James Hill (died 1727) [1] was an English barrister and antiquary.
A native of Herefordshire, Hill was called to the bar as a member of the Middle Temple. [2]
Herefordshire is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It borders Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire and Powys to the west.
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. It is located in the wider Temple area of London, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and within the City of London.
In 1718 Hill became a member of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society 30 April 1719. At a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on 3 January 1722 it was decided to attempt a complete history of British coins. Hill undertook to describe the Saxon coins in the Earl of Oxford's possession, while his own collection was to be catalogued by George Holmes. [2] The plan was not carried through. [3]
The Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, and is a registered charity.
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national Academy of Sciences. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as "The Royal Society". It is the oldest national scientific institution in the world. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, fostering international and global co-operation, education and public engagement. It also performs these roles for the smaller countries of the Commonwealth.
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS was an English and later British statesman of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory Ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a Prime Minister, although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721.
A few years before his death Hill moved permanently to Herefordshire. He still corresponded with other antiquaries, especially Roger Gale and William Stukeley. 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 and from Herefordshire, to Andrew Coltée Ducarel. [2]
Roger Gale was an English scholar and antiquary as well as a Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1705 to 1713. His father was an ecclesiastic and professor at Cambridge, which the younger Gale also attended. After his graduation, Gale briefly served as a diplomat in France, as well as holding a position as a reader at Oxford University's Bodleian Library. On his father's death in 1702, Gale retired to his family estate, but was elected to Parliament in 1705, where he served until 1713. He then continued in public service until 1735, when he once more retired to his estates.
William Stukeley was an English antiquarian, physician, and Anglican clergyman. A significant influence on the later development of archaeology, he pioneered the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire. He published over twenty books on archaeology and other subjects during his lifetime.
A deed is any legal instrument in writing which passes, affirms or confirms an interest, right, or property and that is signed, attested, delivered, and in some jurisdictions, sealed. It is commonly associated with transferring (conveyancing) title to property. The deed has a greater presumption of validity and is less rebuttable than an instrument signed by the party to the deed. A deed can be unilateral or bilateral. Deeds include conveyances, commissions, licenses, patents, diplomas, and conditionally powers of attorney if executed as deeds. The deed is the modern descendant of the medieval charter, and delivery is thought to symbolically replace the ancient ceremony of livery of seisin.
At his dying request, Hill's father showed his Herefordshire collections to Samuel Gale in March 1728, who thought they couldn't be published. 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 them and made additions. After Roberts's death in 1776 the collection, now about twenty volumes, passed back to Taylor, who sold them in 1778 to Thomas Clarke, F.S.A., principal registrar of the diocese of Hereford. On Clarke's death in March 1780 they came to the Rev. James Clarke. Clarke offered to sell them to John Allen the younger of Hereford, but they could not agree on a price. [2] Via other hands and Belmont Priory, the papers came to Hereford City Library. [4]
Samuel Gale (1682–1754) was an English antiquary, a founder of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
John Allen (1789–1829) was an English bookseller and antiquary, notable for his work on the history of Herefordshire.
Hill also wrote verse. Isaac Taylor had soliloquy of Hill's "on hearing a parent correct his child with curses". A more ambitious poem was mentioned by Maurice Johnson, junior, in a letter to Stukeley, dated 14 October 1719. Verses on Hill's death are in John Husband's Miscellany of Poems (pp. 134–40), Oxford, 1731, implying that Hill wrote some lines on "Eternity" about ten hours before his death. [2]
Maurice Johnson (1688–1755), of Spalding, was the founder of 'The Gentlemen's Society'.
Between 1715 and 1717 Hill issued proposals for publishing by subscription a history of the city of Hereford. He proposed to follow this by another volume, a county history. The plan was printed in Richard Rawlinson's English Topographer,’ 1720, pp. 71–3. Nothing came of the project. [2]
Hill showed the Society of Antiquaries in 1718 many drawings and plans from travels in the west of England that summer. One of his drawings, a west view and ichnography of Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire, was engraved by J. Harris for John Stevens's History of Antient Abbeys, 1723. In 1722 he exhibited to the Society surveys of Ariconium and Hereford. [2]
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