Sir Richard Hill

Sir Richard Hill (1732-1808) was the brother of Rowland Hill (1744-1833), a famous Evangelical preacher. He became a follower of the evangelist George Whitefield and the Calvinistic Methodists in 1757.  He entered Parliament in 1780, representing Shropshire.  He frequently made references to the Bible in his speeches and at times was ridiculed for it. In 1798-99 Hill and Charles Daubeny (1745-1827), son of George Daubeny, the wealthy Bristol merchant, carried on a pamphlet war. While ministering that year in a free church he had founded for the poor in Bath, Daubeny published his Guide to the Church, a series of lectures that proposed a way for the union of dissenting parties within one church.  Hill responded with An Apology for Brotherly Love and for the Doctrines of the Church of England.  Daubeny then replied with An Appendix to the Guide to the Church (1799), which argued that the Church of England was essentially of apostolic origin and any dissent from it was akin to schism. Hill immediately followed with his Reformation truth restored, defending nonconformity and the virtues of evangelical preaching.   Hill left Parliament in 1806 and died two years later.  Daubeny was rewarded for his services to the church by being appointed Archdeacon of Salisbury in 1804.