Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/426

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perhaps was a local invention (for such it was) and improvement applied in the lifetime of its author to the advantages of such vast multitudes of his fellow-creatures.’ Hill retired on full pension, and received in addition a parliamentary grant of 20,000l. In 1857 he had been made F.R.S., and in 1860 K.C.B.; in 1864 the honorary degree of D.C.L. was conferred on him by the university of Oxford, and in 1879 the freedom of the city of London. In his retirement he served on the royal commission on railways appointed in 1865. In a separate report, published in 1867, he recommended that the state should gradually purchase the railways by free covenant between the proprietors and the government, and that they should then be worked, not by the state, but by companies, to which they should be leased on such conditions as would most tend to public benefit. He drew up also a ‘History of Penny Postage,’ which was written under his direction, but was the actual composition of his brother, Arthur Hill. This, with an introductory memoir, was published in two vols. 8vo, London, 1880, by his nephew, Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill. He died on 27 Aug. 1879, at his residence in Hampstead, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Statues have been erected at Kidderminster, Birmingham, and at the Royal Exchange, London. The Rowland Hill Memorial and Benevolent Fund was raised shortly after his death to commemorate his memory, and to provide relief for distressed persons connected with the post office for whom no provision is made under the Superannuation Act. The invested property amounts to more than 16,000l., producing a yearly income of about 650l. By donations, &c., this was raised in 1888–9 to 1,673l., and relief was granted to 175 cases. He married, on 27 Sept. 1827, Caroline, the daughter of Joseph Pearson, a manufacturer of Wolverhampton, and a magistrate for the county. She died on 27 May 1881. By her he had one son and three daughters.

[Life of Sir Rowland Hill and Hist. of Penny Postage, by Sir Rowland Hill and G. Birkbeck Hill, 1880; Remains of Thomas Wright Hill, F.R.A.S., privately printed, 1859; Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill, by his Daughters, 1878; obituary notice in the Times, 28 Aug. 1879; W. L. Sargant's Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer, 1870, vol. ii.; Public Education; Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers, 1822; Laws of Hazelwood School, 1827; Home Colonies, by Rowland Hill, 1832; first four annual Reports of the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia; Post Office Reform, its Importance and Practicability, 1837; Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry; Ninth Report of the Committee for Post Office Inquiry, 1837; Reports of the Select Committee on Postage, 1838–9; The Post Circular, Nos. 1–14, 1838–1839; Report of the Committee on Postage, 1843; State and Prospects of Penny Postage, by Rowland Hill, 1844; annual Reports of the Postmaster-general; The Post Office of Fifty Years ago, by Pearson Hill, 1887; A Paper on some newly discovered Essays and Proofs of Postage Stamps, by Pearson Hill, 1889; London Mag. April and May 1824; Edinburgh Review, Nos. 82 and 142; Quarterly Review, No. 128.]

G. B. H.

HILL, ROWLEY, D.D. (1836–1887), bishop of Sodor and Man, third son of Sir George Hill, bart., of St. Columb's, co. Londonderry, born 22 Feb. 1836, was educated at Christ's Hospital, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1859, M.A. 1863, and D.D. honoris causâ 1877. He was ordained a deacon in 1860, and served the curacy of Christ Church, Dover; in the following year he was admitted to priest's orders, when he removed to the curacy of St. Marylebone, London. In 1863 he became perpetual curate of St. Luke's, Edgware Road, and after five years' service in that parish he was presented to the rectory of Frant, in the diocese of Chichester. In 1871 he exchanged his rectory for the vicarage of St. Michael's, Chester Square. He was presented in 1873 to the vicarage of Sheffield. That large and important parish he held, with the rural deanery of Sheffield and a prebend in York Cathedral, until August 1877, when he was raised to the bishopric of Sodor and Man. He discharged his duties with great zeal and success. But his plan of uniting the proposed bishopric of Liverpool to that of Sodor and Man was not generally approved, and was declined by the government. After a very brief illness he died at his residence in London, 10 Hereford Square, Old Brompton, 27 May 1887.

Hill married, first, 30 April 1863, Caroline Maud, second daughter of Captain Alfred Chapman, R.N., by whom, who died 6 April 1882, he had issue; and secondly, in 1884, Alice, daughter of Captain George Probyn, who survived him.

Besides smaller publications Hill wrote: 1. ‘Sunday School Lessons; the Collects,’ 2nd edition, 1866. 2. ‘Sunday School Lessons; the Gospels,’ 1866. 3. ‘The Titles of Our Lord,’ 1870. 4. ‘Instructions on the Church Catechism,’ 1874. 5. ‘The Church at Home; a Series of Short Sermons,’ 1881.

[Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 1880, p. 637; Graduati Cantabrigienses, 1873, p. 198; Church Bells, 15 April 1878, viii. 215; Men of the Time,