Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, John? (d.1697?)
HILL, JOHN? (d. 1697?), governor of Inverlochy during the massacre of Glencoe in 1692, was lieutenant-colonel of a regiment of foot then not long raised by Archibald Campbell, first duke of Argyll (d. 1703) [q. v.], and which was disbanded about 1697. He was in 1691 governor of Inverlochy, now Fort William, Inverness-shire, where he had been left with fifteen hundred men by General Hugh Mackay to watch the highlands. On 31 Dec. 1691, the last day for the highland chieftains to take the oath of allegiance to William III, Mac Ian, chief of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, a sept of the great Clan Coila, visited Hill, and requested him to administer the oath to him. Hill was not a magistrate, but gave Mac Ian an introductory letter to Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglass, sheriff of Argyllshire. Mac Ian accordingly presented himself to Sheriff Campbell at Inverary on 6 Jan. 1692, five days after the oath should have been taken. Mac Ian showed Hill's letter to the sheriff and was sworn. It was decided by the government in London, however, to make an example of Mac Ian and his people. Hill seems to have been a kind-hearted man, and was not disposed to favour a measure like the Glencoe massacre. The instructions were for that reason sent to his second in command, Lieutenant-colonel James Hamilton. The massacre took place under Hamilton's instructions and superintendence on 13 Feb. 1692. Hill and Hamilton were tried for murder at Edinburgh, but were ‘cleared’ (Luttrell, Relation, iii. 496). Luttrell speaks of some of Hill's men having been killed in the highlands while tax-collecting in November 1695 (ib. iii. 551). In the index to Luttrell's ‘Relation of State Affairs’ Hill of Inverlochy is identified with the Colonel Hill, lieutenant-governor of Montserrat, who died at Pembroke in August 1697 (ib. iv. 261).
[Account of the massacre of Glencoe in Macaulay's Hist. of England, vol. iii.; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, printed 1857), ii. 82, 314, 327, 375, 484, iii. 493, 496, 551, iv. 261. The Home Office (War Office) records afford no materials for the further identification of Colonel Hill of Argyll's regiment. In Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 193, he is confused with Major-general John Hill (d. 1732?) [q. v.]]