[Illustration] The first in the pedigree is Hugh de la Hulle, who
held the estate of Hulle, that is, Court of Hill, in the parish of
Burford, in this county, as the eleventh part of a knight's fee, of
the Barony of Stuteville, in the reigns of Richard I. and John, as
appears by the Testa de Neville. The family afterwards removed into
the north of the county, by marriages with the coheiresses of
Wlenkeslow, Buntingsdale, Styche, and Warren. The castle still borne
in the coat of Hill is found on the seal of William Hill in the
reign of Richard II. Court of Hill, the original seat of the Hills,
was bequeathed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the second son of
the eldest branch of the family, in whose line it continued till
carried by an heiress to the family of the present proprietor.
Hawkstone, the present seat, was settled upon Humphry Hill in 1560.
The great ornament of this family, and indeed he may be called the
founder of its modern consequence, was Richard Hill, Envoy
Extraordinary to the Italian States in the very beginning of the
eighteenth century.
See Blakeway, pp. 142, 179; and Morris MSS.
ARMS.--_Ermine, on a fess sable a castle argent_.
Present Representative, Rowland Hill, second Viscount Hill.