Present Representative, the Rev. Arthur Oakeley.
Hill of Hawkstone, Viscount Hill 1842, Baronet 1726-7.
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.
Forester of Willey, Baron Forester 1821.
This family is clearly descended from "Robert de Wolint," (Wellington,) alias Forester, who is named in the Testa de Neville as holding his estate by the serjeantry of keeping the royal hay of Wellington in the forest of the Wrekin; and there is every probability that he was the descendant of Ulger the Forester, chief forester of all the king's forests in Shropshire in the time of Stephen.