Thomas Hill

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Malpas, Cheshire, England

Family/Spouse: Margaret Wilbraham. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

He was a wealthy merchant, and lord mayor of London in 1549-50.

"Perhaps because of [his] 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. Although he was one of the City's representatives in the first parliament of Mary's reign (October–December 1553), Hill is not named as one of those 'which stood for the trewe religion'. His will gives little indication of fervent protestantism, and there was no celebration of godly values in either the memorial tablet in St Stephen Walbrook or in the inscription on the portrait at Mercers' Hall. His arrangement for the distribution of a dole of 12d. a house through the wards of the City as he lay dying was characteristic of his charity, but also redolent of an older type of piety. His interest in innovative charitable projects and in education may have owed more to the humanist values fashionable in London circles at this time than to protestantism." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]