Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/433

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Patrick's, Dublin. At the Restoration he was, as a parliamentarian, removed from this post, and went to Finglas, near Dublin, where he became minister, and kept a boarding-school for the children of gentlemen. He died in November 1667 ‘of a pestilential fever’ (which was also fatal to most of his family), and was buried on 29 Nov. in Finglas Church. Hill married when at Sutton Coldfield the well-to-do daughter of ‘a plain countryman.’ She died about 1641, and Hill, when practising medicine in London, married (according to Wood) ‘a young lass, daughter of one Mr. Burges, a physician, who brought him forth a child that lived within the seventh month after marriage.’

Another William Hill of Merton College became, according to Wood, a bible clerk of Merton in 1647, and afterwards a tale-bearer to the parliamentary visitors. This man obtained a living, but was ejected at the Restoration, and falling in with a number of fanatics, became privy to a plot to seize the king at Whitehall. He turned informer, and by his means the conspirators were arrested 29 Oct. 1662, and four of them were hanged at Tyburn, 23 Dec. Hill was rewarded with a benefice, which he did not long enjoy. Wood says he published a pamphlet giving a ‘narrative of the plot.’

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 800–2; Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

W. W.

HILL, WILLIAM NOEL-, third Lord Berwick (d. 1842), was the second son of Noel Hill, first lord Berwick (grand-nephew of Richard Hill [q. v.]), by Anne, daughter of Henry Vernon of Hilton, Staffordshire. He was ambassador at Naples from 1824 to 1833. In 1824 he assumed the additional name of Noel, and in the same year was created a privy councillor. In 1832 he succeeded his elder brother, Thomas Noel, as third Baron Berwick. He was an F.S.A. He died unmarried at Redrice, near Andover, on 4 Aug. 1842. His large library was dispersed by sale.

[Gent. Mag. 1842, ii. 423; Burke's Peerage; Diary and Corresp. of Lord Colchester, vol. iii.; Haydn's Book of Dignities.]

HILL, WILLS, first Marquis of Downshire (1718–1793), second and only surviving son of Trevor, first viscount Hillsborough, by his wife Mary, eldest daughter and coheiress of Anthony Rowe of Muswell Hill, Middlesex, and widow of Sir Edward Denton, bart., of Hillesden, Buckinghamshire, was born at Fairford, Gloucestershire, on 30 May 1718. At the general election in May 1741 he was returned to parliament for the boroughs of Warwick and Huntingdon, and elected to sit for Warwick, which he continued to represent until he was created an English peer. In May 1742 he succeeded his father as second Viscount Hillsborough in the peerage of Ireland. On the 27th of the same month, as chairman of the committee appointed by the House of Commons on the previous day, he moved that the refusal of the lords to pass the Indemnification Bill was ‘an obstruction to justice and may prove fatal to the liberties of this nation.’ The motion was, however, rejected by 245 to 193 (Parl. Hist. xii. 715–732). In July 1742 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of county Down in the room of his father, and 10 Nov. 1743 he took his seat for the first time in the Irish House of Peers (Journals of the Irish House of Lords, iii. 542). On 25 Aug. 1746 he was sworn a member of the Irish privy council. He moved the address of condolence in the House of Commons on 22 March 1751, on the death of the Prince of Wales. Walpole describes him as ‘a young man of great honour and merit,’ scrupulous in weighing his reasons, and excellent at setting them off by solemnity of voice and manner (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 80). On 3 Oct. 1751 he was created, by letters patent, Viscount Kilwarlin and Earl of Hillsborough in the peerage of Ireland, with remainder in default of male issue to his uncle, Arthur Hill, and the heirs male of his body. He took part in the debate on the subsidy to the elector of Saxony on 22 Jan. 1752, and ‘distinguished himself extremely upon this occasion. He spoke very strongly for us and upon right principles’ (letter of the Duke of Newcastle to the Duke of Dorset of 25 Jan. 1752, Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. iii. p. 43). In May 1753 he supported the Clandestine Marriage Bill (Parl. Hist. xv. 62–7), and on 21 May 1754 was appointed comptroller of the household to George II, being sworn an English privy councillor on the same day. Resigning the comptrollership he became treasurer of the chamber on 27 Dec. 1755, a post from which he retired in the following year. On 17 Nov. 1756 he was created Lord Harwich, baron of Harwich in the county of Essex, in the peerage of Great Britain, and took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on 2 Dec. 1756 (Journals of the House of Lords, xxix. 5). On 10 Sept. 1763 he was appointed president of the board of trade and foreign plantations in the place of Lord Shelburne in Grenville's administration, but resigned office on the Marquis of Rockingham becoming prime minister in July 1765. On Pitt's accession to power in the following year