Author: Hill, Rowland
Biography:
HILL, Rowland (1744-1833)
He was born on 23 Aug. 1744 at Hawkstone Hall, Shropshire, the estate inherited by his father Sir Rowland Hill, the first Baronet Hill (1705-83). He was one of ten children and the sixth son of Hill and his wife Mary Pole; his eldest brother Richard (1733-1808) inherited the baronetcy. It is Richard who is credited with the religious conversion that set Rowland on the path to his lifelong career as spiritual leader and preacher. But the path was not easy: though he maintained his affiliation with the Church of England, he took an independent position with regard to both doctrine and practice, based on evolving though fundamentally Calvinistic principles. He was ordained deacon in 1773 but was denied ordination as a priest. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Eton, Rowland graduated from St. John’s, Cambridge (matric. 1764, BA 1769, MA 1772). On 23 May 1773 he married Mary Tudway (1747-1830) and settled at Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire. They had no children themselves but some of his most important contributions to the life of the church were focused on the young, notably his role in the Sunday School movement, his establishment of a vaccination clinic near his Surrey Chapel where he personally vaccinated thousands of children, and the original hymns he wrote and had published for them. (In the preface to his first collection he wrote that “The first present I ever remember to have received, was Dr. Watts’s Hymns for Children.”) Hill was a charismatic preacher who took his message around the country as an itinerant while maintaining a base (from 1783) at the Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars, London--an ecumenical meeting-place built with funding from Hill and other donors. Besides being instrumental in the publication of dissenting literature through the Religious Tract Society and the Evangelical Magazine, Hill published the popular Village Dialogues (1801) and numerous pamphlets on doctrinal matters; compiled several collections of hymns; and turned his travels as a preacher into reports on the spiritual health of the country outside the capital. He died at home in London on 11 Apr. 1833 and was buried under the altar of the Surrey Chapel on 19 Apr. (ODNB 4 Jul. 2022; Divine Hymns for Children [1790]; ancestry.com 5 Jul. 2022)