ceived a pension of 60l. a year. In 1536, he exercised the duties of censor of the press for the king. On 24 Nov. 1538, he preached at St Paul's Cross and showed the blood of the abbey of Hales, affirming it to be clarified honey and saffron (Holinshed, pp. 275, 946), and on 24 Nov. 1538 he similarly denounced the Rood of Grace of Boxley, exhibiting its machinery and breaking it to pieces (Stow, Annales, p. 574; Burnet, Hist. of the Reformation, ed. Pocock, i. 385, vi. 194). In November 1538, as perpetual commendatory of the Black Friars in London, he surrendered the house into the King's hands. His letters, towards the end of his life, complain of 'cyatica;' he died before the end of 1538, and was buried in his cathedral (Hasted, Kent, ii. 11).
Hilsey was occupied, during his last years, in compiling, at Cromwell's order, a service-book in English. It appeared in 1539 as 'The Manuall of Prayers, or the Prymer in English, set out at length, whose contents the reader, by the Prologue next after the Kalender, shal sone perceave, and there in shal se brefly the order of the whole boke. Set forth by Jhon, late Bishop of Rochester, at the commandment of the ryght honorable Lorde Thomas Crumwel, Lorde Privie Seal, Vicegerent to the kynges highnes' (printed by John Mayler for John Waylande), 8vo. This has a dedication by Hilsey to Cromwell and an elaborate 'instruction of the sacrament', besides some shorter explanatory prologues. Hilsey's arrangement of the Epistles and Gospels is substantially the same as in the later prayer books (cf. Burton, lvi.) The book was republished in great part as 'The Prymer both in Englyshe and Latin' in 1540, and by Dr. Burton in 1834 in his 'Three Primers of Henry VIII.' At Cromwell's request Hilsey also prepared 'The Primer in English, most necessary for the Educacyon of Children, abstracted out of the Manuall of Prayers, or Primer in Englishe and Latin, set forth by John, laet bysh. of Rochester', &c., 1539, 8vo, and wrote 'De veri Corporis Esu in Sacramento' which was dedicated to Cromwell and is noticed in John White's 'Discorio-Martyrion', 1553, 4to. Works also ascribed to Hilsey include 'Resolutions concerning the Sacraments' and 'Resolutions of some Questions relating to Bishops, Priests, and Deaconns', but he apparently only assisted the compilation of these documents. He also helped to compile 'The Institution of a Christian Man'.
[Wood's Athenae Oxon. i. 112; Gasquet's Henry VIII and the Engl. Monasteries i. 173, &c., ii. 454, &c.; Cooper's Athenae Cantabr. i. 70; Cal. State Papers, Hen. VIII, 1534-8, passim; Dixon's History of the Church of England, i. 214, &c., ii. 251; Rymer's Foedera; British Magazine, xxxvi. 175, 303; Gorham's Reformation Gleanings, p. 19; H. Wharton's Anglia Sacra, p. 381; Narratives of Reformation (Camd. Soc.) p. 326; Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), p. 467; J. B. Mullinger's University of Cambridge, p. 19; Dugdale's Monasticon vi. 1487 (but read Hilsey for Fisher); Oxf. Univ. Reg. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.) i. 147.]
HILTON, JOHN (d. 1657), musical composer, contributed madrigals to ‘The Triumphs of Oriana,’ 1601, in the index to which he is assigned the degree of Mus.B., though no further proof is forthcoming of his having taken this degree before 1626. The close of his madrigal, ‘Fair Oriana, Beauty's Queen,’ shows such boldness in the use of the device called ‘nota cambiata’ that it is difficult to imagine it to be the work of a tiro in composition. Thomas Oliphant edited two madrigals by Hilton, ‘One April Morn’ and ‘Smooth-flowing Stream,’ which he stated to exist in a manuscript of the date 1610. On 1 July 1626 Hilton took the degree of Mus.B. at Cambridge, being enrolled as a member of Trinity College. His exercise is mentioned in the grace according to the usual form, but there is no record of its performance. His first publication on his own account, ‘Ayres, or Fa La's for Three Voyces,’ appeared in 1627. This work, which he calls ‘these vnripe First-fruits of my Labours,’ is dedicated to Dr. William Heather, apparently his master. Prefatory verses by Edward Lake and John Rice respectively seem to allude to the composer's sufferings at the hands of unfriendly critics. To some such cause the irregular intervals at which he published his compositions may be due. In 1628 he was made parish clerk and organist of St. Margaret's, Westminster, receiving for the former office a salary of 6l. 13s. 4d., or ten marks a year. It is assumed that on the suppression of the organs in 1644 he retained the post of clerk. On the death of William Lawes in 1645, Hilton wrote an elegy for three voices, ‘Bound by the neere conjunction of our Soules,’ which appears in the ‘Choice Psalms’ of Henry and William Lawes, published in 1648. Four years later the celebrated collection, ‘Catch that catch can,’ appeared, containing twelve canons and thirty catches and rounds by Hilton himself, together with similar compositions by twenty-one other composers (2nd edition, issued after Hilton's death, in 1658). In Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 11608, among seventeen compositions by Hilton for one or more voices, some in the form of dialogues, appear his latest known works, two songs dated 1656, and entitled respectively ‘Love is the
