough, i. 418*). A more ambitious, but unfinished, poem is mentioned by Maurice Johnson, junior, in a letter to Stukeley, dated 14 Oct. 1719 (Stukeley, i. 168). Verses on his death are in John Husband's ‘Miscellany of Poems’ (pp. 134–40), 8vo, Oxford, 1731, from which it appears that Hill wrote some lines on ‘Eternity’ about ten hours before his death.
[Rawlinson's English Topographer, pp. 70–3; Stukeley's Diaries and Letters (Surtees Soc.), vol. i.; Gough's British Topography, vol. i.; John Allen's Bibliotheca Herefordiensis, pp. viii–x; Nichols's Lit. Anecd.]
HILL, JAMES (d. 1817?), actor and vocalist, was a native of Kidderminster; lost his father when four years old; was educated by an uncle, and was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a painter. After a visit to London he went to Bristol, and with some difficulty induced the managers of the theatres at Bristol and Bath to allow him to perform for a single occasion at the Bath theatre. He made his first appearance accordingly, 1 Oct. 1796, in Bannister's part of Belville in ‘Rosina,’ a comic opera by Mrs. Brooke. His success was enough to secure him an engagement for singing parts. After he had taken lessons of the leader of the orchestra at Bath, Xamenes, and others, he became, on the introduction of Signora Storace, the pupil of Rauzzini. As Edwin in Leonard MacNally's comic opera of ‘Robin Hood’ he made, at Covent Garden, 8 Oct. 1798, his first appearance in London, attracting little attention. He was the original Sir Edward in Thomas Knight's ‘Turnpike Gate,’ 14 Nov. 1799; Don Antonio in Cobb's ‘Paul and Virginia,’ 1 May 1800; Abdalla in T. J. Dibdin's ‘Il Bondocani,’ 15 Nov. 1800; Young Inca in Morton's ‘Blind Girl,’ 22 April 1801; Lorenzo in ‘Who's the Rogue?’ and he took other second-rate parts in musical pieces of little importance. De Mountfort, count of Brittany, in T. J. Dibdin's ‘English Fleet in 1342,’ is the last part in which he is traceable at Covent Garden, 13 Dec. 1803. At the close of the season of 1805–6, in resentment of some fancied injury, he retired into the country and disappeared. According to Oxberry's ‘Dramatic Chronology,’ Hill seems to have died in 1817 in Jamaica. Gilliland speaks of him as possessing a pleasing voice and genteel person, but wanting in sprightliness and ease of deportment, a respectable substitute for Incledon, but not in the same rank (Dramatic Synopsis, pp. 114–15).
[Books cited; Genest's Account of the Stage; Gilliland's Dramatic Mirror.]
HILL, JAMES JOHN (1811–1882), painter, was the son of Daniel Hill of Broad Street, Birmingham, where he was born in 1811. He was educated at Hazlewood School, and received his artistic training in the academy conducted by John Vincent Barber [see under Barber, Joseph], where Thomas Creswick [q. v.] was his fellow-student. He practised his art for some years in his native town, chiefly as a portrait-painter, and among his sitters were Dr. Warneford and Mrs. Glover, the founder of Spring Hill College. In 1839 he removed to London, and in 1842 was elected a member of the Society of British Artists.
