In the wake of the "coup d'état" against Protector Somerset, Hill took over as Lord Mayor for the year beginning in November 1549 and was the first Protestant to hold that office. This was a period of substantial religious uncertainty, but he oversaw some of the critical changes in the direction of godly Protestantism, including the removal of altars. His mayoralty witnessed a determined campaign against moral offences, the wardmote inquests being required in April 1550 to make fresh presentments of ill rule, 'upon which indictments the lord mayor sat many times' (Hume, 167–9). The crusade was controversial because of Hill's readiness to punish wealthy offenders. Perhaps because of this determined moralism, which seems to have owed something to pressure from the Protestant pulpits, and perhaps because of the coincidence of his mayoralty with a decisive turn in the English Reformation, Hill is often described as the first Protestant lord mayor of London, but this tradition seems to date from no earlier than 1795, when a descendant, Sir Rowland Hill, Bt, erected an obelisk to his memory in Hawkstone Park, Shropshire.