The Hildyards, resident in Holderness by the fourteenth century, acquired their main estate there by marriage, purchased the manor house at Hull and accumulated land near Grimsby, Lincolnshire. The first MP in the family was Hildyard’s uncle and namesake, returned for Hedon in 1563, 1571 and 1572 on the interest of his father-in-law, Sir John Constable†. When this man’s son drowned in 1584 Hildyard became heir-presumptive to a much larger inheritance than that he could expect from his mother. Returned to Parliament for Hedon from 1589, presumably by arrangement between his uncle and Sir Henry Constable*, in 1599 he married an heiress whose estates lay on the opposite bank of the Humber.
Hildyard came into his inheritance in 1602, when his father and uncle died within a few months of each other. He attended the proclamation of King James at Hull on 28 Mar. 1603, was knighted at York three weeks later, and replaced his uncle on the Council in the North in July.
Hildyard missed the 1614 Parliament, perhaps because Sir Henry Constable the younger was displeased at his challenge to the jurisdiction of the lordship of Holderness, a snub which led to an Exchequer case in Michaelmas 1614.
In both 1621 and 1624 Hildyard was more active in the Commons than he had previously been, speaking in several important debates, although his name was not always recorded correctly. On 14 May 1621, when Sir Thomas Edmondes pressed for a speedy end to the session, Hildyard advocated that priority be given to the expiring laws continuance bill, lest probationer Acts be lost at the prorogation.
As a long-serving MP, Hildyard was named to the privileges committee on 5 Feb. 1621. Two days later, he spoke in the debate on the return of Viscount Falkland (Sir Henry Carey I*), whose Scottish peerage raised the spectre of a Commons swamped by ennobled courtiers. Sir Thomas Roe* and Hildyard proposed to defuse the situation by allowing Falkland to sit but barring those with Scottish peerages for the future. On 2 and 3 May Hildyard contributed two precedents to the House’s justification of its proceedings against the Catholic barrister Edward Floyd, one of which misquoted an incident from the 1593 session; he recalled this dispute on the final day of the session, moving that the Protestation then being drafted should cite the Commons’ claims to judicature.
Much of Hildyard’s parliamentary activity can be linked to local issues. On 7 May 1621 he defended one of Viscount Dunbar’s privileges, objecting to the bill granting the Deptford Trinity House a monopoly over lighthouses on the grounds that some lordships, such as Holderness, held local Admiralty rights. Perhaps with an eye to his own exposed position on the Yorkshire coast, he also suggested a proviso to allow lights to be extinguished in time of war.
Hildyard was involved in a number of other debates. He clearly approved of Sir Eubule Thelwall’s motion of 3 Mar. 1624 to draft a bill to restrict the abuse of writs of habeas corpus by defaulting debtors, moving that the committee should consult the proposals made by the 1621 committee for courts of justice.
Illness forced Hildyard to leave the 1624 session two weeks early, but his incapacity was clearly temporary, as he was present at the hustings for the hotly contested Yorkshire election of May 1625. While he may have missed the opening of the session, being involved in the shipment of recruits from Hull to Holland until the middle of June, he was present when the Yorkshire election dispute was debated on 4 July. A supporter of Sir John Savile*, he claimed to have demanded and been promised a poll by sheriff Sir Richard Cholmley*. His criticism of Cholmley’s failure to complete the poll is reminiscent of his speech of 19 Mar. 1624, in which he had censured the sheriff of Cambridgeshire for refusing a poll under similar circumstances. As he must have hoped, the Commons used the earlier precedent to justify their annulment of the return of Savile’s opponents, Sir Thomas Wentworth and Sir Thomas Fairfax I*.
Hildyard left no trace on the records of the 1626 Parliament. Like many Members, he doubtless aimed to avoid controversy during the impeachment of Savile’s patron, the duke of Buckingham. With the favourite’s backing, Savile and his allies dominated Yorkshire politics during the 18 months following the dissolution: Hildyard was included on the commission for the Forced Loan not only in the East Riding, but also in Durham and the West Riding, two areas with which he had little connection. He was also appointed to the commission to raise money for the squadron of armed colliers Savile set out to defend the Yorkshire coast against the Dunkirkers. However, he left little trace of any activity either in collecting the Loan or as a commissioner for the colliers, perhaps because of lingering ill-feeling against Viscount Dunbar, who co-ordinated the collection of the Loan in the East Riding. Hildyard may also have been embarrassed by the activities of his cousin Sir William Hildyard, who only paid the Loan under duress and acted as a messenger for Sir William Constable*, one of the most prominent East Riding refusers.
Hildyard’s support for Savile had apparently cooled by 1628. His motion for a miserly grant of three subsidies and two fifteenths in the subsidy debate of 4 Apr. 1628 suggests little enthusiasm for war with France and Spain, perhaps because of the continual threats to the Yorkshire coast from privateers. He took no part in the debates on the Petition of Right, but when the House considered imprisoning his wife’s relative Sir William Welby during their investigation of Welby’s activities as a Lincolnshire deputy lieutenant, Hildyard interceded to vouch for his future appearance. In the entertaining but inconsequential debate over the precedence of Oxford and Cambridge in the subsidy bill, he argued that Masters of Arts from his university, Cambridge, took precedence over those awarded at Oxford in the same year, but was dismissed by William Hakewill, who explained that Cambridge degrees took precedence because the university’s commencement fell a week before that at Oxford.
The distance which had opened up between Hildyard and Savile by 1628 apparently saved the former after Savile was displaced in favour of Sir Thomas Wentworth. Hotham, discussing Wentworth’s proposal to continue Hildyard in office in January 1629, observed that
tis true he is somewhat less than nothing, yet he hath always made one as a cipher to add to the number, and he will be sure to be of the safer side ... Besides he hath been long one of your Council [in the North] and will be ... no good, small harm.
SCL, Strafford Pprs. 12/50; J.T. Cliffe, Yorks. Gentry, 238.
This assessment appears to have been accurate, as Hildyard played little part in local affairs at the end of his life. He now devoted most of his time to his family and estate, enclosing one of his manors by agreement with his tenants in 1629, and marrying his second son to the daughter of a Hull merchant in 1634.
Despite his age, Hildyard ‘blamed himself for neglecting the setting of his estate in order’ while drafting a nuncupative will on his deathbed on 22 Nov. 1634. He made bequests for two of his daughters then present, confirmed a previous grant of the manor of Lisset to his youngest son Christopher, and appointed his eldest son Henry as his executor. The latter, as heir under the family entail, needed no separate provision, and Hildyard had already endowed his second son Robert with the lands inherited from his mother in 1608; he was buried at Winestead on 23 November.