Arthur Hill, 8th Marquess of Downshire

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THE 8th MARQUESS OF DOWNSHIRE marksman and musical Marquess who re-settled his landed dynssty in North Yorkshire.

THE 8th MARQUESS OF DOWNSHIRE, the Hereditary Constable of Hillsborough Fort, who died on the 18th December aged 74, successfully re-established his once great Ulster based landowning family in North Yorkshire after the Irish Land Acts and Bracknell New Town had largely deprived them of their original estates.

In 1573 a Devon man, Moyses Hill,arrived in Ireland as a landless adventurer in Esses's army sent to subdue the rebellious O'Neill. As a 1957 booklet puts it 'in process of time Moyses' descendants became numbered amongst the richest, most powerful and most benelovent landowners in Ireland.' Wills Hill, the 1st Marquess of Downshire, was a prominent member of Lord North's cabinet at the time of the American War. The 2nd Marquess has been known as 'the gentle Leviathan' and the 3rd as 'a great Irish landlord' and as an innovative accountant. In 1607 Sir Moyses Hill bought the Hills' first manor in County Down. By 1883 they had the eighth highest landed income of the whole United Kingdom. They held 115,000 acres in Ireland and 5,000 in Berkshire, England, with an enormous combined annual rental income of £96,691. In County Down these acquisitions had come mostly from the families of O'Neill and Magennis. In the mid-nineteenth century one could go from Larne (County Antrim) in the north to Blessington (County Wicklow) in the south without loosing sight of Hill land. The core was the Kilwarlin estate around Hillsborough in County Down. This features the old Hill seat of Hillsborough Castle, since 1922 Government House and subsequently the official residence of the Secretary of State. And then there is Hillsborough Fort, still a treasured Downshire possession. In 1630 a Hill was instructed to form and keep a garrison of 20, and a bugler. Nearly four hundred years on the force has gone but the hereditary Constable and the bugler remain.

(Arthur) Robin Ian Hill was born on May 10 1929 in Brompton Square, London, the only son of Lord Arthur Francis HIll,the younger son of the 6th Marquess of Downshire. As a youth Robin Hill was taught oboe by Leon Goossens. At Eton he captained the school shooting VIII and lead it win the Asburton Shield at Bisley. Instead of Cambridge he did his National Service with the Royal Scots Grays in Germany from 1948-50. Life in Ardingly, a discount house and chartered accountancy followed, with awards of ACA in 1959 and FCA 1962. In 1963 he took up farming.

[In the meantime he was a cornerstone of the party scene; known to have driven from Kelso to London for a party, then driven straight back, albeit in an Alvis.]

The Irish domains and the Berkshire estate with its 1870s repro-Jacobean Burne-Jones and Morris windowed mansion at Easthampstead had both become alienated and sold. His precedessors had not found alternatives, so the young Hill, now in possession of a wife and heir, was in need of a seat. Near Masham in North Yorkshire he found Clifton Castle, of which Pevsner wrote: 'built in 1802-10, and not at all in the castle mood'.

In March 1989 Hill succeeded his uncle to his seven peerages: four of Ireland and three of Great Britain. The need to satisfy the Treasury immediately lead Downshire, as he now was, into mild controversy. The 2nd Marquess had married the heir of the last Trumbull. This inheritance included the Easthampstead estate, near Bracknell, west of Windsor, and with it the Trumbull papers. These comprised 380 volumes of manuscripts collected by Sir William Trumbull (1639-1716), British Ambassador to Paris, and to Constantinople, and his grandson William Trumbull, British Resident in Brussels. The archive which features letters by Stuart kings, Philip II of Spain, Maria de Medici, Bacon,Donne,Dryden,Fenton,Pope and Weckherlin, had been on loan to Berkshire county record office. In the summer of 1989 the collection was sent to Sotheby's in London, divided into 63 lots and prepared for sale, with an estimate of £2.5m. Happily breakup was avoided. On the eve of the November sale an in lieu of tax deal was done, the auction cancelled and the British Library took the papers.

Taking his seat in the House of Lords in November 1989 he joined the Conservative benches. A member of the Lords bridge team he was a rare speaker but had become increasingly more attentive. By the time of his explusion in 1999 he was the most attentive of the seven Irish Marquesses. In ten years in the Lords he made two speeches and laid down one written question. But in the tradition of a Lords backbencher the essence is quality not quantity. His maiden speech, made in October 1994, was part of a debate taking note of 'recent developments in Northern Ireland.'

In reply for the Opposition the late Lord Williams of Mostyn said of it: '.. I hope I may, with respect, point to one, the maiden speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Downshire, a speech which I personally found to be of interest and of great content, both of which are adjectives one cannot normally ascribe to maiden speeches.'

He said: '... it would be fair to say that Ireland as a whole, as other noble Lords have said, has had a turbulent history and that fact has been emphasised by its continuance in Ulster. There are a multiplicity of reasons for that phenomenon, although some try to award part of the blame to the equivocal manner in which Ireland has been treated successively by England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. I would not subscribe entirely to that view,although I believe that, in establishing a link between England and Ireland, fundamental mistakes were made at the start which are taking many centuires to resolve..... ...There is no doubt that the joint declaration marks a sea change in contemporary Irish politics. The opportunity it affords for all who hold both the Province and Ireland as a whole most dear they will ignore at their peril.'

In a debate entitled 'Pylons in the Vale of York' of March 1995 he pointed to new problems regarding public-private finance,landowners and compulsory purchase: 'there could come a time, and it will surely come, when the pylon builders' purse runs out and compulsory purchase arrives. Surely there then arises a moreptent conflict of interest-the invocation of public power in order to provide private profit.' This was notably astute as the private profit in this case was to be Enron's. His one written question referred to the Targets of the Pesticides safety directive.

In 1957 he married Juliet Weld-Forester, a daughter of the 7th Baron Forester. She died in 1986. In 1989 he married Diana Hibbert, a daughter of Sir Ronald Hibbert Cross, Bt. She died in 1998. He married thirdly Tessa Prain in 2003. He is survived by the two sons and daughte rof his first marriage, and by his third wife. His elder son, who till now used the courtesy title of Earl of Hillsborough, succeeds him and also becomes heir presumptive to the 7th Baron Sandys.