The earliest of the postal reformer's forefathers to achieve fame that outlives him was Sir Rowland Hill, mercer, and Lord Mayor of London in 1549, a native of Hodnet, Shropshire, who founded a Grammar School at Drayton, benefited the London Blue Coat School, was a builder of bridges, and is mentioned by John Stowe. From his brother are descended the three Rowland Hills famous in more modern times—the preacher, the warrior, and the author of Penny Postage. Some of the preacher's witticisms are still remembered, though they are often attributed to his brother cleric, Sydney Smith; Napier, in his “Peninsular War,” speaks very highly of the warrior, who, had Wellington fallen at Waterloo, would have taken the Duke's place, and who succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief when, in 1828, Wellington became Prime Minister. A later common ancestor of the three, a landed proprietor, married twice, and the first wife's children were thrown upon the world to fight their way as best as they could, my paternal grandfather's great-grandfather being one of the dispossessed. But even the blackest cloud has its silver lining; and the fall, by teaching the young people self-help, probably brought out the latent good stuff that was in them. At any rate, family tradition preserves memory of not a few men and women—Hills, or of the stocks with which they married—of whom their descendants have reason to be proud. There was, for example, John Hill, who served among “the twelve good men and true” on a certain trial, was the only one of them who declined to accept a bribe, and, the fact becoming known, was handsomely complimented by the presiding judge. Thenceforth, whenever the Assizes in that part of the country came round again, John used to be asked after as “the honest juror.” At least two of my father's forebears, a Symonds and a Hill, refused to cast their political votes to order, and were punished for their sturdy independence. The one lived to see a hospital erected in Shrewsbury out of the large fortune for some two hundred years ago of £30,000 which should have come to his wife, the testator's sister; the other, a baker and corn merchant, son to “the honest juror,” saw his supply of fuel required to bake his bread cut off by the local squire, a candidate for Parliament, for whom the worthy baker had dared to refuse to vote. Ovens then were heated by wood, which in this case came from the squire's estate. When next James Hill made the usual application, the faggots were not to be had. He was not discouraged. Wood, he reflected, was dear; coal—much seldomer used then than now—was cheap. He mixed the two, and found the plan succeed, lessened the proportion of wood, and finally dispensed with it altogether. His example was followed by other people: the demand for the squire's firewood languished, and the boycotted voter was presently requested to purchase afresh. “An instance,” says Dr Birkbeck Hill, “of a new kind of faggot vote.”