Gill was of very unruly disposition, and was, according to the pamphleteers of the day, on bad terms with the university authorities; but he displayed much skill as a writer of Latin and Greek verse.
He was visiting his friends at Trinity College, Oxford, about Michaelmas 1628, when he drank a health to John Felton, Buckingham's assassin, and made some disrespectful remarks about the king.
A search at Oxford in the rooms of William Pickering of Trinity College, an intimate friend of Gill, disclosed letters and verses by him (some dated in 1626), abusing Buckingham and Charles I. Gill admitted his guilt, and was sentenced (1 November) to degradation from the ministry, to a fine of 2,000l., and to the loss of both ears (one to be removed at Oxford, and the other in London).
Gill's father immediately petitioned for a remission of the sentence, and Edward, earl of Dorset, supported the appeal (Aubrey).
Laud, a friend of the elder Gill, consented to mitigate the fine, and to forego the corporal punishment.
On 30 November 1630 a free pardon was signed by Charles I. Gill, now dismissed from his ushership, received small gratuities from the governors of St. Paul's School in 1631, 1633, and 1634.
He tried to retrieve his reputation by publishing in 1632 a little volume of collected Latin verse, entitled ‘Parerga sive Poetici Conatus,’ containing a fulsome dedication to the king and a profoundly respectful poem to Laud, dated 1 January 1631–2, besides much verse to other royal or noble personages, and odes on the successes of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany.
According to Anthony Wood, Gill obtained temporary employment at the school of Thomas Farnaby in Cripplegate.
On 28 January 1639 Gill appealed to the king to reverse the decision on the ground that it was based on ‘the unjust complaint of a lying, thieving boy’ (Cal.
The king referred the petition to Archbishop Laud and ‘some other lords.’ The Mercers' Company, the governing body of the school, insisted on their right to deal with Gill as they pleased.
But the company gained the day, and Laud's remarks about the canon law formed the subject of the tenth charge brought against him at his trial.
He died at the close of 1642, having ‘taught certain youths privately in Aldergate Street, London, to the time of his death’ (Wood).
at the Bodleian Library are some abusive but interesting English verses by Gill on Ben Jonson's ‘Magnetick Lady,’ which Dr. Bliss printed in his edition of Wood's ‘Athenæ’ (ii.
Zouch Townley defended Jonson from Gill's illiberal attack in a short poem (ib.)