Rowland Hill, born at Hodnet, Shropshire about 1495, was the eldest son of Thomas Hill and Margaret Wilbraham, daughter of Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, Cheshire. He had a younger brother, William, and four sisters, Agnes, Joan, Jane and Elizabeth. He was apprenticed to a London mercer, Thomas Kitson, obtaining his freedom of the Company in 1519. He then became a leading merchant adventurer, with the centre of his business operations being in the parish of St Stephen Walbrook, where he owned a property fronting onto Walbrook. He was churchwarden of St Stephens between 1525 and 1526. Hill was prominent in the affairs of the Mercers' Company. He was warden between 1535–6, and between 1543–4 and 1550–51 and 1555–6.
Public service
In 1541–2, he was elected sheriff of the City of London. From 28–30 March 1542, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on the orders of the House of Commons, as a result of his 'abuse' of the Sergeant of Parliament sent to secure the release of George Ferrers, a member of parliament imprisoned for debt in the Bread Street Counter. The King, Henry VIII, took the side of the House of Commons in this case of member's privilege; however, he showed favour to Hill shortly after the affair by knighting him on 18 May 1542. This was during the prorogation of the parliament. Hill was elected to the Court of Aldermen on 9 November 1542 and elected a Sheriff of the City of London for the same year. In the wake of the coup d'état against Protector Somerset, Hill took over as Lord Mayor for the year beginning in November 1549 and was the first Protestant to hold that office. This was a period of substantial religious uncertainty, but he oversaw some of the critical changes in the direction of godly Protestantism, including the removal of altars. His mayoralty witnessed a determined campaign against moral offences, the wardmote inquests being required in April 1550 to make fresh presentments of ill rule, 'upon which indictments the lord mayor sat many times'. The crusade was controversial because of Hill's readiness to punish wealthy offenders. Perhaps because of this determined moralism, which seems to have owed something to pressure from the Protestant pulpits, and perhaps because of the coincidence of his mayoralty with a decisive turn in the English Reformation, Hill is often described as the first Protestant lord mayor of London, but this tradition seems to date from no earlier than 1795, when a descendant, Sir Rowland Hill, Bt, erected an obelisk to his memory in Hawkstone Park, Shropshire. He was one of the City's representatives in the first parliament of Queen Mary's reign. He endured a short spell of disfavour under Mary and was dropped from the commissions of the peace for Middlesex and Shropshire in 1554. He had, however, recovered the regime's confidence by 1557, when he was nominated as a commissioner for the investigation of heretics. He was a committed member of the court of aldermen, and attended nearly two-thirds of the meetings in the reigns of both Edward VI and Mary.
Private life
Hill also retained substantial interest in the Welsh marches, and acquired extensive estates in Shropshire, Cheshire, Flintshire, and Staffordshire; between 1539 and 1547 he purchased large quantities of former monastic property including Haughmond Abbey. His power in his native county was reflected in his appearance on the Shropshire commission of the peace between 1543 and 1554. He was left a piece of gold in the 1552 will of Chief Justice Sir Thomas Bromley ‘for a token of a remembrance for the old love and amity between him and me now by this my decease ended’. Hill had a reputation for charitable virtue. In 1555 he established a school at Market Drayton in Shropshire. He was also closely involved with the establishment of the London hospitals. He was the first president of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals from 1557 to 1558 and again between 1559 and 1561, and he held the post of surveyor-general of the London hospitals from 1559 until his death. His charity had a stern edge, for his epitaph states that he also enjoyed a reputation as 'a foe to vice and a vehement corrector':
A friend to virtue, a lover of learning, A foe to vice and vehement corrector, A prudent person, all truth supporting, A citizen sage, and worthy counsellor, A love of wisdom, of justice a furtherer, Lo here his corps lieth, Sir Rowland Hill by name, Of London late Lord Mayor and Alderman of same.
He died 28 October 1561 of strangury, according to the diary of Henry Machyn, and was buried at St Stephen Walbrook on 5 November. The identity of Hill's wife, whom he had married by 1542, is unknown. She died during the year of his mayoralty, and since there were no children of the marriage, his heir was his brother, William, parson of Stoke on Tern; however he left most of his property to the children of his four sisters:
Agnes Hill, who married John Cowper, esquire.
Joan Hill, who married George Dormayne, esquire.
Jane Hill, who married John Gratewood, esquire, of Wollerton, Shropshire, the son of William Gratwood by Mary Newport, daughter of Thomas Newport of High Ercall, Shropshire, by whom she had a son, William Gratwood, who married Mary Newport, the daughter of Sir Richard Newport of High Ercall; Alice Gratewood, who married the justice Reginald Corbet; and Margaret Gratwood, who married Thomas Jones of Chilton.
Elizabeth Hill, who married John Barker of Haughtmond in Shropshire, esquire.
There are 16th-century portraits of Hill in the Museum of London and in the Mercers' Hall in Ironmongers' Lane. There is a statue of him atop an obelisk in Hawkstone Park in Shropshire.
