My first encounter with Hill was as an undergraduate when
I heard him give a series of lectures in Balliol College’s hall which later
found their way into print in his book, Society and Puritanism. His
general points were buttressed by copious quotations from late-sixteenth and
early to mid-seventeenth century printed sources, most of them pamphlets and
sermons. He had a rather off-putting habit of sniffing after every two or three
sentences which I found rather disconcerting.
Two and a half years later, I found myself assigned to
him as my supervisor for my prospective research. Our initial talk took place
in his office as Master of Balliol. He was interested in finding out what my
social origins were, what the cost of my watch (which was one of the very first
to show dates) had been and to invite me to the Monday evening parties to which
his other pupils and girls from St Hilda’s College, where his wife taught, came
for drinks. And that was about it. (I gave up on the Monday evening parties
after attending one or two because I could not hear myself think due to the
noise.)
Later meetings took place in a room where he had a chair
held by a chain coming down from the ceiling. He used to sit in this chair
swinging slightly from side to side whilst saying nothing. I found this silence
disconcerting: it was only a year or two later that I was told that this was an
old Oxford technique to encourage students to be forthcoming about their work.
It did not work for me.
Much more seriously, Christopher Hill, for all his
encyclopaedic knowledge of printed sources, was completely at sea as far as
manuscript sources were concerned. I never saw him reading manuscripts in the
Bodleian, in the British Museum or the Public Record Office or in any county
archive then or in the better part of forty years that followed. Since I was
desperately searching for the lost archives of the people I was investigating,
his inability to help was a problem I had not anticipated. His comments on my
written work were rather perfunctory too, probably because he soon recognised
that I was not a follower or potential follower of his Marxist approach in any
sense at all. As a potential protégé or candidate for academic jobs, I was
without promise from his point of view.
I did see him once or twice after I ceased being a
postgraduate – in Malet Street in London and again at The Huntington Library in
California. He and his wife were friendly and polite but I got the distinct
impression that he had found the changes in the historiography of pre- and
post-revolutionary England since the mid-1970s invalid, unacceptable and
nonsensical. He had gone on writing as if they had not happened and thereby
lost touch with later generations of historians. This was sad but it happens
sooner or later to most academic historians. I was pleased to have known him
although never convinced by his arguments at any stage.
