Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hill, George (1716-1808)

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1389283Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 26 — Hill, George (1716-1808)1891John Andrew Hamilton

HILL, GEORGE (1716–1808), serjeant-at-law, of an old Northamptonshire family, was born in 1716. He was admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar, practising at first as a conveyancer. He joined the midland circuit, and although his practice was small, he soon gained a great reputation for exceptional knowledge of case law. Although he was a scholar and a mathematician of considerable learning and attainments, as a lawyer he was so overwhelmed by his memory for cases that he was unable to extract from them clear general principles, and earned for himself the nickname of Serjeant Labyrinth. On 6 Nov. 1772 he became at once a serjeant and a king's serjeant. Of his absence of mind and abstraction among unpractical points of law many anecdotes are told (see Polson, Law and Lawyers, i. 76; Twiss, Life of Lord Eldon, i. 301, 325; Cradock, Memoirs, i. 248, iv. 149; Memoirs of Letitia Matilda Hawkins, i. 255; Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices, ii. 571). He died at his house in Bedford Square on 21 Feb. 1808, and was buried in the family vault at Rothwell, Northamptonshire, where there is an epitaph upon him by Bennett, bishop of Cloyne. He married Anna Barbara, daughter and heiress of Thomas Medlycote of Cottingham, Northamptonshire, by whom he had two daughters. His legal manuscripts were purchased of his executors by the Society of Lincoln's Inn, and are in the library there.

[Woolrych's Eminent Serjeants; Law Mag. 1844, p. 331; European Mag. i. 233; Romilly's Memoirs, i. 72.]

J. A. H.