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THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 


'  Herein  may  be  seen  noble  chyvalrye,  eurtoseye, 
humanitye,  friendlynesse,  hardynesse,  love,  frend- 
ship,  cowardyse,  murdre,  hate,  virtue,  and  synne. 
Dog  after  the  good,  and  leve  the  evyl,  and  it  shal 
brynge  you  to  good  fame  and  renommee.' 

William  Caxton's  preface  to  Sir  Thomas 
Malory's  '  Morte  d' Arthur.' 


^Jien,ru\JJu{rjl<in .  Jii'//a/it/.  tiJfcruanij  Jjt  Lyucouni ,  /uuiti/e?ri(leAtnaJana  nu 


THE    LANCASHIRE 
HOLLANDS 


By  BERNARD  HOLLAND,   C.B. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  AND  PEDIGREES 


LONDON 

JOHN   MURRAY,   ALBEMARLE  STREET,   W. 

1917 


TO 
MY  FRIEND  AND 
RELATIVE,  SIR  HENRY  NEWBOLT, 
WHOSE  EXCELLENT  ROMANCE  ENTITLED  'THE 
NEW   JUNE'    FIRST   GAVE   ME   THE   IDEA 
OF   WRITING  THIS   BOOK,  I  DEDI- 
CATE MY  UNROMANCING 
HISTORY 


*^*5955 


PREFACE 

The  motto  of  the  Knutsford  branch  of  Hollands  is  '  Respice, 
Aspice,  Prospice.'  I  have  written  this  book  primarily  for  the 
benefit  of  existing  Hollands  and  those  more  numerous,  I  hope, 
as  yet  unborn,  so  that  they  may  be  the  better  able  to  practise 
the  precept  of  '  Respice,'  and  may  have  some  consecutive 
information  as  to  the  men  and  women  who  bore  their  name 
in  times  past.  I  do  not  agree  with  those  people  who,  as  a 
philosopher  says,  '  Nowadays  attach  much  more  importance 
to  the  pedigrees  of  domestic  animals  than  to  the  pedigrees 
of  men.'  The  book  may  also,  I  hope,  be  of  interest  to  others 
who  have  a  taste  for  history,  public  and  private,  or  patriotic 
feeling  for  Lancashire. 

Except  now  and  then,  as  this  does  not  pretend  to  be  a 
didactic  history,  I  do  not  worry  the  reader's  eye  by  detailed 
footnote  references  to  the  authorities,  but  I  append  a  list 
of  the  chief  sources  of  information,  and  I  ask  readers  to 
credit  me  with  not  having  stated  any  fact  without  some 
authority.  In  the  period  between  the  thirteenth  century 
and  the  sixteenth,  one  has  to  depend  mainly  upon  the  old 
chroniclers,  English  and  French  ;  for  these  centuries  are 
sadly  deficient  in  that  written  correspondence  from  which 
one  learns  so  much  of  the  character  of  men  and  women  in 
later  times.  These  chroniclers  mostly  give  the  mere  outward 
show  of  things,  and  hardly  before  de  Commines  does  one 
obtain  any  attempt  to  analyse  character.  They  are  also 
sometimes  obviously  inaccurate  as  to  facts,  and  it  is  never 
clear  how  far  they  are  poetically  composing  the  words  which 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

they  put  into  the  mouths  of  their  characters,  or  how  far 

they  are  reporting  on  more  or  less  trustworthy  evidence. 

When  two  chroniclers  narrate  the  same  event,  they  usually 

give  varying  versions  which  are  the  despair  of  the  modern 

conscientious  historian.     He  has  to  use  his  judgment  and 

make  out  the  course  of  events  which  seems  the  most  probable. 

At  the  same  time,  I  feel  sure,  from  internal  evidence,  that 

men  like  Froissart  and  de  Wavrin  did  their  best  to  ascertain 

what  did  happen,  and  greatly  are  we  indebted  to  them  for 

their  trouble.     As  to  facts  of  drier  order,  there  is  plenty 

of    record    in    legal    and    administrative    documents.     The 

writer  who  deals  with  Lancashire,  as  is  my  fortune  in  respect 

to  part  of  the  story,  has  the  advantage  that  no  county 

provides   such   ample   printed  materials   for   local  history. 

The   great   patriotism   and   modern   wealth  of   Lancashire 

men  has  wrought  this.     In  addition  to  Baines'  older  county 

history,  there  is  the  copious  series  of  the  Chetham  Society 

publications,   the   distinct   works   of  men   like  Booker   and 

Croston,  and,  above  all,  the  '  Victorian  County  History  of 

Lancashire '    published    within    the    last    few    years.     This 

splendid  monument  of  well-directed  labour  is,  I  should  say, 

the  best  designed  and  most  complete  of  all  county  histories, 

ancient  and  modern.     It  would  have  been  impossible  not 

many  years  ago  to  write  the  present  book  without  far  more 

time  and  original  research  than  I  could  have  afforded  to  give, 

although  this  book  has  cost  me  quite  enough,  and  possibly 

too  much,  time  and  trouble,  but  books  like  the  Victorian 

County  History  and,   on  national  affairs,  like  those  of  Sir 

James  Ramsay,  Mr.  Wylie,  and  others,  men  who  have  given 

all  the  spare  time  of  their  lives  to  mediaeval  history,  make 

things  much  easier  now  for  the  amateur  historian. 

I  have  derived  special  advantage  from  Mr.  James 
Croston's  pedigree  of  the  Hollands  of  UphoUand  in  his 
admirable    '  History   of  the    Ancient   Hall    of   Samlesbury,' 


PREFACE  ix 

published  in  1871,  and  from  the  Upholland,  Denton  and 
Mobberley  pedigrees  in  Mr.  Wm.  Fergusson  Irvine's 
'  History  of  the  Family  of  Holland  of  Mobberley  and  Knuts- 
ford,'  which  appeared  in  1902.  Mr.  Irvine's  book  was  partly 
based  upon  materials  collected  by  the  late  Edgar  Swinton 
Holland,  who  seems  to  have  meditated  writing  a  general 
history  of  the  family. 

I  have  entitled  this  book,  '  The  Lancashire  Hollands.* 
Those  of  them  who  played  a  great  part  on  the  national  stage 
for  four  generations,  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries, 
lived  mainly,  it  is  true,  in  the  South  of  England,  but  they 
were  by  origin  pure  bred  Lancastrians,  and  other  branches 
of  the  family  lived  in  or  near  Lancashire  till  modern  times, 
and  some  still  live  there.  Therefore  the  Hollands,  like  many 
another  vigorous  clan,  may  salute  the  Red  Rose  County  with 
'  Salve,  magna  Parens.' 

I  began  to  compose  this  book  in  hours  of  leisure  before 
the  great  war  broke  out  in  August  1914,  though  I  have 
finished  it  since.  It  would  not  have  been  easy  to  start  upon 
a  mere  family  history  after  the  outbreak  of  volcanic  events 
which  make  even  great  affairs  in  former  history  seem  pale, 
and  writing  seem  rather  a  shadowy  occupation. 

The  best  justification  of  histories  of  this  kind  is  that 
given  by  the  wise  Gibbon  in  his  Autobiography.     He  says  : 

'  A  lively  desire  of  knowing  and  recording  our  ancestors 
so  generally  prevails  that  it  must  depend  on  the  influence 
of  some  common  principle  in  the  minds  of  men.  We  seem 
to  have  lived  in  the  persons  of  our  forefathers ;  it  is  the 
labour  and  reward  of  verity  to  extend  the  term  of  this  ideal 
longevity.  .  .  .  The  satirist  may  laugh,  the  philosopher  may 
preach,  but  Reason  herself  will  respect  the  prejudice  and 
habits  which  have  been  consecrated  by  the  experience  of 
mankind.' 

Bernard  Holland. 

Harbledown,  near  Canterbury. 


I 


1 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 


PAQE 

Hollands  of  Uphollaitd 1 


CHAPTER  II 
Thomas  Holland,  Eakl  of  Kent 25 

CHAPTER  III 

Thomas  Holland,  Second  Eael  of  Kent,  and  Sir  John 

Holland 45 

CHAPTER  IV 
Sm  John  Holland  in  Spain 68 

CHAPTER  V 
Vicissitudes  of  Fortune 83 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  Holland  Revolt 131 

CHAPTER  VII 
Edmund  Holland,  Fourth  Earl  of  Kent,  and  his  Sisters    157 

CHAPTER  VIII 
John  Holland,  Second  Duke  of  Exeter        .        .        .  180 

si 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IX 
Henby  Holland,  Third  Duke  of  Exeter       .         ,         .    202 

CHAPTER  X 
Hollands  of  Sutton 237 

CHAPTER  XI 
Hollands  of  Denton 269 

CHAPTER  XII 
Hollands  of  Clifton  and  Cheshire       ....     285 

CHAPTER  XIII 
Hollands  of  Wales 304 

CHAPTER  XIV 
HoiiLANDS  OF  Norfolk,  &c.     ......     319 

Appendices 333 

Index 349 


ILLUSTEATIONS 

FACINQ  PAGE 

Henry  Thuestan  Holland,  afterwards  First  Viscount 
Knutsford  (behind)  and  his  Younger  Brother 
Francis  James,  afterwards  Canon  Holland  of 
Canterbury  (in  front)     ....  Frontispiece 

From  a  drawing  made  about  the  year  1845. 

A  Knight  of  the  House  of  Holland  in  the  Centre.    A 

Knight  of  the  House  of  Lancaster  on  the  Right        6 

This  drawing  is  in  the  Barleian  3fSS.  Coll.,  2129,  fol.  218a.    It  was  copied  in  1640 
from  painted  glass  then  in  the  window  of  Warrington  Church. 

Tomb  of  Edward  Plantagenet,  Prince  of  Wales,  in 

Canterbury  Cathedral  ......   38 

Reproduced  from  Sandford's  '  Genealogical  History  of  the  Kings  of  England'  1707. 

Portrait  of  Elizabeth,  Daughter  of  John,  Duke  of 
Lancaster,  and  Wife  of  John  Holland,  Duke  of 
Exeter,  with  her  Second  Husband,  John  Corn  well. 
Lord  Fanhope 64 

Reproduced  from  a  church  window  in  Sandford's  '  Genealogical  History  of  the  Kings  of 
England,'  1707. 

Tomb  of  John  Plantagenet,  Duke  of.  Lancaster,  and 
his  Wife  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  Destroyed  in 
the  Flre  of  1666 123 

Reproduced  from  Sandford's    Genealogical  History  of  the  Kings  of  England,'  1707. 

Tomb  op  Margaret  Holland,  Daughter  of  the  Second 
Earl  of  Kent,  with  her  two  Husbands,  John 
Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  and  Thomas,  Duke  of 
Clarence,  in  Canterbury  Cathedral       .         .         .172 

Reproduced  from  Sandford's  '  Genealogical  History  of  the  Kings  of  England,'  1707. 

Dartington  Hall,  near  Totnes,  Devonshire  ,         ,     182 

Seal  of  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  Duke 

OF  Exeter,  as  Lord  High  Admiral  of  England      .     186 

xiii 


xiv  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FAOma  PAQH 

Tomb  of  John  Holland,  Second  Duke  of  Exeter,  and 
HIS  TWO  Wives  Lady  Anne  Stafford  and  Lady  Anne 
MONTACUTE         ........     200 

Thomas  Holland,  S.J 252 

Enlarged  and  clarified  photograph  from  the  original  miniature  portrait  at  Lanheme 
Convent  in  Cornwall. 

Denton  Hall,  the  Ancient  Residence  of  the  Denton 

Branch  of  the  Holland  Family      ....     282 

Sm  Henry  Holland,  Baronet,  M.D 296 

From  a  portrait  made  about  1840. 

Elizabeth    Stevenson,    Mrs.    Gaskell,    Daughter    of 

Elizabeth  Holland  ......     300 

From  a  miniature  done  in  Edinburgh  by  James  Thomson,  just  before  she  teas  married, 
in  1832. 

Arms  and  Inscription  of  Edward  Holland  in  Conway 

Church 311 

From  the  monument  in  Conway  Church,  which  also  commemorates  by  inscriptions 
successively  added  three  more  generations  of  the  family. 

Philemon  Holland         .......     322 

Enlarged  from  the  portrait  on  the  title-page  o] '  Cyrupaedia.'    The  originai  engraving 
is  by  William  Marshall, 

Map  showing  Position  of  Places  mentioned  in  Lancashire 

AND  Cheshire  .....        End  of  Appendices 


PEDIGREE   TABLES 


PAOB 


Hollands  of  Upholland xvi 

HOTT.ANDS  OF  ETJXTON 16 

Hollands,  Earls  of  Kent  and  Huntingdon,  &c.     .         .  24 

Tee  Hollands  and  the  Houses  of  Plantagenet  and 
Lancaster,  Mortimer  and  York,  Beaufort  and 
Nevill 235,  236 

Hollands  of  Sutton 238 

Hollands  of  Denton  and  Heaton 268 

Hollands  of  Clifton 286 

Hollands  of  Mobberley 295 

Hollands  of  Sandlebridqb  and  Knutsford,  Cheshire     .  298 

Hollands  of  Conway 304 

Hollands  of  Norfolk 318 

Hollands  of  Sussex 328 

Hollands  of  Lisoard  Vale,  &o 334 

Hollands  of  Dumbleton,  &o.           .....  335 


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THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 


ERRATA. 

Page  17,  line  12.     Warren  should  be  Warenne. 

Page  83.     In  quotation  at  head,  Charles  II  should  be  Charles  I. 

Page  160,  line  21.     1306  should  be  1406. 

Page  160,  line  22.     1307  should  be  1407. 

Page  304  In  the  Pedigree  a  generation  has  been  omitted.  Thomas 
Holland  (line  6)  was  father  of  William  Holland  and  Catherine 
(Atherton).  William  Holland  was  father  of  Humphrey  Holland, 
who  died,  and  was  not  born,  in  1528. 

Page  335.     Frederick  Holland,  Capt.  R.N.,  died  in  1860,  not  1857. 


The  Lancashire  Hollands. 

HiQwara  iv,  came  to  violent  enas,  as  oenttea  an  amDitious 
and  fighting  family  in  stormy  English  times,  when  politics 
was  a  game  played  with  lives  for  stakes. 

The  village  of  Upholland  is  about  four  miles  west  of 
Wigan.  The  place  is  now  blackened  by  coal-mining,  but 
must  once  have  been  a  pleasant  enough  region.  Not  far 
off  there  is  another  village  called  Down-holland,  where  also 
a  Holland  family  lived,  from,  at  least,  the  reign  of  Henry  II 
to  that  of  Henry  VIII,  but  they  seem  to  have  been  uncon- 
nected with  the  Hollands  of  Upholland,  and  with  them  this 
book  is  not  concerned.     There  was  also  a  Lincolnshire  family 


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THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

CHAPTER  I 

HOLLANDS    OF   UPHOLLAND 

Memento  dierum  antiquorum  ; 
Cogita  generationes  singiilas. 

Canticle  of  Moses. 

'  There  has  existed  no  family  in  Lancashire,'  wrote  a  dis- 
tinguished antiquary  of  that  county,  Mr.  Langton,  '  whose 
career  has  been  so  remarkable  as  that  of  the  Hollands. 
Playing  an  active  part  in  the  most  picturesque  and  chivalrous 
period  of  English  history,  they  figured  among  the  founders 
of  the  Order  of  the  Garter,  allied  themselves  with  the  royal 
family,  and  attained  the  highest  rank  in  the  peerage.' 

The  vicissitudes  of  their  fortunes  were  great.  If  they 
rose  to  the  heights  they  also  tasted  of  the  depths.  Most  of 
the  chiefs  of  the  race,  from  the  time  of  Edward  II  to  that  of 
Edward  IV,  came  to  violent  ends,  as  befitted  an  ambitious 
and  fighting  family  in  stormy  English  times,  when  politics 
was  a  game  played  with  lives  for  stakes. 

The  village  of  Upholland  is  about  four  miles  west  of 
Wigan.  The  place  is  now  blackened  by  coal-mining,  but 
must  once  have  been  a  pleasant  enough  region.  Not  far 
off  there  is  another  village  called  Down-holland,  where  also 
a  Holland  family  lived,  from,  at  least,  the  reign  of  Henry  II 
to  that  of  Henry  VIII,  but  they  seem  to  have  been  uncon- 
nected with  the  Hollands  of  Upholland,  and  with  them  this 
book  is  not  concerned.     There  was  also  a  Lincolnshire  family 


2  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

of  Hollands,  but  unrelated  to  those  of  Lancashire.^  Down 
to  the  fifteenth  century  the  name  was  always  spelt  Holand 
(or  Holande),  and  its  bearers  were  called  John  de  Holand, 
Thomas  de  Holand,  &c.,  but  in  this  book  the  later  spelling 
has,  as  a  rule,  been  used  throughout. 

The  manor  of  Upholland  appears  in  Domesday  Book  as 
'  Holland,'  and  was  in  the  possession  of  '  Steinulf  '  in  the 
days  of  Edward  the  Confessor.  The  Hollands  appear  in 
the  reign  of  John  as  donors  to  Cockersand  Abbey,  but  their 
name  is  first  mentioned  in  connection  with  this  manor  in 
a  '  final  concord  '  made  at  the  Lancaster  Assizes  dated 
November  5,  1202.^  In  this  deed  Uhctred  de  Chyrche 
releases  his  right  in  fourteen  oxgangs  of  land  in  Upholland 
to  Matthew  de  Holland.  This  would  mean  about  210 
acres  of  arable  land  together  with  rights  of  meadowing  and 
pasturage,  perhaps  the  manor  as  a  whole,  under  this  form. 
Two  later  deeds  show  that  between  1212  and  1224  Matthew 
de  Holland  died  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Robert. 
Robert  de  Holland  was  still  alive  in  1241.  In  that  year  he 
and  his  son  Thurstan  were  in  prison  on  the  charge  of  having 
set  fire  to  a  house  belonging  to  the  Rector  of  Wigan  and 
occupied  by  John  Mansel.  The  Sheriff,  however,  was  directed 
to  release  them  on  bail.  Thurstan  did  not  appear  on  the 
day  appointed  for  trial,  '  but  Robert  came  and  defended 
his  whole  action  and  put  himself  for  good  or  evil  upon  the 
country,  to  wit,  upon  twelve  knights  above  suspicion  and 

^  The  record  of  these  Lincolnshire  Hollands,  who  owned  Estovening  Manor  in 
the  parish  of  Swineshead,  begins  with  an  Otho  Holland  before  the  Conquest,  and 
continued  in  that  region  down  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  One  of  them, 
Sir  Thomas  Holland,  te7np.  Henry  VI,  '  spent  his  life  in  the  Holy  Land  and  came 
home  but  every  seventh  year.'  No  wonder,  for  he  was  married  to  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  Sir  Piers  Tempest,  whom  men  called  '  the  Dovilish  Dame.'  One  would 
like  to  know  more  about  this  couple,  who  would  have  been  a  good  subject  for  au 
*  Ingoldsby  Legend.' 

"  In  the  Cockersand  Chartulary,  published  by  the  Chetham  Society,  are 
printed  two  deeds  of  grant  of  land  in  Upholland  to  the  then  new  Abbey, 
one  by  Matthew  de  Holland,  the  second  by  his  son  Robert. 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  3 

four  vills  of  the  neighbourhood  of  Wigan.'  A  day  was 
given  him  by  the  Justices  at  the  next  Assizes,  and  the  Sheriff 
was  directed  in  the  meantime  to  '  let  him  have  peace,  and 
in  no  wise  to  trouble  him  or  permit  him  to  be  troubled.' 
Thurstan  appeared  before  the  Justices  on  July  23,  but  no 
prosecutor  attended  the  Court.  The  Justices  asked  Thurstan 
'  how  he  would  acquit  himself  concerning  the  fire  if  any  one 
would  speak  against  him,'  and  he  too  claimed  trial  by  jury, 
and  was  given  a  day  at  the  Assizes.  It  does  not  appear 
what  further  happened  in  this  case. 

In  1242-3  Thurstan  had  probably  succeeded  to  his  father, 
for  he  represented  the  family  in  an  inquiry  then  held  to 
ascertain  the  knights'  fees  in  that  '  Hundred  '  chargeable 
to  the  Gascon  Scutage.  Robert  de  Holland  had  other  sons 
besides  Thurstan  :  Adam,  the  ancestor  of  the  Hollands  of 
Euxton ;  Richard,  from  whom  came  the  Hollands  of  Sutton  ; 
Matthew,  Robert,  Roger,  and  William.  In  1268  Thurstan 
Holland,  with  his  brothers  Matthew,  Richard,  Robert  and 
William,  and  Thurstan's  own  son  Robert,  were  all  sum- 
moned to  answer  a  charge  of  trespass. 

Thurstan  de  Holland  first  married  the  daughter  of 
Adam  de  Kellet,  through  whom  the  Hollands  acquired  manors 
in  north  Lancashire,  as  Lonsdale,  Furness,  and  Cartmel. 
By  this  wife  he  had  five  sons,  Robert,  William,  Richard, 
Roger,  Adam,  and  a  daughter,  Margaret.  Thurstan  next 
married  Juliana,  a  daughter  of  John  Gellibrand,  and  had 
four  more  sons,  Thurstan,  Adam,  Elias,  and  Simon.  He 
married  thirdly  a  daughter  of  Henry  de  Hale,  an  illegitimate 
son  of  Richard  de  Meath,  Lord  of  Hale.  An  old  Norman- 
French  petition  from  the  '  loyal  tenants  of  Hale  '  states 
that  as  Henry  de  Hale  lay  dying  '  came  one  Thurstan  de 
Holland,  who  had  married  the  daughter  of  the  said  Henry 
and  as  he  lay  at  the  point  of  death  [come  il  launguist  a 
la  mort]  his  memory  lost,  the  said  Thurstan  took  the  said 


4  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Henry's  seal  which  he  had  round  his  neck,  and  made  use 
of  the  seal  to  issue  charters  granting  the  said  manor  of 
Hale  to  himself,  the  said  Thurstan,  and  Robert  his  son.' 
He  had  then  put  out  some  old  tenants,  and  introduced 
new  ones,  which,  perhaps,  accounts  for  the  allegation. 

This  accusation  may  not  have  been  true,  but  evidently 
Thurstan  de  Holland  was  one  of  those  vigorous  and  not 
too  scrupulous  men  who,  by  local  efforts  and  marriages, 
found  families.  Thurstan  lived  long.  He  is  described  as 
'  Sir  Thurstan  de  Holland '  in  witnessing  a  charter  to 
Stanlaw  Abbey  in  1272.  He  signed  it  with  a  cross,  and 
his  seal  showed  three  bulls'  heads. 

Robert  de  Holland  was  the  eldest  son  of  Thurstan. 
William,  another  son  of  Thurstan,  became  Sir  William 
de  Holland,  and  he  was  ancestor  of  several  Lancashire 
families,  Hollands  of  Denton,  Clifton,  and  their  branches, 
a  numerous  posterity  which,  through  descendants  from  the 
Clifton  line,  endures  to  the  present  day. 

Sir  Thurstan  de  Holland's  eldest  son  Robert  is  on  the 
main  line  of  the  present  history.  He  married  Elizabeth, 
the  youngest  of  three  daughters  and  co-heiress  of  William 
de  Samlesbury.  This  Robert  received  knighthood  about 
the  year  1281.  His  eldest  son  was  also  named  Robert, 
and  he  had  another  son,  William,  and  three  daughters 
who  married  into  Lancastrian  families,  Joan,  Margery,  and 
Ameria.  William  died  before  1321,  without  issue.  Joan 
married  first  Sir  Edward  Talbot  of  Bashall,  and  next 
Sir  Hugh  de  Dutton,  and  lastly  Sir  John  de  Redcliffe. 
Margery  married  John  la  Warre,  from  whom  descended 
the  baronial  families  of  West  and  de  la  Warre.  Ameria 
married  Adam,  son  of  Sir  John  Ireland,  knight,  from 
whom  also  came  a  numerous  posterity. 

Sir  Robert  de  Holland,  son  of  Robert  and  grandson  of 
Thurstan,  was  a  great  man  in  his  day,  and  first  brought  this 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  5 

energetic  family  of  Upholland  into  the  domain  of  national 
history.     Beginning  as  a  well-to-do  Lancashire  Squire,  he 
owed  his  advance  to  his  position  in  the  household  of  that 
feudal  lord  of  vast  domains,  Thomas,  Earl  of  Lancaster, 
grandson  of  King  Henry  III  through  that    King's  second 
son  Edmund,  and  nephew  of  Edward  I.     Robert  de  Holland 
took  part  in  the  Scottish  wars  at  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
Edward  I  and  the  beginning  of  that  of  Edward  II.     In 
the  first  year  of  the  latter  reign  he  received  from  the  Crown 
seven  manors  in  Derbyshire.     By  this  time  he  had  become 
a  leading  '  Member  of  Society.'     In  1307  he  rode  at  a  tourna- 
ment, held  outside  London,  in  the  fields  of  Stepney,  where 
he  bore  for  arms  '  azure,  seme  of  fleurs  de  lys,  a  lion  rampant 
guardant,  argent,'  and  in  the  same  year  he  obtained  further 
territorial  grants  from  the  Crown.     This  was  the  first  year 
of  Edward  II's  unhappy  reign.     In  the  same  year  Robert 
de  Holland  obtained  leave  to  fortify  ('  kernellare  ')  his  man- 
sions of  Holland  in  Lancashire  and  Bagsworth  in  Leicester- 
shire, and  was  appointed  Chief  Justice  of  Chester,  with  the 
charge  of  the  royal  castles  of  Chester,  Rhudlaw,  and  Flint. 
In  1308  he  made  a  great  marriage  with  Maud,  then  aged 
twenty-four,    younger    daughter    and    co-heiress    of    Alan, 
Lord  de  la  Zouche  of  Ashby  de  la  Zouche  in   the  county 
of  Leicester,  who  was  great  grandson  of  King  Henry  II 
by  the  fair  and  frail  Rosamond  de  Clifford.     Maud  de  la 
Zouche,  on  her  father's  death,  five  years  later,  brought  him 
several  more  manors  in  Northamptonshire,  Oxfordshire,  and 
Hertfordshire.   In  the  year  of  his  marriage,  Robert  de  Holland 
was  summoned  to  appear  at  Newcastle-on-Tyne  to  repel  the 
invading  Scots,  and  two  years  later  was  appointed  to  super- 
intend military  levies  in  the  counties  of  Lancaster,  Leicester, 
Stafford,  and  Derby      He  was  summoned  to  Parliament  in 
1314  and  1321  as  '  Roberto  de  Holland,  Baron  Holland.' 
It  has  already  been  said  that  Robert  de  Holland  owed 


6  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

his  rise  to  Thomas,  Earl  of  Lancaster,  Leicester,  and 
Derby,  and  cousin  to  the  King.  This  great  lord  had 
given  to  his  follower,  who  was  his  chief  agent  and  adviser 
in  Lancashire,  a  number  of  manors  in  Cheshire,  Staffordshire, 
Yorkshire,  and  Buckinghamshire. 

Robert  de  Holland,  perhaps  in  order  to  give  his  wife  a 
title  to  dower,  obtained  a  re-grant  of  his  inherited  territorial 
manors  of  Upholland  and  Hale  upon  new  and  interesting 
conditions.     Thomas,  Earl  of  Lancaster,  by  charter,  granted 
these  two  manors  to  him  and  to  Maud  his  wife,  to  hold  of 
the  chief  lord  by  the  service  of  distributing  each  year  for  the 
said  Earl's  soul  on  St.  Thomas  the  Martyr's  Day  and  on 
Christmas  Day  to  the  poor  folk  on  the  manor  of  Upholland 
twenty  heaped  up  measures  of  wheated  flour,  and  ox,  and 
swine,  and  calf's  flesh  to  the  value  of  £10,  and  of  providing 
a  repast  of  two  courses  for  240  poor  persons  in  the  Hall  of 
Upholland  on  the  same  feast,  to  be  served  on  dishes  after 
the  manner  of  gentlefolk,  and  a  repast  of  one  course  the 
following  day,  a  pair  of  shoes  or  4rf.  being  given  to  each  of 
the  poor  persons  on  departing. 

The  gifts  of  land  and  mesne  manors,  both  from  the  Crown 
and  from  his  chief  and  patron,  made  Robert  de  Holland 
rich  and  powerful,  and  his  marriage,  besides  bringing  more 
manors,  made  him  well  connected ;  but  his  fortune  fell,  as 
it  had  risen,  with  that  of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster. 

Throughout  English  history,  from  the  time,  at  any  rate, 
of  Henry  III  to  that  of  George  III,  there  has  been  a  struggle, 
now  and  then  volcanically  breaking  forth,  between  the  King 
and  his  intimate  advisers  on  the  one  side,  and,  on  the  other, 
the  party  of  the  territorial  aristocracy  who  always  tried  to 
put  the  royal  power  in  commission,  and  so  rule  themselves. 
The  reign  of  Edward  II,  like  those  of  Richard  II  and  James 
II,  was  one  of  the  explosive  epochs  in  this  struggle,  and 
the  Earl  of  Lancaster  was  at  the  head  of  the  feudal  party, 
in  opposition  to  the  Crown. 


(f-^^: 


,/^0^H. 


/.^^ 


;'?M 


v# 


'/  w-- 


Wf 


/  ■■  /' 


A  KNIGHT  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  HOLLAND  IN  THE  CENTRE.   A  KNIGHT  OF  THE 

HOUSE  OF  LANCASTER  ON  THE  RIGHT 

This  drawing  is  in  the  Harleian  MSS.  Coll.,  2129,  fol.  218a.  It  was  copied  in  1010  from  ])aiuted  glass 
then  in  the  window  of  Warrington  Church.  Baines  sa3-s  ('  Hist.  Lane'  vol.  iii.  p.  072)  :  '  The  surcoat  of  the 
first  knight,  representing  a  Bauastre,  was  or,  that  of  the  second  sable,  pummel  of  his  sword  or,  and  blade 
argent.  The  arms  on  the  pennon  are  those  of  Holland,  and  the  third  knight  is  probably  Thomas,  Earl  of 
Lancaster ' 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  7 

Robert  de  Holland  accompanied  the  Earl  of  Lancaster 
in  the  military  operations  which,  in  1312,  led  to  the  over- 
throw of  King  Edward's  favourite  Piers  Gaveston  and  his 
execution  on  Blacklow  Hill  near  Warwick  on  July  1,  1312. 
But  in  1315  broke  out  a  rebellion  against  the  Earl  in  his 
own  county  of  Lancashire.  This  was  led  by  Sir  Adam  de 
Banastre,  chief  of  a  numerous  and  powerful  family,  who 
had  married  Margaret  Holland,^  the  aunt  of  Sir  Robert, 
now  Lord  Holland.  This  rising  against  their  patron  the 
Earl  of  Lancaster  brought  the  loyal  Hollands  into  violent 
collision  with  the  rebel  Banastres,  notwithstanding  the 
marriage  alliance.  '  The  Hollands,'  say  the  authors  of 
the  '  Victorian  History  of  Lancashire,'  '  were  a  numerous 
clan  in  south-west  Lancashire  ;  their  importance  greatly 
increased  with  the  rise  of  their  chief  ;  and  probably  they 
presumed  upon  it.'  The  Banastre  faction  had  some  success 
at  first,  and  plundered  the  houses  of  the  Hollands  and 
their  friends,  but  they  were  happily  routed  in  a  pitched 
fight,  banners  flying,  near  Preston,  on  November  4,  1315. 
Sir  William  de  Holland,  Sir  Robert's  brother,  captured  Sir 
Thomas  de  Banastre,  at  Charnock,  and  at  once  beheaded 
him  on  Leyland  Moor.  Sir  Adam  was  also  afterwards 
caught  and  beheaded  at  Martinmas. 

After  Gaveston's  illegal  execution,  Sir  Robert  de  Holland 
took  the  precaution  to  obtain  a  royal  pardon  for  his  share 
in  that  outrage.  In  1321  (the  year,  by  the  way,  that  Dante 
died  at  Ravenna)  he  was  ordered  to  abstain  from  attending 
the  meeting  of  the  so-called  '  Good  Peers  '  whom  Lancaster 
had  illegally  convened  to  meet  in  November.  That  Earl, 
who  was  so  popular  that  after  his  death  his  admirers 
tried  to  get  him  canonised  as  a  saint,  was  engaged 
in    his    attempt    to    oust    the    reigning    favourites,    the^ 

^  Adam  de  Banastre  was  Margaret's  second  husband.  The  Harringtons  of 
Hornby  and  Wolfage  descended  from  Katharine,  daughter  of  Margaret  by  Sir 
Adam  de  Banastre.     She  married  Sir  John  Harrington. 


8  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Despensers,    from   the   council   of    his    cousin   the    King. 

In    1322   Robert,   Lord   Holland,   was    sent   by   him   into 

Lancashire  to  raise  a  force  there  in  aid  of  this  enterprise, 

and,  despite  the  King's  prohibition  expressly  addressed  to 

him,  marched  his  levy  to  join  the  Earl.     In  the  meantime, 

one  of  his  younger  brothers.  Sir  Richard  de  Holland,  with 

another  levy,  tried  to  cross  the  Mersey  at  Runcorn  into 

Cheshire  to  attack  a  royal  force  in  that  county,  led  by  Sir 

Oliver  de  Ingham,  but  failed  because  all  the  boats  had  been 

withdrawn  to  the  Cheshire  side.     This  was  in  the  middle 

of  March  1322.     The  Earl  of  Lancaster,  operating  on  the 

Trent,  placed  a  body  of  foot  soldiers  at  Burton,  to  keep  the 

bridge,  and  to  prevent  the  royal  army,  estimated  at  30,000 

men,  from  crossing  the  river.     He  was  out-manoeuvred  by 

the  King's  army,  which  passed  the  Trent  at  Walton,  lower 

down  the  river,  and  thereby  turned  the  Earl's   flank   and 

compelled  his  retreat  across  the  Dove.     The  retreat  was 

accomplished  in  such  haste   that  the   Earl's   army  chest, 

containing  100,000  silver  pieces,  fell  into  the  river,  where 

it  was  discovered  in  the  year  1831.     The  Earl  retreated  as 

far  as  Boroughbridge  in  Yorkshire,  and  was  there  defeated 

and  captured  on  March  16.     He  was  summarily  tried  and 

beheaded  a  few  days  later  in  his  own  Castle  of  Pontefract. 

According  to  one  account  Sir  Robert  de  Holland  was  at 

this  fight ;    according  to  another  he  did  not  arrive  in  time. 

In  any  case  he  surrendered  to  the  King  immediately  after 

the  conflict,   and  escaped  the   penalty  of  death,   but  the 

whole  of  his  great  territorial  possessions  were  confiscated 

by  the  Crown. 

After  the  fall  of  the  great  Earl,  and  of  his  agent  Robert, 
Lord  Holland,  Lancashire  sank  for  a  space  into  anarchy. 
The  men  crushed  by  the  Hollands  seven  years  earlier  raised 
their  heads  again.  '  Banastre's  old  associate,  Sir  William 
Bradshaw,  formed  a  confederacy  with  Thomas  de  Banastre 
and  others  against  the  Hollands,  who  united  their  forces 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  9 

under  Sir  Richard  de  Holland.  They  attacked  each  other 
whenever  they  met,  besieged  one  another's  houses,  overawed 
courts  of  law,  and  kept  a  great  part  of  the  country  practically 
in  a  state  of  war  for  more  than  a  year.'  ^ 

Signs  of  this  wild  state  of  things  appear  in  the  Court 
records.  In  1324  Sir  William  de  Bradeschagh  (Bradshaw) 
accused  Henry  de  Gylibrand  of  coming  with  Richard  de 
Holland  and  Adam  de  Hindelaye  on  the  Friday  next  before 
the  Feast  of  St.  John  in  the  preceding  year  to  Leyland  with 
a  hundred  armed  men,  who  attacked  the  complainant  and 
carried  off  two  of  his  horses.  The  troop  then  rode  on  to 
Preston,  where  Edward  de  Nevile  and  Gilbert  Singleton,  two 
of  the  King's  Judges,  were  holding  assizes,  and  so  much 
terrified  them  by  noise  and  clamour  that  they  dared  not 
proceed  with  business,  nor  did  the  complainant  dare  '  to 
defend  his  sentence  in  an  assize  of  novel  disseisin,'^  where- 
by he  suffered  damage  to  the  extent  of  ten  marks.  In 
1330  the  Prior  of  Lancaster  complained  that  he  had 
been  seized  and  imprisoned  by  one  of  the  Banastres  and 
others.  In  1334  Sir  Richard  de  Holland  laid  a  claim  to  a 
mill  and  two  plough-lands  at  Aighton.  The  successful 
defence  was  (1)  that  there  was  only  one  plough-land  at 
Aighton,  (2)  that  the  said  Sir  Richard  had  been  convicted 
of  felony.  In  the  same  year  a  man  named  Richard  le 
Skimmer,  parker  or  forest-keeper  of  Ightenhill,  was  prose- 
cuted at  a  County  Court  held  at  Wigan  on  the  charge  of 
having  ridden  with  thirty  armed  men  to  Prescot  Church  on 
the  Sunday  after  Barnabas'  Day  in  1330,  four  years  before, 
and  having  dragged  from  the  church  Richard  de  Holland, 
Thomas  de  Hale,  and  John  Walthew.  He  would  have 
beheaded  the  last-named  then  and  there,  had  not  Walthew 


*   Victorian  History  of  Lancashire,  ii.  201. 

'^  Assize  of  Novel  Disseisin. — An  action  to  recover  property  of  which  a  party 
had  been  disseised  (dispossessed)  after  the  last  circuit  of  the  judges.  Abolished 
by  3  &  4  Will.  4,  c.  27  (1833).— Wharton,  Law  Lexicon. 


10       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

claimed  the  refuge  of  the  Church.  This  vigorous  parker  was 
probably  inflamed  by  some  outrageous  raiding  in  pursuit  of 
deer,  since  the  forest  laws  about  this  time  were  freely  violated 
in  Lancashire,  and  this  was  one  great  cause  of  fighting. 

While  affairs  went  thus  rudely  in  Lancashire,  Robert, 
Lord  Holland,  Chief  of  the  family,  languished  for  a  while 
in  successive  prisons  at  Dover  and  York,  until  at  last  he 
was  set  free  upon  giving  pledges  of  good  behaviour.  He 
must  have  been  in  poverty.  In  1328,  six  years  after  Borough- 
bridge,  in  the  second  year  of  the  reign  of  Edward  III,  the 
attainder  of  Thomas,  Earl  of  Lancaster,  was  reversed,  and 
his  estates  were  restored  to  his  brother  and  heir,  Henry, 
Earl  of  Lancaster.  About  the  same  time  the  new  King, 
with  the  assent  of  Parliament,  directed  that  the  estates 
of  those  who  had  joined  Earl  Thomas  against  the  Des- 
pensers  and  the  late  King  should  also  be  restored  ;  and, 
among  others,  it  was  ordered  that  the  possessions  of  Robert 
de  Holland  should  be  redelivered  into  his  hands.  The  Earl 
of  Lancaster  opposed  this  restitution,  and  Holland  addressed 
a  petition  to  the  King  in  Council.  On  October  7,  in  the 
same  year,  Holland  was  killed  by  adherents  of  that  Earl. 
According  to  Dugdale  he  had  '  incurred  much  hatred  from 
the  people  for  dealing  unfaithfully  with  his  lord,  who,  out 
of  his  great  affection,  had  raised  him  from  nothing,  so  that, 
in  1328,  being  taken  in  a  wood  near  Henley  Park,  toward 
Windsor,  he  was  beheaded  on  the  nones  of  October,  and 
his  head  was  sent  to  Henry,  Earl  of  Lancaster,  then  at 
Waltham  Cross,  in  Essex,  by  one  Sir  Thomas  Wyther,  a 
knight,  and  some  other  private  friends.' 

The  allegation  seems  to  have  been  that  Holland,  in  order 
to  gain  favour  with  the  King  and  to  save  his  estates  and  his 
life,  had  taken  care  not  to  arrive  at  Boroughbridge,  with  a 
strong  division  which  he  led,  either  at  all,  or,  at  least,  until 
it  was  too  late  to  avert  defeat.     If  this  be  true — and  it 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  11 

is  all  very  doubtful — it  is  clear  that  he  gained  nothing  from 
this  infidelity  but  his  life.      He  was  imprisoned  and  involved 
in  the  ruin  of  his  patron,  and  the  estates  of  his  kinsmen, 
John  and  Richard  de  Holland,  were  confiscated  as  well  as 
his  own.     Mr.  Croston  says,  in  his  book    on    Samlesbury 
Hall,  that  '  the  charge  of  treachery  had  no  foundation  in 
truth,  and  was,  in  all  probability,  devised  by  the  adherents 
of  Earl  Henry  to  secure  his  removal,  and  thereby  prevent 
him  from  becoming  repossessed  of  the  manors  which  had 
been  conferred  upon  him  by  Earl  Thomas.'     The  dispatch 
of  his  head  to  Earl  Henry  has,  however,  an  air  of  personal 
revenge   which   could  hardly   be   entirely  explained   by   a 
mere  motive  of  interest.     Eventually  the  patrimonial  estates 
were  restored  to  the  family,  but  few,  if  any,  of  those  granted 
by  Earl  Thomas  were  recovered. 

Sir  Robert,  Lord  Holland,  in  the  day  of  his  wealth  and 
greatness,  was  not  forgetful  of  the  Church.     He  founded, 
at  Upholland,  in  connection  with  the  church,  a  chapel  of 
St.  Thomas  the  Martyr,  a  collegiate  foundation  of  a  Dean 
and  Chaplains,  or  secular  Canons.     It  was  not  a  success, 
as  is  shown  by  the  recitals  in  a  later  deed  of  June  10,  1319, 
which  was  executed  by  Walter,  Bishop  of    Coventry  and 
Lichfield,  with  the   consent   of   Robert   de   Holland.     The 
deed  says,  in  Latin,  that  '  the  said  Chaplains  (capellani)  who 
for  a  short  time  were  in  agreement,  have  long  and  rashly 
(temere)   abandoned  the   said  place,  and  thus  the  religion 
or  devotion  which  it  was  hoped  would  there  be  exercised 
for  ever  is  dissolved  and  has  ceased.      We,  considering  that 
the   college  there  ordained  has  been  dispersed,  and  seeing 
that  the  divine  worship  in  that  place  has  been  frustrated, 
and  desiring  that,  for  the  increase  of  religion  and  divine 
worship,  the  state  of  the  said  place  should  be  reformed, 
and  having  inspected  the  unproductiveness  and  situation 
of  the  place,  it  appears  to  be  more  convenient  that  religious 


12  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

rather  than  secular  men  should  abide  there  for  ever.' 
Evidently  the  strength  of  the  monastic  rule  was  necessary 
to  make  religious  men  live  in  so  sterile  and  remote  a  spot. 

The  deed  therefore  substituted  for  the  former  foundation 
one  of  a  Prior  and  twelve  monks  of  the  Order  of  St.  Benedict, 
'  nigrum  habitum  gerentes.'  Thomas  de  Banastre  was 
presented  by  Robert  de  Holland  as  first  Prior.  The  only 
information  about  this  priory  is  that  John  de  Barnaby 
was  Prior  in  1350,  when  he  and  others  were  tried  for  a  riot 
and  were  acquitted.  The  monks  chanted  their  masses  for 
more  than  two  hundred  years  in  remote  Upholland,  and 
then  came  Henry  VIII  and  Thomas  Cromwell.  At  the 
dissolution,  in  1534,  the  place  was  granted  to  John  Holcroft. 
The  gross  income  was  then  £61  3^.  4c^.  and  the  net  income 
£53  35.  4d.  The  church  was  kept  for  a  chapelry  of  Wigan, 
and  still  remains.  A  few  fragments  of  wall  mark  the  site 
of  the  other  buildings. 

The  Sir  Robert  Holland  who  founded  this  priory  and 
was  slain  near  Henley  in  1328,  left  five  sons  and  a  daughter. 
The  eldest  son,  also  named  Robert,  was  for  a  time  engaged, 
like  his  brothers,  in  the  French  wars,  and  was  summoned 
to  Parliament  as  Baron  Holland  from  February  25,  1342, 
to  October  6,  1372. 

This  second  Sir  Robert  de  Holland,  Baron  Holland,  took 
part  in  1347  in  an  affair  which  created  a  sensation  at  the 
time.  He  and  several  other  Lancashire  gentlemen  assisted 
Sir  Robert  Dalton  of  that  county  to  abduct  with  violence  a 
wealthy  widow,  whom  Dalton  wished  to  marry.  Her  name 
was  Margery,  widow  of  a  large  landowner  named  Nicolas  de 
la  Beche,  and  she  subsequently  had  been  married  to  Gerard 
de  risle.  The  Lancashire  gentlemen  carried  her  off  by 
force  from  her  manor  house  called  Beaumes  or  Beams  in 
Berkshire,  close  to  Reading.  In  the  affray  the  lady's  uncle, 
Michael    le   Poyning,    and   another   man  were   killed,   and 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  13 

several  were  wounded.  The  crime  was  the  more  outrageous, 
and  was  severely  prosecuted,  because  it  was  committed 
'  within  the  verge  of  the  marshalsea  '  of  the  Duke  of  Clarence, 
the  King's  brother,  who  was  acting  as  '  keeper  of  the  realm  ' 
while  the  King  was  in  France,  and  was  just  then  residing 
at  Reading.  The  arrest  of  Dalton,  Holland,  and  the  rest 
was  at  once  ordered,  and  they  fled  to  wild  Lancashire  with 
the  lady.  There  some  of  them  took  refuge  at  Upholland 
Hall,  the  house  settled  for  life  on  the  Lady  Maud  Holland, 
Robert  Holland's  widowed  mother.  She  thus  became  im- 
plicated in  the  proceedings,  but  pleaded  that  the  house 
was  empty  and  that  she  was  ignorant  of  this  harbouring. 
On  the  arrival  of  the  King's  writ  at  Upholland  the  abductors 
fled  farther  north. 

This  crime  of  widow  or  heiress  stealing  was  then  very 
common.  About  the  same  time  there  was  a  famous  case 
of  the  widow  Lady  de  Boteler,  who  was  carried  off  from 
her  house  in  Lancashire  with  no  more  luggage,  as  she 
complained,  than  her  '  smock  and  her  kyrtle.'  John  of 
Gaunt  issued  a  special  proclamation  in  his  duchy  against 
lady-stealing,  in  which  it  was  recited  that  the  offence  was 
more  common  in  Lancashire  than  in  any  county,  and  that 
the  ladies  carried  off  were  too  apt  to  marry  their  ravishers. 
In  that  age,  when  land  was  wealth,  a  nobleman  or  gentle- 
man could  only  increase  his  estate  in  one  of  two  ways — by 
marrying  an  heiress  or  widow,  or  by  obtaining  a  share 
in  confiscated  possessions  of  unsuccessful  traitors  who 
had  been  attainted  for  treason.  This  necessity,  vital  to 
those  who  would  be  great,  vitiated  motives  both  in 
marriage  and  in  politics,  just  as,  later,  the  prospect 
of  the  plunder  of  the  vast  estates  of  the  monasteries 
vitiated  the  religious  motive  of  English  and  German 
reformers.  In  later  times,  although  marriage  was  still  the 
pleasantest  and  the  best  way  of  gaining  or  increasing  wealth 


14       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

or  power,  the  long  wars  and  plunder  of  France  opened  out 
new  avenues  and  careers  to  English  gentlemen,  and,  after 
that,  came  successively  distribution  of  the  monastic  lands, 
increasing  sale  of  wool  to  the  manufacturing  towns  of 
Flanders,  opening  of  the  new  world,  and  capture  of  bullion 
by  sea-rovers  from  the  Spaniards,  and,  later  still,  develop- 
ment of  the  British  Empire,  and  other  modes  of  earned  or 
unearned  income.  But  before  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century  the  roads  to  wealth  were  scanty,  and  even  less 
consistent  than  they  now  are  with  strict  virtue. 

Lady  Maud  Holland,  nee  la  Zouche,  died  in  1349,  two 
years  after  the  Beaumes  affair,  at  the  age  of  sixty-five,  and 
the  Manor  of  Upholland  passed  to  her  son  Robert,  second 
Lord  Holland.  He  died  at  the  age  of  sixty-one,  in  the  year 
1373.  His  son,  also  named  Robert,  died  before  him,  and 
Upholland  and  other  estates  passed  to  the  last  mentioned 
Robert's  daughter  Maud.  This  Maud  de  Holland,  at  the 
age  of  seventeen,  married  Sir  John  Lovell,  K.G.,  after- 
wards Lord  Lovell.^  The  Manor  of  Upholland  and  other 
estates  remained  in  that  family  until  they  were  confiscated 
after  the  death  of  Francis,  Viscount  Lovell,  one  of 
Richard  Ill's  leading  adherents,  at  the  battle  of  Bosworth, 
in  1485.  The  manor  was  thereupon  granted  by  Henry  VII 
to  the  first  Earl  of  Derby.  On  the  death  of  the  ninth 
Earl  it  passed  to  his  daughter,  Henrietta  Maria,  Countess 
of  Ashburnham,  who  sold  it  in  1717  to  Thomas  Ashurst. 
His  successor  sold  it  to  Sir  Thomas  Boothe,  the  ancestor 
of  the  Lords  Skelmersdale. 

Such  was  the  fate  of  the  eldest  line  of  the  Hollands,  and 

^  Some  of  the  estates,  e.g.  the  Manor  of  Torrisholme,  passed  to  Maud's  uncle, 
John  Holland,  and  when  he  died  in  1456,  without  issue,  went  to  his  distant  cousin, 
Henry  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  as  next  heir.  These  must  have  been  bound  to 
go  in  tail  male.  This  Sir  John  Lovell  died  in  1408.  A  long  list  of  his  manors 
in  right  of  his  wife  Maud,  daughter  of  Robert  Holland,  appear  in  the  Inquisitio 
post  mortem.    Most  of  them  were  in  Leicestershire,  Oxfordshire,  and  Wiltshire. 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  15 

of  their  ancestral  Manor  of  Upholland.  Among  other 
branches  from  that  stem  were  (1)  that  derived  from  Sir 
Robert,  Lord  Holland's  second  son,  Thomas,  whence  came 
the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Dukes  of  Exeter  ;  (2)  that 
derived  from  the  said  Sir  Robert's  younger  brother  William 
de  Holland,  whence  came  the  Hollands  of  Denton,  Clifton, 
&c.  ;  and  (3)  that  derived  from  his  great  uncle,  Richard  de 
Holland,  whence  came  the  Hollands  of  Sutton.  What  is 
known  of  these  lines  will  be  stated  in  this  book,  but  it  is  con- 
venient to  mention  here,  and  get  rid  of,  another  short-lived 
line,  the  Hollands  of  Euxton. 

The  Hollands  who  owned  the  Manor  of  Euxton  bore  for 
their  arms  those  of  the  race,  azure  seme  with  fleurs  de  lys, 
a  lion  rampant  guardant,  argent,  over  all  a  bandlet  gules. 
They  came  from  a  younger  brother  of  Thurstan  de  Holland, 
namely,  Adam  de  Holland,  who  was  in  possession  of  the 
Manor  of  Euxton  about  1250,  apparently  through  marriage 
with  an  heiress  of  the  great  landed  family  of  the  Bussells. 
His  eldest  son  was  Robert,  who  married  an  heiress  of  the 
Ellels.  The  pedigree  of  these  Hollands  of  Euxton  was  as 
follows  : 

Adam  de  Holland,  =  Christiana  de  Bussell. 
living  1269.  | 

Robert  de  Holland,  =  Aline  de  EUel, 
living  1306.  I 


William  de  Holland,  =  Elizabeth,  Grimbald  de  Holland, 

living  1323.  I  d.  of 


Robert  de  Holland,  =  Joan,  William  de  Holland. 

11  years  old  in  1323.     I  d.  of 


Joan  Holland  =  Sir  William  de  Molyneux. 
Earls  of  Sefton. 


16       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

The  first  of  the  two  Robert  Hollands  mentioned  in  this 
pedigree  seems  to  have  been  rather  a  lawless  character. 
In  1278  the  Abbot  of  Leicester  lodged  a  complaint  that 
Robert  de  Holland  of  Euxton  and  others  had  seized  his 
corn  in  the  highway  at  Ellel,  and  in  1281  his  own  relative 
by  marriage,  William  Bussel,  complained  that  Robert  de 
Holland  had  seized  his  cattle.  His  grandson,  the  second 
Robert,  came  to  some  violent  end,  since  two  men  were 
pardoned  in  1339  for  their  share  in  the  death  of  Robert  de 
Holland  of  Euxton.  His  daughter  Joan  became  heiress, 
and  carried  the  manor  in  marriage  to  Sir  William  de 
Molyneux  of  Sefton,  a  gentleman  distinguished  in  the 
Edwardian  Wars,  the  direct  ancestor  of  the  present  Earls 
of  Sefton. 

But  the  story  of  the  main  line  of  the  Hollands  of  Up- 
holland  must  now  be  completed.  Sir  Robert,  Lord  Holland, 
he  who  was  illegally  beheaded  near  Henley-on-Thames,  had, 
besides  his  eldest  son  Robert,  four  younger  sons,  Thomas, 
Otho,  John,  and  Alan,  and  one  daughter,  Isabel  de  Holland.^ 
At  his  death  in  1328  his  eldest  son  was  sixteen,  so  was  born 
in  1312.  Isabel  became  involved  in  the  fortunes  of  a  remark- 
able man,  John,  Earl  de  Warenne,  and  Earl  also  of  Surrey 
and  Sussex.  He  was  born  in  1286  and  was  the  last  of  a  very 
great  Norman  family,  the  heads  of  which  had  taken  a  leading 
part  in  the  affairs  of  England  since  the  Conquest.  The  first 
of  them  had  married  Gundred,  a  daughter  of  William  the 
Conqueror.  The  last  Earl  had  acted  with  Lancaster  and 
his  allies  of  the  feudal  aristocracy  against  Piers  de  Gaveston, 
but  afterwards  had  gone  over  to  the  side  of  the  Court.  His 
alliance  was  valuable,  for  he  had  wide  domains  north  of  the 
Trent  with  Conisborough  Castle  in  Yorkshire  for  his  central 
stronghold,  the  ruins  of  which  still  rise  above  the  Don,  and 
also  great  possessions  in  the  south.     To  him  belonged  the 

1  John  is  d.oubtf\il.     He  only  appears  in  the  pedigree  of  the  Devonshire  Hollands. 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  IT 

towns  and  castles  of  Reigate  in  Surrey  and  Lewes  in  Sussex. 
In  1322  he  acted  against  the  Earl  of  Lancaster  in  Yorkshire, 
and  was  one  of  the  peers  who  signed  his  death  warrant  at 
Pontefract. 

In  addition  to  his  landed  wealth  the  Earl  de  Warenne, 
towards  the  end  of  his  life,  was  enriched,  if  the  frequently 
incredible  monk  of  St.  Albans,  Walsingham,  is  to  be  believed, 
by  the  discovery  through  the  wizard  doings  of  a  Saracen 
physician  of  a  great  treasure  hidden  in  the  cave  on  his 
Bromfield  estates  in  Herefordshire.  This  monk  says  in 
his  Latin  Chronicle  :  '  There  came  at  that  time  a  certain 
Saracen  physician  to  the  Earl  de  Warren,  asking  his  leave 
to  catch  a  certain  Serpent  in  his  Welsh  estates,  in  a  place 
called  Bromfield.  When,  by  incantations,  he  had  caught 
the  said  Serpent,  he  declared  that  in  a  cavern,  in  a 
neighbouring  place,  where  the  Serpent  had  dwelt,  there 
was  a  great  treasure.  Hearing  which,  some  men  of  Hereford, 
by  the  advice  of  a  certain  Lombard,  named  Peter  Picard, 
began  to  dig  there,  and  finding  that  to  be  true  which  the 
Saracen  had  predicted,  often  met  there  at  night,  until, 
discovered  by  the  servants  of  the  Earl,  they  were  taken  and 
put  in  prison.  The  Earl,  truly,  made  no  small  gain  from 
this  event.' 

John,  Earl  de  Warenne  in  1307,  when  he  was  twenty, 
married  a  French  lady,  Jeanne,  daughter  of  the  Count  de 
Barre.  Their  life  was  unhappy  ;  they  both  sued  for  divorce, 
but  the  law  of  the  Church  presented  difficulties,  and  at  first, 
at  any  rate,  the  attempt  was  not  successful.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  it  ever  was.  They  lived  separated,  and  Earl 
de  Warenne  pursued  his  wild  career.  On  the  Monday  before 
Ascension  Day,  in  the  year  1317,  a  kinsman  and  retainer 
of  his  carried  off  Alice,  the  wife  of  Thomas,  Earl  of 
Lancaster,  from  a  manor  house  at  Canford  in  Dorsetshire 
and,  ostentatiously,  at  the  head  of  an  armed  escort,  conveyed 


18  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

her  to  de  Warenne  at  his  castle  of  Reigate  in  Surrey.^  The 
lady  was  the  heiress  of  the  great  Norman  family  of  the 
de  Lacys,  and  had  brought  to  the  House  of  Lancaster 
Pontefract  Castle  and  wide  domains  in  Yorkshire. ^ 

It  was  alleged  that  this  ravishing  was  connived  at  by  the 
Court  who  hated  Thomas  of  Lancaster,  and  it  was  probably 
done  with  the  consent  of  the  Countess  Alice,  who  was  accused 
of  a  previous  northern  intrigue  with  de  Warenne,  when  she 
was  at  Pontefract,  and  he  in  his  hunting  domain  at  Conis- 
borough.  The  act  was  an  audacious  challenge  by  de  Warenne 
of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster,  who  was  then  at  the  height  of  his 
power,  and  it  led  to  a  short  private  war  between  the  Earls 
of  Lancaster  and  de  Warenne  in  Yorkshire.  For  his  evil 
living  the  Earl  de  Warenne  was  threatened  with  excom- 
munication by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  actually 
did  inciu:  a  diocesan  excommunication  by  the  Bishop  of 
Chichester,  which  caused  an  affray  between  his  men  and 
those  of  the  Bishop.^  The  Archbishop's  proceedings  were 
intended,  it  seems,  to  make  the  Earl  break  off  his  connection 
with  Maud  de  Nerford,  a  lady  of  good  family  in  Norfolk, 
who  lived  with  him  for  many  years,  and  bore  him  six  illegiti- 

^  The  monk,  Walsingliam,  gives  an  absurd  and  d^eam-like  description  of  what 
happened  on  the  road  near  Farnham.  His  object  evidently  was  still  further  to 
blacken  the  character  of  the  Countess  for  the  benefit  of  that  popular  hero,  Thomas 
of  Lancaster. 

^  Pontefract  Castle  was  afterwards  acquired  by  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster, through  his  marriage  with  Blanche,  daughter  of  Henry,  Earl  of  Lancaster. 
So  it  passed  to  his  son  King  Henry  IV. 

3  The  diocesan  excommunication  of  a  great  man  for  a  great  crime  hap- 
pened now  and  then.  In  the  early  twelfth  century,  for  instance,  William  Duke 
of  Aquitaine  carried  off  with  violence  the  beautiful  Viscountess  de  Chatelherault, 
and  kept  her  immured  in  his  castle  at  Poitiers.  Peter,  Bishop  of  Poitiers, 
thereon  excommunicated  him.  The  Duke,  with  sword  drawn,  came  furiously 
into  the  cathedral  while  the  Bishop  was  celebrating  Mass,  and  commanded  him 
to  withdraw  the  interdict.  Bishop  Peter  refused,  and  the  Duke  returned  his 
shining  blade  into  the  scabbard,  with  the  words,  '  Je  ne  t'aimo  pas  assez  pour 
t'envoyer  en  Paradis.' 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  19 

mate  children,  John,  Edward,  William,  Joan,  Katherine, 
and  Isabel.  In  1316  the  Earl,  in  agreement  with  the  King, 
made  a  deed  of  settlement  of  his  lands  north  of  the  Trent, 
on  himself  for  life,  then  on  Maud  de  Nerford,  if  she  survived 
him,  for  her  life,  with  remainder  to  her  sons  by  him  and  their 
heirs  male,  and  in  the  event  of  the  extinction  of  all  these, 
then  to  the  Crown.  Maud  died  before  the  Earl.  Her  three 
sons  survived  him,  but  this  settlement  was  set  aside  in  favour 
of  a  new  one  which  he  made  in  1346.  Before  this  date  Isabel 
de  Holland  was  living  with  John,  Earl  de  Warenne,  as  his 
recognised  wife.  His  first  wife,  Jeanne  de  la  Barre,  was 
still,  indeed,  alive,  for  she  survived  him,  and  died  in  France 
in  1361.  Perhaps  the  suit  for  divorce  had,  after  all,  been 
at  last  successful.^  In  any  case,  Isabel  was  recognised  in  the 
deed  of  1346,  and  in  the  Earl's  will  of  1347,  as,  at  least 
virtually,  his  wife.  In  the  will,  written  in  France,  he  calls 
her  '  ma  compaigne.'  This  is  an  expression  which  was  then 
sometimes  used  in  French  wills,  for  wife.  So,  for  instance, 
John  of  Gaunt  in  his  will,  also  written  in  French,  speaks  of 
his  first  two  wives  as  '  Blanche  et  Constance,  mes  tres  cheres 
compaignes.'  On  the  other  hand,  both  in  the  deed  of  1346, 
and  the  will  of  1347,  Isabel  is  described  by  her  own  family 
name  of  '  Isabelle  de  Holande,'  which  would  be  unusual. 
On  the  whole  the  character  and  position  of  the  fair  Isabel 
must  remain  enigmatic. 

The  indenture  in  1346  shows  that  the  Earl,  then  sixty, 
and  only  a  year  from  his  death,  still  contemplated  the 
possibility  of  having  by  Isabel  a  child,  who  would  be  the 
legitimate  heir  of  his  estates.  Dugdale  gives  this  deed  as 
follows  :  It  was  provided  that,  '  If  God  should  please 
to  send  him  an  heir  by  Isabel  de  Holland,  then  his  wife,. 

1  Brayley,  in  his  History  of  Surrey,  says  that  the  Earl  did  obtain  the  divorce. 
I  know  not  on  what  authority.     Dallaway,  in  his  History  of  Sussex,  denies  it. 


20  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

should  the  said  heir  be  male  or  female,  it  should  be  joined  in 
marriage  to  some  one  of  the  blood  royal  unto  whom  the 
King  should  think  fittest,  so  that  the  whole  inheritance  of 
the  Earl  Avith  the  name  and  arms  of  Warenne  should  be 
preserved  by  the  blood  royal  in  the  blood  of  the  said  Earl. 
If  he  had  no  issue  from  the  said  Isabel,  then  his  castles 
and  lands  should,  after  his  death,  remain  to  the  King  to  be 
bestowed  on  one  of  his  own  sons  on  condition  that  the 
name,  honour  and  arms  of  Warenne  should  be  for  ever 
maintained  and  kept.' 

This  settlement,  apparently,  like  that  of  1316,  applied 
to  all  his  territories  north  of  the  Trent,  but  not  to  his 
southern  possessions.  As  the  Earl  left  no  child  by  Isabel 
de  Holland,  the  remainder  over  came  into  force,  and,  a  few 
days  after  the  Earl's  death.  King  Edward  III  made  an 
appointment  by  Letters  Patent  of  these  possessions  in  favour 
of  his  fifth  son,  Edmund  de  Langley,  then  six  years  old. 
Edmund  was  afterwards  Duke  of  York,  and  this  inheritance 
was  the  foundation  of  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  House 
of  York,  especially  in  Yorkshire,  and  so  is  of  some  importance 
in  English  history. 

In  the  following  year  the  Earl  de  Warenne,  then  at  Conis- 
borough  Castle,  made  his  will,  dated  June  23,  1347,  an 
interesting  document  in  many  ways.^  He  appointed  as 
his  executors  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbur}^  the  Lady  Maud 
de  Holland  (the  widow  of  Robert,  Lord  Holland),  Sir  Thomas 
Holland,  her  second  son,  and  eight  other  persons.  He  gave 
instructions  for  the  payment  of  his  debts  by  the  sale  of 
sufficient  live-stock,  and  gave  legacies  to  the  shrine  of  St. 
Thomas  at  Canterbury,  and  numerous  other  religious  founda- 
tions. He  left  money  legacies  to  his  illegitimate  children 
by  Maud  de  Nerford,  and  to  William,  one  of  the  sons,  who 

^  The  will  of  1347  is  given  in  Testamenta  Eboriacensia — Surteea  Society,  i. 
41-5. 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  21 

was  Prior  of  Horton  in  Kent,  his  translation  in  French  of 
the  Bible.  He  devised  to  Lady  Maud  Holland  four  horses 
(jumentz)  from  his  stud  farm  (haras)  in  Sussex.  To  Sir 
Robert  de  Holland  and  Sir  Otho  de  Holland  he  bequeathed 
various  specified  parts  of  the  metal  trappings  of  his  charger, 
and  he  made  a  number  of  other  legacies.  To  Isabel  de 
Holland,  '  ma  compaigne,'  he  left  a  ruby  ring,  the  plate  and 
vestments  of  his  chapel,  and  one-half  of  all  his  live-stock  ; 
and,  after  payment  of  debts  and  legacies,  he  made  her 
residuary  legatee  of  his  real  and  personal  estate.  This 
bequest  did  not  carry  the  land  and  castles  north  of  Trent, 
which  had  been  settled  by  the  deed  of  the  preceding  year, 
nor  any  lands  elsewhere,  which  the  Earl  could  not  devise 
by  will.  Most  of  these,  including  the  important  Surrey 
Castle  of  Reigate,  went  to  Richard  Fitz  Alan,  the  son  of  his 
sister  Alice  de  Warenne,  who  had  married  the  Earl  of  Arundel. 
Apparently  any  territorial  benefits  to  Isabel  were  cancelled 
by  a  Royal  Patent  of  December  12,  1347,  seven  months 
after  the  Earl's  death.^ 

This  will  shows  that  John,  Earl  de  Warenne,  was  upon 
excellent  terms  with  the  Hollands,  since  the  whole  family, 
except  John  and  Alan,  appear  in  it  either  as  legatees  or 
executors,  and,  inasmuch  as  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
the  virtuous  and  aged  Stratford,  is  an  executor,  it  must  be 
supposed  that  the  union  of  Isabel  Holland  with  the  Earl 
was  not  disapproved  by  the  Church,  like  that  with  Maud  de 
Nerford.  Since  Isabel's  eldest  brother  was  born  in  1312, 
she  was  probably  about  thirty,  most  enchanting  age  of 
woman,  in  1347,  when  the  Earl  died  at  about  twice  her  age. 
The  sinful  Earl,  the  beautiful  Isabel,  for  she  must  have  been 
beautiful  to  please  a  man  like  him,  the  Saracen  physician,^ 
and  other  characters  in  the  drama,  would  afford  food  for 
imagination  to  a  weaver  of  historical  romance. 

^  See  Dallaway's  History  oj  Western  Sussex,  ii.  130. 


22  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

John,  last  Earl  de  Warenne,  and  Surrey  and  Sussex, 
was  buried,  as  in  his  will  he  desired,  alone,  under  a  raised 
tomb,  near  the  High  Altar,  in  the  Abbey  of  Lewes.  *  It 
is  impossible,'  says  the  modern  historian  of  Sussex,  '  from 
the  remains  of  this  distinguished  edifice,  to  form  any  correct 
notion  of  its  relative  parts.  The  High  Altar,  before  which 
so  many  of  the  noble  family  of  De  Warren  reposed  under 
splendid  tombs,  cannot  be  traced.' 

These  devastations  by  our  vandals  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  are  certainly  an  irreparable  grief  to 
the  antiquary,  and  a  cause  of  real  regret  to  the  lover 
of  historical  continuity.  They  call  to  remembrance  the 
Elizabethan  poet  Webster's  fine  lines  in  his  '  Duchess  of 
Amalfi  '  : 

I  do  love  these  ancient  ruins  ; 

We  never  tread  upon  them  but  we  set 

Our  foot  upon  some  reverent  history  ; 

And,  questionless,  here,  in  this  open  court — 

Which  now  lies  naked  to  the  injuries 

Of  stormy  weather — some  men  lie  interred, 

Loved  the  Church  so  well,  and  gave  so  largely  to  it. 

They  thought  it  should  have  canopied  their  bones 

Till  Domesday  ;    but  all  things  have  their  end  ; 

Churches  and  cities,  which  have  diseases  like  to  men. 

It  is  not  recorded  what  subsequent  adventures  befell  the 
fair  and  successful  Isabel,  daughter  of  Robert,  Lord  Holland, 
and  sister  to  Robert,  Thomas,  Otho,  John,  and  Alan. 
That  which  happened  to  the  line  of  her  eldest  brother,  and 
to  the  ancestral  manor,  already  has  been  narrated.  The 
eventful  history  of  the  most  famous  cadet  branch  of  the 
Hollands  of  Upholland  continues  through  her  second  brother, 
Thomas,  who  rose  in  the  wars  oversea,  made  a  great 
marriage,  and  became  Earl  of  Kent. 

The  fortunes  of  this  line  will  be  narrated  in  the  following 


HOLLANDS  OF  UPHOLLAND  23 

chapters.  Of  the  other  brothers,  Otho  and,  perhaps,  Alan 
left  no  posterity.  There  is  said  by  one  authority  to  have 
been  a  fourth  brother,  John,  who  married  a  lady  called 
Eleanor  Medsted,  and  founded  a  family  who  in  lineal 
male  descent  held  the  manor  of  Weare  near  Topsham  in 
Devonshire  until  the  middle  or  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 


HOLLANDS,  EARLS  OF  KENT  AND  HUNTINGDON, 

Sir  Robert  de  Holland  =  Maud,  d.  of  Alan,  Lord  de 
of   Upholland,   Lancashire, 
Lord  Holland,  illegally  be- 
headed, October  1328. 


ETC. 


la  Zouche. 


Sir  Thomas  de  Holland,  =  Joan    Plantagenet,  =  2ndlyEdwardPrince 


K.G.,  1st  Earl  of  Kent  ;  b. 
before  1320,  d.  1360  ;  second 
son.  ^ 


d.  of  Edmund  Earl 
of  Kent,  and  grand- 
daughter of  King 
Edward  I. 


of    Wales,    eon    of 
King  Edward  III. 


Thomas  Holland,  =  Alice,  d.  of  Fitz- 


K.G.,     2Dd     Earl 
Kent ;  b.  1350,  d.  1397. 


Alan,     Earl 
Arundel. 


of 


John   de   Holland,  = 
K.G.,  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don     and      Duke     of 
Exeter ;  b.  about  1352 ; 
illegally  beheaded,  1400. 


King  Richard  11. 

:  Elizabeth,  d. 
of  John  of 
Gaunt,  Duke 
of  Lancaster. 


John  Holland, 
K.G.,  2nd  Earl  of 
Huntingdon  and 
Duke  of  Exeter ; 
b.  1394,   d.  1447. 


(1)  Anne 
^vidow  of 
Edmund 
Mortimer, 
Earl  of 
March ;  d. 
1432. 


(2)  Beatrice, 
illegitimate, 
d.  of  John  I, 
King  of  Por- 
tugal ;  d. 
1439. 


(3)  Anne, 
d.  of  John 
de  Monta- 
cute.  Earl 
of  Salis- 
bury. 


Anne  Holland  =  (1)  John  Lord 
NeviU. 

(2)    Sir    John 
NeviU. 


I 

Thomas  HoUand,  =  Joan,  d.  of 
K.G.,  3rd  Earl  of      Ralph     de 
Kent;    b.    1376;       Stafford. 
d.s.p.,       illegally 
beheaded,  1400. 


I 
Edmund,     K.G.,  =  Lucia,  d.  of 
4th  Earl  of  Kent ;        Bemabo 
b.  1384  ;  killed  in       Visconti  of 
France,  1408  s.p.      Milan. 


-Alianora  =  Roger  Mortimer,  Earl  of  March. 

Joan  =  (1)  Edmund   of   Langley,   Duke    of 

York. 

(2)  Sir  William  de  WiUoughby,  Lord 
d'Eresby. 

(3)  Henry  Scrope,  Earl  of  Masham. 

(4)  Henry  Bromflete,  Lord  de  Vesci. 


Henry  Holland,  =  Anne,    d.    of 


3rd  Duke  of 
Exeter ;  b.  1430, 
d.,  probably 
murdered  by 
Yorkists,  1476. 


Richard  Plan- 
tagenet, Duke 
of  York,  and 
sister  of  King 
Edward  IV. 


Anne  Holland,  d.  unmarried. 


— ^Margaret  =  (1)  John  de  Beaufort,  Earl  of  Som- 
erset  son    of    John   of   Gaunt, 
Duke  of  Lancaster. 
(2)  Thomas,  Duke  of  Clarence,  son 
of  King  Henry  IV. 

Eleanor  =  Thomas  de  Montacute,  4th  Earl  of 

Salisbury. 

— Elizabeth  =  Sir  John  Nevill. 

— Bridget,  became  a  nun  at  Barking. 

1  Sir  Thomas  HoUand,  1st  Earl  of  Kent,  also  had  two  daughters  :  Joan,  who  married  John,  Duke  of  Brittany,  and  Maud, 

who  married  (1)  Hugh,  Lord  Courtenay,  (2)  Waleran,  Count  of  St.  Pol. 


CHAPTER  II 

THOMAS    HOLLAND,    EARL    OF    KENT 

*  Quell  the  Scot,'  exclaims  the  lance, 

*  Bear  me  to  the  heart  of  France,' 
Is  the  longing  of  the  shield — 

Tell  thy  name,  thou  trembling  Field  ! 
Field  of  death,  where'er  thou  be 
Groan  thou  with  our  victory. 

W.    WOEDSWORTH, 

Woman  born  to  be  controlled, 
Stoops  to  the  forward  and  the  bold, 

Walter  Scott. 

Thomas  Holland  was  born  some  time  before  1320,  and 
was  a  boy  when  his  father  came  to  his  sudden  and  violent 
end.  His  first  miUtary  experience  seems  to  have  been  upon 
Edward  Ill's  expedition  to  Flanders  in  1340,  undertaken 
to  assist  his  brother-in-law  of  Hainault  and  the  citizens 
of  Ghent  and  the  other  Flemish  cities  against  the  French. 
This  campaign  opened  with  the  English  naval  victory  off 
Sluys,  which  was,  according  to  Froissart,  '  a  murderous 
and  horrible  '  combat.  After  this  Holland  did  some  cam- 
paigning with  the  Spanish  Christians  against  the  Moors 
of  Grenada,  and  with  the  Teutonic  knights  against  the 
heathen  in  East  Prussia.  In  1342  he  went  with  Sir  John 
d'Artevelde  to  Bayonne,  to  defend  the  Gascon  frontier. 
In  1344,  together  with  his  brother  Otho,  he  was  made  one 
of  the  first  members  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter.  '  Forty 
knights,'  says  Froissart,  '  were  chosen,  according  to  report 
esteemed  the  bravest  in  Christendom,  who  sealed  and  swore 

25 


26  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

to  maintain  and  keep  the  feast  and  ordinances  which  had 
been  made.^  On  St.  George's  Day  the  grand  inaugural 
ceremony  took  place  at  Windsor.  '  The  King  made  great  pre- 
parations, and  there  were  earls,  barons,  ladies  and  damsels 
most  nobly  entertained.  Many  knights  came  to  them 
from  beyond  sea,  from  Flanders,  Hainault  and  Brabant, 
but  not  one  from  France.' 

Two  years  after  this  festival  Thomas  Holland  went  with 
the  King,  who  was  now  claiming  the  French  throne,  into 
Normandy,  and  took  part  in  the  capture  of  Caen,  now  a 
flourishing  and  then,  for  those  times,  a  populous  and  wealthy 
city,  larger  than  any  in  England  except  London,  and  full 
of  delicious  plunder,  says  Froissart,  '  fine  draperies,  rich 
citizens,  and  noble  dames  and  damsels.'  Here  Holland 
made  a  splendid  prize.  The  story  is  best  told  by  Froissart 
in  one  of  his  most  vigorous  battle  pictures.  The  Caen 
townsmen,  absolutely  confident  in  their  valour  and  numbers, 
insisted  upon  marching  out  to  fight  the  English,  contrary 
to  the  advice  of  the  Constable  of  France,  the  Count  of  Eu, 
who  represented  the  French  King  there.     Froissart  says  : 

'  So  soon  as  these  citizens  of  the  town  of  Caen  saw  these 
English  approach,  who  came  on  in  three  battalions,  closely 
ranked,  and  perceived  these  banners  and  these  pennons 

^  Froissart  was  wrong  as  to  the  number,  forty.     The  first  knights  were  twenty. 
Bix  in  number,  and  were  listed  in  the  following  order  : 

1.  King  Edward.  14.  Sir  Thomas  Holland. 

2.  Edward,  Prince  of  Wales.  15.  John,  Lord  Gray  of  Codmore. 

3.  Henry,  Earl  of  Lancaster.  16.  Sir  Richard  Fitzsimon. 

4.  Thomas,  Earl  of  Warwick.  17.  Sir  Miles  Stapleton. 
6.  Piers,  de  Greilly,  Capital  de  Buch.       18.  Sir  Thomas  Wale. 

6.  Kalph,  Lord  Stafford.  19.  Sir  Hugh  Wrottesley.       , 

7.  William,  Earl  of  Salisbury.  20.  Sir  Nele  Loring. 

8.  Roger,  Earl  of  March.  21.  Sir  John  Chandos. 

9.  John,  Lord  Lisle.  22.  Lord  James  Audley. 

10.  Bartholomew,  Lord  Burgherst.  23.  Sir  Otho  Holland. 

11.  John,  Lord  Beauchamp.  24.  Sir  Henry  Earn  of  Brabant. 

12.  John,  Lord  Mohun  of  Dunster.  25.  Sir  Sanchio  d'Ambeticourt. 

13.  Hugh,  Lord  Courtenay.  26.  Sir  Walter  Pareley. 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT  27 

flap  and  fly  in  the  wind  in  great  plenty,  and  heard  these 
soldiers  shout,  which  they  were  not  accustomed  to  see  nor 
to  hear,  so  frightened  and  discomfited  were  they  that  all 
those  in  the  world  never  have  kept  them  back  from  flight, 
so  that  one  and  all  they  retreated  towards  their  town  without 
order,  did  the  Constable  wish  it  or  not. 

'  Then  could  one  see  men  shudder  and  be  all  dismayed, 
and  this  order  of  battle  melt  to  nothing,  for  each  man  laboured 
to  re-enter  the  town  in  safety.  There  was  there  great 
confusion,  and  many  a  man  overturned  and  thrown  on 
the  ground,  and  they  tumbled  in  heaps  one  on  another,  so 
scared  were  they.  The  Constable  of  France  and  the  Count 
of  Tancarville  and  other  knights  placed  themselves  on  a 
gate  at  the  foot  of  the  draw-bridge,  ^  for  they  saw  that  since 
their  men  fled,  there  was  no  resource  at  all,  for  these  English 
were  already  entered  and  came  among  them  and  slew  them 
at  pleasure  without  mercy.  Some  knights  and  squires  and 
others,  who  knew  the  way  towards  the  castle  went  in  that 
direction,  and  Robert  de  Warignies  took  them  all  in,  for 
the  castle  is  strong  and  great  and  stands  advantageously. 
Those  were  in  safety  who  could  get  there.  The  English, 
men  at  arms  and  archers,  who  were  chasing  the  flying  made 
great  slaughter,  for  they  gave  quarter  to  no  one,  whence 
it  happened  that  the  Constable  of  France  and  the  Count 
of  Tancarville,  who  were  on  this  gate  at  the  foot  of  the 
draw-bridge,  looked  up  and  down  the  street  and  saw  such 
great  pestilence  and  tribulation  that  it  was  hideous  to 
consider  and  imagine,  and  they  thought  that  they  should 
fall  on  this  side  into  the  hands  of  archers  who  would  not 
know  who  they  were.^  While  they  looked  down  in  great 
dread  on  these  people  slaying,  they  saw  a  gentleman,  an 

^  I.e.  at  the  drawn-up  end. 

'  And  would  consequently  kill  them,  not  knowing  their  great  ransom  value 
if  alive. 


28  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

English  knight,  who  had  only  one  eye,  who  was  called  Sir 
Thomas  Holland,  and  five  or  six  good  knights  with  him, 
which  Sir  Thomas  they  knew,  for  formerly  they  had  seen, 
him  and  been  comrades  with  him  in  Granada  and  Prussia, 
and  in  other  campaigns  to  which  knights  repair.     So  they 
were   all  comforted  again  when  they  saw  him.     So   they 
called  to  him  as  he  passed  and  said  to  him,  "  Sir  Thomas, 
speak  to  us  !  "     When  the  knight  heard  himself  named,  he 
stopped  short  and  asked,  "  Who  are  you,  gentlemen,  who 
know  me  ?  "     The  said  Lords  named  themselves  and  said, 
"  We  are  such  and  such,  come  and  speak  to  us  here,  and 
take  us   prisoners."     When  the   said   Sir  Thomas  Holland 
heard  these  words  he  was  all  joyous,  both  that  he  could 
save  them,  and  for  that  he  had,  in  taking  them,  a  fine  day's 
business,  and  a  fine  chance  of  good  prisoners  worth  100,000 
"  moutons."  ^     So  he  withdrew  as  soon  as  he  could  all  his 
troop  that  way,  and  he  and  sixteen  of  those  with  him,  dis- 
mounted and  went  up  to  the  top  of  the  gate  and  found 
the   aforesaid   Lords   and   quite   twenty-five   knights   with 
them,  who  were  not  safe  from  the  slaying  which  they  saw 
in  the  streets,  and  all  yielded  themselves  at  once  and  without 
delay  to  the  said  Sir  Thomas,  who  took  them  and  pledged 
them  his  prisoners  ;    and  then  left  enough  of  his  men  to 
guard  them,   and  mounted  his  horse  and  went  into  the 
streets,  and  that  day  prevented  many  cruelties  and  horrible 
deeds  which  would  have  been  done,  if  he  had  not  stood  in 
the  way,  of  his  charity  and  knightly  kindness.     With  the 
said  Sir  Thomas  Holland  were  many  knights  of  England, 
who  prevented  much  mischief  from  being  done,  and  saved 
many  a  beautiful  citizeness  and  many  a  cloistered  lady.' 
Knights  in  these  wars,  when  in  good  humour,  sometimes 
did  merciful  acts  of  this  kind,  while  the  rank  and  file,  as 

^  '  Moutons,'  a  French  coin  so  called  because  it  had  a  lamb  stamped  on  it- 
It  was  equal  in  value  to  five  English  shillings  of  that  period. 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT  29 

many  tales  in  Froissart  show,  assumed,  where  they  could, 
full  licence  to  plunder  and  ravish.  On  the  other  hand, 
no  quarter  was  given  on  either  side  to  the  rank  and  file 
of  the  other,  whereas  gentlemen  were,  when  possible,  saved 
from  death,  partly  on  account  of  a  comradeship  feeling 
and  partly  on  account  of  their  ransom  value.  But  the  wars 
for  the  English  claim  to  the  French  succession  were  cruelly 
waged,  and,  while  happy  England  as  usual  remained 
untouched,  unhappy  France  was  burnt  and  plundered  and 
devastated  without  mercy. 

Sir  Thomas  Holland  sold  the  Constable  of  France  to  the 
King  for  80,000  florins.  The  King  afterwards,  in  England, 
committed  the  prisoner  to  the  custody  of  Sir  Otho  Holland, 
the  brother  of  Sir  Thomas.  Beltz,  in  his  '  Memorials  of 
the  Order  of  the  Garter,'  says  that  the  King  delivered  the 
Count  of  Eu  '  by  an  indenture  into  the  custody  of  Sir  Otho 
Holand,  under  condition  that  the  prisoner  should  not  be 
admitted  to  leave  England,  or  to  bear  arms  publicly,  until 
he  should  have  paid  his  full  ransom  to  the  King.'  It  seems, 
notwithstanding,  that  Sir  Otho  took  the  Count  with  him 
to  Calais,  where  he  was  seen  at  large  and  armed.  Information 
thereof  being  given.  Sir  Otho  was  brought  to  the  bar  of 
the  King's  Bench  before  the  Chancellor  and  other  high 
personages,  and,  being  unable  to  deny  the  charge,  he  put 
himself  upon  the  King's  favour,  and  was  thereupon  com- 
mitted to  the  custody  of  the  marshal. 

After  the  taking  of  Caen,  the  English  advanced  to  the 
gates  of  Paris,  and  burnt  St.  Germain,  St.  Cloud,  Boulogne, 
and  other  villages  in  the  environs.  Then  they  marched 
north  to  the  Beauvais  country,  plundering  and  burning 
as  they  went.  The  inhabitants  of  Poissy,  having  promised 
in  the  presence  of  the  main  army  to  pay  a  certain  sum  to 
save  the  town,  then  refused  to  pay  it,  and  fell  upon  a  small 
detachment  which  had  been  left  behind  to  receive  the  ransom. 


30  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

These  English  defended  themselves  gallantly,  and  sent  to 
the  army  for  succour.  When  the  Kentish  Lord  Reginald  de 
Cobham  and  Sir  Thomas  Holland,  who  commanded  the  rear- 
guard, heard  this,  they  '  cried  out  "  Treason  !  Treason  !  "  ' 
and  returned  to  Poissy,  where  they  found  their  countrymen 
still  engaged  with  the  townsmen.  Almost  all  the  inhabitants 
were  then  slain,  the  town  was  burnt,  and  the  two  castles 
razed  to  the  ground. 

A  few  days  after  this  act  of  military  punishment,  on 
Saturday,  August  26,  1346,  Thomas  Holland  took  part  in 
the  glorious  battle  of  Crecy.  He  was  in  the  division,  or 
battalion,  commanded  by  the  Prince  of  Wales,  then  sixteen 
years  old,  together  with  the  Earls  of  Warwick  and  Oxford, 
Sir  Godfrey  de  Harcourt,  Lord  Reginald  de  Cobham,  Lord 
Stafford,  Lord  Mauley,  Lord  Delaware,  Sir  John  Chandos, 
Lord  Bartholomew  Burgherst,  Lord  Robert  Neville,  Lord 
Thomas  Clifford,  Lord  Bouchier,  Lord  Latimer,  and  others. 
The  division  consisted  of  about  800  men  at  arms,  2000  archers, 
and  1000  Welshmen.  There  were  two  other  battalions. 
'They  marched,'  says  Froissart,  on  the  morning  of  the 
fight,  '  in  regular  order  to  their  ground,  each  lord  under  his 
own  banner  and  pennon,  and  in  the  centre  of  his  men.'  The 
lion  rampant,  guardant,  argent,  on  a  field  azure  seme  of 
fleurs  de  lys,  which  his  father  bore  in  the  lists  at  Stepney, 
no  doubt  waved  over  Sir  Thomas  Holland.  When  the 
three  divisions  had  been  thus  ranged  in  the  early  morning, 
they  were  visited  by  the  King,  riding  on  a  small  palfrey, 
with  a  white  wand  in  his  hand,  and  attended  by  his  two 
marshals.  He  rode  slowly  through  all  the  ranks,  exhorting 
the  men,  '  to  guard  his  honour  and  defend  his  right.'  Then 
they  ate  a  meal  and  heard  a  mass,  and,  in  order  to  keep 
fresh,  sat  on  the  ground,  placing  their  helmets  and  bows 
before  them,  and  awaited  the  arrival  of  the  French,  who  were 
coming  in  a  disorderly  manner  by  the  road  from  Abbeville. 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT     31 

The  brunt  of  the  battle,  so  strikingly  narrated  by  Froissart, 
fell  upon  the  Prince's  division,  for  here  alone  the  French, 
under  the  Count  d'Alen9on,  attacked  in  anything  like  regular 
order.  Here  there  was  hard  fighting  for  a  space.  After 
this  victory  the  siege  of  Calais  began,  and  lasted  almost  a 
year.  One  day  during  the  siege  Sir  Thomas  Holland  led  a 
party  of  2000  English  out  to  forage.  They  were  attacked 
by  the  French  near  St.  Omer,  and  were  driven  in  with  the 
loss  of  600  men. 

Sir  Thomas  Holland  made  a  very  great  marriage  which 
affected,  for  good  or  evil,  all  the  subsequent  fortunes  of  this 
branch  of  the  family.  Edmund  of  Woodstock,  Earl  of 
Kent,  was  a  younger  son  of  King  Edward  I,  and  brother  of 
King  Edward  II.  He  was  amiable  and  popular,  but  came 
to  a  disastrous  end.  England  was,  for  a  while,  during  the 
minority  of  Edward  III,  ruled  by  Queen  Isabella  his  mother, 
and  her  favourite,  the  Lord  Mortimer.  Against  their  rule 
conspired  and  rose  the  Earl  of  Lancaster,  that  same  Henry 
of  Lancaster  to  whom  Robert  de  Holland's  head  had  been 
sent  in  a  basket.  For  a  few  days  the  Earl  of  Kent,  the  King's 
uncle,  joined  Lancaster,  but  almost  immediately  abandoned 
him.  This  action  of  incipient  revolt  was  not  forgiven  by 
the  Queen  and  Mortimer.  Their  agents,  it  is  said,  made 
Kent  believe  a  story  that  his  brother  Edward  II,  although 
apparently  buried,  was  not  really  dead,  but  alive,  and  shut 
up  in  Corfe  Castle.  Kent  wrote  letters  to  his  dead  brother, 
and  these  naturally  came  into  the  hands  of  the  Government. 
They  summoned  a  special,  and  packed,  parliament  to 
Winchester  to  try  him  ;  he  was  convicted  of  high  treason, 
and  sentenced  to  death.  He  had  to  wait  for  four  hours 
outside  Winchester  before  anyone  could  be  found  who  would 
take  up  the  axe,  and  behead  the  uncle  of  the  King.  This 
happened  in  1330,  when  Kent  was  twenty-nine  years  old. 
He  left  two  sons  and  one  daughter.     The  two  sons  were 


32  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

successively  Earls  of  Kent,  and  died  without  issue.  The 
second  son,  John,  Earl  of  Kent,  died  December  27,  1352. 
Joan,  the  daughter,  was  two  years  old  when  her  father  lost 
his  head.  She  grew  up  famous  '  for  her  admirable  beauty,' 
and  men  called  her,  after  her  father's  title,  the  '  Fair  Maid 
of  Kent.'  Her  position  was  lofty,  since  she  was  a  first  cousin 
of  Edward  III,  and,  if  her  brothers  died  childless,  the  heir 
to  great  possessions. 

When  she  was  about  twelve  years  old,  Joan  entered  into 
a  contract  of  marriage  with  Sir  Thomas  Holland,  who  was 
then   about   twenty-five.     Their   union   was   consummated 
before,  apparently,  the  marriage  was  properly  solemnised. 
Afterwards,  while  Holland  was  in  Prussia,  warring  to  aid 
the  Teutonic  Order  against  heathen  Wends  and  Letts,  Joan 
entered  into  a  new  contract  of  marriage  with  the  eldest  son 
of  William  de  Montacute,  Earl  of  Salisbury,  who  took  her 
into  his  keeping,  until  his  son  should  be  old  enough  to  com- 
plete the  marriage. 1     Holland  appealed  to  the   Pope.     A 
papal  letter,  dated  May  3,  1347,  was  addressed  from  Rome 
to  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  and  York,  and  the  Bishops 
of    London  and  Norwich,  on    the    petition  of    Thomas  de 
Holland,  Knight,  stating  that  his  wife,  Joan,  daughter  of 
Edmund,  Earl  of  Kent,  to  whom  he  was  married  upwards 
of  eight  years  ago,  was  afterwards  given  in  marriage  to 
William,  son  of  William  de  Montacute,  Earl  of  Salisbury, 
during  the  absence  from  the  realm  of  the  said  Thomas,  then 
in  Prussia,  and  that  the  said  William,  and  Margaret,  Joan's 
mother,  opposed  Thomas  in  recovering  his  conjugal  rights. 
The  cause  was,  at  Holland's  instance,  brought  before  the 
Pope,  and  a  suit  of  nullity  of   marriage   against  William 
and  Margaret  and  Joan  was  ordered  to  be  heard  by  Aymer, 

^  This  Earl  of  Salisbury,  the  son,  was  bom  1328,  and  succeeded  to  the  title  in 
1344.  He  died  1387.  He  would  therefore  have  only  been  a  boy  of  about  thirteen 
when,  as  was  alleged,  he  received  Joan  in  marriage  before  1344. 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT     83 

Cardinal  of  St.  Anastasia,  but  Joan  was  caused  by  William 
to  be  detained  in  England,  and  kept  in  custody.  The  Pope's 
letter  directed  that  Joan  should  be  set  free,  so  that  she  might 
appoint  a  proctor  and  carry  on  the  cause.  Finally,  Rome 
gave  sentence  in  Sir  Thomas  Holland's  favour,  apparently 
on  the  ground  that  his  was  the  earlier  contract,  and  that 
its  actual  consummation  had  made  it  a  virtual  first  marriage. ^ 
Salisbury  released  his  claim  and  married  another,  and  the 
high-born  Beauty,  now  about  twenty  years  old,  became, 
whether  with  her  will  or  against  does  not  appear,  fully 
Holland's  wife,  and  she  bore  him  children.  Edward  the 
Black  Prince,  her  cousin,  stood  godfather  to  her  eldest 
son,  Thomas,  afterwards  second  Earl  of  Kent  of  the 
Holland  line. 

In  1353  both  of  Joan's  brothers  were  dead,  and  then 
Sir  Thomas  Holland  obtained  from  the  Crown  a  grant  of 
100  marks  a  year  for  life  for  the  better  support  of  this  wife 
of  the  blood  royal.  Two  years  later  possession  was  granted 
to  him  of  the  lands  of  her  inheritance.  Holland  had  been 
summoned  several  times  to  Parliament  as  a  baron,  under 
the  title  of  Lord  Holland,  and,  in  1360,  a  few  months  before 
his  death,  he  was  summoned  under  the  title  of  Earl  of  Kent, 
which  he  had  received,  or  assumed,  in  right  of  his  wife. 

After  Crecy,  Sir  Thomas  Holland  held  various  military 
and  administrative  posts.  Li  1354  he  was  Lieutenant  of 
the  King  in  Brittany,  during  the  minority  of  the  Duke, 
and  disposed  of  all  the  revenues  of  the  Duchy.  In  1356 
he  was  Warden  of  the  Channel  Islands,  and  in  1359  he  was 
appointed  to  be  Captain  and  Lieutenant-Governor  in  Nor- 
mandy. In  September  1360,  he  received  the  lofty  title  of 
Captain  and  Lieutenant  in  France  and  Normandy.     This 

^  By  tlie  law  of  the  Roman  Church  a  formal  contract  made  a  civil  marriage. 
In  Scotland  this  law  continued  after  the  Reformation,  which  is  why  runaway 
English  couples  went  to  Gretna  Green. 

D 


34       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

office,  like  his  title  of  Earl  of  Kent,  he  enjoyed  but  for  a 
brief  space,  for  he  died  on  December  30  in  that  year,  then 
being  between  forty  and  fifty  years  old,  and  was  buried  at 
the  Grey  Friars'  Abbey  at  Stamford.  He  died  possessed 
of  a  number  of  manors  in  the  counties  of  Kent,  Surrey, 
Essex,  Suffolk,  Buckingham,  Worcester,  Stafford,  Hert- 
ford, Northampton,  Derby,  and  York,  mainly  his  wife's 
heritage. 

Evidently  this  Thomas  Hollnnd  was  an  able  and  trust- 
worthy man  of  action,  and  had  the  personal  charm  which 
is  also  so  important  to  success.  Froissart  calls  him  '  un 
gentil  chevalier,'  and,  elsewhere  '  le  bon  chevalier.'  Another 
old  chronicler  says  that  he  was  a  vigorous  soldier,  '  miles 
strenuus.'     The  Chandos  Herald  poetically  styles  him  : 

Le  bon  Thomas  de  Holland 
Qui  en  lui  cut  proesse  grand. 

Still,  the  social  world  must  have  deemed  Joan  of  Kent's 
marriage  with  Holland  a  bad  mesalliance  for  a  grand- 
daughter of  King  Edward  I,  and  first  cousin  of  King 
Edward  III.  Holland  certainly  did  not  belong  to  the 
old  feudal  nobility,  but  only  to  a  Lancashire  Squire  family, 
which  had  recently  produced  one  distinguished,  but  un- 
popular man,  Robert  de  Holland,  who  had  come  to  a  dis- 
astrous end.  At  her  husband's  death,  Joan,  Countess  of 
Kent,  was  about  thirty-three,  and  now  perhaps  in  fullest 
ripeness  of  her  glorious  beauty.  Not  long  afterwards  she 
married  her  cousin,  Edward  Prince  of  Wales,  who  was 
then  about  thirty  years  old.  They  were  within  the  pro- 
hibited degrees  and  therefore  a  dispensation  had  to  be 
obtained  from  Rome.  It  was  given  on  condition  that  the 
Prince  founded  a  Chantry,  which  he  did,  in  the  crypt  of 
Canterbury  Cathedral.  But  how  was  it  that  the  heir  to 
the  great  throne  of  England  had  remained  so  long  unmarried 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT  35 

in  those  days  of  early  marriages,  notwithstanding  that 
various  high  alliances  had  been  discussed  ?  Some  have 
said  that,  since  he  was  a  boy,  the  Black  Prince  had  been 
passionately  attached  to  this  beautiful  cousin  of  his,  and 
that  he  had  wished  to  marry  her  even  before  she  married 
Thomas  Holland,  but  was  prevented  by  the  dislike  of  his 
parents  to  the  match.  Certainly  when  the  Prince  returned 
from  Poitiers,  a  hero  of  twenty-five,  leading  with  high 
chivalry  the  French  King  captive,  a  beautiful  woman  at 
the  passionate  age  of  twenty-eight,  playing  her  part  amidst 
the  magnificent  festivities  of  Windsor,  may  well  have  found 
such  a  cousin  irresistible. 

Froissart,  according  to  the  Amiens  MS.,  says  that  the 
Prince,  before  leaving  for  his  Government  of  Aquitaine, 
in  1362,  lived  at  his  house  at  Berkhampstead  with  '  Madame 
la  Princesse  sa  femme,  qu'il  avoit  par  amour  prise  a  epouse 
et  a  compaigne  de  sa  vollente  sans  le  sceu  du  roy  son  pere. 
En  avant  la  ditte  dame  etait  mariee  a  ce  bon  chevalier 
monsigneur  Thummas  de  Holland  de  qui  elle  avoit  des 
biaus  enfans.' 

Froissart  was  an  excellent  authority,for  he  was  in  England 
at  this  time.  But  he  must  mean,  not  that  the  marriage 
ceremony  was  secret,  but  that  the  Prince  had  engaged 
himself  to  marry  Joan  without  his  father's  previous  know- 
ledge. An  excellent  seventeenth-century  English  historian* 
who  laboured  hard  at  original  sources  of  history,^  says  that 
in  the  year  1861,  the  object  of  the  Prince  of  Wales'  affection 
was  '  that  incomparable  paragon  of  beauty  the  Lady  Joan, 
commonly  called  the  Fair  Countess  of  Kent,  at  this  time 
a  widow,  and  yet  neither  in  age  much  unequal  to  this  great 
Prince,  nor  in  virtue,  or  nobility,  though  a  subject,  un- 
worthy of  him.     She  was  now  in  the  thirty -third  year  of 

^  Joshua  Barnes's  History  of  Edward  III  and  the  Black  Prince,  printed  at 
Cambridge,  1688,  one  of  the  most  spirited  histories  of  this  period. 


36  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

her  age  and  the  Prince  in  the  thirty-first  of  his,  he  being 
great  grandchild  of  King  Edward  the  First,  and  she  grand- 
child to  the  said  King  by  a  second  venture,  he,  the  glory 
of  his  sex  for  military  performances  and  other  princely 
virtues,  and  she  the  flower  of  hers,  for  a  discreet  honorable 
mind  sweetened  with  all  the  delicacies  of  a  most  surprising 
beauty.  However  'tis  said  ^  the  Prince  only  intended  at 
first  to  incline  her  to  the  love  of  a  certain  knight,  a  servant 
of  his,  whom  he  designed  to  advance  thereby  ;  but  that 
after  certain  denials  with  which  he  would  not  be  put  off, 
she  told  him  plainly  "how  when  she  was  under  ward  she 
had  been  disposed  of  by  others  ;  but  that  now,  being  at 
years  of  discretion  and  mistress  of  her  own  actions,  she 
would  not  cast  herself  beneath  her  rank  ;  but  remembered 
that  she  was  of  the  blood  royal  of  England,  and  therefore 
resolved  never  to  marry  again  but  to  a  Prince  for  quality 
and  virtue  like  himself."  ' 

What  woman's  son  could  resist  such  woman's  wooing  ? 
The  Black  Prince  did  not  resist  the  kindred  Plantagenet 
Beauty,  obtained  his  father's  consent,  and  the  marriage 
was  celebrated  with  solemnity  and  splendour  at  Windsor 
on  October  16,  1361.2 

The  Duchy  of  Aquitaine  had  been  secured  to  the  English 
Crown  by  the  Treaty  of  Bretigny  made  with  France  in 
1360.     It  was  granted  on  feudal  tenure,  by  Edward  III  to 

^  Said  by  John  Hardyng  (the  early  fifteenth- century  chronicler)  more  concisely. 
The  galknt  conversation  in  the  text  rests,  alas,  on  slender  evidence. 

*  Bernard  Burke  in  his  Royal  Descents  quotes  a  curious  certificate  given  to  the 
Prince  by  Simon,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  dated  October  9,  1361.  (Harleian 
MS.  6148.)  In  this  allusion  is  made  to  the  Bull  of  Pope  Innocent  granting  a 
dispensation  for  the  Prince's  marriage  he  being  within  the  prohibited  degrees  of 
kindred  and  as  being  the  godfather  of  Joan's  eldest  son,  '  whereupon  many 
scandals  may  arise.'  Hem, '  she  was  afore  contracted  to  Thomas  Montacute,  Earl  of 
Salisbury,  after  to  Thomas  Holland,  knight,  betwixt  whom  grew  strife  in  that 
cause  before  the  Pope's  Court,  but  judgment  was  given  against  the  Earl,  and  she 
remained  wife  to  the  knight,  and  the  Earl,  therewith  content,  married  another 
lady  at  Lambeth.' 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT  37 

his  son,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  by  a  Charter  dated  July  19, 
1362,  together  with  the  title  of  Prince  of  Aquitaine.  The 
Prince  and  Princess  left  England  for  their  new  principality 
at  the  beginning  of  February  1363.  Immediately  after 
Christmas,  the  good  Queen  Philippa,  together  with  King 
Edward  III  and  other  princes  of  the  royal  family,  had  made 
a  visit  of  five  days  to  them  at  Berkhampstead,  so  that  if 
the  marriage  had  been  against  her  own  inclinations  this 
admirable  lady  seems  to  have  forgiven  it.  John  Froissart 
came  to  Berkhampstead  on  this  occasion  in  the  Queen's 
retinue.  He  heard  there  an  old  knight,  conversing  with 
the  ladies,  say  that  in  a  certain  ancient  book  it  was  pre- 
dicted that  the  Prince  of  Wales  would  never  be  King  of 
England,  but  the  realm  and  crown  should  pass  to  the  House 
of  Lancaster. 

The  Queen  was,  no  doubt,  kind  to  the  Holland  children 
whom  she  found  at  Berkhampstead,  two  boys  and  two 
girls  of  remarkable  beauty  all  under  thirteen  or  fourteen 
years  of  age.  Froissart,  too,  must  have  known  these  children 
well,  and  encouraged  them  with  tales  of  chivalry  and  love. 
Joan  lived  with  the  Prince  until  his  death  on  Trinity 
Sunday,  June  8,  1376,  and  she  did  the  honours  of  his  gay 
and  splendid  court  at  Bordeaux  and  Angouleme.  She  bore 
him  two  sons,  Edward  the  eldest,  born  at  Angouleme, 
February  1365,  who  died  when  he  was  seven,  and  Richard, 
born  at  Bordeaux  in  the  year  1367,  who  became  King 
Richard  II.  At  the  deposition  of  Richard,  1399,  Henry  of 
Lancaster  alleged  that  Richard  was  not  really  the  son  of 
Edward  Prince  of  Wales.  He  said  that  he  himself  had 
heard  from  several  knights,  who  were  at  the  Court  of 
Bordeaux,  that  the  Prince  was  uneasy  about  his  wife's  con- 
duct, and  that  having  for  some  years  had  no  child  by  the 
Prince,  she  was  anxious  to  have  one  because  she  knew  that 
the  King  of  England  was  vexed  that  she,  who  had  given  two 


38  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

sons  to  Sir  Thomas  Holland,  had  as  yet  given  none  to  the 
Prince  of  Wales.  The  great  unlikeness  of  Richard  in  every 
respect  to  his  father  was  said  also  to  be  proof  of  this,  but 
this  is  a  weak  argument.  He  was  no  more  unlike  than  was 
the  weak  and  gentle  Henry  VI  to  his  undoubted  and  heroic 
sire.  A  slight  mist  of  doubt,  perhaps,  hangs  over  the  life  of 
the  Beauty  of  Kent,  but  Henry's  accusation  was,  in  all  pro- 
bability, quite  untrue,  and  certainly  to  make  it  was  more 
politic  than  chivalrous,  since  his  cousin  Joan  was  dead  and 
could  not  reply  or  deny.^ 

That  admirable  author,  so  deeply  versed  in  mediaeval 
history  and  sentiment,  Kenelm  Digby,  in  his  book,  the 
'  Broadstone  of  Honour,'  calls  the  Princess  '  wise  and 
excellent.'  He  is  following  a  French  chronicler,  in  relating 
how  '  when  Pedro  the  Cruel  of  Castile,  upon  flying  to  Angou- 
leme,  had  prevailed  upon  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  defend  his 
cause,  having  presented  him  with  a  superb  golden  table, 
the  Prince  ordered  that  the  present  should  be  shown  to  the 
Princess,  who  was  at  the  same  time  informed  of  his  resolution 
in  favour  of  the  war.  This  '  wise  and  excellent  woman  * 
says  Digby,  lamented  in  bitter  terms  the  decision  of  the 
Prince,  and  exclaimed  that  she  heartily  wished  that  the 
t  able  had  never  been  presented,  and  that  the  wicked  Pedro 
had  never  set  foot  in  their  Court.^  When  the  words  of  the 
Princess  were  related  to  the  Prince,  '  I  see  well,'  said  he, 
'  that  she  wishes  that  I  should  be  always  by  her  side,   and 

^  Lord  Bacon  in  his  Historical  Discourse  ascribes  a  '  light  inconstancy  '  to  Joan 
Plantagenet,  of  which  he  says  '  a  tincture '  reappears  in  her  son,  Richard  II- 
There  is  not  much  ground  for  attributing  inconstancy  to  Joan  more  than  to 
other  beautiful  women.     How  can  they  be  entirely  constant  ? 

*  The  golden  table  was  at  a  later  date  sold  by  the  Prince  to  Fitz-Alan  of  Arundel, 
then  Bishop  of  Ely,  foronly  300  marks,  and  the  Bishop  left  it  by  will  to  his  episcopal 
successors,  but,  says  an  old  historian,  '  Time,  Avarice,  or  Sacrilege,  or  some  other 
Accident,  have  devoured  the  very  table  itself,'  which  is  a  pity.  The  chronicler 
calls  it  '  a  wonderful,  sumptuous  and  costly  table,  adorned  with  gold  and  precious 
stones.* 


TOilB    OF    KDWAKD    rLANTAGKM:T,    rinNCi:    OF    WALES,    IN 
CANTERBURY    CATHEDRAL 

Reproduced  from  Sandford's  '  Geiiealoaical  Hi-itory  of  the  Kings  of  England.'  1707 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT  39 

never  leave  her  chamber  ;  but  a  Prince  must  be  ready  to 
win  worship  and  to  expose  himself  to  all  kinds  of  dangers, 
comme  firent  autrefois  Roland,  Olivier,  Ogier,  les  quatres 
fils  Aimon,  Charlemagne,  le  Grand  Leon  de  Bourges,  Jean  de 
Tournant,  Lancelot,  Tristan,  Alexandre,  Artus  et  Godefroy, 
dont  tons  les  romans  racontent  le  courage,  la  valeur,  et 
I'intrepidite  toute  martiale  et  toute  heroique  ;  et  par  St. 
Georges,  je  rendray  Espagne  en  droit  heritier.' 

This  story  calls  up  a  vision  rather  of  too  fond  a  wife  than 
of  the  flirting  and  faithless  princess  solemnly  suggested  by 
Henry  IV  to  Parliament.  The  Prince  did  not  venture  to 
consult  his  beautiful  Princess  until  after  he  had  made  his 
decision,  for  he  knew  too  well  what,  notwithstanding  the 
table,  she  would  think  of  Pedro. 

The  exact  words  of  the  Prince's  splendid  tirade,  of  which 
Don  Quixote  would  have  highly  approved,  are,  alas  !  probably 
the  work  of  a  romantic  imagination ;  but,  according  to  the 
more  exact  Froissart,  some  of  the  Black  Prince's  men 
counsellors  advised  him  not  to  espouse  the  cause  of  Pedro, 
a  cruel  tyrant,  hated  and  just  expelled  by  all  classes  of  his 
people,  and  whose  opinions  and  actions  were,  says  Froissart, 
*  durement  rebelles  a  tons  commandements  de  I'Eglise.' 
The  Prince  said,  in  reply,  that  he  knew  of  Pedro's  crimes, 
but  that,  if  a  bastard  were  elected  to  dethrone  a  legitimate 
brother,  it  would  imperil  '  I'estat  royal.'  He  warned  Pedro, 
however,  that,  if  he  replaced  him  on  his  throne,  he  should 
expect  him  hereafter  to  reform  his  ways.  No  doubt,  as 
Froissart  says,  the  Prince  then  at  the  height  of  his  masculine 
vigour,  was  really  impelled  by  the  desire  for  adventure  and 
glory.  He  was  inspired  by  the  romantic  literature  of  the 
age,  just  as  modern  Princes  may  be  inspired  to  war  by 
scientific  theories  as  to  race,  survival  of  the  fittest,  and  so- 
forth.  The  Father  Possevih,  a  learned  Jesuit  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  used  to  complain  that  for  the  last  five  hundred  years 


40       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

the  Princes  of  Europe  had  been  infatuated  by  romances. 
Men  in  those  days,  as  now,  took  trouble  to  find  just  causes 
for  war,  but  they  beheved  in  their  hearts  that  a  good  war 
was  its  own  justification.  All  this  happened  in  the  autumn 
of  1366. 

Thomas  Holland,  first  Earl  of  Kent,  had  by  his  wife 
Joan  Plantagenet  two  sons,  Thomas  and  John,  and  two 
daughters,  Joan  and  Maud.  These  two  Holland  girls  were 
young  stars  shining  in  the  last  and  most  glorious  years  of 
that  mediaeval  England  which  seemed  to  come  to  an  end 
with  the  deaths  of  Edward  III  and  the  Black  Prince.  The 
younger,  Maud,  was  married  about  the  year  1365,  when  she 
was  not  more  than  ten,  to  the  Earl  of  Devon's  eldest  son, 
Hugh,  Lord  Courtenay,  who  was  four  or  five  years  older. 
He  was  grandson  to  the  Earl  of  Devon  who  married  Margaret 
de  Bohun  ;  their  finely  carved  effigies  are  still  to  be  seen 
at  Exeter  Cathedral.  In  1367  this  boy  Hugh,  together  with 
Maud's  brother  Thomas,  second  Earl  of  Kent,  and  others,  was 
knighted  by  the  Black  Prince  before  the  battle  of  Vittoria 
when  the  army  was  arrayed  for  battle.  Hugh  Courtenay 
died  young,  in  1373,  and  Maud  was  left  a  widow  at  about 
eighteen. 

Waleran  of  Luxembourg,  Count  of  St.  Pol,  and  Lord  of 
rich  possessions  in  Picardy,  was  born  in  1355,  succeeded  to 
his  father's  title  in  1371,  and  in  the  year  1375  was  taken 
prisoner  by  the  English  near  Calais,  and  detained  as  a  prisoner 
in  England  until  he  could  raise  a  huge  ransom.  Here  he 
fell  in  love  with  the  ravishing  beauty  of  the  young  widow 
Maud  Holland.  Froissart  relates  how  the  young  Earl  was 
kept  prisoner  for  long  '  in  the  fair  castle  of  Windsor  ;  and 
he  had  so  courteous  a  keeper,  that  he  might  go  and  sport 
and  fly  his  birds  between  Windsor  and  Westminster  ;  he 
was  trusted  on  his  faith.  The  same  season,  the  Princess, 
mother  of  King  Richard,  lay  at  Windsor,  and  her  daughter 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT  41 

with  her,  my  Lady  ^Maud,  the  fairest  lady  in  all  England  ; 
the  Earl  of  St,  Pol  and  this  young  lady  were  in  true  amours 
together,  each  of  other  ;  and  sometimes  they  met  together 
at  dancing  and  carolling  and  other  disports,  till  at  last  it 
was  spied.  And  then  the  lady  discovered  to  her  mother 
how  she  loved  ardently  the  young  Earl  of  St.  Pol  ;  then  there 
was  a  marriage  spoken  of  between  the  Earl  and  Lady  Maud  ; 
and  so  the  Earl  was  set  to  his  ransom  to  pay  some  six  score 
thousand  francs,  so  that  when  he  married  the  Lady  Maud, 
then  he  was  to  be  abated  three  score  thousand  and  the  other 
three  score  thousand  to  pay.  And  when  this  covenant  of 
marrying  was  made  between  the  Earl  and  the  Lady,  the  King 
of  England  suffered  him  to  repass  the  sea  to  fetch  his  ransom, 
on  his  only  promise  to  return  again  a  year  after.'  The  King 
of  France  detained  St.  Pol  in  prison  a  long  time  on  some 
charge,  but  he  at  last  got  free  and  then  came  back  with  his 
ransom  to  England  and  married  Lady  Maud,  and  they  went 
to  live  at  the  castle  of  Ham  on  the  river  Eure,  which  was 
lent  to  them  by  St.  Pol's  brother-in-law  the  Sire  de  Moriaume, 
till  the  French  King's  wrath  should  abate. 

The  eighteenth- century  historian  of  France,  Pere  Daniel, 
says  politely  of  Maud  the  Fair,  that  she  was  '  une  des  plus 
belles  personnes  de  I'Europe,'  and  of  Waleran  that  '  c'etait 
un  seigneur  bien  fait,  adroit  a  tous  les  exercises  du  corps, 
enjoue  dans  la  conversation,  et  qui  par  tous  les  beaux  en- 
droits  merita  de  plaire  beaucoup  a  cette  princesse.'  The 
date  of  the  marriage  seems  to  have  been  somewhere  about 
1380.  Waleran  and  Maud  would  each  have  been  twenty- 
five  or  thereabouts.  Froissart,  a'great  connoisseur  of  appear- 
ances, niust  have  known  both  of  them  well,  for  he  lived 
in  their  country  near  Valenciennes  and  was  working  there 
at  his  history  for  about  ten  or  twelve  years  after  1374,  so 
that  his  evidence  as  to  Maud's  beauty  is  good. 

The  Count  of  St.  Pol  survived  his  wife  and  lived  till  1417, 


42  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

marrying  secondly  a  daughter  of  the  Duke  de  Barre.  In 
later  years  he  became  violent  and  cruel,  and  in  one  campaign 
against  insurgents  in  1391,  burned  down  a  hundred  and 
twenty  villages  in  Luxembourg.  He  had  no  son  by  Maud 
the  Fair,  only  one  daughter  who,  like  the  Princess,  her 
grandmother,  was  named  Jeanne.  This  valuable  heiress, 
for  there  were  no  children  by  the  second  marriage,  was 
married  in  1402  to  Antoine,  second  son  of  the  Duke  of 
Burgundy,  '  laquelle  feste,'  says  Monstrelet,  '  fut  moult 
notable,  et  y  eut  plusieurs  princes  et  princesses  avec  tres 
noble  chevelerie.'  This  marriage  united  the  great  St.  Pol 
possessions  to  the  House  of  Burgundy.  On  the  death  of 
his  father,  Antoine  became  Duke  of  Brabant.  In  1407, 
on  the  death  of  his  mother,  heiress  of  the  Counts  of  Flanders, 
the  Duke  of  Brabant  became  Seigneur  of  the  Flemish  cities. 
Antoine  was  killed  at  Agincourt,  and  when,  in  1430,  his 
son,  Duke  Philip  of  Brabant  died  without  leaving  issue, 
the  whole  of  the  St.  Pol,  Brabant,  and  Flemish  possessions 
went  to  swell  the  greatness  of  the  main  or  elder  line  of  the 
Dukes  of  Burgundy.  Thus  Waleran  de  St.  Pol  and  his 
Countess,  Maud,  are  links  in  history,  for  round  the  rich 
Burgundian  inheritance  turned  many  a  later  war. 

Maud  Holland's  form  and  beauty,  like  that  of  her  brother 
Lord  Huntingdon,  came  no  doubt  from  her  maternal  Plan- 
tagenet  ancestry,  rather  than  from  the  Lancastrian  squires 
of  her  paternal  line.  The  tombs  at  Westminster  Abbey, 
and  that  of  the  Black  Prince  at  Canterbury,  studied  com- 
paratively, show  that  the  beauty  of  the  later  Plantagenets 
was  mainly  derived  from  the  wife  of  Edward  I,  Eleanor  of 
Castile.  Richard  II  is  certainly  a  singular  departure  from 
the  type,  seeing  that  both  his  parents  were  Plantagenets. 
He  has  not  the  straight,  or  delicately  aquiline,  nose,  the 
finely  moulded  cheeks,  and  the  small  well-chiselled  head. 
But  then  neither,  according  to  the  monument  at  Canterbury, 
had  his  cousin  Henry  IV,  also  a  Plantagenet  on  both  sides, 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  EARL  OF  KENT     43 

who  dethroned  him.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  reformers  of 
rehgion  we  should  have  had  the  exact  Hkenesses  of  Thomas 
Holland,  the  first  Earl  of  Kent,  and  of  his  wife  Joan  Plan- 
tagenet,  from  their  monument  in  the  Grey  Friars  at  Stam- 
ford. As  it  is,  we  only  have  a  full  carved  face  surrounded 
by  luxuriant  hair,  embossed  on  the  vault  of  the  Black  Prince's 
Chantry  at  Canterbury,  which  is  believed  to  represent  the 
Fair  Maid  of  Kent.  There  are  no  special  praises  of  the 
beauty  of  Joan,  elder  sister  of  Maud,  and  perhaps  she  was 
more  of  a  Holland.  This  Lady  Joan,  in  her  girlhood,  adorned 
the  Court  of  her  step-father  the  Black  Prince  at  Bordeaux, 
and  was  married  very  young  in  1366  to  John  de  Montfort, 
Duke  of  Brittany,  who  had  previously  been  married  to  Mary, 
a  daughter  of  King  Edward  III. 

'  The  nuptials,'  says  Froissart,  '  were  celebrated  with 
great  pomp  and  magnificence  in  the  good  city  of  Nantes.' 
It  was  a  fine  marriage  for  Joan,  but  not  a  happy  one.  '  Duke 
John,'  says  a  French  historian,  '  w^as  a  politic  and  war-like 
prince,  but  his  great  qualities  were  tarnished  by  his  pride, 
cruelty  and  bad  faith,'  and  he  lived  in  perpetual  turmoil. 
The  battle  of  Auray,  in  1364,  where  his  rival  Charles  de 
Blois,  supported  by  the  French,  was  killed,  made  John 
master  of  the  whole  duchy,  but  in  1372  he  w^as  driven  out 
for  a  while.  In  1381  he  allied  himself  with  Charles  VI 
of  France,  and  so  quarrelled  w^ith  his  previous  English  allies, 
who  had  to  leave  Brittany,  but  kept  possession  of  Brest, 
and  also  detained  from  him  his  wife  who  was  in  England. 
In  that  year  she  was  living  at  Byfleetin  Surrey  (spelt  Byflete 
in  old  chronicles).  Here,  in  the  pleasant  meadows  by  the 
River  Wey,  was  a  manor  house  belonging  to  the  Crown 
where  now  stands  the  present  manor  house,  portions  of 
which  are  very  ancient.  The  old  house  now  belongs  to 
Mrs.  Rutson,  whose  mother  was  a  Holland.  John,  Duke  of 
Brittany,  with  the  permission  of  his  sovereign  the  French 
King,    sent   envoys   to   Richard  II  to   ask,   among   other 


44       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

things,   that    his  Duchess,   the    King's   half-sister,    should 
return  to  him. 

Richard  referred  the  matter  to  his  council,  who  directed 
Bazvalen,  the  chief  envoy,  to  repair  to  Byflete  and  convey 
to  the  Duchess  the  request  of  his  master.  The  Duchess 
expressed  her  willingness  to  obey,  and  to  depart  for  Brittany 
immediately,  if  the  King  and  the  Princess  of  Wales,  her 
mother,  would  permit.  Bazvalen  then  visited  the  Princess 
at  Wallingford-on-Thames,  and  obtained  her  consent,  and 
then  the  King  allowed  the  departure  of  his  sister.  It  was 
this  same  Bazvalen,  a  wise  counsellor,  who,  a  few  years 
later,  saved  the  life  of  Sir  Olivier  de  Clisson,  and  the  honour 
of  his  own  master,  in  that  dark  affair  in  the  Breton  Castle 
of  L'Hermine.  The  Duchess  of  Brittany  died  in  1386,  and 
the  Duke  who  married  again,  at  the  end  of  1399. 

This  story  must  now  pursue  the  adventures  of  the  two 
brothers  of  Joan,  Duchess  of  Brittany,  and  Maud,  Countess 
of  St.  Pol — namely,  Thomas  Holland,  second  Earl  of  Kent, 
and  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  finally  Duke  of 
Exeter.  These  two  were,  in  1360,  the  only  living  male 
descendants,  save  for  their  eldest  uncle  Robert  and  his  son, 
of  their  grandfather  Sir  Robert,  Lord  Holland  of  Upholland 
in  Lancashire.  Alan  Holland,  one  of  their  uncles,  had  died, 
according  to  some  authorities,  without  leaving  children,  and 
the  other  uncle.  Sir  Otho  Holland,  K.G.,  had  died  on 
September  3,  1359,  a  few  months  before  their  father.  He 
certainly  left  no  children,  and  his  estates  went,  under 
different  entails,  to  his  brothers  Robert  and  Thomas. 
Otho  had  not  been  very  fortunate.  Some  years  after 
his  trouble  about  the  Count  d'Eu,  he  accompanied  his 
brother  Thomas  on  a  campaign  in  France  in  1355,  and  was 
made  prisoner  together  with  Sir  Thomas  Beaumont  in  an 
action  near  Grandserre,  in  Dauphiny.  He  was  ransomed^ 
and  was  Governor  of  the  Channel  Islands  in  1359,  and  died 
that  autumn  in  Normandy. 


CHAPTER  III 

THOMAS   HOLLAND,    SECOND   EARL   OF   KENT,    AND 
SIR    JOHN    HOLLAND 

Glories 
Of  human  greatness  are  but  pleasing  dreams 
And  shadows  soon  decaying ;    on  the  stage 
Of  my  mortality,  my  youth  hath  acted 
Some  scenes  of  vanity,  drawn  out  at  length 
By  varied  pleasures,  sweetened  with  mixture, 
But  tragical  in  issue. 

Ford — Broken  Heart. , 

Thomas  Holland,  second  Earl  of  Kent,  was  ten  years 
old  when  his  father  died  at  the  end  of  1360.  His  brother 
John  was  a  year  or  two  younger.  Men  began  life  early  in 
those  days.  At  the  age  of  about  thirteen,  Thomas  was 
married  to  Alice  Fitzalan,  the  daughter  of  Richard,  Earl 
of  Arundel,  one  of  the  old  Norman- sprung  nobility,  and 
of  his  wife  Maud,  who  was  second  daughter  of  Henry, 
Earl  of  Lancaster,  and  so  descended  from  King  Henry  III. 
Young  Thomas  Holland  went  to  France  in  the  train  of 
his  step-father,  the  Black  Prince.  In  1366,  when  he  was 
sixteen,  he  went  with  the  Prince's  army  into  Spain  in  the 
attempt  to  overthrow  Enrique,  who  had  usurped  Don 
Pedro's  throne,  and  he  received  knighthood  at  his  hands, 
under  the  walls  of  Vittoria,  on  March  18,  '  after  the  trumpets 
had  sounded  for  marshalling  the  host.' 

An  English  historian  of  the  seventeenth  century  says 
that  the  Prince's  army  arranged  themselves  in  the  pre- 
ordained order  '  in  a  moment,'  at  the  sound  of  the  trumpets, 

45 


46  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

*  they  were  all  so  practised  and  expert  in  war.  Surely  it 
was  a  gallant  sight  to  behold  the  brightness  of  their  arms, 
to  observe  the  stateliness  of  their  barbed  horses,  to  view 
the  rich  banners  and  streamers  embroidered  and  beaten 
with  arms,  both  in  colours  and  metal,  and  waving  with  a 
delightful  terror  in  the  wind.' 

The  sun  of  Spain  never  shone  upon  array  more  beautiful, 
for  it  was  a  great  army,  and  the  chivalry  of  England  and 
Aquitaine  were  there.  The  Prince  of  Wales  was  in  the 
centre,  on  one  wing  was  the  King  of  Majorca,  another  was 
commanded  by  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  then  twenty-seven, 
with  the  great  Captain,  Sir  John  Chandos,  as  the  Chief  of 
his  Staff.  Three  hundred  young  men  were  made  knights 
on  the  field.  The  Black  Prince  knighted  Don  Pedro,  his 
stepson,  young  Thomas  Holland,  the  three  sons  of  the  Earl 
of  Devon,  Hugh,  Philip,  and  Denis  Courtenay,  of  whom 
the  eldest,  Hugh,  was  already  married  to  Maud  Holland, 
the  lovely  child- sister  of  Thomas  Holland.  He  knighted 
also  William  de  Molyneux  of  that  Lancashire  family  and 
other  youths.  Others  were  knighted  by  the  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster, Chandos,  and  other  chief  leaders.  An  English  victory 
at  Vittoria  was,  however,  to  be  deferred  till  a  later  age. 
Neither  side  were  anxious  to  fight  as  both  were  awaiting 
reinforcements,  and  though  there  were  some  sharp  en- 
counters, the  decisive  battle  did  not  take  place  for  about 
three  weeks,  and  was  then  fought  on  April  3,  upon  the  plain 
of  Najara.  It  was  a  grand  fight,  greater  than  that  of  Poitiers, 
between  two  great  armies.  The  Castilians,  with  their 
French  allies  had  the  larger  numbers  ;  they  counted,  it 
is  said,  a  hundred  thousand  men,  but  the  Prince's  force  was 
much  better  trained  and  disciplined  and  won  by  superior 
arrow-fire  and  tactics.  Spanish  slingers  were  no  match 
for  English  bowmen.  The  victory  was  decisive  and  the 
loss    of   the    English-Gascon    force    was    small    compared 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND       47 

with  that  of  the  foe.  Thomas  Holland  is  mentioned  as 
fighting  this  day  close  to  his  step-father  the  Black  Prince. 

In  1373  the  young  Earl  of  Kent  was  in  the  army  with 
which  John,  Duke  of  Lancaster,  marched  right  through 
France  from  Calais  to  Bordeaux,  dreadfully  ravaging  on 
the  way  the  Somme  Valley  and  all  the  country  round  Noyon 
and  Laon,  and  Soissons  and  Rheims,  and  the  region  of 
the  Loire,  '  killing  and  ransoming  the  people,  wasting  the 
country  and  firing  the  towns  wherever  he  came,'  says  the 
old  writer.  There  was  hardly  any  fighting,  but  the  English 
lost  almost  all  their  horses  and  many  of  their  men  through 
sickness  and  fatigue. 

In  1374  and  1375  the  Earl  of  Kent  was  still  in  the  French 
wars.  In  the  latter  year  he  was  made  a  Knight  of  the 
Garter,  and  accompanied  the  Earl  of  Cambridge,  son  of 
the  Duke  of  York,  into  Brittany  with  3000  archers  and 
2000  men-at-arms.  When  King  Edward  died  in  1377,  the 
Earl  of  Kent  was  in  full  manhood,  about  twenty-seven 
years  old.  In  1381  took  place  the  rising  caused  by  the 
poll  tax  in  Kent  and  Essex.  Joan,  the  widow  Princess  of 
Wales,  was  caught  in  the  Tower  by  the  Kentish  rebels  and 
treated  with  some  rudeness.  It  was  alleged  that  the  two 
Hollands  felt  themselves  so  unpopular  that  when  young 
King  Richard  rode  to  Smithfield  to  parley  with  Wat  Tyler, 
they  dropped  out  of  his  train  and  would  not  face  the  music 
of  the  mob.  The  subsequent  punishment  of  the  Kentish 
insurgents  was  entrusted  to  the  Earl  of  Kent  and  was  cruelly 
severe.  In  1385  he  accompanied  the  King's  great  expedition 
into  Scotland. 

Thomas,  Earl  of  Kent,  and  his  brother  John  Holland, 
as  half-brothers  of  King  Richard,  were  constantly  at  Court, 
and  they  were  accused  of  exercising  a  bad  influence  upon 
Richard.  A  monkish  chronicler  of  the  time,  Walsingham, 
was  evidently  one  of  their  best  haters  ;    but  then  the  Court 


48       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

party  were  accused  of  sympathy  with  the  Lollards,  who 
were,  indeed,  religious  radicals  not  at  all  deserving  sympathy, 
and  their  political  opponents  were  the  old  aristocratic  and 
more  religiously  conservative  Englishmen.  No  doubt,  also, 
the  Hollands  were  still,  notwithstanding  their  mother's 
rank,  considered  by  the  feudal  party  to  be  adventurers 
and  upstarts.  Holinshed  wrote  in  Tudor  days  and  based 
his  statements  mainly  on  the  chronicles  of  the  monk 
Walsingham  and  other  ecclesiastics,  but  to  some  extent, 
perhaps,  on  tradition.  He  says  that  the  people  at  the 
time  of  the  arrest  and  death  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  and 
Arundel,  accused  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  '  as 
one  of  the  chief  authors  of  all  the  mischief  .  .  .  having 
trained  up  the  King  in  vice  and  evil  customs  from  his  youth.' 

He  also  says  of  Richard,  '  He  was  seemly  of  shape  and 
favour,  and  of  nature  good  enough,  if  the  wickedness  and 
naughty  demeanour  of  such  as  were  about  him  had  not 
altered  it.'  The  learned  modern  historian.  Bishop  Stubbs, 
follows  in  the  same  line.  The  good  Bishop  of  Oxford  did 
not,  by  temperament,  or  character,  or  way  of  life,  at  all 
resemble  the  Hollands,  and  was  not  well  qualified  to  under- 
stand or  imagine  them.  He  says  in  his  '  Constitutional 
History  '  (ii.  p.  464)  : 

'  Richard  was  most  unfortunate  in  his  surroundings  ;  in 
his  two  half-brothers,  the  Hollands,  he  had  companions  of 
the  worst  sort,  violent,  dissipated,  and  cruel.' 

Again  he  says  : 

'  Capable  of  energetic  and  resolute  action  upon  occasion, 
Richard  was  habitually  idle,  too  conscious,  perhaps,  that 
when  the  occasion  arose  he  would  be  able  to  meet  it. 
The  Hollands  were  willing  that  the  tutelage  should  last 
as  long  as  they  could  wield  his  power  and  reap  advantage 
of  his  inactivity.' 

This  may  have  been  so,  though  blame  of  this  kind  seems 
to  attach  more  in  Richard's  earliest  days  to  his  guardian 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND       4a 

uncles,  but  some  of  the  contemporary  evidence  as  to  the 
character  and  motives  of  the  Hollands  must  be  taken  with 
much  caution.  It  is  a  bad  thing  for  kings  to  inherit 
crowns  in  early  boyhood.  No  doubt  Richard  was  exposed 
to  great  flatteries  and  temptations.  He  was  vacillating, 
inconstant,  and  easily  influenced,  childish  and  artistic  in 
temperament,  with  no  fixed  convictions  and  no  steadfast 
policy,  the  kind  of  man  who  will  do  anything  to  avoid 
a  bad  quarter  of  an  hour.  His  Court  was  voluptuous  and 
extravagant,  even  the  most  obsequious  Parliament  of  hi? 
reign  complained  of  the  number  of  '  bishops  and  ladies  ' 
who  lived  in  it.  In  this  Court  the  Hollands  were  certainly 
not  immaculate  any  more  than  were  the  Guises,  Beauforts, 
Rohans,  and  Rochefoucaulds  in  the  Court  of  Louis  XIII. 

One  must  judge  them  in  connection  with  their  own  age 
and  not  by  the  test  of  modern  moral  standards.  The 
end  of  the  fourteenth  century  was  not  a  morally  good 
period.  There  was,  indeed,  much  true  religion  existing. 
Was  not  Mother  Julian  at  this  very  time  receiving  her 
revelations  of  divine  love  in  her  cell  at  Norwich  ?  Doubtless 
there  was  many  a  good  parish  priest  like  him  described  by 
Chaucer,  and  there  was  certainly  among  the  English  and 
other  European  common  people  more  deep  and  true  religious 
feeling  than  there  is  now.  The  exquisite  religious  art  is 
a  witness,  for  then,  as  now,  artists  delineated  that  which 
they  saw  in  the  faces  all  around  them.  The  ideal  was 
high,  though  lives  often  fell  far  short  of  it.  If  men  were 
immoral,  they  were  not  hypocritical,  and  they  knew  how  to 
repent.  Ecclesiastical  government  was  certainly  demoralised 
and  secularised  by  long  prosperity  and  power  ;  it  was  ia 
many  places  corrupted  by  avarice,  sensuality  and  worldly 
pursuits  and  pleasures,  and  it  was  discredited  by  the  long 
papal  schism.  All  this  never  reached  a  lower  depth 
(except,  perhaps,  under  Alexander  VI)  than  when,  a  few 
years  later,  John  XXIII  was  Pope.     The  tide  of  Catholic 


50       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

fervour  was  still  ebbing  from  the  high  point  which  it  reached 
when  it  broke  upon  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  and  did  not 
begin   to   flow  again  till  the  sixteenth  century.     Religion 
was  loosely   associated    with    her   ever-uneasy   companion 
Morality,  and  the  way  in  which  the  marriage  jurisdiction 
of  the  ecclesiastical  lawyers  at  Rome  was  then  exercised, 
was  the  reverse  of    salutary.     Morals  were    lax,   not   only 
in    royal    and    aristocratic,    but   also,  if   one  may    at    all 
credit  Chaucer  and  more  prosaic  records,  in  bourgeois  circles. 
Then    again,    the    old    Saxon    ferocity  and    barbarism    in 
the  English,  and  the  aristocratic  contempt  of  the  Norman 
families    for    plebeian    life    had    not    yet    softened    down 
into  the  later  civilisation.     English  and  French  gentlemen 
treated  each  other  courteously    enough,    but  other  classes 
in   France   were   mercilessly   dealt   with   by   the   invaders. 
The   story  revealed  in   French  chronicles  is  really   dread- 
ful.    Towns  and  villages  were  usually  plundered,  directly 
or  by  way  of  ransom,  and  often  burnt,  and  their  inhabitants 
were  frequently  slain  and  ravished.     The  kind  of  warfare 
is  described  in  a  letter  from  Sir  John  Wingfield  to  '  a  certain 
noble  lord  then  in  England,'  dated  from  Bordeaux,  Decem- 
ber 22,  1355,  giving  an  account  of  the  Prince  of  Wales'  cam- 
paign that  year.    Here  is  one  passage.    '  So  then  we  marched 
through  the  seigniory  of  Thoulouse,  and  took  many  good 
towns   before  we   came   to   Carcassonne,    which   is   greater 
and  stronger  and  fairer  than  York.     But  as  well  this  as 
all  other  towns  in  the  country  which  we  took  were  burned, 
plundered  and  destroyed.'     Or  again,  '  Then  he  (the  Prince) 
went  into  the  country  of  Estarac  wherein  he  took  many 
towns  and  wasted  and  ravaged  all  the  country.'     Imagine 
the  details  of  this  process.     The  object  was,  says  Sir  John, 
to  destroy  the  revenues  of  the  French  King.^     The  fact 

1  Sir  John's  two  letters,  very  interesting,  are  quoted  in  Guthrie's  History  of 
England  (1747). 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND       51 

was  that  the  English  were  then  a  hard  and  fierce  race,  Uttle 
as  yet  softened  by  civiUsation.  The  historian  Froude, 
describing  them  as  they  were  a  little  later,  calls  them  '  a 
sturdy  high-hearted  race,  sound  in  body  and  fierce  in  spirit 
and  furnished  with  thews  and  sinews  which,  under  the 
stimulus  of  those  great  "  shins  of  beef,"  their  common  diet, 
were  the  wonder  of  the  age.  .  .  .  Again  and  again  a  few 
thousands  of  them  carried  dismay  into  the  heart  of  France. 
.  .  .  Invariably,  by  friend  and  foe  alike,  the  English  are 
described  as  the  fiercest  people  in  all  Europe  (the  "  English 
wild  beasts  "  Benvenuto  Cellini  called  them),  and  this  great 
physical  power  they  owed  to  the  profuse  abundance  in  which 
they  lived,  and  the  soldiery  training  in  which  every  man 
of  them  was  bred  from  childhood.' 

This  training  was  not  likely  to  make  gentlemen  of  the 
mild  and  well-ordered  mentality  dear  to  constitutional 
historians  of  the  Liberal  school.  Then  again,  no  doubt, 
the  long  absences  of  gentlemen  in  foreign  wars  had,  like 
the  Crusades,  bad  effects  on  domestic  morality.  There  is 
evidence  that  the  level  of  morals  and  religion  had  declined 
both  in  England  and  France  between  the  thirteenth 
century  and  the  fifteenth.  All  these  things  had  a  deterior- 
ating effect  on  English  character,  except  with  regard  to 
valour  in  fighting,  a  constant  quality  throughout  all  English 
history,  and  this  influence  was  felt  for  two  centuries  to  come. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  account  one  must  admire  the 
strong  individuality  of  men  of  these  times,  not  yet  flattened 
out  by  the  steam-roller  of  democratic  civilisation.  The 
French  historian  and  statesmen,  Guizot,  said  in  one  of  his 
lectures  that  there  is  a  political  advantage  in  studying  the 
Middle  Ages.  '  Our  time  may  be  characterised  by  a  certain 
weakness,  a  certain  softness  in  minds  and  manners. 
Individual  wills  and  convictions  want  energy  and  confidence, 
obey  a  general  impulse,  and  yield  to  an  exterior  necessity. 


52  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Whether  it  be  for  resistance  or  for  action,  no  one  has  a  great 
idea  of  his  own  force,  or  any  confidence  in  his  own  thought. 
Individuality,  in  a  word,  the  intimate  and  personal  energy 
of  man,  is  weak  and  timid.  Amidst  the  progress  of  general 
liberty  many  men  seem  to  have  lost  the  noble  and  powerful 
sentiment  of  their  own  liberty.  Such  was  not  the  Middle 
Age,  the  social  condition  was  then  deplorable  '  (and  yet, 
perhaps,  not,  after  all,  so  unhappy)  '  but  in  many  men 
individuality  was  strong  and  will  energetic,  the  moral  nature 
of  men  appeared  here  and  there,  in  all  its  grandeur  and 
with  all  its  power.'  In  fact  men  were  not  yet  so  much 
'  civilised  '  as  later,  nor  so  far  removed  from  the  northern 
barbarian.  Shakespeare  lived  before  the  change  to  modern 
civilisation  had  well  set  in,  and  he  found  in  men  around 
him  models  for  his  vigorous  and  passionate  historical 
characters.  Poets  who  wrote  such  speeches  now  would  be 
copying  from  Shakespeare  and  not  from  life,  which  is  why 
this  kind  of  writing  seems  unreal. 

As  to  the  Hollands,  they  were  as  vigorous,  and  probably 
not  worse  than,  the  other  lords  of  their  time  whose  position 
or  wealth  exposed  them  to  the  higher  temptations.  But 
they  were  usually  on  the  unpopular  and  losing  side,  and 
this  has  made  historians,  who,  on  the  contrary,  are  usually 
on  the  popular  and  winning  side,  write  them  down  as  specially 
bad  men. 

John  Holland  was  rather  a  favourite  with  the  experienced 
Froissart,  who  knew  a  man  of  character  when  he  came  across 
one.  We  had  much  better  take  the  opinion  of  such  men  of 
the  world  as  Sir  John  Froissart,  who  knew  John  Holland  very 
well  at  Richard's   Court,^  or  John  de  Wavrin,  seigneur  of 

1  Froissart  lived  iu  England  between  1361  and  1366  and  must  have  often  seen 
the  second  Earl  of  Kent  and  Sir  John  Holland  as  boys,  and  he  met  them  as  men 
(unless  John  had  already  started  for  Palestine)  at  Richard's  Court  on  his  last 
visit  to  England  in  the  summer  of  1394,  twenty-seven  years  later. 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND       53 

Forestel,  who  knew  men  who  remembered  him,  than  of  the 
monk,  Walsingham,  gloomily  writing  in  the  cloisters  of  St. 
Albans,  or  of  the  virtuous  and  learned  Bishop  Stubbs,  writing 
in  the  nineteenth  century  in  an  Oxford  library  to  show  how 
the  popular  English  Constitution  developed  notwithstanding 
the  assaults  of  the  malignant.  Walsingham  was  prejudiced 
by  anti-Lollardism,  and  Stubbs  by  the  imagination  of 
progress.  The  constitutional  and  economic  histories  written 
in  the  later  nineteenth  century,  however  meritorious,  must 
have  been  an  ungrateful  offering  to  the  muse  of  History  when 
she  remembered  her  Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  her  Livy 
and  Plutarch  and  Tacitus,  her  Froissart  and  de  Commines, 
her  Gibbon  and  her  Macaulay.  For  it  is  doubtful  whether 
to  the  mind  of  a  muse,  being  a  woman,  any  degree  of 
conscientious  labour  and  scientific  accuracy  and  '  sound 
political  views,  can  compensate  for  the  absence  of  dramatic 
and  personal  interest. 

John  Holland  was,  it  must  be  owned,  of  a  violent  temper 
in  youth,  and  not  tenderly  scrupulous  in  action  when  older. 
In  1372,  when  he  was  about  twenty,  he  w^ent  on  a  military 
expedition  against  the  Scots.  In  1381  he  was  made  Chief 
Justice  of  Chester,  and  after  that  was  seldom  out  of  some 
great  employment.  In  1382  he  was  sent  with  Sir  Simon 
de  Burley  and  other  men  of  quality  to  bring  into  England 
Anne,  daughter  to  the  Emperor  Charles  IV,  whom  Richard 
had  espoused  by  proxy.  They  met  the  Princess  at  Calais 
and  brought  her  across  the  sea  to  Dover,  where  they  stayed 
for  two  days.  Thence  they  escorted  her  over  Barham 
Downs  to  Canterbury,  where  they  were  received  in  state 
by  the  Earl  of  Buckingham  and  others,  and  thence  rode 
on  to  London  and  the  impatient  Richard. 

In  the  following  year,  1383,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  was  ' 
anxious  to  obtain  men,  ships  and  money  for  an  expedition 
to  assert  his  wife's  claim  to  the  throne  of  Castile.     This  was 


54  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

delayed  by  a  rival  expedition.  Urban,  the  Italian  Pope 
whom  the  English  supported  against  his  rival  '  Pope ' 
Clement  at  Avignon,  preached  a  crusade  against  the  Clemen- 
tines, among  whom  were  the  King  of  France  and  the  Count 
of  Flanders.  The  English  willingly  took  up  this  quarrel 
and  a  force  crossed  the  sea  under  the  very  unfit  command 
of  the  Bishop  of  Norwich,  who  was  a  Despenser.  These 
crusaders  slew  some  nine  thousand  Flemings  near  Dunkirk, 
and  assisted  by  the  jealous  '  Gantois '  laid  siege  to  Ypres, 
then  a  formidable  industrial  rival  to  Ghent. 

Upon  the  advance  of  a  large  French  army  from  Arras, 
the  English  had  to  raise  the  siege  and  retire  to  Calais,  and 
the  entire  expedition  failed,   rather  to  the  satisfaction  of 
the  Duke  of  Lancaster  and  his  friends,  who  wished  for  the 
rival  Spanish  expedition.     They  now  attempted  to  make 
peace  with  the   French  in   order  to   facilitate  this  object. 
In  the  following   November,   the   Duke   of  Lancaster,   his 
son,  Henry  of  Derby,  Sir  John  Holland,  Sir  John  Cobham> 
Sir  John  Marmion  and  others  were  sent  to  meet  the  Dukes 
of  Burgundy  and  Berry  and  other  French  lords  at  Wissant, 
between  Calais  and  Boulogne,  to  try  to  arrange  a  peace  or 
truce.     The  Count  of  Flanders  gave  the  company  a  banquet 
in  a  pavilion  made  of  Bruges  cloth  erected  near  the  sea,  and 
proceedings  were  agreeable  and  friendly,  but  the   French 
asked  too  much,  even  for  Calais  itself,  and  the  negotiations 
broke  down. 

In  the  year  1384,  rumour  connected  John  Holland's 
name  with  a  deed  of  violence.  There  was  an  Irish  Carmelite 
Friar  who  had  begun  to  hatch  an  accusation  of  treason 
against  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  whose  daughter,  Elizabeth, 
John  Holland  married  two  years  later.  Walsingham  of 
St.  Albans,  the  monkish  chronicler,  alleges  that  John  Holland 
murdered  this  Friar  Latimer  in  prison  with  his  own  hands, 
assisted  by  Sir  Henry  Green,  in  a  shockingly  cruel  manner. 


THOIVIAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND      55 

Walsingham  is  the  sole  authority  for  this  highly  improb- 
able story,  which  later  historians  have  repeated.  He  was 
evidently  inspired  by  a  violent  dislike  for  the  Hollands 
and  their  set.  Beltz,  the  author  of  '  Memorials  of  the 
Order  of  the  Garter,'  justly  observes,  '  The  horror  with 
which  the  Lollard  heresy  had  inspired  him  is  evident  at  every 
mention  of  its  fautors,  to  whom  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  is 
known  to  have  extended  his  protection.'  Walsingham's 
credit  in  this  matter  is  not  increased  by  his  transmission 
of  the  legend  that,  as  Friar  John  Latimer's  corpse  was 
dragged  through  the  streets,  buds  and  leaves  broke  out 
from  the  wood  of  the  hurdle  to  which  it  was  bound,  and 
that  a  blind  man  who  touched  it  was  restored  to  sight. 
It  is  quite  unnecessary  to  believe  the  unlikely  story  that 
the  King's  half-brother  put  to  death  a  miserable  Irish  Friar 
with  his  own  hands. 

In  the  year  1384  both  the  Earl  of  Kent  and  his  brother 
Sir  John  Holland  were  Knights  of  the  Garter.  The  ward- 
robe accounts  show  that  they,  and  other  Knights  of  the 
Order,  received  in  that  year  '  robes  of  cloth  in  violet  colour, 
embroidered  v/ith  garters,  furred  with  miniver,  and  lined 
with  scarlet.' 

In  1385  John  Holland  accompanied  the  King,  who  was 
now  eighteen  years  old,  in  an  expedition  against  the  Scots. 
These  incessant  foes,  aided  by  a  strong  contingent  of  their 
French  allies,  had  invaded  Northumberland,  and  were 
burning  and  destroying.  The  English  made  great  prepara- 
tions for  an  expedition  against  Scotland  both  by  land  and 
sea.  '  The  King  took  the  field,'  says  Froissart,  '  accompanied 
by  his  uncles,  the  Earls  of  Cambridge  and  Buckingham, 
and  his  brothers.  Sir  Thomas  and  Sir  John  Holland.  There 
were  also  the  Earls  of  Salisbury  and  Arundel,  the  young- 
Earl  of  Pembroke,  the  young  Lord  de  Spencer,  the  Earl 
of  Stafford,  and   so  many  barons  and  knights   that  they 


56       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

amounted  to  full  forty  thousand  lances,  without  counting 
those  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  the  Earl  of  Northumberland, 
the  Earl  of  Nottingham,  the  Lord  Lacy,  the  Lord  Neville 
and  other  barons  of  the  marches,  who  were  in  pursuit  of 
the  French  and  the  Scots,  to  the  number  of  two  thousand 
lances  and  fifteen  hundred  archers.  The  King  and  the 
lords  who  attended  him  had  also  full  fifty  thousand  archers, 
without  including  the  varlets.'  Sir  John  Holland  had  in 
his  pay  and  command  100  men-at-arms  and  160  archers. 
The  Earl  of  Stafford  brought  120  men-at-arms  and  180 
archers.  His  son  Ralph  Stafford  had  seven  men  and 
twelve  archers.  By  such  contingents,  great  and  small,  the 
feudal  army  was  made  up.  The  Scots  and  their  French 
allies,  who  immensely  disliked  the  food,  drink,  manners, 
language,  and  climate  of  the  rude  north,  prudently  retired 
into  Scotland  upon  approach  of  this  formidable  host, 
and  afterwards  the  English  invaded  Scotland,  devastated 
the  better  part  of  it  as  far  north  as  Aberdeen,  and  burned 
Edinburgh  and  Dunfermline  and  Dundee.  But  before  that, 
when,  on  his  advance  northward,  Richard  was  in  Yorkshire 
at  the  beginning  of  August,  a  terrible  thing  happened  in 
the  English  host  which,  as  Froissart  says,  '  caused  a  mortal 
hatred  between  different  lords,'  and,  as  Thomas  Walsingham 
says,  '  clouded  all  public  and  private  joy.'  It  would  be  a 
very  great  pitj^  to  relate  this  story  in  other  words  than  those 
used  by  Froissart,  whose  way  of  relation  recalls  scenes  in 
Homer's  '  Iliad.'  He  had  known  the  Hollands  as  boys  when 
he  was  in  England  in  the  early  sixties,  and  he  doubtless 
obtained  the  details  of  this  story  on  the  best  authority. 

'  Round  about  St.  John  of  Beverley  in  the  diocese  of 

York,  were  lodged  the  King  of  England,  and  great  plenty 

of  the  earls,  barons  and  knights  of  his  kingdom,  for  each 

odged  the   nearest  they  could  to  him,  and  especially  his 

two  uncles  and  his  two  brothers,  Sir  Thomas  de  Holland, 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND      57 

Earl  of  Kent,  and  Sir  John  de  Holland  were  there  with  a 
beautiful  company  of  men-at-arms.  In  the  retinue  of  the 
King  was  a  knight  of  Bohemia,  who  was  come  to  visit  the 
Queen  of  England,  and,  for  love  of  the  Queen,  the  King 
and  the  lords  entertained  him  well.  The  knight  was  named 
Sir  Nicies  ;  a  gay  and  handsome  knight  he  was  after  the 
German  fashion.  And  it  chanced  that  in  a  horse  camp  in 
the  fields  outside  a  village  near  Beverley,  two  squires  of  Sir 
John  de  Holland,  the  brother  of  the  King,  had  words  about 
lodgings  with  Sir  Nicies  and  followed  him  and  made  him 
great  displeasure.  Upon  this,  two  archers  of  Ralph  de 
Stafford,  son  of  Earl  de  Stafford,  began  to  take  the  part  of 
the  knight,  because  he  was  a  foreigner,  and  blamed  the 
squires,  saying,  "  You  are  wrong  to  insult  this  knight.  Do 
you  know  that  he  belongs  to  my  lady  the  Queen  and  her 
country  ?  You  ought  to  give  him  a  preference  over  our- 
selves." "  Ah,"  said  one  of  the  squires,  "  thou  rascal,  dost 
thou  wish  to  talk  ?  What  the  devil  hast  thou  to  do  with 
it  if  I  blame  his  follies  ?  "  "  What  have  I  to  do  with  it  ?  " 
said  the  archer.  "  I  have  plenty  to  do  with  it,  for  he  is  a 
comrade  of  my  master's  and  I'll  not  stand  his  being  blamed 
or  insulted."  "  And  if  I  thought,  rascal,"  said  the  squire, 
"  that  thou  wouldest  help  him  against  me,  I  would  run  this 
sword  through  thy  body."  And  as  he  spoke,  he  made  as 
though  he  would  strike  him.  The  archer  stepped  back, 
for  he  held  his  bow  all  ready,  drew  a  good  arrow  and  let  fly 
at  the  squire,  and  sent  the  arrow  right  through  his  breast 
and  heart  and  killed  him  dead. 

'  The  other  squire,  when  he  saw  his  comrade  thus  served, 
fled.  Sir  Nicies  was  already  gone  back  to  his  lodging. 
The  archers  returned  to  their  master  and  told  him  their 
adventure.  Sir  Ralph  said  they  had  done  ill.  "  By  my 
faith,"  replied  the  archer,  "  Sir,  it  had  to  be  so  if  I  wished 
not  to  be  killed,  and  I  had  rather  I  killed  him  than  that 


58  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

he  killed  me."  "  Come,  come  !  "  said  Sir  Ralph. 
f  Don't  go  where  they  can  find  you.  I  will  arrange 
peace  with  Sir  John  de  Holland,  through  my  lord,  my 
father,  or  others,"  The  archer  answered  and  said,  "  Very 
well.  Sir." 

'  News  came  to  Sir  John  de  Holland  that  one  of  the  archers 
of  Sir  Ralph  de  Stafford  had  slain  one  of  his  squires,  the 
one  whom  he  loved  best  in  all  the  world,  and  they  told  him 
that  it  had  been  the  fault  of  Sir  Nicies,  this  foreign  knight. 
When  Sir  John  de  Holland  heard  what  had  happened,  he 
was  furiously  enraged  and  said,  "  Never  will  I  drink  or  eat 
till  this  be   avenged."     Forthwith,   he   got    on   his   horse, 
and  made  his  men  mount  also,  and  went  from  his  lodging, 
and  by  now  it  was  late  in  the  evening,  and  he  made  inquiry 
where   this   Sir   Nicies  was    lodged.     They  told  him  they 
thought  he  was  lodged  in  the  rear-guard  with  the  Earl  of 
Devonshire  and  the  Earl  of  Stafford  and  their  people.     Sir 
John  de  Holland  took  this  road  and  began  to  ride  about  at 
hazard  to  find  this  Sir  Nicies.     As  he  and  his  men  rode 
between  hedges  and  bushes  along  a  very  narrow  lane  where 
those  who  encountered   could   not  turn   aside,   Sir  Ralph 
de  Stafford  and  Sir  John  de  Holland  met  each  other,  and 
when  they  saw  each  other,  each  asked  in  passing,  "  And  who 
is   there  ?  "     "I   am    Stafford."     And    "  I   am   Holland." 
Then  said  Sir  John  de  Holland,  who  was  still  in  his  fury, 
"  Stafford,  Stafford  !     I  was  looking  for  thee  !     Thy  people 
have  killed  my  squire  whom  I  loved  well."     And  thereupon 
he    thrust    out    with    a    Bordeaux    sword    which   he    held 
unsheathed  and  naked.     His  thrust   pierced  the  body  of 
Sir  Ralph  de  Stafford,  and  laid  him  dead,  which  was  a  great 
pity.     And  then  he  passed  on  and  knew  not  yet  whom  he 
had  slain,   but  he  knew  well  that  he  had  slain  someone. 
Then  were  the  men  of  Sir  Ralph  de  Stafford  much  enraged 
when  they  saw  their  master  dead,  and  began  to  shout,  "  Ah 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND        59 

Holland,  Holland  !  You  have  slain  the  son  of  the  Earl  of 
Stafford  !  Evil  tidings  will  they  be  to  his  father  when  he 
shall  know  it  !  "  Some  of  the  men  of  Sir  John  de  Holland 
heard  this  and  said  to  their  master,  "  Sir,  you  have  slain 
Sir  Ralph  de  Stafford  !  "  "  All  the  better,"  said  Sir  John. 
*'  I  would  rather  have  killed  him  than  one  of  less  degree, 
for  so  I  have  the  better  avenged  my  boy." 

'  Then  went  Sir  John  Holland  to  the  town  of  St.  John 
of  Beverley,  and  took  sanctuary,  and  departed  not  thence, 
for  well  he  knew  that  he  should  have  great  trouble  in  the 
army  from  the  friends  of  the  knight  for  his  death,  and  he 
knew  not  what  his  brother,  the  King  of  England,  would  say 
of  it.  So  to  avoid  all  these  dangers,  he  shut  himself  up  in 
the  sanctuary. 

'  News  came  to  the  Earl  of  Stafford  that  his  son  was 
slain  by  a  great  misadventure.  "  Slain  !  "  said  the  Earl- 
"  And  who  killed  him  ?  " 

'  Those  who  had  been  there  said,  "  My  lord,  it  was  the 
King's  brother.  Sir  John  de  Holland,"  and  they  told  him 
how  it  was  and  why.  Those  who  loved  his  son,  for  many 
there  were,  and  they  were  fine,  young,  bold  and  enterprising 
knights,  were  wroth  beyond  measure,  and  he  called 
together  all  his  friends  to  take  counsel  what  he  should 
do  and  how  he  should  avenge  himself.  But  the  wisest 
and  best  advised  of  his  counsellors  held  him  back,  and 
told  him  that  on  the  morrow  they  should  lay  this  before 
the  King  of  England,  and  require  that  he  should  do  law 
and  justice. 

'  So  passed  the  night,  and  in  the  morning  Sir  Ralph  de 
Stafford  was  buried  in  a  church  of  a  village  thereby,  and 
there  were  there  present  all  those  of  his  kindred,  lords  and 
knights  that  were  in  this  army. 

'  After  the  funeral,  the  Earl  of  Stafford  and  full  sixty 
of  his  lineage  and  that  of  his  son,  mounted  their  horses  and 


60  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

came  to  the  King,  who  was  already  informed  of  this  adven- 
ture ;  they  found  the  King  and  his  uncles  and  great  plenty 
of  other  lords  with  him.  The  Earl  of  Stafford,  when  he  was 
come  before  the  King,  knelt,  and  then  said  with  weeping, 
and  in  great  anguish  of  heart  :  "  King,  thou  art  King  of  all 
England,  and  thou  hast  solemnly  sworn  to  maintain  right 
in  the  realm,  and  to  do  justice,  and  thou  knowest  how  thy 
brother  without  cause  or  reason  has  slain  my  son  and  heir. 
I  require  that  thou  do  me  right  and  justice,  or  else  thou  shalt 
have  no  worse  enemy  than  me,  and  I  will  thee  to  know  that 
the  death  of  my  son  touches  me  so  near  that,  were  I  not 
unwilling  to  break  and  ruin  the  expedition  on  which  we  are, 
and  to  receive  more  harm  than  honour  by  the  trouble  which 
I  should  bring  into  our  host,  it  should  be  paid  for  and  avenged 
so  highly  that  men  would  talk  of  it  in  England  for  a  hundred 
years  to  come.  But  now  I  will  refrain  so  long  as  we  be 
on  this  expedition  to  Scotland,  for  I  will  not  rejoice  our 
enemies  by  my  grief." 

'  "  Earl  of  Stafford,"  replied  the  King,  "  be  assured 
that  I  will  maintain  justice  and  right  to  the  highest  limit 
that  the  lords  of  my  realm  can  deem  possible,  and  that  not 
for  any  brother  will  I  fail  to  do  so."  Then  answered  the 
kinsmen  of  the  Earl  of  Stafford,  "  Sir,  you  have  spoken  well 
and  great  thanks  to  you." 

'  The  Earl  of  Stafford  went  through  the  expedition  to 
Scotland,  and  during  all  that  time  he  seemed  to  have  for- 
gotten the  death  of  his  son,  wherein  all  the  lords  thought 
he  showed  great  wisdom.'     So  far  Froissart. 

John  Holland  was  aged  about  thirty-three  when  this 
happened.  His  unpremeditated  deed  of  chance  fury  in 
that  dark  lane  near  Beverley  was  attended  by  disastrous 
consequences  years  later,  and  was  one  of  the  causes  which 
indirectly    contributed    to    the    downfall    and    murder    of 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND       61 

Richard  II.  On  such  chances  or  destinies  do  things  depend. 
If  the  honest  archers  had  not  overheard  the  squires  banter- 
ing with  youthful  spirits  the  possibly  fantastic  German 
knight,  many  things  might  have  happened  otherwise  than 
they  did. 

The  King  at  first  declared  that  his  brother  must  expiate 
the  crime  by  the  extreme  rigour  of  the  law.  Ralph  Stafford 
had  been  a  favourite  at  the  Court,  having  been  bred  up  with 
the  King  from  childhood.  He  was  also  a  great  friend  of 
the  Queen's,  and  was  on  his  way  to  speak  with  her  about  the 
affair  when,  by  ill-fortune,  he  met  Holland  in  the  dark  lane 
near  Beverley. 

The  Princess  of  Wales,  the  mother  both  of  Richard 
and  of  John  Holland,  was  at  Wallingford  on  the  Thames. 
She  heard  that  the  King  had  vowed  that  John  should  suffer 
death,  and  sent  to  him  a  messenger  imploring  him  to  have 
mercy  on  his  brother,  but  finding  that  her  prayer  availed 
not,  she  fell  into  such  grief  that  she  died  within  five  days. 
Her  body  was  wrapt  in  cere  cloth  and  enclosed  in  a  lead 
coffin,  and  was  kept  till  the  King's  return  from  Scotland 
and  then  was  buried,  not  by  the  side  of  her  more  glorious 
second  husband,  the  Black  Prince,  in  Canterbury  Cathedral, 
but  by  that  of  her  first  husband.  Sir  Thomas  Holland,  Earl 
of  Kent,  in  the  Abbey  of  the  Grey  Friars  at  Stamford.  Their 
monument,  like  hundreds  of  the  most  interesting  monuments 
in  England,  perished  with  the  Abbey  at  the  Reformation. 
Such  was  the  end  of  the  singular  life  of  the  Fair  Maid  of 
Kent. 

Her  will  began  thus  : 

'  In  the  year  of  Our  Lord  1385  and  of  the  reign  of  my 
dear  son,  Richard  King  of  England  and  France  the  ninth, 
at  my  castle  of  Wallingford  in  the  diocese  of  Salisbury  the 
7th  of  August ;   I  Joan,  Princess  of  Wales,  Duchess  of  Corn- 


62  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

wall,  Countess  of  Chester  and  Lady  Wake  ;  ^  etc.  My  body 
to  be  buried  in  my  Chapel  at  Stamford  near  the  monument 
of  my  late  lord  and  husband  the  Earl  of  Kent ;  To  my  dear 
son,  the  King,  my  new  bed  of  red  velvet  embroidered  with 
ostrich  feathers  of  silver  and  herds  of  leopards  of  gold  with 
boughs  and  leaves  issuing  out  of  their  mouths  ;  To  my  dear 
son,  Thomas  Earl  of  Kent,  my  bed  of  red  camak  paied  with 
red  and  rays  of  gold  ;  To  my  dear  son  John  Holland  a  bed 
of  red  camak  ;    To — etc.' 

Her  executors  were  the  Bishops  of  London  and 
Winchester,  Lord  Cobham,  Sir  William  de  Beauchamp,  Sir 
William  de  Nevill,  Sir  Simon  de  Burley,  Sir  Lewis  de  Clifford, 
Sir  Richard  de  Sturry  and  six  others,  two  of  whom  were 
her  '  dear  chaplains.'  The  Princess  was  at  her  death  about 
fifty-seven  years  old.  She  had  returned  to  England  with 
her  sick  husband  in  1373,  and  had  been  a  widow  since  he 
died  at  Westminster  on  June  8,  1376. 

King  Richard,  after  all,  proved  swiftly  placable.  The 
Duke  of  Lancaster  and  other  lords  mediated  between  the 
Staffords,  the  Hollands,  and  the  King.  An  agreement  was, 
at  last,  arrived  at  that  John  should  go  through  a  public 
ceremonial  symbolic  of  penitence  and  remorse,  and  should 
also  '  find  three  priests  to  celebrate  divine  service  every 
day,  to  the  world's  end,  for  the  soul  of  him,  the  said  Ralph, 
in  some  such  place  as  the  King  should  appoint.'  Where- 
upon the  King  appointed  that  two  of  the  priests  should 
perform  this  at  the  very  place  where  Ralph  Stafford  was 
slain,  and  the  third  in  some  place  near  to  it.  It  was,  how- 
ever, afterwards  arranged  that  all  the  masses  should  be 
said  at  Langley  in  Hertfordshire,  in  the  Church  of  the  '  Friars 
Preachers,'  where  young  Stafford's  body  was  finally  interred. 
This    mode    of    expiation   was  then    not    uncommon.      So 

^  Edward  III  had  made  Sir  Thomas  Holland  Baron  Wake  of  Lyde!.  Joan's 
mother  was  Margaret,  heiress  of  Lord  Wake  of  Lydel  in  Cimiberland. 


THOIVIAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND      63 

Shakespeare  makes  Henry  V  say  in  his  meditation  on  the 
eve  of  the  battle  of  Agincourt : 

Not  to-day,  O  Lord  ! 
O !  not  to-day,  think  not  upon  the  fault 
My  father  made  in  compassing  the  crown. 
I  Richard's  body  have  interred  new ; 
And  on  it  have  bestow'd  more  contrite  tears 
Than  from  it  issued  forced  drops  of  blood  : 
Five  hundred  poor  I  have  in  yearly  pay. 
Who  twice  a-day  their  wither'd  hands  hold  up 
Toward  heaven,  to  pardon  blood  ;    and  I  have  built 
Two  chantries,  where  the  sad  and  solemn  priests 
Sing  still  for  Richard's  soul. 

The  monastic  chronicler,  Malvern,  gives  an  account  in 
Latin  of  the  ceremonial  act  of  penitence  performed,  no 
doubt  prudently  but  reluctantly,  by  John  Holland.  It 
was  at  Windsor  Castle.  '  John  Holland,  clothed  in 
mourning,  entered  to  the  King,  between  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  and  the  Bishop  of  London,  and  thrice  bowed 
to  the  ground  on  his  knees  and  arms,  before  he  came  to 
him,  then,  raising  himself  on  his  knees,  and  extending  his 
arms  upwards,  weeping  and  humbly  seeking  mercy  from 
the  King,  and  beseeching  forgiveness  for  that  rashly  and 
indiscreetly  he  had  committed  such  a  crime  contrary  to 
prohibition.  Some  of  those  who  stood  around  wept  on 
seeing  this.  At  the  third  prostration  the  said  Bishops  knelt 
before  the  King  with  him.  Then  the  King,  somewhat 
moved  by  the  prayers  of  the  nobles  who  were  present,  and 
chiefly  by  those  of  Earls  Stafford  and  Warwick,  whom 
above  all  the  Lord  John  Holland  had  offended,  pardoned 
him  for  that  which  he  had  done.'  It  was  the  kind  of 
carefully  arranged,  and  somewhat  Byzantine,  ceremonial, 
which  Richard  II  enjoyed  above  all  things. 


64  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

After  this  enforced  forgiveness,  the  Earl  of  Stafford, 
deprived  of  the  hope  of  his  House,  departed  on  a  pilgrimage 
to  Jerusalem,  and  died,  in  1387,  on  his  way  home,  in  the 
Island  of  Rhodes.  His  body  was  brought  home  to  England 
by  John  Hinkley,  his  squire,  and  buried  with  those  of  his 
ancestors  before  the  high  altar  of  Stone,  in  Staffordshire. 
John  Holland,  on  the  other  hand,  pursued  his  wild  career. 
He  was  so  quickly  restored  to  full  royal  favour  that  a  few 
months  later  he  was  sent  with  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of 
Lancaster,  to  treat  with  the  Earl  of  Flanders  touching 
certain  differences  then  pending  between  the  English  and 
the  Flemings,  and  also  to  treat  of  peace  with  the  French. 
In  the  earlier  half  of  the  same  year,  1386,  John  Holland 
married  Elizabeth,  second  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster, and  sister  to  Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  Earl  of  Derby. 
This  was  the  second  marriage  with  the  royal  family 
made  by  the  Hollands.  Elizabeth  of  Lancaster  was 
on  her  father's  side  granddaughter  of  Edward  III,  and 
on  both  sides  was  a  descendant  from  Henry  III.  But 
notwithstanding  these  successes  the  crime  at  Beverley 
pursued  John  Holland  to  the  disastrous  end  of  his  life. 
He  had  slain  a  distinguished  member  of  the  ring  of 
the  great  Norman-descended  families,  and  he  was  never 
forgiven. 

Blanche,  daughter  of  Henry,  Duke  of  Lancaster,  the 
mother  of  Elizabeth,  was  the  heiress  who  brought  the  vast 
Lancaster  possessions  to  John  of  Gaunt.  She  was  not  only 
the  greatest  heiress  but  one  of  the  most  delightful  women 
of  her  time.  Froissart,  an  excellent  judge  in  these  things, 
says  of  this  Blanche  :  '  I  never  saw  two  such  noble  dames, 
so  good,  liberal  and  courteous  as  this  lady  and  the  late 
Queen  of  England  (Philippa),  nor  ever  shall,  were  I  to  live 
a  thousand  years,  which  is  impossible.'  Blanche  of 
Lancaster  died  of  the   '  Black   Death '  pestilence  in  1369, 


^s^ 


PORTRAIT  OF  ELIZABETH,  DAUGHTER  OF  JOHN,  DUKE  OF  LANCASTER,  AND 
WIFE  OF  JOHN  HOLLAND,  DUKE  OF  EXETER,  WITH  HER  SECOND  HUSBAND, 
JOHN    CORNWELL,    LORD    FANHOPE 

Eeproduced  from  a  church  wiudow  in  Sandford's  ' Geaealogical  History  of  the  Kings  o£  England,'  1707 


THOMAS  HOLLAND,  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND      65 

still   a  young  woman.     A  French  contemporary  poet  wrote 
of  her  charmingly : 

Elle  morut  jeune  et  jolie. 
Environ  de  vingt  et  deux  ans, 
Gaie,  lie,  friche,  esbatans, 
Douce,  simple,  d'umble  semblance, 
La  bonne  dame  6t  a  nom  Blanche.^ 

The  poet  was  wrong  as  to  the  twenty-two  years.  She 
died,  in  1369,  at  twenty-eight  years  of  age,  but  left  her 
children  quite  young,  Henry,  Philippa,  and  Elizabeth.  John 
of  Gaunt,  soon  afterwards,  in  1371,  married  his  second  wife, 
the  Princess  Constance  of  Castile.  Philippa  and  Elizabeth 
were  placed  under  the  charge  of  Katherine,  wife  of  Sir 
Hugh  Swynford,  as  a  governess  and  duenna.  This  Katherine 
was  the  daughter  of  a  Hainault  gentleman  who  came  over 
to  the  Court  of  England  with  Queen  Philippa.  Katherine 
was  very  beautiful  and  seductive  and  knew  the  ways  of 
the  Court.  In  the  inscription  on  the  once  existing  monument 
of  John  of  Lancaster  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  she  was  de- 
scribed as  'eximia  pulchritudine  feminam.'  Froissart  calls 
her  'une  dame  qui  scavoit  moult  de  toutes  honneurs.'  She 
was  made  a  Lady  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter  in  1387.  The 
Duke  of  Lancaster,  all  his  life,  v/as  notoriously  pervious 
to  feminine  seductions.  Katherine  Swynford,  while  her 
husband  was  in  France,  and  during  the  Duke's  marriage 
to  Constance  of  Castile,  became  his  mistress  and  bore  to 
him  three  sons,  the  Beauforts,  and  two  daughters.  After 
the  death  of  Constance,  the  Duke,  then  fifty-six  years  of 
age,  married  Katherine,  who  was  ten  years  younger,  and 
their  offspring  were  declared  legitimate  both  by  Act  of 
Parliament  and  by  a  Bull  of  Pope  Boniface  IX. 

Philippa  and  Elizabeth,  the  daughters  of  the  good  Blanche, 

*  From  Le  Joli  Buisson  de  Jonece. 


66  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

were  thus  brought  up  in  immoral  surroundings.  EUzabeth 
was  betrothed  in  childhood  to  a  young  boy,  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke.  When  she  was  old  enough  she  was  brought 
to  the  royal  Court  to  acquire  the  manners  of  the  day.  Here 
John  Holland  made  ardent  love  to  her,  and  in  1386,  soon 
after  the  Stafford  affair,  they  were  married,  hurriedly, 
it  seems,  and  without  much  ceremony,  with  a  view,  it  was 
alleged,  to  the  saving  of  honour.^  Elizabeth  was  about 
twenty-two  and  John  Holland  about  thirty-four  when 
this  marriage  took  place.  It  was  as  important  in  the 
relationships  and  history  of  the  Hollands  as  that 
which  Thomas  Holland  had  made  with  the  Fair  Maid 
of  Kent. 

The  sister  of  Blanche,  the  mother  of  Elizabeth,  her  aunt 
Maud  of  Lancaster,  had  married  for  her  first  husband  Ralph 
de  Stafford,  the  victim  of  the  encounter  at  Beverley,  so 
that  John  Holland  married  the  niece  of  the  wife  of  the 
man  whom  he  had  killed  a  few  months  earlier. 

During  this  period  the  elder  Holland  brother,  Thomas, 
Earl  of  Kent,  had  advanced  in  his  mundane  career. 
After  his  return  to  England,  during  the  truce  in  the 
endless  French  war,  he  received  a  money  grant  from 
the  Crown.  In  1378  he  acted  as  a  Commissioner  in 
awarding  certain  damages  between  the  English  and 
the  Scots,  and  in  the  same  year  he  was  made  Marshal 
of  England.  In  1381  he  was  sent  as  an  Ambassador  to 
Flanders  to  treat  of  the  marriage  between  Richard  II  and 
Anne,  the  Emperor's  sister.  After  his  mother's  death  in  1386, 
he  obtained  numerous  manors  of  her  inheritance.     He  was 

^  A  contemporary  monastic  chronicler,  Malvern,  gives  some  details  as  to  this, 
which  show  the  story  circulating  at  the  time.  He  is  the  only  authority,  and  the 
gossip  about  a  distant  and  suspected  Court  current  in  provincial  monasteries  must 
be  received  with  caution.  But  John  Holland's  passionate  and  hasty  character, 
and  the  level  of  morals  in  John  of  Gaimt's  house,  makes  this  story  probable 
enough. 


THOMAS  HOLLAND  AND  JOHN  HOLLAND      67 

now  a  wealthy  Earl,  and  his  wife,  Alice  Fitz-Alan,  daughter 
of  the  ninth  Earl  of  the  noble  and  ancient  House  of  Arundel, 
bore  a  large  family  of  beautiful  children,  of  whom  more 
hereafter.  Through  his  daughters  he  was  the  ancestor 
of  many  kings  and  great  nobles,  down  to  the  present 
day. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SIR   JOHN    HOLLAND    IN    SPAIN 

Faire  sheilds,  gay  steedes,  bright  armes,  be  my  delight, 
These  be  the  riches  fit  for  an  advent'rous  knight. 

Spenser. 

John  Holland's  life  was  more  filled  with  adventure  than 
that  of  his  elder  brother,  Thomas,  Earl  of  Kent.  The  Duke 
of  Lancaster's  second  wife,  Constance,  was  the  elder  daughter 
of  King  Pedro  '  The  Cruel,'  of  Castile  and  Leon,  who  had 
been  dethroned  by  his  illegitimate  half-brother,  Enrique. 
Pedro  recovered  the  throne  in  1367  after  the  Black  Prince's 
victory  over  Enrique  at  Najara,  but,  a  year  later,  was  over- 
thrown again  by  Enrique,  and  slain  by  that  brother's  own 
hand.  Pedro's  two  daughters  fled  to  the  Black  Prince's 
Court  at  Bordeaux,  and  there  Lancaster  met  and  married 
Constance.  Enrique's  son,  John,  supported  by  the  French, 
was  now  King  of  Castile.  For  some  years  the  Duke  of 
Lancaster  had  called  himself  King  of  Castile  in  right  of  his 
wife,  daughter  of  a  legitimate  sovereign  whose  throne  had 
been  usurped  by  a  bastard  line.  He  now  proposed  to  set 
forth  for  Spain  at  the  head  of  a  fleet  and  army  to  vindicate 
the  claim.  For  political  reasons  he  was  glad  to  leave 
England  for  a  space,  and  King  Richard  was  delighted 
to  get  rid  of  at  least  one  powerful  uncle.  Govern- 
ment support  was  therefore  given  to  this  expedition. 
Parliament  voted  a  supply,  and,  in  July  1386,  Lancaster 
sailed   from  Plymouth  with   a   force    of   men-at-arms    and 

68 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  69 

archers.  Sir  John  Holland  had  good  reasons  of  his  own 
for  leaving  England  for  a  while,  and  he  was  appointed 
to  be  Constable  of  this  army.  The  Marshal  was  Sir  Thomas 
Moreaux,  who  was  married,  according  to  Froissart,  to  an 
illegitimate  daughter  of  the  Duke.  The  Duchess  of  Lancaster 
went  in  the  Duke's  ship  with  her  own  daughter  Catherine 
and  the  Duke's  two  daughters  by  his  first  marriage,  Eliza- 
beth, now  the  wife  of  John  Holland,  and  Philippa,  the  elder 
sister,  a  girl  still  unwed. 

'  It  was,'  says  Froissart,  '  the  month  of  May  '  (it  really 
was  July)  '  when  they  embarked,  and  they  had  the  usual 
fine  weather  of  that  pleasant  season.'     They  sailed  near 
enough  to  the  French  shores  to  be  seen,  '  and  a  fine  sight 
it  was,  for  there  were  upwards  of  two  hundred  sail.     It 
was  delightful  to  observe  the  galleys,  which  had  men-at- 
arms  on  board,  coast  the  shores  in  search  of  adventures  as 
they  heard  the  French  fleet  was  at  sea.'     So  it  had  been,  but 
had  retired  into  Havre.     The  Duke  resolved  to  put  into 
Brest  in  order  to  relieve  the  castle,  where  an  English  garrison 
was  being  blockaded  by  a  Breton  force.     '  The  weather,' 
says  Froissart,  '  was  now  delightful,  and  the  sea  so  calm 
that  it  was  a  pleasure  to  be  on  it ;   the  fleet  advanced  with 
an  easy  sail,  and  arrived  at  the  mouth  of  Brest  harbour, 
where,  waiting  for  the  tide,  they  entered  in  safety.     The 
clarions  and  trumpets   sounded   sweetly   from  the   barges 
and  the  castle.'     A  spirited  encounter,  in  which  no  one  was 
much   hurt,    followed,    and   the   besiegers   evacuated   their 
positions   and   retired   up   country.     The    Duke,    Sir   John 
Holland,  and  some  other  knights,  went  into  the  castle,  with 
their  ladies,  and  had  refreshments.     On  the  next  day  they 
set  sail  for  Corunna,  where  they  cast  anchor  five  days  later. 
'  It  was  a  fine  sight,'  Froissart  continues,  '  to  view  all  the 
ships  and  galleys  enter  the  port,  laden  with  men-at-arms, 
with   trumpets   and   clarions    sounding.'     A   defiant   reply 


70  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

was  blown  by  trumpets  and  clarions  from  the  castle,  then 
by  chance  occupied  by  a  force  of  French  knights  who  had 
come  to  assist  the  Castilian  King,  and  happened  to  be  passing 
on  a  pilgrimage  to  San  lago  of  Compostella.     The  English 
landed,  and  the  Duke  sent  the  ships  back  to  England,  for 
he  wished  all  the  world  to  know,  he  said,  '  that  I  will  never 
recross  the  sea  to  England,  until  I  be  master  of  Castile,  or 
die  in  the  attempt.'     The  army  lodged  in  huts  covered  with 
leaves  and  remained  before  Corunna  for  nearly  a  month 
'  amusing  themselves,  for  the  chief  lords  had  brought  hounds 
for  their  pastime,  and  hawks  for  the  ladies.     They  had  also 
mills  to  grind  their  corn,  and  ovens  to  bake,  for  they  never 
willingly  go  to  war  in  foreign  countries  without  carrying 
things  of  that  kind  with  them.' 

One  day  the  French  garrison  in  Corunna  surprised 
a  party  of  three  hundred  English  foraging  archers,  and 
killed  two  hundred  of  them.  The  Duke  and  Sir  John 
Holland,  the  Constable,  sharply  reprimanded  Sir  Thomas 
Moreaux  the  Marshal  for  letting  foragers  go  so  near  the 
enemy  without  a  protecting  guard  of  men-at-arms.  Sir 
Thomas  replied  that  '  they  had  been  caught,  to  be  sure, 
this  once,  though  they  had  foraged  ten  times  before  with- 
out any  interruption.'  '  Sir  Thomas,'  said  the  Duke,  '  be 
more  cautious  in  future  ;  for  such  things  may  fall  out  in 
one  day  or  hour,  as  may  not  happen  again  in  a  century.' 

At  the  end  of  a  month  the  army  abandoned  the  siege  of 
Corunna,  and  marched  in  three  battalions  to  San  lago  of 
Compostella.  The  Marshal  led  the  van  of  300  lances  and 
700  archers  ;  next  marched  the  Duke  with  400  spears, 
accompanied  by  all  the  ladies.  The  rear  was  composed  of 
400  lances  and  700  archers,  accompanied  by  the  Constable, 
Sir  John  Holland.  San  lago  surrendered,  on  a  threat  of 
total  destruction  if  it  did  not,  and  became  Lancaster's  head- 
quarters.    The  Duke  and  his  ladies  lodged  in  the  Abbey, 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  71 

Sir  John  Holland  and  Sir  Thomas  Moreaux  in  the  town, 
and  the  rest  in  houses  or  extemporised  huts.  There  was 
plenty  of  meat,  and  so  much  strong  wine  that  the  English 
archers  '  were  for  the  greater  part  of  their  time  in  bed  drunk, 
and  very  often,  by  drinking  too  much  new  wine,  they  had 
fevers,  and  in  the  morning  such  headaches  as  to  prevent 
them  from  doing  anything  the  rest  of  the  day.'  The  English 
fought  no  battles,  but  took  two  or  three  towns,  and 
devastated  the  country,  as  did  also  the  French  who  had  come 
to  assist  the  King  of  Castile.  The  King  of  Portugal  was 
friendly  to  the  English,  and  arranged  to  meet  the  Duke  of 
Lancaster  on  the  Portuguese  frontier.  The  Duke  and  Sir 
John  Holland  rode  to  the  place  appointed,  at  the  head  of 
300  spears  and  600  archers.  The  King  gave  a  dinner  to  the 
Duke  in  a  pavilion  covered  with  leaves.  '  The  Bishops  of 
Coimbra  and  Oporto  and  Braganza  were  seated  at  the  King's 
table  with  the  Duke,  and  a  little  below  him  were  Sir  John 
Holland  and  Sir  Henry  Beaumont.  There  were  many 
minstrels,  and  this  festivity  lasted  till  night.'  The  King 
was  clothed  in  white  lined  with  crimson,  with  a  red  cross 
of  St.  George.  The  next  day  the  Duke  gave  a  return  dinner 
in  his  pavilion  to  the  King.  The  apartments  were  hung 
with  cloth  and  covered  with  carpets  just  as  if  '  the  King 
had  been  at  Lisbon  or  the  Duke  in  London.'  It  was  settled 
that  they  should  attack  the  usurper  of  Castile,  early  in  March, 
with  their  united  forces,  and  then  they  talked  about  a 
marriage  for  the  King,  who  was  still  unwed.  The  Duke 
said,  '  Sir  King,  I  have  at  San  lago  two  girls,  and  I  will 
give  you  the  choice  to  take  which  of  them  shall  please  you 
best.  Send  thither  your  Council  and  I  will  return  her  with 
them.'  '  Many  thanks,'  said  the  King,  '  you  offer  me  more 
than  I  ask.  I  will  leave  my  cousin,  Catherine  of  Castile,  but 
I  demand  your  daughter  Philippa  in  marriage.'  Two  days 
later  the  Duke  gave  a  still  more   glorious  banquet  to  the 


72  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

King.  'His  apartments,'  says  Froissart,  'were  decorated 
with  the  richest  tapestry,  with  his  arms  emblazoned  upon 
it,  and  as  splendidly  ornamented,  as  if  he  had  been  at  Hert- 
ford, Leicester,  or  at  any  of  his  mansions  in  England,  which 
very  much  astonished  the  Portuguese.' 

On  the  Duke's  return  to  San  lago  the  Duchess  asked 
him  many  questions  about  the  Portuguese  King  as  to  whose 
character,  health,  strength,  and  appearance  the  Duke  gave 
a  favourable  report.  '  Well,  and  what  was  done  in  regard 
to  the  marriage  ?  '  said  the  Duchess.  '  I  have  given  him 
one  of  my  daughters.'  '  Which  ?  '  asked  the  Duchess.  '  I 
offered  him  the  choice  of  Catherine  or  Philippa,  for  which 
he  thanked  me  much,  and  fixed  on  Philippa.'  '  He  is  right,' 
said  the  Duchess,  '  for  my  daughter  Catherine  is  too  young 
for  him.'  There  must  have  been  much  talk  about  all  this 
among  the  ladies  at  San  lago,  and  Elizabeth  Holland  may 
have  felt  a  touch  of  jealousy  that,  in  the  result  of  too  easy 
a  surrender,  she  was  only  the  wife  of  King  Richard's  half- 
brother  while  her  own  sister  Philippa  was  to  be  a  reigning 
queen. 

After  this  came  some  more  warfare,  in  the  course  of 
which  Sir  John  Holland  took  by  storm  a  Galician  town 
called  Ribadeo,  where  1500  unfortunate  townsmen,  whose 
only  offence  was  that  they  had  refused  to  surrender, 
were  slaughtered  by  the  English,  and  much  booty  was 
gained. 

Thereafter  the  Archbishop  of  Braganza  arrived  at  San 
lago  to  marry  the  Lady  Philippa  for  the  King  of  Portugal 
by  way  of  proxy.  The  ceremony  was  performed,  '  and  the 
Archbishop  of  Braganza  '  (says  the  ever-delightful  Froissart) 
'  and  the  Lady  Philippa  were  courteously  laid  beside  each 
other,  on  a  bed,  as  married  persons  should  be.'  On  the 
morrow  she  mounted  her  palfrey,  as  did  also  her  damsels 
and  her  bastard  sister,  Lady  Moreaux.     Sir  John  Holland 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  73 

and  Sir  Thomas  Percy  escorted  her  to  Oporto  with  100 
spears  and  200  archers.  There  were  banquetings,  music 
and  dancing,  and  a  grand  tournament,  in  which  Sir  John 
Holland  won  the  stranger's  prize.  The  last  words  that  the 
King,  who  was  much  pleased  with  Philippa,  said  to  Holland 
were  that  he  was  ready  to  invade  Castile  with  the  Duke. 
*  That  is  good  news  indeed,'  said  the  Duke  when  Holland 
repeated  this  to  him. 

The  Duke  soon  took  the  field  and  captured  a  town  of  im- 
portance called  by  Froissart  Entenca  (the  modern  Betanzos, 
probably).  At  Valladolid,  among  the  French  who  had  come 
to  aid  the  King  of  Castile,  was  a  knight  famous  for  his 
prowess  in  battles  and  in  tournaments,  Sir  Reginald  de 
Roye.  The  following  story  must  be  quoted  in  full  from 
Froissart,  for  it  is  very  characteristic  both  of  those  times,  in 
which  war  and  tournaments  were  different  forms  of  the  most 
popular  game,  and  also  of  that  writer.    Froissart  says  : 

'  During  the  stay  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  in  Entenca, 
a  herald  arrived  from  Valladolid,  who  demanded  where  Sir 
John  Holland  was  lodged.  On  being  shown  thither,  he 
found  Sir  John  within,  and,  bending  his  knee,  presented 
him  a  letter,  saying,  "  Sir,  I  am  a  herald -at -arms,  whom  Sir 
Reginald  de  Roye  sends  hither  :  he  salutes  you  by  me,  and 
you  will  be  pleased  to  read  this  letter."  Sir  John  answered, 
he  would  willingly  do  so.  Having  opened  it,  he  read  that 
Sir  Reginald  de  Roye  entreated  him,  for  the  love  of  his 
mistress,  that  he  would  deliver  him  from  his  vow,  by  tilting 
with  him  three  courses  with  the  lance,  three  attacks  with 
the  sword,  three  with  the  battle-axe,  and  three  with  the 
dagger  ;  and  that  if  he  chose  to  come  to  Valladolid,  he  had 
provided  him  an  escort  of  sixty  spears  ;  but,  if  it  were  more 
agreeable  to  him  to  remain  in  Entenca,  he  desired  he  would 
obtain  from  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  a  passport  for  himself 
and  thirty  companions. 


74  TH      LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

'  When  Sir  John  Holland  had  perused  the  letter,  he 
smiled,  and,  looking  at  the  herald,  said,  "  Friend,  thou  art 
welcome  ;  for  thou  hast  brought  me  what  pleases  me  much, 
and  I  accept  the  challenge.  Thou  wilt  remain  in  my  lodging, 
with  my  people,  and,  in  the  course  of  to-morrow,  thou  shalt 
have  my  answer,  whether  the  tilts  are  to  be  in  Galicia  or 
Castile."  The  herald  replied,  "  God  grant  it."  He  remained 
in  Sir  John's  lodgings,  where  he  was  made  comfortable  ; 
and  Sir  John  went  to  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  whom  he 
found  in  conversation  with  the  Marshal,  and  showed  the 
letter  the  herald  had  brought.  "  Well,"  said  the  Duke, 
"  and  have  you  accepted  it  ?  "  "  Yes,  by  my  faith  have  I ; 
and  why  not  ?  I  love  nothing  better  than  fighting,  and 
the  knight  entreats  me  to  indulge  him  :  consider,  therefore, 
where  you  would  choose  it  should  take  place."  The  Duke 
mused  a  while,  and  then  said,  "  It  shall  be  performed  in  this 
town  :  have  a  passport  made  out  in  what  terms  you 
please,  and  I  will  seal  it."  "It  is  well  said,"  replied 
Sir  John  ;  "  and  I  will,  in  God's  name,  soon  make  out  the 
passport." 

'  The  passport  was  fairly  written  and  sealed  for  thirty 
knights  and  squires  to  come  and  return  ;  and  Sir  John 
Holland,  when  he  delivered  it  to  the  herald,  presented  him 
with  a  handsome  mantle  lined  with  minever  and  with  twelve 
nobles.  The  herald  took  leave  and  returned  to  Valladolid, 
where  he  related  what  had  passed,  and  showed  his  presents. 

'  News  of  this  tournament  was  carried  to  Oporto,  where 
the  King  of  Portugal  kept  his  court.  "  In  the  name  of  God," 
said  the  King,  "  I  will  be  present  at  it,  and  so  shall  my 
queen  and  the  ladies."  "  Many  thanks,"  replied  the  Duchess 
of  Lancaster  ;  "  for  I  shall  be  accompanied  by  the  King 
and  Queen  when  I  return."  It  was  not  long  after  this 
conversation  that  the  King  of  Portugal,  the  Queen,  the 
Duchess  with   her  daughter  and  the  ladies  of   the  court. 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  75 

set  out  for  Entenca  in  grand  array.  The  Duke  of  Lancaster, 
when  they  were  near  at  hand  mounted  his  horse,  and, 
attended  by  a  numerous  company,  went  to  meet  them. 
When  the  King  and  Duke  met,  they  embraced  each  other 
most  kindly,  and  entered  the  town  together,  where  their 
lodgings  were  as  well  prepared  as  they  could  be  in  such  a 
place,  though  they  were  not  so  magnificent  as  if  they  had 
been  at  Paris. 

'  Three  days  after  the  arrival  of  the  King  of  Portugal, 
came  Sir  Reginald  de  Roye,  handsomely  accompanied  by 
knights  and  squires,  to  the  amount  of  six  score  horse.  They 
were  all  properly  lodged  ;  for  the  Duke  had  given  his  officers 
strict  orders  they  should  be  well  taken  care  of.  On  the 
morrow,  Sir  John  Holland  and  Sir  Reginald  de  Roye 
armed  themselves,  and  rode  into  a  spacious  close,  well 
sanded,  where  the  tilts  were  to  be  performed.  Scaffolds 
were  erected  for  the  ladies,  the  King,  the  Duke,  and  the 
many  English  lords  who  had  come  to  witness  the  combat ; 
for  none  had  staid  at  home. 

'  The  two  knights,  who  were  to  perform  this  deed  of 
arms,  entered  the  lists  so  well  armed  and  equipped  that 
nothing  was  wanting.  Their  spears,  battle-axes  and  swords, 
were  brought  them  ;  and  each,  being  mounted  on  the  best 
of  horses,  placed  himself  about  a  bow-shot  distant  from 
the  other,  but  at  times  they  pranced  about  on  their  horses 
most  gallantly,  for  they  knew  every  eye  to  be  upon  them. 

'  All  being  now  arranged  for  their  combat,  which  was  to 
include  everything  except  pushing  it  to  extremity,  though 
no  one  could  foresee  what  mischief  might  happen,  nor  how 
it  would  end  ;  for  they  were  to  tilt  with  pointed  lances,  then 
with  swords,  which  were  so  sharp  that  scarcely  a  helmet 
could  resist  their  strokes  ;  and  these  were  to  be  succeeded 
by  battle-axes  and  daggers,  each  so  well  tempered  that 
nothing  could  withstand  them.     Now,   consider  the  perils 


76       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

those  run  who  engage  in  such  combats  to  exalt  their  honour, 
for  one  unlucky  stroke  puts  an  end  to  the  business. 

'  Having  braced  their  targets  and  examined  each  other 
through  the  visors  of  their  helmets,  they  spurred  on  their 
horses  spear  in  hand.     Though  they  allowed  their  horses 
to  gallop  as  they  pleased,  they  advanced  on  as  straight  a 
line  as  if  it  had  been  drawn  with  a  cord,  and  hit  each  other 
on  the  visors  with  such  force  that  Sir  Reginald's  lance  was 
shivered  into  four  pieces,  which  flew  to  a  greater  height  than 
they  could  have  been  thrown.     All  present  allowed  this  to 
be  gallantly  done.     Sir  John  Holland  struck  Sir  Reginald 
likewise  on  the  visor,  but  not  with  the  same  success,  and  I 
will  tell  you  why.     Sir  Reginald  had  but  lightly  laced  on 
his  helmet,  so  that  it  was  held  by  one  thong  only,  which 
broke  at  the  blow,  and  the  helmet  flew  over  his  head,  leaving 
Sir  Reginald  bare-headed.     Each  passed  the  other,  and  Sir 
John  Holland  bore  his  lance  without  halting.     The  spectators 
cried  out  that  it  was  a  fine  course.     The  knights  returned 
to  their  stations,  when  Sir  Reginald's  helmet  was  fitted  on 
again  and  another  lance  given  to  him  ;    Sir  John  grasped 
his  own,   which  was  not  broken.     When  ready,   they  set 
off  full   gallop,  for  they  had  excellent   horses  under  them 
which  they  well  knew  how  to  manage,  and  again  struck  each 
other  on  the  helmets,  so  that  sparks  of  fire  came  from  them, 
but  chiefly  from  Sir  John  Holland's.     He  received  a  very 
severe  blow,  for  this  time  the  lance  did  not  break ;    neither 
did  Sir  John's,  which  hit  the  visor  of  his  adversary  without 
much  effect,  passing  through,  and  leaving  it  on  the  crupper 
of  the  horse,  and  Sir  Reginald  was  once  more  bare-headed. 
"  Ha  !  "  cried  the  English  to  the  French,  "  he  does  not  fight 
fair  :   why  is  not  his  helmet  as  well  buckled  on  as  Sir  John 
Holland's  ?     We  say  he  is  playing  tricks  :    tell  him  to  put 
himself  on  an  equal  footing  with  his  adversary."     "  Hold 
your  tongues  !  "  said  the  Duke,   "  and  let  them  alone  :    in 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  77 

arms,  every  one  takes  what  advantage  he  can  :  if  Sir  John 
think  there  is  any  advantage  in  thus  fastening  on  the  helmet, 
he  may  do  the  same.  But  for  my  part,  were  I  in  their 
situations,  I  would  lace  my  helmet  as  tight  as  possible  ;  and, 
if  one  hundred  were  asked  their  opinions,  there  would  be 
four-score  of  my  way  of  thinking."  The  English,  on  this, 
were  silent,  and  never  again  interfered.  The  ladies  declared 
they  had  nobly  jousted  ;  and  they  were  much  praised  by 
the  King  of  Portugal,  who  said  to  Sir  John  Fernando,  "  In 
our  country,  they  do  not  tilt  so  well,  nor  so  gallantly  :  what 
say  you,  Sir  John  ?  "  "  By  my  faith,  sir,"  replied  he, 
"  they  do  tilt  well ;  and  formerly  I  saw  as  good  jousts  before 
your  brother,  when  we  were  at  Elvas  to  oppose  the  King 
of  Castile,  between  this  Frenchman  and  Sir  William  Windsor  ; 
but  I  never  heard  that  his  helmet  was  tighter  laced  then 
than  it  is  now." 

'  The  King  on  this  turned  from  Sir  John  to  observe  the 
knights,  who  were  about  to  begin  their  third  course.  Sir 
John  and  Sir  Reginald  eyed  each  other,  to  see  if  any  advantage 
were  to  be  gained,  for  their  horses  were  so  excellent  that 
they  could  manage  them  as  they  pleased,  and,  sticking 
spurs  into  them,  hit  their  helmets  so  sharply  that  they 
struck  fire,  and  the  shafts  of  their  lances  were  broken.  Sir 
Reginald  was  again  unhelmed,  for  he  could  never  avoid 
this  happening,  and  they  passed  each  other  without  falling. 
All  now  declared  they  had  well  jousted  ;  though  the  English, 
excepting  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  blamed  greatly  Sir  Regi- 
nald ;  but  he  said,  "  he  considered  that  man  as  wise  who  in 
combat  knows  how  to  seize  his  vantage.  Know,"  added  he, 
addressing  himself  to  Sir  Thomas  Percy  and  Sir  Thomas 
Moreaux,  "  that  Sir  Reginald  de  Roye  is  not  now  to  be 
taught  how  to  tilt :  he  is  better  skilled  than  Sir  John  Holland," 
though  he  has  borne  himself  well." 

'  After  the  courses  of  the  lance,  they  fought  three  rounds 


78  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

with  swords,  battle-axes,  and  daggers,  without  either  of 
them  being  wounded.  The  French  carried  off  Sir  Reginald 
to  his  lodgings,  and  the  English  did  the  same  to  Sir  John 
Holland.' 

The  Duke  then  entertained  at  dinner  all  the  French 
visitors  ;  the  Duchess  sat  beside  him,  and  next  to  her  Sir 
Reginald  de  Roye.  After  dinner,  the  Duchess  said  to  the 
French  knights,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  that  she  marvelled 
much  that  gentlemen  like  themselves  could  fight  for  the 
claim  of  a  bastard  against  her  claim  as  rightful  heiress.  Sir 
Reginald  bowed,  and  said,  '  Madam,  we  know  that  what 
you  have  said  is  true  ;  but  our  lord,  the  King  of  France, 
holds  a  different  opinion  from  yours,  and,  as  we  are  his 
liegemen,  we  must  make  war  for  him,  and  go  whitherso- 
ever he  may  send  us,  for  we  cannot  disobey  him.'  At  these 
words  Sir  John  Holland  and  Sir  Thomas  Percy  handed 
the  lady  to  her  chamber  ;  wine  and  spices  were  brought, 
and  then  the  French  knights  took  leave,  mounted  their 
horses  and  rode  to  Valladolid. 

After  the  tournament,  the  Duke  and  the  King  of  Portugal 
had  a  conference,  and  settled  plans  of  operation.  The 
King  was  to  enter  Castile  while  the  Duke  continued  to 
subdue  Galicia,  and  they  were  not  to  join  forces  unless  the 
enemy  showed  inclination  to  battle.  The  reason  was  partly 
one  of  forage  supplies,  but  also  because  the  armies  might 
easily  quarrel,  '  for  the  English  are  hasty  and  proud,  and 
the  Portuguese  hot  and  impetuous,  easily  angered,  and 
not  soon  pacified.'  But  if  a  battle  against  the  common 
foe  were  imminent  they  would  agree  very  well  for  the  time, 
'  like  Gascons,'  says  Froissart,  or,  as  we  perhaps  should  say, 
like  the  Irish.  The  English  captured  a  town  or  two,  but 
the  campaigning  had  no  appreciable  results,  the  weather 
was  hot,  and  the  men  began  to  grumble  in  good  old  English 
fashion.     One  said — '  We  should  have  done  more  if  he  had 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  79 

not  brought  women  who  only  wish  to  remain  quiet,  and 
for  one  day  that  they  are  incHned  to  travel  they  will  repose 
fifteen.  What  the  devil  !  What  business  had  the  Duke 
to  bring  his  wife  and  daughters  with  him,  since  he  came 
here  for  conquest  ?  It  was  quite  unreasonable,  for  it  has 
been  a  great  hindrance  to  him.'  Others  said  that  Spain 
was  not  nearly  so  pleasant  a  country  to  make  war  in  as 
France,  '  where  there  are  plenty  of  large  villages,  a  fair 
country,  fine  provender,  ponds,  rich  pastures,  and  good 
wines,  and  a  climate  fairly  temperate ;  but  here  everything 
is  the  reverse.'  There  was  also  much  sickness  in  the  army, 
due  in  part  to  excessive  drinking,  by  men  brought  up  on 
good  ale,  of  the  hard  and  hot  Spanish  wines.  The  horses 
were  in  bad  condition  and  died,  and  so  did  very  many  of 
the  men.  The  Duke  himself  was  unwell.  The  enemy, 
under  the  guidance  of  a  wary  antagonist,  the  Frenchman 
Bertrand  du  Guesclin,  who  had  been  made  Constable  of 
Castile,  kept  in  the  towns  and  castles  most  of  which  they 
held,  harassed  the  English  in  small  encounters,  and  offered 
no  large  battle.  This  was  also  the  successful  policy  of 
du  Guesclin  in  France. 

Sir  John  Holland  saw  the  army  daily  wasting  away, 
and  heard  the  bitter  complaint  of  the  men.  They  used, 
says  Froissart,  words  such  as  these  :  '  Ah,  my  lord  of  Lan- 
caster, why  have  you  brought  us  to  Castile  ?  Accursed 
be  the  voyage  !  He  does  not,  it  seems,  wish  that  any  English- 
man should  ever  again  quit  his  country  to  serve  him.  He 
seems  resolved  to  kick  against  the  pricks.  He  will  have 
his  men  guard  the  country  he  has  won  ;  but  when  they  shall 
all  be  dead,  who  will  then  guard  it  ?  He  shows  poor  know- 
ledge of  war,  for  why,  when  he  saw  that  no  enemy  came  to 
fight  him,  did  he  not  retreat  into  Portugal,  or  elsewhere, 
to  avoid  the  losses  he  must  now  suffer  ?  For  we  shall  all  die 
of  this  cursed  disease,  and  without  having  struck  a  blow.' 


80       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Sir  John  Holland,  adds  Froissart,  '  was  much  hurt 
on  hearing  such  language,  for  the  honour  of  the  Duke 
whose  daughter  he  had  married,  and  he  determined  to 
speak  with  him  on  the  matter,  which,  from  his  situation, 
he  could  do  more  easily  than  any  one  else.' 

He  said  to  the  Duke  :  '  My  lord,  you  must  at  once  change 
your  plans,  for  your  army  is  all  sick.  If  an  assault  should 
now  be  made  upon  you,  you  could  not  meet  it,  for  your 
men  are  all  worn  down  and  discontented,  and  their  horses 
dead.  High  and  low  are  so  discouraged  that  you  must  not 
expect  any  service  from  them.'  '  What  can  I  do  ?  '  said  the 
Duke  feebly.  '  I  wish  to  have  advice.'  Thereupon  Holland 
advised  him  to  disband  his  army  and  let  the  men  go  where 
they  would,  and  go  himself  to  Portugal.  The  question 
then  rose  how  the  individuals  in  the  army  could  get  back  to 
England.  They  had  no  ships,  and  the  way  through  Spain 
and  France  was  beset  by  enemies.  There  was  nothing  for 
it  but  to  send  envoys  to  the  usurping  King  of  Castile,  and 
humbly  crave  that  he  would  allow  the  remnants  of  the 
English  host  to  pass  through  his  territories,  and  would  also 
obtain  permission  from  his  all}^  the  French  king,  that  they 
might  pass  through  his.  The  King  of  Castile  graciously 
consented,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  English  as  soon  and  as 
cheaply  as  possible.  Many  of  those  who  then  set  forth 
in  scattered  bands  died  on  the  way  ;  and  although  the  actual 
fighting  in  Spain  had  not  been  much,  not  half  of  the  1500 
men-at-arms  and  4000  archers, who  had  sailed  from  Plymouth 
in  such  gallant  array,  ever  saw  the  shores  of  Old  England 
again.  It  was  an  inglorious  end  to  an  ambitious  expedition. 
Holland  and  his  wife  were  the  last  to  leave  the  Duke,  who 
returned  for  a  while  to  San  lago,  where  he  had  to  endure 
the  merry  jests  of  French  pilgrims  on  his  discomfiture,  and 
then  went  to  Oporto,  and  finally  by  sea  to  Bayonne.  John 
Holland,  leading  a  troop  in  some  order,  visited  the  King  of 


SIR  JOHN  HOLLAND  IN  SPAIN  81 

Castile,  who  received  him  poHtely  and  gave  him  handsome 
mules  for  his  journey,  and  he  picked  up  some  English  who 
had  been  detained  by  sickness  in  Castilian  towns.  He  rode 
across  the  Black  Prince's  famous  battle-field  of  Najara, 
crossed  the  Pyrenees,  after  an  interview  with  the  King  of 
Navarre,  by  the  pass  of  Roncesvalles,  and  rode  on  to  Bayonne, 
where  he  and  his  Countess  remained  for  a  time.  He  was 
home  in  England  by  St.  George's  Day,  April  23, 1388,  because 
he  was  at  the  Garter  Banquet  at  Windsor.  The  Duke  of 
Lancaster  wrote  repeatedly  to  England  from  Bayonne  and 
Bordeaux  asking  for  a  new  army  with  which  to  renew  his 
Spanish  venture,  but  in  vain.  '  Those,'  says  Froissart, 
'  who  had  returned  from  Castile  gave  such  accounts  as 
discouraged  others  from  going  thither.  They  said,  "  The 
voyage  was  so  long,  a  war  with  France  would  be  much 
more  advantageous.  France  has  a  rich  country  and 
temperate  climate,  with  fine  rivers  ;  but  Castile  has  nothing 
but  rocks  and  high  mountains,  a  sharp  air,  muddy  rivers, 
bad  meat,  and  wines  so  hot  and  harsh  there  is  no  drinking 
them.  The  inhabitants  are  poor  and  filthy,  badly  clothed 
and  lodged,  and  quite  different  in  their  manners  to  us,  so 
that  it  would  be  folly  to  go  there.  When  you  enter  a  large 
city  or  town  you  expect  to  find  everything ;  but  you  will 
meet  with  nothing  but  wines,  lard,  and  empty  coffers.  It 
is  quite  the  contrary  in  France  ;  for  there  we  have  many 
times  found  in  the  cities  and  towns,  when  the  fortune  of 
war  delivered  them  into  our  hands,  such  wealth  and  riches 
as  astonished  us.  It  is  such  a  war  as  this  we  ought  to  attend 
to,  and  not  a  war  with  Castile  or  Portugal,  where  there  is 
nothing  but  poverty  and  loss  to  be  suffered.' 

Such  was  the  talk  of  the  returned  English,  and  no  doubt 
their  grumblings  still  further  diminished  the  fast  waning 
popularity  of  the  royal  house  with  which  John  Holland 
was  so  closely  connected.     None  paid  any  attention  now 


82  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

to  the  once  glorious  Duke  of  Lancaster,  at  Bordeaux,  and 
his  concerns.  Not  long  afterwards,  however,  the  quarrel 
about  the  Castilian  throne  was  amicably  compromised  by 
the  marriage  of  his  daughter,  the  Lady  Catherine,  to  the 
son  and  heir  of  the  King  of  Castile.  Thus  one  sister  of 
Elizabeth  Holland  had  become  reigning  Queen  of  Portugal 
and  the  other  Queen-to-be  of  Spain.  The  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster's expedition  had  failed,  had  cost  two  or  three  thousand 
English  lives,  and  had  caused  great  misery  to  people  in 
Galicia  and  Castile  ;  but,  then,  he  had  made  two  excellent 
matches  for  his  daughters. 


CHAPTER  V 

VICISSITUDES    OF    FORTUNE 

'  And  yet  time  hath  its  revolutions  ;  there  must  be  a  period  and  an  end  to  all 
things  temporal — finis  rerum — an  end  of  names  and  dignities,  and  why  not  of 
De  Vere  ?  For  where  is  Bohun  ?  Where  is  Mowbray  ?  Where  is  Mortimer  ? 
Nay,  which  is  more  and  most  of  all,  where  is  Plantagenet  ?  They  are  entombed 
in  the  urns  and  sepulchres  of  mortality.  And  yet  let  the  name  and  dignity  of  Do 
Vere  stand  so  long  as  it  pleaseth  God.' — Chief  Justice  Crew  in  the  Earldom  of 
Oxford  Judgment,  temp.  Charles  II. 

Sir  John  Holland  went  to  Spain  in  the  summer  of  1386, 
and  returned  home  before  the  end  of  April  1388.  Fierce 
political  storms  meanwhile  swept  over  England.  King 
Richard,  in  1385,  gave  the  dukedom  of  Gloucester  to  his 
uncle  Thomas,  and  that  of  York  to  his  uncle  Edmund.  He 
raised  Michael  de  la  Pole  to  be  Earl  of  Suffolk,  and  con- 
ferred upon  a  far  more  high-born  courtier,  Robert  De  Vere, 
the  offensively  high-sounding  title  of  Duke  of  Ireland,  much 
to  the  irritation  of  the  royal  dukes.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester 
reformed  the  opposition  party  against  the  new  favourites. 
Behind  him  were  great  lords  of  the  Norman  caste  :  Thomas 
de  Mowbray,  Earl  of  Nottingham,  Thomas  Beauchamp, 
Earl  of  Warwick,  and  Richard  Fitz-Alan,  Earl  of  Arundel, 
who  was  related  to  the  Hollands,  for  his  sister,  Alice,  had 
married  the  second  Earl  of  Kent.  These  proud  warrior 
nobles  were  backed  by  powerful  Churchmen ;  Courtenay, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  first  cousin  on  the  materna 
side  to  Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  William  of  Wykeham,  Bishop 
of  Winchester,  a  moderate  and  prudent  man,  and  Thomas 

83 


84  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Fitz-Alan,  brother  of  Lord  Arundel,  then  Bishop  of  Ely, 
and  later  Archbishop  of  York,  and  finally  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  one  of  the  most  ambitious  politicians  of 
his  time.  These  prelates  supported  Gloucester  and  his 
aristocratic  allies,  who  were  religious  conservatives,  while 
the  Court  party  were  deemed  to  be  tainted  by  the  doctrines 
of  the  Lollard  preachers,  men  of  Saxon  breed,  who  not  only 
were  violent  heretics  in  religion,  but  advocated  the  temporal 
spoliation  of  the  Church. 

Parliament  met  in  October  1386,  was  asked  to  vote 
supplies  for  a  French  expedition,  and  demanded  that  the 
King  should  first  dismiss  his  Chancellor  and  Treasurer. 
Richard  replied  that  he  would  not  dismiss  a  kitchen 
scullion  to  please  Parliament.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester 
and  Bishop  Arundel  told  him  that,  if  he  alienated  himself 
from  his  people  and  would  not  be  governed  by  the  laws  and 
by  the  advice  of  the  Lords,  the  said  Lords  might,  with  the 
assent  of  the  Commons,  lawfully  deprive  him  of  his  crown 
and  confer  it  upon  some  near  kinsman  of  the  royal  line. 
For  want  of  means  of  resistance,  Richard  gave  way,  and 
the  Earl  of  Suffolk  was  impeached  by  the  Commons  and 
sentenced  to  imprisonment.  Gloucester's  party  then  placed 
the  King,  who  was  now  twenty,  under  the  tutelage  of  certain 
Commissioners,  who  were  to  receive  all  the  revenues  of  the 
Crown  and  to  control  all  the  expenditure.  It  was  an  early 
attempt  at  the  system  of  Cabinet  government  which  was 
perfected  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  August  1387,  however,  Richard  obtained  from  the 
judges  a  unanimous  and  obviously  correct  opinion  that 
the  instrument  which  he  had  signed  under  force  and  con- 
straint, appointing  this  commission,  was  illegal.  Gloucester, 
Nottingham,  and  Arundel  marched  from  Essex  on  London 
at  the  head  of  40,000  men,  and  were  joined  at  Waltham 
Cross  by  that  discreet  and  time-observing  son  of  the  Duke 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  85 

of  Lancaster,  Henry  Bolingbroke,  Earl  of  Derby.  Gloucester 
and  his  friends  entered  London,  and,  in  the  Parliament  held 
early  in  1388,  known  by  those  whom  it  savagely  oppressed 
as  the  '  Merciless,'  and  by  its  admirers  as  the  'Wonderful,' 
appealed  of  treason  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Duke  of 
Ireland,  the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  the  Chief  Justice  Tressilian, 
Sir  Nicholas  Brember,  Mayor  of  London,  and  others.  The 
appellants  were  Gloucester,  Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  Arundel, 
Warwick,  and  Nottingham. 

The  Duke  of  Ireland  raised  some  troops  in  the  west,  but 
was  defeated  at  Radcote  Bridge  by  Gloucester  and  Henry 
of  Bolingbroke,  and  fled  beyond  the  seas,  only  to  die  at 
Louvain  in  Brabant,  gored  by  a  wild  boar.  The  Earl  of 
Suffolk  fled  to  France,  and  the  judges  who  had  given  the 
opinion  as  to  the  commission  were  sentenced  to  the  horrible 
doom  of  exile  for  life  in  Ireland.  The  Chief  Justice  and 
the  Mayor  of  London  and  five  other  leading  courtiers,  gentle- 
men of  distinction,  were  hung.  Sir  Simon  Burley,  K.G., 
falsely  accused  of  a  plot  to  deliver  Dover  Castle  to  the  French, 
was  beheaded  on  May  5,  1388.  This  gentleman  had  been 
a  kind  of  tutor  or  guardian  of  Richard  in  his  childhood. 
Froissart  says  of  him,  '  God  have  mercy  on  his  soul  !  To 
write  of  his  shameful  death  right  sore  displeaseth  me,  howbeit, 
I  must  needs  do  it  to  follow  the  history.  Greatly  I  complain 
of  his  death,  for,  when  I  was  young,  I  found  him  a  gentle 
knight,  sage  and  wise.'  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,  tried  hard 
to  save  Burley's  life,  and  quarrelled  with  his  uncle  of 
Gloucester  over  this  ;  for,  says  Holinshed,  the  Duke  '  being 
a  sore  and  right  severe  man,  might  not  by  any  means  be 
removed  from  his  opinion  and  purpose,  if  he  once  resolved 
on  any  matter.' 

By  these  evil  deeds  the  Court  party  was  crushed,  and, 
for  a  year,  Gloucester  reigned  supreme  in  his  nephew's 
kingdom.     In   May  1389,  however,  Richard   succeeded   in 


86  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

effecting  a  mild  counter-revolution.  He  dismissed  from 
his  Council  Gloucester  and  his  friends,  and  held  his  own 
for  some  years  with  the  support  of  a  middle  party.  Thomas 
Arundel,  now  Archbishop  of  York,  ceased  to  be  Chancellor, 
and  was  replaced  by  the  moderate  William  of  Wykeham. 
In  1391  Arundel  again  received  the  Great  Seal,  and  in  1396 
was  made  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

Affairs  were  nominally  managed  for  the  indolent  and 
pleasure -loving  King  by  his  uncle  the  Duke  of  York,  but 
the  real  manager  at  this  time  seems  to  have  been  the  astute 
Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  Earl  of  Derby,  who  made  himself 
very  popular  by  his  personal  charm  and  by  his  use  of 
power. 

The  Court's  headquarters  were  mainly  at  this  time  at 
the  royal  palace  at  Eltham,  near  London,  in  the  delightful 
county  of  Kent,  and  it  was  as  magnificent  as  those  times 
allowed.  The  King  was  young,  fond  of  luxury  and 
pageantry,  and,  as  John  Gower  testifies  in  verse  and  John 
Froissart  in  prose,  he  was,  like  Charles  I  and  other  unfortunate 
kings,  a  discerning  patron  of  art  and  literature. 

'  I  was  in  his  court,'  says  Sir  John  Froissart,  '  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  year  together,  and  he  made  me  good 
cheer  because  that  in  my  youth,  I  was  clerk  and  servant 
to  the  noble  King  Edward  III,  his  grandfather,  and  with 
my  lady  Philippa  of  Hainault,  Queen  of  England,  his  grand- 
mother, and  when  I  departed  from  him  it  was  at  Windsor, 
and  at  my  departing  the  King  sent  me  by  a  knight  of  his 
called  Sir  John  Golofer,  a  goblet  of  silver  and  gilt  weighing 
two  marks  of  silver,  and  within  it  a  hundred  nobles,  by  the 
which  I  am  as  yet  the  better  and  shall  be  as  long  as  I  live, 
wherefore  I  am  bound  to  pray  to  God  for  his  soul,  and  with 
much  sorrow  I  write  of  his  death.' 

The  greatest  poet  of  those  days,  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  also 
belonged  to  the  Court.     In  May  1398  he  was  employed  by 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  87 

the  King  on  urgent  and  secret  business  in  the  kingdom, 
and  in  October  1398  received  an  annual  grant  of  wine  from 
the  Port  of  London.  As  John  Holland  was  then  virtual 
First  Minister,  this  shows  that  he  must  have  liked  and  trusted 
the  poet.-"-  A  Court  of  which  Chaucer  and  well-experienced 
John  Froissart  approved — he  must  have  seen  and  heard 
much  there  of  the  Hollands — had  no  doubt  merits  and  charms. 
Holinshed  says  of  Richard,  '  He  kept  the  greatest  port  and 
maintained  the  most  plentiful  house  that  ever  any  King 
of  England  did  either  before  his  time  or  after.  For  there 
resorted  daily  to  his  Court  about  ten  thousand  persons. 
They  had  meat  and  drink  there  allowed  them.  In  his 
kitchen  there  were  three  hundred  servitors.  Of  ladies, 
chamberlains,  there  were  about  three  hundred  at  least. 
They  wore  gorgeous  and  costly  apparel.'  This  way  of  life 
was  distasteful  to  the  bourgeoisie,  who,  with  some  justice, 
thought  that  good  money  was  being  wasted,  though  the 
taxation  was  probably  the  lightest  in  Europe,  and  to  the 
rude  country  lords,  who  deemed  it  frenchified  and  effeminate. 
But  it  was  a  delightful  court  in  which  the  Hollands  lived, 
too  delightful  to  last  long  in  a  still  rough  and  feudal  England. 
It  was  the  most  refined  and  civilised  that  England  had 
until  the  charming  early  years  of  Charles  I,  for  that  of  the 
virgin  Elizabeth,  though  showy,  was  fundamentally  coarse 
and  parvenu. 

John  Holland  pursued  a  successful  career.  Immediately 
after  his  return,  at  request  of  the  Commons  in  Parliament, 
in  1388,  he  was  made  Earl  of  Huntingdon.  For  the  brother 
of  a  king,  he  arrived  late  at  a  peerage  ;  the  honour  had 
probably  been  deferred  by  the  Stafford  affair.     We  have 

^  Chaucer  on  the  occasion  of  his  secret  mission  received  a  letter  of  protection, 
which  he  asked  for  on  the  ground  that  he  was  afraid  of  being  molested  by  his  rivals  , 
and  enemies.     Besides  the  wine  he  had  a  grant  of  £20  a  year  from  Richard.     After 
Richard's  fall  Henry  IV  continued  these  allowances,  although  the  poet  had  accident- 
ally lost  the  letters  patent  which  conferred  them. 


88  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

an  account  of  this  creation  by  the   monastic   chronicler, 
Malvern.     He    says  : 

'  The  second  day  of  June,  the  King,  sitting  in  full  Parlia- 
ment, and  all  the  temporal  and  spiritual  lords  standing 
round  him,  the  Earl  of  Bolingbroke  and  the  Earl  of  Salisbury 
brought  my  lord  John  Holland,  brother  of  the  King, 
apparelled  as  an  Earl  into  Parliament,  and  Thomas  Hobell, 
Esquire,  carried  the  sword  of  the  said  Lord  John  Holland, 
and  the  King  took  the  sword,  and  touched  the  said  Lord 
John  Holland  and  named  him  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  and 
also  gave  him  two  thousand  marks  a  year  for  the  maintenance 
and  support  of  his  rank.' 

Also  he  received  manors  in  several  counties,  mainly  in 
Devon,  Somerset,  and  Cornwall,  and  he  obtained  the  forfeited 
house  which  had  belonged  to  the  Earl  of  Suffolk  in  Thames 
Street,  London,  and  bore  the  curious  name  of  '  The  New 
June,'  though  he  seems  to  have  usually  lodged  in  another 
house  in  the  same  locality  called  '  Cold  Harbour.'  He 
was  appointed  Admiral  of  the  King's  fleet  from  the  Thames 
westward,  and  Governor  of  Brest  in  Brittany,  the  land 
where  his  late  sister  Joan  had  been  Duchess.  He  maintained 
his  prowess  in  the  lists,  and  in  1390  went  to  a  famous 
tournament  in  France.  Three  French  gentlemen  had  under- 
taken to  hold  the  lists  for  thirty  days  round  about  Whit- 
suntide against  all  comers.  They  were  Huntingdon's  old 
antagonist  in  Spain,  Reginald  de  Roye,  the  young  Boucicault, 
and  the  seigneur  de  St.  Pye.  The  challengers  announced 
they  would  pitch  their  tents  close  to  Calais,  and  it  was  the 
opinion  of  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  Sir  John  Golofer, 
Sir  William  Clifton,  Sir  William  Clynton,  and  other  gentle- 
men whom  Froissart  names,  and  many  other  knights  and 
squires,  that  this  was  a  challenge  to  England,  and  that  they 
should  take  part  in  this  sport;  for,  said  they,  '  Surely  the 
knights  of  France  have  done  well,  and  like  good  companions. 


VICISSITUDES  OF   FORTUNE  89 

and  we  shall  not  fail  them  at  their  business.'  So  the  Earl 
of  Huntingdon,  with  over  sixty  knights  and  squires,  passed 
the  sea  and  lodged  at  Calais. 

It  was,  says  Froissart,  '  at  the  entering  in  of  the  jolly, 
fresh,  lively  month  of  May,'  that  the  three  young  French 
knights  came  from  Boulogne  to  the  Abbey  of  St.  Inglevert, 
and  in  a  fair  plain  between  that  place  and  Calais,  set  up 
three  light  green  pavilions,  and  at  the  entrance  to  each 
pavilion  each  knight  hung  up  two  shields  with  his  arms. 
On  May  21,  the  tournament  began  before  a  large  audience 
from  Calais  and  all  the  country  round,  with  all  the  sound 
and  bustle  and  colour  which  Chaucer  describes  in  his 
'  Knight's  Tale.'  The  rule  was,  that  each  visitor  could 
run  six  courses,  selecting  which  of  the  French  knights  he 
pleased,  for  each.  John  Froissart  no  doubt  was  there, 
for  it  was  near  his  country,  and  he  would  not  have 
missed  such  a  gathering  and  sight  for  all  the  world, 
and  he  describes  every  course  that  was  run  for  four  days 
with  the  utmost  minuteness.^  It  will  be  enough  here  to 
report  shortly  the  feats  of  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  who 
opened  the  proceedings.  John  Holland  was  now  a  man  of 
about  thirty-eight,  of  noble  appearance,  tall,  and  at  the 
maximum  of  his  physical  strength.  He  first  sent  his  squire 
to  touch  the  shield  of  Boucicault,  who,  ready  mounted  and 
armed,  rode  out  of  his  pavilion.  The  two  knights  regarded 
each  other,  drew  apart  for  a  space,  then  '  spurred  their 
horses  and  came  together  rudely.'  Boucicault  struck  the 
English  Earl  on  the  shield,  but  the  spear-head  glided  off 
and  did  no  harm,  and  so  they  passed  and  turned  and  rested 
at  their  distances  ;    '  this  course  was  greatly  praised.' 

^  Froissart's  wealth  of  detail,  equal  to  any  modern  reporter's  account  of  a 
prize  fight,  is  here  too  much  even  for  the  leisurely  Lord  Berners,  who  has  to  omit 
many  of  the  finer  points  in  his  translation.  The  eighteenth-century  translator 
Johnes  abbreviates  it  still  more.  Froissart,  regarded  as  a  historian,  has,  luckily 
for  us,  no  artistic  sense  of  proportion  relatively  to  supposed  importance  of  events. 


90       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

In  the  second  course  they  met  without  damage  to  either 
side,  and  in  the  third  their  horses  swerved,  and  they  failed 
to  meet.  '  The  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  who  had  great  desire 
to  joust  and  was  somewhat  chafed,  came  to  his  place  and 
awaited  Boucicault,  but  Boucicault  would  not  take  his 
spear,  and  showed  that  he  would  run  no  more  that  day 
against  the  Earl.'  Then  Huntingdon  sent  his  squire  to  touch 
the  shield  of  St.  Pye,  who  came  out  of  his  pavilion,  and 
'  when  the  Earl  saw  that  he  was  ready,  he  spurred  his  horse, 
and  St.  Pye  likewise ;  they  couched  their  spears,  but  at  the 
meeting  their  horses  crossed,  and  the  Earl  was  unhelmed. 
Then  he  returned  to  his  squires  and  '  was  rehelmed  and  took 
again  his  spear,'  and  St.  Pye  his,  and  then  they  ran  again 
and  '  met  each  other  with  their  spears  in  the  midst  of  their 
shields  '  so  that  each  of  them  was  nearly  carried  out  of  the 
saddle,  but  by  the  grip  of  their  legs  saved  themselves  and 
so  returned  and  took  breath.  '  Sir  John  Holland,  who  had 
great  desire  to  do  honourably,  took  again  his  spear  and  spurred 
his  horse,  and  when  the  Lord  of  St.  Pye  saw  him  coming,  he 
dashed  forth  his  horse  to  encounter  him  ;  each  struck  the 
other  on  the  helmet  so  that  the  fire  flashed  out,  in  which  the 
Lord  of  St.  Pye  was  unhelmed,  and  so  they  passed  forth  and 
came  to  their  own  places.  This  course  was  greatly  praised  ; 
and  both  French  and  English  said  that  those  three  lords, 
the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  Sir  Boucicault,  and  the  Lord  of 
St.  Pye,  had  done  well  their  devoirs,  without  any  damage  to 
each  other.  Again  the  Earl  desired,  for  love  of  his  lady, 
to  have  another  course,  but  he  was  refused  ;  then  he  went 
out  of  the  rank  to  give  place  to  others,  for  he  had  run  all  of 
his  six  courses  well  and  valiantly,  so  that  he  had  laud  and 
honour  of  all  parties.'  Huntingdon  had  not,  however, 
touched  the  shield  of  Reginald  de  Roye,  perhaps  he  was 
dissatisfied  with  that  device  of  an  unlaced  helmet  which  he 
had  experienced  in   Spain,   or  perhaps,   having  tested  de 


% 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  91 

Roye's  strength  before,  he  did  not  care,  so  near  to  Dover, 
to  risk  his  dignity  as  brother  to  the  King.  But  if  he  had 
been  allowed  his  request  for  one  extra  course  he  would, 
perhaps,  have  run  it  against  de  Roye.  In  the  rest  of  that 
day,  however,  and  on  the  three  following  days.  Sir  Reginald 
met  several  English  knights  and  had  decidedly  the  better 
of  most  of  them,  for,  says  Froissart,  '  he  was  one  of  the  best 
jousters  in  the  realm  of  France  ;  also  he  lived  in  amours 
with  a  young  lady  which  availed  him  in  all  his  business,' 
by  increasing  his  spirit  and  daring,  as  such  amours  ever  do. 
On  the  third  day  he  ran  no  less  than  five  courses  against 
Sir  John  Arundel,  who  was  '  young  and  fresh,  a  jolly  dancer 
and  singer,'  with  very  even  results,  lover  meeting  lover. 
This  Arundel  sounds  like  the  Young  Squire  in  Chaucer's 
*  Prologue ' : 

Singing  he  was,  or  fluting  all  the  day. 
He  was  as  fresh  as  is  the  month  of  May. 

On  the  fourth  day  Reginald  de  Roye  sent  a  Bohemian  knight 
of  the  Queen's  retinue  clean  off  his  horse  in  the  second  course, 
and  almost  left  him  for  dead.  Possibly  this  was  '  Sir  Nicies  ' 
who  was  concerned  in  the  affair  at  Beverley  five  years  earlier. 
'  The  Englishmen,'  says  Froissart,  '  were  not  displeased,' 
because  the  German  had  ridden  his  fkst  course  against 
Boucicault  unfairly,  which  had  caused  much  talk  and  com- 
motion. By  the  rules  of  the  game,  the  Bohemian  knight 
had  forfeited  his  horse  and  arms,  if  Boucicault  had  chosen 
to  press  his  right.  As  it  was,  he  was  adjudged  to  lose  his 
option  as  to  antagonist,  and  the  umpires  selected  for  his 
second  course  the  formidable  de  Roye,  and  after  this 
encounter,  for  good  cause,  the  unnerved  and  unpopular 
German  ran  no  more.  When  their  courses  had  all  been  run^- 
the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  the  other  Englishmen  took 
courteous  leave,   thanking  the   French  gentlemen  for  the 


92  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

noble  sport  they  had  given,  crossed  to  Dover,  and  rode  up 
to  London  by  the  old  Roman  highway,  not  forgetting  to  pay 
their  devoirs  at  St.  Thomas'  shrine  in  Canterbury.  Here, 
also,  John  Holland  must  have  looked  at  the  new  and 
beautiful  monument  and  effigy  of  his  step-father,  the  Black 
Prince,  to  the  right  of  the  shrine,  with  helmet,  sword, 
gauntlets,  and  surcoat  hung  above  it. 

In  radiant  May  weather  and  the  gay  air  of  Kent,  this 
gallant  company  rode  in  merry  groups,  between  fresh  green 
woods  and  pastures  dotted  with  sheep  and  white  with 
flowering  thorn,  meadows  golden  with  buttercups,  and 
through  old  villages  with  admiring  folk  at  doors  and 
windows,  while  the  levels  of  the  sea,  the  Medway,  and  the 
Thames  gleamed  to  their  right  all  the  fifty  miles  from  the 
top  of  Boughton  Hill  to  London.  The  three  French  knights 
stayed  on  the  fair  green  plain  by  St.  Inglevert  for  the  residue 
of  their  thirty  days'  challenge,  and  then  rode  over  the  chalk 
downs  to  Boulogne,  and  by  the  water  meadows  of  the  Somme 
through  Abbeville  and  Amiens,  and  so  leisurely  to  Paris, 
'  to  see  the  King  and  the  Duke  of  Touraine  and  other  lords 
that  were  at  Paris  at  that  time,  who  made  them  great  cheer, 
as  reason  required,  for  they  had  valiantly  borne  themselves 
whereby  they  achieved  great  honour  of  the  King  and  all 
the  realm  of  France.' 

This  same  year  Huntingdon  appeared  in  a  grand  tourna- 
ment held  at  Smithfield,  which  was  attended  by  gentlemen 
from  France,  Germany,  and  Flanders.  Anyone  who  had 
been  in  the  then  fashionable  East  End  of  London  on  the 
Sunday  after  Michaelmas,  might  have  seen,  about  3  p.m., 
issuing  out  of  the  Tower,  threescore  coursers  apparelled  for 
the  jousts,  and  on  each  a  squire  riding  at  a  soft  pace,  and 
next  threescore  ladies  mounted  sideways  on  fair  palfreys, 
and  richly  apparelled,  each  leading  by  a  silver  chain  a  knight 
ready   equipped   for   the   tournament.     '  Thus   they   came 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  93 

Tiding  along  the  streets  of  London  with  a  great  number 
of  trumpets  and  other  minstrels,  and  so  came  to  Smithfield, 
where  the  Queen  of  England  and  other  ladies  and  damsels 
were  ready  in  chambers  richly  adorned  to  see  the  jousts, 
and  the  King  was  with  the  Queen.'  Count  Waleran  de 
St.  Pol,  brother-in-law  of  the  Hollands,  on  the  first  day  won 
the  prize  for  the  visitors,  and  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  that 
for  the  English  challengers.  On  the  second  day  the  Count 
of  Ostrevant  won  for  the  visitors  and  Sir  Hugh  Spencer 
for  the  challengers.  Banquets  and  balls  were  given  by 
the  King,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  and  the  Bishop  of  London, 
and  at  the  end  of  this  festive  week  there  were  great  enter- 
tainments at  Windsor. 

Huntingdon  was  one  of  those  sent  in  1392  to  treat  of 
peace  at  Amiens,  and  in  1394  he  was  made  Lord  Great 
Chamberlain  of  England.  In  this  year  died  Queen 
Anne,  whose  good-humoured  plain  face  may  be  seen  on 
her  tomb  at  Westminster.  King  Richard,  says  Froissart, 
was  inconsolable,  but  soon  afterwards,  he  adds,  the  light- 
hearted  King  '  took  the  road  for  Wales,  and  hunted  all 
the  way  to  forget  the  loss  of  his  queen."  His  uncles  of 
York  and  Gloucester  were  with  him,  and  so  were  his  half- 
brothers  Kent  and  Huntingdon,  and  other  lords  in  great 
array. 

In  this  same  year,  1394,  Huntingdon  obtained  a  licence 
to  travel  abroad  for  two  years.  In  June  of  this  year,  the 
Pope  granted  a  plenary  indulgence  of  sins  to  John  Holland, 
Earl  of  Huntingdon,  going  with  some  persons  in  his  company 
to  fight  against  the  Turks  and  other  enemies  of  Christ. 
He  went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem  and  Saint  Catherine 
of  Mount  Sinai,  induced  by  love  of  travel,  and  thinking, 
possibly,  that  his  past  life  required  religious  expiation." 
According  to  Froissart,  he  passed  through  Paris  on  his 
way  out,  and  was  there  handsomely  received  by  the  French 


94       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

King,  and  heard  that  there  was  to  be  a  war  in  Hungary 
between  the  King  of  that  country  and  the  Turks  under 
Sultan  Bajazet,  to  which  many  French  knights  were  going, 
among  them  famous  Sir  Reginald  de  Roye,  his  old  anta- 
gonist in  Spain.  Holland  told  his  French  friends  that  he 
would  not  fail  to  be  there,  and  that  he  would  return  from 
Jerusalem  through  Hungary.  Whether  he  actually  did 
so,  there  is  no  record,  but  as  he  was  at  Eltham  Palace  in 
1395,  on  the  occasion  of  the  visit  of  Robert  the  Hermit 
to  King  Richard,  he  would  not  have  had  time  for  a 
campaign  in  Hungary.  A  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem  and 
Sinai  then  took  the  best  part  of  a  year  to  accomplish.^ 

When  English  and  French  gentlemen  were  not  engaged 
in  fighting  each  other,  they  frequently  went  on  such  crusades 
in  order  to  keep  their  hand  in,  and  to  make  up  accounts 
with  Heaven.  Chaucer's  knight,  a  contemporary  of  John 
Holland,  had  been,  says  his  creator,  in  Turkey,  Spain, 
Prussia,  Russia,  Lithuania,  fighting  against  various  infidels, 
whereas  his  son,  the  young  squire,  had  only  as  yet  been  in 
Flanders,  Artois,  and  Picardy,  like  many  of  our  young  squires 
in  the  days  of  George  V.  Thus  Henry  of  Derby  went  in 
1394,  with  a  thousand  English  knights  and  squires  and 
their  followers,  to  assist  the  noble  and  glorious  Order  of 
Teutonic  Knights  to  fight  against  the  stubborn  heathen 
of  Lithuania.  The  Hungarian  war  ended  in  complete 
victory  for  the  Sultan  Bajazet  at  Nicopolis,  and  most  of 
the  numerous  and  gallant  French  gentlemen  who  fought 
on  the   Christian  side  were  slain  or  captured. 

John  Holland  two  years  later  contemplated  an  Italian 
expedition.  In  1396  Boniface  IX,  the  Pope  whom  the 
English  supported,  wrote  to  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury 
and  York  concerning  '  the  purpose  of  John  Holland,  Earl 
of   Huntingdon,   the   King's   brother,   to   come   into   Italy 

1  Dates  even  make  it  doubtful  whether  Holland  went  to  Jerusalem  after  all. 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  95 

and  other  parts  for  the  extermination  of  heretics,  rebels, 
and  usurpers  of  cities  and  lands  of  the  Pope  and  the  Roman 
Church,'  as  the  Pope  had  learned  from  the  Earl's  letters 
and  messengers.  He  directed  the  Archbishops  to  give  to 
the  Earl  for  that  purpose,  a  grant  from  ecclesiastical  first- 
fruits  in  their  provinces.  This  crusade  was  directed  against 
adherents  of  the  anti-pope.  Penitents  who  joined  in  the 
expedition  were  to  have  the  '  usual  Holy  Land  indulgence 
and  remission  of  sins.'  Huntingdon  had  probably  been  in 
Rome  on  his  way  to  or  from  Palestine,  and  had  there 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  Pope.  In  March  1397, 
Pope  Boniface  appointed  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  to  be 
'  Gonfalonier  of  the  Holy  Roman  Church,'  and  Captain - 
General  of  all  men-at-arms  fighting  in  that  service. 
If  the  Earl  had  taken  up  this  appointment,  he  might 
have  had  some  fine  adventures,  and  might  also  have 
avoided  a  great  disaster,  as  he  said  himself  in  the  last 
hour  of  his  life.  Unhappily  his  attention  was  distracted 
by  home  politics. 

When  he  returned  from  his  Eastern  travels,  new  storms 
darkened  the  sky.  His  father-in-law,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster, 
had  violently  quarrelled  with  his  younger  brother,  the  Duke 
of  Gloucester,  Lancaster,  after  the  death  of  his  second 
wife.  King  Pedro's  daughter,  married  Katherine  Swynford,  his 
former  mistress  and  mother  by  him  of  the  Beauforts.  The 
Duke  of  York  cared  little,  but  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of 
Gloucester  were  furious,  and  the  Duchess  Eleanor,  who 
came  of  the  proud  race  of  Bohun,  refused  to  give  to  her 
new  sister-in-law  the  social  precedence  to  which  Katherine 
was  now  entitled  as  legitimate  wife  of  an  elder  brother. 
The  Countess  of  Derby,  another  de  Bohun,  and  the  Countess 
of  Arundel,  very  great  ladies  both  by  birth  and  marriage, 
were  also  indignant.  Then,  the  unpopularity  of  the  King 
was  increasing,  and  his  quarrel  with  his  uncle  of  Gloucester 
threatened  to  burst  into  new  flame. 


96       THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

The  great  question  of  the  day  was  that  of  peace  or  war 
with  France.  King  Richard  loved  peace  and  hated  war  ; 
all  his  earliest  memories  were  of  France  ;  in  tastes  and 
character  he  was  more  French  than  English.  His  tastes 
were  artistic,  not  warlike.  Little  cared  he  that  almost 
all  the  Edwardian  conquests  had  been  lost.  His  uncle, 
John  of  Lancaster,  also  desired  peace,  because,  according 
to  Froissart,  he  thought  that  continued  war  would  lead 
to  French  invasions  of  the  domains  of  his  son-in-law,  the 
King  of  Castile.  The  amiable  Duke  of  York  was  also  pacific. 
He  preferred  sport  to  war.  But  Thomas,  Duke  of  Gloucester, 
was  entirely  set  upon  war  and  re -conquest,  and  he  headed 
a  formidable  party.     Froissart  says  : 

'  Many  thought  that  the  Commonalty  of  England  were 
more  inclined  to  war  than  peace,  for  in  the  time  of  the  good 
King  Edward  and  his  son,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  they  had 
so  many  victories  over  the  French,  and  so  great  conquests 
and  so  much  money  from  ransoms,  and  payments  by  towns 
and  countries,  that  they  were  become  marvellously  rich, 
and  many,  Avho  were  no  gentlemen  by  birth,  by  their  daring 
and  valiant  adventures,  won  so  much  gold  and  silver  that 
they  became  noble,  and  rose  to  great  honour,  and  so  such 
as  followed  after  would  fain  follow  the  same  life.  .  .   . 

'  The  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  divers  other  lords,  knights, 
and  squires  were  of  the  same  opinion  as  the  Commons, 
and  desired  war  rather  than  peace  to  sustain  their  estates. 
The  King  and  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  would  fain  have  had 
peace  ;  howbeit,  they  would  not  displease  the  Commons 
of  England.' 

Young  men  with  fortunes  to  make,  and  older  men  with 
fortunes  to  mend,  and  they  who  loved  war  for  its  own  sake, 
and  the  mercantile  class  who  wished  to  see  French  gold 
and  silver  once  more  roll  into  England  and  send  up  prices, 
were  all  for  the  Duke  of  Gloucester.     In  the  long  war,  the 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  97 

English  had  plunder  and  glory,  the  French  defeat,  misery, 
and  spoliation.  Richard  II,  by  wishing  to  make  peace 
with  France,  came  against  the  presentiment  of  a  young 
and  vigorous  nation  instinctively  conscious  that  its  eventual 
mission  was  to  annex  and  rule  a  large  portion  of  this  planet. 
James  II  was  dethroned  long  after  not,  perhaps,  more 
because  he  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  than  because  he  wished 
to  keep  peace  with  France,  now  our  friend,  but  then  our 
great  rival.  Men  in  the  eighteenth  century  sympathised 
with  this  view.  Guthrie  in  his  Historj'^  published  in  1747 
says  of  the  reign  of  Edward  IV  :  '  The  generous  wines  of 
France  and  Italy  flowed  round  the  English  board  and  drowned 
every  sentiment  of  that  public  jealousy  of  France,  which 
ought  to  be  the  ruling  passion  of  every  English  King.' 
Richard,  the  Hollands,  and  their  friends  were  the  more 
civilised  people,  but  Gloucester  was  on  the  line  of  the 
future,  for  the  main  line  of  English  history  is  the  pursuit 
of  dominion. 

The  English  used  to  say  that  '  so  long  as  we  hold  Calais, 
we  have  the  key  of  France  under  our  girdle.'  Precisely 
because  the  French  wished  to  recover  Calais,  the  negotiations 
broke  down,  and  those  held  in  May  1393  at  Leulinghen  in 
Flanders  between  the  royal  Dukes  of  Lancaster,  Gloucester, 
Burgundy,  and  Berri,  also  failed  to  arrange  more  than  a 
four  years'  truce.  The  French  complained  that  Gloucester 
was  so  mysterious  that  it  was  impossible  to  understand 
what  he  really  intended  or  wanted. 

At  this  time  appeared  '  Robert  the  Hermit,'  originally 
a  squire  of  Normandy,  and  by  surname  le  Menuot,  about 
fifty  years  old,  who,  on  his  return  from  Palestine,  had 
seen  at  sea  a  vision  commanding  him  to  exhort  the 
French  and  English  kings  to  make  peace,  and  to  denounce 
Heaven's  judgment  upon  those  who  continued  to  make 
war.     He  was  well  received  by  the  French  King,  but  the 


98  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLAND 

English  war  party  said  that  his  vision  was  a  trick  of  the 
French,  whom  they  always  accused  of  duplicity  and  sublety. 
Robert  the  Hermit  was  sent  on  to  England  by  the  French 
King,  with  the  Count  of  St.  Pol,  in  1395,  and  had  an  audience 
at  Eltham  of  King  Richard,  with  whom  were  the  Duke  of 
Lancaster  and  the  Earls  of  Huntingdon  and  Salisbury. 
The  King  sent  Robert  on  to  Essex  to  preach  peace  to  his 
stubborn  uncle  of  Gloucester,  who  had  prevented  its  con- 
clusion at  Amiens  and  Leulinghen.  The  Hermit,  by  his 
own  invitation,  stayed  for  two  days  with  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  at  Pleshy  Castle.  The  Duke  condescended  to 
explain  to  him  at  length  the  reasons  for  war  against  the 
perfidious  French,  who  had,  he  said,  failed  to  observe  the 
conditions  of  the  peace  made  at  Bretigny  in  1360.  The 
Hermit,  in  reply,  reminded  the  Duke  of  the  Crucified,  said 
that  the  duty  of  Christians  was  to  forgive  offences,  and  told 
the  Duke  that  those  who  opposed  peace  would  dearly  answer 
for  it  in  this  life  or  in  the  next. 

'  How  know  you  that  ?  '  asked  the  surly  Duke. 

'  Sir,'  replied  the  Hermit,  '  all  that  I  say  cometh  by  divine 
inspiration,  by  a  vision  that  came  to  me  as  I  returned  from 
Syria  upon  the  sea  near  the  island  of  Rhodes.' 

Afterwards,  King  Richard  made  Robert  the  Hermit 
'  good  cheer  at  Windsor,  for  love  that  the  French  King  had 
sent  him,  and  because  he  was  wise  and  eloquent,  and  of 
sweet  words  and  honest.'  At  his  departing  he  gave  him 
great  gifts,  and  so  did  the  Dukes  of  Lancaster  and  York 
and  the  Earls  of  Huntingdon  and  Salisbury.  It  is  to  the 
credit  of  John  Holland  that  he  was  kind  to  good  Robert 
the  Hermit.  Both  of  the  Hermit's  hosts,  the  Duke  who 
desired  war,  and  the  King  who  desired  peace,  came  to 
violent  ends,  so  that  the  ways  of  Heaven,  as  ever,  remain 
mysterious. 

The  political  quarrel  was  brought  to  a  head  by  Richard's 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  99 

second  marriage,  in  October  1396,  with  Isabelle,  daughter 
of  King  Charles  of  France,  a  child  only  eight  years  old,  and 
by  the  more  permanent  treaty  with  France  which  accom^ 
panied  it.  The  Earls  of  Nottingham  and  Rutland  went 
to  Paris  in  the  spring  of  1396  to  inspect  the  little  Princess 
and  discuss  the  matter  with  the  French  Court.  On  their 
return  they  rode  so  fast  to  give  news  to  the  impatient  Richard 
that  they  came  from  Sandwich  to  Windsor  in  a  day  and  a 
half.  Then  the  French  King  sent  over  the  Count  of  St., 
Pol,  whose  wife  was  Huntingdon's  lovely  sister,  Maud 
Holland,  to  treat  secretly  of  the  marriage  and  peace.  St. 
Pol  found  the  King  in  his  palace  on  Eltham's  pleasant  hill, 
and  with  him  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  and  the  Earls 
of  Kent  and  Huntingdon.  It  was  an  inner  family  circle. 
Richard  told  St.  Pol  that  he,  himself,  was  all  for  peace 
with  France,  but  could  not  act  alone,  that  his  brothers, 
the  Hollands,  and  his  uncles  of  Lancaster  and  York,  were 
also  inclined  thereto  ;  '  but,'  he  added,  '  I  have  another 
uncle,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  who  is  a  right  perilous  and 
marvellous  man.'  He  said  that  Gloucester  was  so  secretive 
that  no  one  could  tell  what  he  intended,  but  that  he  had  with 
him  the  Londoners  and  many  lords  and  knights,  and  that, 
in  order  to  prevent  peace  with  France,  he  would  probably 
raise  a  rebellion,  and  in  that  event  he,  Richard,  would  lose 
his  realm.  St.  Pol  replied,  '  Sir,  if  you  suffer  this,  they  will 
destroy  you.  It  is  said  in  France  that  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 
intends  nothing  but  to  prevent  peace  and  renew  the  war 
again,  and  that,  little  by  little,  he  draws  the  hearts  of  the 
young  men  to  his  side,  for  they  desire  war  rather  than  peace, 
so  that  the  ancient  wise  men,  if  war  begins  to  stir,  would 
not  be  heard  or  believed;  therefore,  sir, provide  rather  betimes 
than  too  late  ;  it  were  better  you  had  them  in  danger  than 
they  you.'  St.  Pol  advised  the  King  to  keep  Gloucester 
soothed  by  fair  words  and  gifts  until  the  marriage  was 


100  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

completed,  and  thereupon  the  French  King  would  aid 
him  to  suppress  any  rebellion.  The  Earl  of  Huntingdon 
said,  '  Sir,  my  fair  brother  of  St.  Pol  hath  showed  you 
the  truth,  therefore  take  good  advice  in  this  matter.' 
Richard  said  to  St.  Pol,  '  In  God's  name,  you  say  well,  and 
so  will  I  do.' 

It  was  arranged  that  the  Kings  of  France  and  England 
should  confer  at  St,  Omer,  and  Richard  and  his  retinue 
soon  travelled  down  the  famous  old  road  to  Dover  and  across 
the  Channel.  Terms  of  peace  were  discussed,  but  Richard 
cared  little  what  they  might  be,  so  that  he  might  have  his 
little  Princess.  He  showed  much  more  interest,  it  was 
noticed,  in  the  arrangements  for  the  ritual  of  the  marriage 
than  in  the  terms  of  peace.  However,  he  had  to  return  to 
England  to  obtain  the  assent  of  Parliament  ;  but  was  soon 
back  at  Calais  for  the  marriage,  which  was  a  most  brilliant 
and  artistic  affair.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester  was  reluctantly 
there  by  the  King's  request,  but  he  was  rude  and  taciturn 
with  the  French.  Froissart  gives  an  account  of  the  marriage 
banquet,  at  which  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  a  '  merry  man,' 
made  jests  in  daring  French  style  which  diverted  the 
company.  One  of  the  guests  was  Mademoiselle  Jeanne  de 
St.  Pol,  then  about  fifteen,  the  daughter  of  Maud  Holland, 
Countess  de  St.  Pol,  and  half -niece  of  the  King.  The  French 
King  said  jestingly  that  he  wished  his  daughter  Isabelle 
were  the  age  of  our  fair  cousin  here,  for  then  she  would  be 
a  better  match  for  the  King  of  England.'  Isabelle  was, 
indeed,  much  too  young,  since  it  was  important  to  obtain 
a  direct  heir  to  the  throne  as  soon  as  possible. 

The  King  and  Queen  and  wedding  guests  returned  to 
Eltham,  receiving  great  entertainments  and  gifts  by  the  way, 
especially  from  the  Archbishop  and  city  of  Canterbury. 
The  Earl  of  Huntingdon  had  already  given  his  little  half- 
sister-in-law  a  'fermaillet'  (?)  set  with  a  great  diamond  in 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  lOl 

the  middle,  three  fine  rubies,  and  three  great  pearls,  said 
to  be  worth  18,000  francs,  and  at  Elthani  he  also  gave  her 
a  gold  chain  a  foot  and  a  half  long.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester 
also,  sulkily  and  reluctantly,  no  doubt,  gave  some  handsome 
jewellery.^ 

These  family  transactions  were  the  last  in  which  Thomas 
Holland,  second  Earl  of  Kent,  was  engaged.  He  died  in  the 
following  year,  1397,  on  April  25,  and  thus  escaped  the 
revolution  which  brought  about  the  temporary  fall  of  the 
Hollands.  He  was  buried  at  Bourne,  or  Brunne,  in  Lincoln- 
shire, a  small  priory  of  eleven  canons,  which  had  been 
founded  by  a  Lord  de  Wake  in  the  twelfth  century,  and 
which  he  had  himself  endowed  with  an  alien  priory.  The 
inquisition  made  after  his  death  shows  that  he  left  very 
large  landed  possessions  scattered  over  many  parts  of 
England,  more  especially  in  Yorkshire,  Lincolnshire,  Essex, 
and  Kent.  He  left  two  sons,  Thomas  and  Edmund,^  and 
six  daughters.  His  eldest  son,  Thomas,  who  now  became 
third  Earl  of  Kent  of  the  Holland  line,  was  a  gallant  and 
jDromising  youth. 

The  young  Earl  married  Joan  Stafford,  daughter  of  the 
Ralph  de  Stafford,  whom  his  uncle,  John  Holland,  had  slain 
in  1386.  This,  unless  it  was  a  pure  love  affair,  shows  that 
the  Stafford  feud  did  not  extend  so  strongly  to  the  Kent 
branch  of  the  Hollands. 

The  Duke  of  Gloucester  could  not  forgive  the  truce  and 
marriage  alliance  with  France.  He  was  a  rough  and  rude 
warrior,   thoroughly   despised   his   unwarlike   and   artistic, 

^  An  interesting  inventory  of  all  these  gifts  is  extant,  made  when  the  girl  was 
sent  back  to  France  after  the  death  of  Richard.  By  treaty  she  was  to  keep  all 
her  personal  possessions. 

*  The  second  Earl  of  Kent  had  also  t\\o  other  sons  who  died  young.  There  is 
extant  a  record  of  the  banquet  given  at  Oxford  when  one  of  them,  Richard  Holland, 
took  his  degree  or  something  of  that  kind  in  February  1395.  It  cost  £67,  a  great 
sum  in  those  days. 


102  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

and  pleasure-loving  and  frenchified  nephew,  and  firmly 
adhered  to  the  claim  of  his  house  to  the  throne  of  France. 
It  was  a  great  opportunity,  he  said,  to  invade  France  now 
that  so  many  of  the  flower  of  the  French  nobility  had  perished 
in  the  war  of  1396  against  the  Turks,  and  he  undertook  to 
raise  6000  men-at-arms  and  100,000  archers  in  England  for 
that  purpose.  He  thought  war  with  France  the  true  policy, 
because  plunder  of  so  wealthy  a  country  made  the  English 
rich,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  peace  made  them  indolent 
and  enervated.  Money  raised  by  taxes,  he  said,  instead  of 
being  used  for  war  with  France,  which  brought  rich  returns, 
was  squandered  by  the  Court,  and  went  God  knows  where. 
The  King  talked  about  expeditions  to  subdue  Ireland,  but 
there  was  no  gain  in  that,  for  '  the  Irish  are  a  wicked  people 
with  a  poor  country,  and  he  who  should  conquer  it  one  year 
would  lose  it  the  next.'  '  Lackingay,  Lackingay,'  the  Duke 
said  to  his  confidential  retainer,  '  all  you  have  just  heard  me 
say,  know  to  be  the  truth.' 

When  Richard  II,  in  the  summer  of  1397,  gave  up  Brest 
to  its  rightful  owner  (and  his  own  brother-in-law),  the  Duke 
of  Brittany,  who  came  to  England  that  July,  for  120,000 
francs  in  gold,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  said  to  him  before 
others,  '  Your  Grace  ought  to  put  3^our  body  in  great  pain 
to  win  a  stronghold  or  town  by  feat  of  arms  before  you  take 
upon  you  to  sell  and  deliver  a  town  gotten  by  the  man- 
hood and  strong  hand  and  policy  of  your  noble  ancestors.' 
Richard,  who  was  usually,  says  Froissart,  '  humble  and  meek 
towards  the  Duke,'  said  sharply,  '  What  is  that  you  say, 
uncle  ?  '  Gloucester  repeated  his  words,  and  Richard  said 
passionately,  '  Think  you  that  I  am  a  fool  or  a  merchant 
to  sell  my  land  ?  No,  by  St.  John  the  Baptist,  no  !  But 
my  cousin,  the  Duke  of  Brittany,  having  paid  the  sums 
for  which  the  town  and  haven  of  Brest  were  engaged  to 
me,  reason  and    good  conscience    required   that  I  should 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  103 

restore  it.'  ^  Richard's  displeasure  was  increased  by  the  rude 
manners  of  this  uncle,  who  appeared  at  Court  when  he  was  not 
invited,  and  did  not  attend  when  he  was  summoned,  and 
showed  his  contempt  in  every  possible  way.  The  King 
heard  that  Gloucester  talked  of  putting  the  crown  once 
more  in  commission  by  force,  and  had  said  that  the  Earls 
of  Arundel  and  Warwick  and  many  barons  and  prelates 
were  ready  to  uphold  him  in  this  enterprise.  The  Duke  of 
Gloucester  was  undoubtedly  stirring  up  the  Londoners  on 
the  subject  of  Customs  duties,  and  wasteful  expenditure 
of  the  receipts  on  idle  feasts  and  dances.  They  sent  a 
deputation  to  Eltham  with  a  petition  on  this  subject. 

At  this  time  the  Dukes  of  Lancaster  and  York,  well 
aware  of  the  storm  rising  in  London  and  elsewhere,  thought 
well  to  dissemble  their  opposition  to  their  imperious  younger 
brother  of  Gloucester,  and  came  seldom  to  Court,  so  that 
Richard  was  left  almost  alone  with  the  Hollands  and  their 
close  allies.  Froissart  says  that  '  there  were  none  of  the 
King's  servants  but  feared  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and 
would  gladly  that  he  had  been  dead,  they  cared  not  how.' 
When  the  Duke  did  come  to  the  Court,  he  regarded  these 
elegant  young  men  with  fierce,  contemptuous,  and  menacing 
looks.  Sir  Thomas  Percy  resigned  his  post  as  seneschal 
because  he  thought  it  dangerous  to  hold  office  about  the 
King,  and  others  told  Richard  that  it  was  a  perilous  thing 
to  serve  him,  and  that  they  were  running  the  risk  of  being 
put  to  death  by  Gloucester  like  Sir  Simon  Burley  and  others 
nine   years   earlier.     John   Holland,    Earl   of   Huntingdon, 

^  The  Duke's  remark  was  provoked  by  seeing  soldiers  of  the  Brest  garrison  back 
in  England  with  no  wages  and  out  of  work.  Brest  had  been  granted  by  the  Duke 
of  Brittany  to  the  King  of  England  in  1378,  to  hold  against  the  French,  the  Duke 
receiving  £1000  and  the  rents  from  some  crown  manors  in  Wiltshire.  The 
castle  was  to  be  given  back  to  the  Duke  or  his  heirs  after  the  war  was  ended  unless^ 
the  Duke  died  heirless.  Thus  it  was  hardly  a  case  of  paying  off  a  mortgage,  but 
neither  was  it  the  case  of  the  sale  of  something  which  belonged  absolutely  to  the 
English  Crown.     The  documents  in  Rymer's  Fcedera  show  how  the  matter  stood. 


104  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

leader  of  the  King's  party,  shared  these  alarms  and  took 
advantage  of  them.  He  knew  that  Gloucester's  most  in- 
timate adviser  was  a  certain  gentleman  (probably  the  above- 
named  Lackingay)  who  had  formerly  been  in  the  household 
of  the  Earl  of  Stafford,  and  directly  attached  to  the  young 
Ralph  Stafford  whom  he  had  slain  in  that  encounter  in  the 
dark  lane  near  Beverley.  He  knew  also  that  he  had  never 
been  forgiven  that  offence  by  the  great  ring  of  Norman 
families.  Richard  now  heard  of  an  elaborate  plot.  The 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  it  was  said,  had  arranged  a  meeting  at 
Arundel  Castle  between  himself  and  the  Earls  of  Arundel 
and  Warwick,  Arundel's  brother,  Fitz-Alan,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  the  Abbot  of  St.  Albans,  the  Prior  of  West- 
minster, and  others.  They  did  meet  at  Arundel,  swore 
faith  to  each  other,  heard  mass  celebrated  by  the  Archbishop, 
and  resolved  to  take  and  imprison  the  King  and  the  Dukes 
of  Lancaster  and  York,  and  to  hang,  draw,  and  quarter  the 
other  lords  of  the  Council,  including,  no  doubt,  the  two 
Hollands.  This  was  to  be  done  in  August.  But  the  Earl 
of  Nottingham,  Earl  Marshal,  who  had  married  Arundel's 
daughter,  and,  in  the  affairs  of  1387-1388,  had  been  one 
leader  of  the  Gloucester  party,  revealed  their  whole  plot 
to  the  King.     Now  Huntingdon  decided  to  strike. 

Richard  was  at  Westminster  signing  documents  on  July  11. 
A  day  or  two  later  he  dined,  says  Holinshed,  '  at  the  house 
of  his  brother,  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  in  the  street  behind 
All  Hallows  Church,  upon  the  banks  of  the  River  Thames, 
which  was  a  right  fair  and  stately  house.'  This  thrilling 
dinner,  full  of  youth  and  fiery  emotion,  took  place  on 
July  12  or  13,  1397.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  the 
Earls  of  Arundel  and  Warwick  had  been  invited,  and  the 
intention  had  been  to  arrest  them  then  and  there.  But 
only  Warwick  had  come  to  London,  and  he  was  arrested 
that    day   at    the    Chancellor's    house    near    Temple    Bar. 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  105 

Gloucester  had  excused  himself  on  the  ground  of  health, 
and  Ai'undel  had  sent  no  excuse,  but  had  gone  to  his  castle  at 
Reigate.  So  the  leaders  of  the  Court  party  dined  without  these 
guests  at  Lord  Huntingdon's  that  morning.     Holinshed  says  : 

'  After  dinner  the  King  gave  his  Council  to  understand 
the  matter,  by  whose  advice  it  was  agreed  that  the  King 
should  assemble  forthwith  what  power  he  might  conveniently 
make  of  men  and  archers,  and  straightway  take  horse, 
accompanied  with  his  brother,  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  and 
the  Earl  Marshal.  Hereupon  at  six  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
just  the  hour  when  they  used  to  go  to  supper,  the  King 
mounted  on  horseback  and  rode  his  way,  whereof  the 
Londoners  had  great  marvel.' 

The  King  and  his  friends  probably  supped  and  had  a 
long  sleep  or  rest  at  Havering-atte -Bower,  a  royal  hunting 
lodge  in  the  wooded  country  of  which  Epping  and  Hainault 
forests  are  remains,  between  London  and  Fleshy,  about 
twenty  miles  from  the  latter.  Havering-atte -Bower  stands 
on  charmingly  undulated  rising  ground,  whence  is  a  wide 
prospect  south-east,  with  an  occasional  gleam  of  the  distant 
Thames  and  the  Kentish  hills  beyond.  Very  early  in  the 
July  morning,  they  rode  on  through  slumberous  Essex 
villages,  and  at  last  came  in  sight  of  the  great  Norman  tower 
built  high  upon  the  ancient,  perhaps  British,  mound  which 
still  exists  at  Fleshy.  A  wide  park  or  sporting  domain  was 
at  that  time  attached  to  the  castle.  The  King  then  bade 
Lord  Huntingdon  ride  on  fast  and  tell  the  Duke  that  the 
King  was  coming  to  speak  with  him.     Hohnshed  continues  : 

'  The  Earl  with  ten  persons  in  his  company  .  .  .  came 
to  the  house,  and  entering  into  the  court,  asked  if  the  Duke 
were  at  home,  and,  understanding  by  a  gentlewoman  who 
made  him  answer,  that  the  Duke  and  Duchess  were  yet  in 
bed,  he  besought  her  to  go  to  the  Duke  and  show  him  that 
the  King  was  coming  at  hand  to  speak  with  him  ;    and 


106  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

forthwith  came  the  King  with  a  competent  number  of  men- 
at-arms,  and  a  great  company  of  archers,  riding  into  the 
base  court,  his  trumpets  sounding  before  him.  The  Duke 
herewith  came  down  into  the  base  court,  where  the  King 
was,  having  no  other  apparel  upon  him  but  his  shirt  and 
a  cloak  or  mantle  cast  about  his  shoulders,  and  with  humble 
reverence  said  his  Grace  was  welcome,  asking  of  the  lords 
how  it  chanced  they  came  so  early  and  sent  him  no  word 
of  their  coming.  The  King  herewith  courteously  requested 
him  to  go  and  make  him  ready  and  appoint  his  horses  to 
be  saddled,  for  that  he  must  needs  ride  with  him  a  little  way 
and  confer  with  him  of  business.  The  Duke  went  up  again 
into  his  chamber  and  put  upon  him  his  clothes,  and  the 
King,  alighting  from  his  horse,  fell  in  talk  with  the  Duchess 
and  her  ladies.  The  Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  divers  others 
followed  the  Duke  into  the  hall,  and  there  stayed  for  him 
until  he  had  put  on  his  raiment.  And  within  a  little  they 
came  forth  again  all  together  into  the  base  court,  where  the 
King  was  delighting  with  the  Duchess  in  pleasant  talk, 
whom  he  willed  now  to  return  to  her  lodging  again,  for  he 
might  stay  no  longer,  and  so  took  his  horse  again,  and  the 
Duke  likewise.  But  shortly  after  that  the  King  and  all 
his  company  were  gone  forth  of  the  gate  of  the  base  court, 
he  commanded  the  Earl  Marshal  to  apprehend  the  Duke, 
which  incontinently  was  done.' 

Froissart  gives  a  somewhat  different  version  of  this 
incident.     He  says  : 

'  One  day  the  King  in  manner  as  going  a'hunting  rode 
from  Havering  atte  Bower,  twenty  miles  from  London,  in 
Essex,  and  within  twenty  miles  of  Pleshy,  where  the  Duke 
of  Gloucester  held  his  house.  After  dinner  the  King  departed 
from  Havering  with  a  small  company  and  came  to  Pleshy 
about  five  o'clock  ;  the  weather  was  fair  and  hot.^  So  the 
*  Froissart  may  have  heard  of  five  o'clock  and  have  mistaken  5  a.m.  for  5  p.m. 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  107 

King  came  suddenly  thither  about  the  time  that  the  Duke 
of  Gloucester  had  supped.  For  he  was  but  a  small  eater, 
nor  eat  never  long  at  dinner  nor  at  supper.  \Vlien  he  heard 
of  the  King's  coming,  he  went  to  meet  him  in  the  middle 
of  the  court,  and  so  did  the  Duchess  and  her  children,  and 
they  welcomed  the  King,  and  the  King  entered  the  hall, 
and  so  into  a  chamber.  Then  a  board  was  spread  for  the 
King's  supper.  The  King  sat  not  long  and  said  at  his  first 
coming,  "  Fair  uncle,  cause  five  or  six  horses  of  yours  to 
be  saddled,  for  I  will  pray  you  to  ride  with  me  to  London, 
as  to-morrow  the  Londoners  will  be  before  us.  And  there 
will  also  be  mine  uncles  of  Lancaster  and  York,  with  divers 
other  noblemen.  For  upon  the  Londoners'  requests  I  will 
be  ordered  according  to  your  counsel.  And  command  your 
steward  to  follow  you  with  your  train  to  London,  where 
they  shall  find  you."  The  Duke,  who  thought  no  evil,  lightly 
agreed  to  the  King.  And  when  the  King  had  supped 
and  risen,  everything  was  ready.  The  King  then  took 
leave  of  the  Duchess  and  her  children,  and  leapt  on  horse- 
back, and  the  Duke  with  him,  accompanied  by  only  seven 
servants,  three  squires,  and  four  yeomen.  So  they  rode  a 
great  pace,  and  the  King  talked  by  the  way  with  his  uncle 
and  he  with  him,  and  they  took  the  way  of  Bondeley  to 
avoid  Brentwood  and  the  London  common  highway,  and 
so  approached  to  Stratford  by  the  River  of  Thames.  When 
the  King  came  near  to  the  ambush  which  he  had  laid,  then 
he  rode  from  his  uncle  a  great  pace  and  left  him  somewhat 
behind  him.  Then  suddenly  the  Earl  Marshal  with  his 
band  came  galloping  after  the  Duke  and  overtook  him 
and  said,  "  Sir,  I  arrest  you  in  the  King's  name."  The 
Duke  saw  well  he  was  betrayed  and  began  to  call  after  the 
King.  I  cannot  tell  whether  the  King  heard  him  or  not, 
but  he  turned  not,  but  rode  forth  faster  than  he  did  before.' 
Froissart  says,  in  a  later  passage,  that  the  arrest  was 


108  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

effected  between  ten  and  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  A  ship 
was  lying  ready  in  the  neighbouring  Thames  ;  the  Duke 
was  placed  in  it  and  carried  off  to  Calais,  where  Nottingham 
was  Governor. 

Holinshed  was  a  careful  and  conscientious  historian, 
and  his  story  must  be  based  upon  some  written  contemporary 
record  which  he  considered  to  be  trustworthy.^  Otherwise, 
he  would  not  have  departed  from  the  story  in  Froissart's 
Chronicle,  which  was  before  him.  As  a  rule,  when  there  are 
two  versions,  Holinshed  gives  both.  On  the  other  hand, 
Froissart's  story  is  also  circumstantial,  and  he  was  living 
and  well  informed.  He  had  been  for  three  months  in  England 
at  Richard's  Court  only  three  years  earlier,  and  must  have 
had  correspondents  there  who  told  him,  though  perhaps 
with  some  misunderstanding,  how  things  happened.  The 
two  versions,  using  probabilities,  might  be  reconciled  in  the 
following  way. 

It  was  important,  from  the  view  of  Huntingdon  and 
his  friends,  that  the  descent  upon  Pleshy  should  be  so  effected 
that  no  one,  seeing  the  movements  of  the  King,  should  ride 
on  fast  ahead  and  warn  the  Duke.  Otherwise  the  Duke 
would  have  probably  left  the  castle  and  raised  the  country, 
and  there  would  have  been  that  fatal  business,  a  '  coup 
d'etat  manque,'  as  when  Charles  I  tried  to  arrest  the  five 
members.  It  was  all-important  that  the  arrests  of  Gloucester, 
Arundel,  and  Warwick  should  nearly  coincide.  It  is  there- 
fore natural  that,  as  Holinshed  says,  the  ride  to  Pleshy 
should  have  been  made  by  night.  But  they  had  not  to 
ride  from  6  p.m.  till  5  or  6  a.m.  to  cover  less  than  forty  miles, 
so  that,  as  Froissart  says,  they  did  probably  break  the 
journey  at  Havering-atte-Bower,  though  not  to  dine,  but^to 
sup  and  sleep  awhile.     This  also  had  the  advantage  that 

*  The  contemporary  Walsingham  merely  says  that  Gloucester  was  arrested 
by  force  at  Pleshy  and  sent  to  Calais. 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  109 

to  go  in  the  evening  to  a  royal  hunting  lodge  gave  a  good 
answer  to  awkward  questions,  since  there  was  the  appearance 
of  an  intention  to  hunt  next  day.  In  the  next  place,  it 
was  important  that  the  arrest  of  the  Duke  should  not  be 
known  by  the  public  before  he  was  safely  lodged  on  board 
ship  on  his  way  to  Calais,  because  Essex  and  London 
swarmed  with  his  adherents,  and  there  might  have  been 
an  attempt  at  rescue.  Probably,  therefore,  the  arrest 
was  made,  not  as  Holinshed  says,  just  outside  Pleshy  in 
the  morning,  but  as  Froissart  says,  late  that  night  at 
Stratford  near  the  river  and  the  waiting  ship.  The  party 
would  naturally  avoid  travelling  along  the  crowded  high 
road  and  in  broad  daylight.  Very  likely  they  were  back 
At  Havering  by  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  dined  and  supped 
there,  and  waited  till  dark,  with  careful  watch  of  the  Duke, 
who  must  have  known  by  then  that  he  was  virtually  a 
prisoner,  and  then  joined  the  high  road  at  Romford.  Havering 
is  about  two  miles  north  of  Romford,  and  some  twenty 
miles  from  Pleshy  by  the  lesser  roads.  It  is  not  clear  what 
place  Froissart  means  by  '  Bondeley,'  but  the  King's 
party  may  have  travelled  to  Havering  by  way  of  Ongar, 
avoiding,  as  he  says,  Brentwood  and  the  great  road. 

In  any  case,  it  is  clear  that  the  Duke  was  drawn  from 
his  Essex  stronghold  by  a  well-acted  lie  in  the  mouth  of 
the  King,  supported  by  visible  force,  and  was  arrested  by 
his  old  and  faithless  pohtical  follower,  the  Earl  of  Nottingham, 
the  unworthy  object,  as  *  banished  Norfolk,'  of  some  of  the 
most  beautiful  lines  of  Shakespeare. 

The  Earl  of  Arundel  was  arrested  on  the  evening  of 
July  16,  by  the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Rutland.  He  was  induced 
to  give  himself  up  by  a  promise  made  to  his  brother,  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  that  the  Earl  should  suffer 
no  bodily  harm,  at  least  so  it  is  said  by  a  dubious  authority. 
Warwick  had  been  already  arrested.     Thus  the  three  leaders 


110  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

of  the  opposition  were  safe  in  custody,  to  the  consternation 
of  their  rebel  party,  which  was  so  strong  in  and  around 
the  City  of  London.  It  was  not  known  who  else  of  those 
who  had  taken  part  in  Gloucester's  movement  ten  years 
earlier  might  not  be  arrested.  On  July  15,  a  Royal  Pro- 
clamation was  addressed  to  the  Sheriffs  of  London  and 
IVIiddlesex  to  allay  these  fears.     It  ran  : 

'  We  have  had  arrested  and  detained  in  safe  custody, 
Thomas,  Duke  of  Gloucester,  Richard,  Earl  of  Arundel,  and 
Thomas,  Earl  of  Warwick ;  on  account  of  the  very  many  ex- 
tortions, oppressions,  and  other  misdeeds  perpetrated  by  them 
against  Us  and  Our  People,  and  for  the  peace  and  security  of 
our  People.'  The  Sheriffs  were  directed  to  inform  their  counties 
that  the  arrests  had  been  made,  not  only  with  the  assent 
of  the  Earls  of  Rutland,  Kent,  and  Huntingdon,  the  Earl 
Marshal,  and  the  Earls  of  Somerset  and  Salisbury,  '  but  also 
with  the  assent  of  our  most  dear  uncles,  John,  Duke  of 
Acquitaine  and  Lancaster,  and  Edmund,  Duke  of  York, 
and  our  most  dear  cousin,  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,'  and  that 
no  one  who  had  been  implicated  in  the  rebellious  movements 
of  Gloucester,  Arundel,  and  Warwick  would,  if  they  remained 
quiet,  be  molested.  There  were,  however,  assemblings 
in  Sussex,  where  Arundel  was  a  great  landholder,  and  on 
July  28,  an  order  was  sent  to  the  Justices  of  the  Peace  in 
that  county  to  arrest  agitators. 

John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  was,  no  doubt,  the 
soul  of  all  these  vigorous  proceedings.  With  good  right, 
apart,  that  is,  from  Christian  morality,  he  struck  his  foes 
when  they  were  nearly,  but  not  quite,  ready  to  strike  him. 
Like  Stafford's  honest  archer  who  shot  his  favourite  squire, 
he  would  much  rather  they  died  than  he  should.  Mediaeval 
politics  in  their  ethics  resembled  modern  war.  Gloucester 
and  his  allies  would  certainly  have  given  no  more  quarter 
to  the  Hollands  than  the   Hollands  gave  to  them.     Nine 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  ill 

years  earlier,  these  fierce  partisans  enforced  the  unjust 
death  of  the  brave  and  virtuous  Sir  Simon  Burley,  who  was 
a  friend  of  Huntingdon's  mother,  had  been  made  a  Knight 
of  the  Garter  by  Edward  III,  had  served  the  Black  Prince 
in  war  and  peace,  and  had  been  a  tutor  to  Richard  in  his 
childhood.  Then  the  good  Queen  Anne,  daughter  of  the 
proudest  house  in  Europe,  an  Emperor's  sister,  was,  it  is 
said,  three  hours  with  Gloucester  entreating  mercy  for  her 
friend  in  vain,  and  Gloucester  told  King  Richard  that  '  if 
he  wished  to  be  king  this  must  be  done.'  Richard  II  con- 
sented to  the  death  of  Burley  for  the  same  reason  that 
Charles  I  deplorably  consented  to  that  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford, 
weakness  in  face  of  force.  No  doubt  this  Thomas,  Duke 
of  Gloucester,  was,  as  Polydore  Virgil  says,  '  vir  ferocissimus 
et  praecipitis  ingenii.'  He  deserved  well  to  expiate,  by 
his  own  death,  his  deliberate  and  cold-blooded  terrorist 
crime  in  causing  on  a  false  charge  the  death  of  Sir  Simon 
Burley,  his  fellow  Knight  of  the  Garter,  and  the  intimate 
and  trusted  friend  of  his  heroic  brother,  Edward,  Prince 
of  Wales. 

These  arrests  were  followed  by  a  gathering  of  the 
Royalists  at  Nottingham.  Here  were  appointed  certain 
Lords  Appellant  to  impeach  Gloucester,  Arundel,  and 
Warwick,  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  other 
Fitz-Alan.  The  Lords  Appellant  were  Rutland,  Hunting- 
don, Kent,  Somerset,  Salisbury,  Despenser,  and  Scrope. 

After  the  middle  of  August,  the  Court  was  at  Woodstock, 
near  Oxford.  Thence  on  the  17th,  the  King  directed  William 
Rickhill  to  go  to  Calais,  and  hear  what  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 
wished  to  say. 

It  was  now,  probably,  that  Gloucester's  doom  was  sealed. 
On  the  26th  a  circular  was  sent  to  Sheriffs  directing  that  the 
magnates,  knights,  and  other  gentlemen  of  each  county 
should  meet  the  King  at  Kingston-on-Thames  on  the  Monday 


112  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

after  the  Exaltation  of  the  Holy  Cross,  very  early  in  the 
morning,  '  sufficiently  armed,'  in  order  to  ride  with  him  to 
Westminster  to  open  Parliament. 

On  August  28  the  Court  was  at  Westminster.  By  a 
letter  that  day  the  King  informed  the  Sheriffs  that  the 
Duke  of  Lancaster  was  allowed  to  bring  up  for  the  meeting 
of  Parliament,  300  men-at-arms  and  600  archers,  the  Duke 
of  York  to  bring  100  men-at-arms  and  200  archers,  and  the 
Earl  of  Derby  to  bring  200  men-at-arms  rnd  400  archers. 
It  looks  as  though  these  royal  princes  were  apprehensive, 
and  had  made  terms  as  to  conditions  on  which  they  would 
attend  Parliament. 

Parliament  was  opened  on  September  17,  and  the  Bishop 
of  Exeter  began  by  a  speech  highly  extolling  the  pure 
monarchic  principle.  He  took  for  his  text  from  the  prophet 
Ezekiel  the  words,  '  Rex  unus  erit  omnibus,'  and  proved  con- 
clusively by  many  authorities  that  '  by  any  other  means 
than  one  sole  king  no  realm  could  be  well  governed.' 

The  Opposition  were  dismayed  and  thrown  out  by  the 
loss  of  their  leaders,  and  power  for  the  time  rested  with  the 
King,  his  lords  and  their  retainers,  and  his  force  of  paid 
Cheshire  archers.  Parliament  was  assembled  in  a  large 
wooden  shed  especially  built  for  the  purpose  in  Palace  Yard, 
open  at  both  ends  and  surrounded  by  the  Cheshire  men, 
who  sometimes  threateningly  drew  their  arrows  ready  to 
fly,  '  ad  pugnam  arcubus  tensis  sagittas  ad  aures  tendentes.' 
The  Commons,  as  they  have  usually  done  in  English  history, 
faithfully  carried  out  the  behests  of  those  who  held  real 
power.  Sir  John  Bushy,  a  courtier,  was  elected  Speaker. 
On  September  20  the  Commons  impeached  of  high  treason 
Thomas  Arundel,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  brother  of 
Richard,  Earl  of  Arundel.  The  charges  did  not  allege  treason- 
able conspiracy  at  the  present,  as  to  which  probably  no 
sufficient  evidence   could  be   obtained,   but  related  to  the 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  113 

transactions  of  1387  and  1388.  The  Archbishop  was  accused 
of  having  instigated,  aided  and  abetted  Gloucester,  Arundel, 
and  Warwick  in  their  violent  and  armed  usurpation  of  royal 
prerogative  in  1387,  their  creation  of  the  Commission  to 
which  the  King's  powers  had  been  transferred,  and  their 
execution  without  the  King's  real  consent,  of  Sir  Simon 
Burley  and  Sir  John  Barnes.  The  Archbishop  was  at  once 
convicted,  and,  by  the  King's  decision,  sentenced  to  banish- 
ment for  life  from  England.  By  subsequent  paj)al  decree, 
obtained  at  the  instance  of  the  English  Government,  he  was 
translated  from  Canterbury  to  the  remote  and  barbarous 
diocese  of  St.  Andrews  in  Scotland,  a  purely  derisory  appoint- 
ment, since,  at  that  time,  Scotland,  out  of  opposition  to  the 
English,  adhered  to  the  anti-pope. 

On  the  next  day,  September  21,  the  eight  lords  who 
formed  the  inner  Council — Rutland,  Kent,  Huntingdon, 
Salisbury,  Somerset,  Nottingham,  Despenser,  and  Scrope — • 
brought  their  appeal  of  treason,  on  the  same  heads,  against 
the  great  Richard,  Earl  of  Arundel,  Warenne,  and  Surrey. 
He  was  tried  by  a  commission  of  peers  presided  over  by 
the  Duke  of  Lancaster.  The  proceedings  had  the  speed 
of  a  court  martial.  Arundel  was  accused  of  those  pro- 
ceedings ten  years  earlier  for  which  he  had  received  a  formal 
pardon.  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,  gave  evidence  of  one 
treasonable  saying  of  his,  and  the  King  himself  deposed 
to  another.  Arundel  pleaded  his  general  and  particular 
pardon,  but  this  plea  was  overruled  on  the  ground  that 
the  King,  when  he  signed  it,  was  acting  under  armed  con- 
straint. Arundel's  defence  was  drowned  by  shouts  of 
'  Traitor,'  and  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  pronounced  sentence 
of  death.  Arrangements  for  his  execution  had  already 
been  made  on  Tower  Hill,  and  he  was  led  straight  from 
Westminster  Hall  through  London  to  the  scaffold.  Holin- 
shed  says  :   '  There  went  with  him  to  see  the  execution  done, 


114  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

six  great  lords,  of  whom  there  were  three  Earls — Nottingham, 
who  had  married  his  daughter,  Kent,  that  was  his  sister's 
son,  and  Huntingdon — being  mounted  on  great  horses,  with 
a  great  company  of  armed  men,  and  the  fierce  bands  of  the 
Cheshire  men  furnished  with  axes,  swords,  bows  and  arrows, 
marching  before  and  behind  him.^  When  he  should  depart  the 
palace,  he  desired  that  his  hands  might  be  loosed  to  dispose 
of  such  money  as  he  had  in  his  purse,  betwixt  that  place 
and  Charing  Cross.  This  was  permitted,  and  so  he  gave  such 
money  as  he  had  in  his  purse  with  his  own  hands,  but  his 
arms  were  still  bound  behind  him.  When  they  came  to 
Tower  Hill  the  noblemen  that  were  about  moved  him  right 
earnestly  to  acknowledge  his  treason  against  the  King. 
But  he  in  no  wise  would  do  so,  but  reiterated  that  he  was 
never  traitor  in  word  or  deed,  and  herewith,  perceiving 
the  Earls  of  Nottingham  and  Kent,  that  stood  by  with 
other  noblemen  busy  to  further  the  execution,  being  of 
kin  and  allied  to  him,  he  spake  to  them  and  said,  "  Truly 
it  would  have  beseemed  you  both  rather  to  have  been  absent 
than  here  at  this  business.  But  the  time  will  come  e'er 
it  be  long,  when  as  many  shall  marvel  at  your  misfortunes 
as  do  now  at  mine."  After  this,  forgiving  the  executioner, 
he  besought  him  not  to  torment  him  long,  but  to  strike 
off  his  head  at  one  blow,  and  feeling  the  edge  of  the  sword, 
whether  it  was  sharp  enough,  he  said,  "It  is  very  keen  ; 
do  that  thou  hast  to  do  quickly."  And  so  kneeling  down, 
the  executioner  struck  off  his  head  with  one  blow.' 

His  body  was  buried  together  with  his  head  in  the  Church 
of  the  Augustine  Friars  in  Bread  Street.  Thomas  of  Walsing- 
ham  says  that  Arundel  '  flinched  not  at  all,  neither  when 
he  underwent  the  sad  sentence  of  death,  nor  when  he  passed 

^  Walsingham  says  :  '  Praecessit  eum  et  sequebatur  satis  ferialis  turba  Cestrien- 
sium  armata  securibus,  gladiis,  arcubus  et  sagittis.'  Holinshed  closely  follows 
Walsingham  in  this  narrative. 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  115 

from  the  place  of  judgment  to  the  place  of  punishment,  nor 
when,  with  bowed  head,  he  offered  himself  to  the  stroke, 
but,  changing  not  the  colour  of  his  face,  he  no  more  grew 
pale  than  if  he  were  invited  to  a  banquet.'  It  was  a  death 
worthy  of  a  son  of  the  Normans  and  of  the  warrior  who, 
ten  years  earlier,  defeated  off  Kent  the  invading  fleets 
of  France  and  Flanders.  Of  all  the  processions  that  have 
passed  through  the  London  streets,  this  was  surely  one  of 
the  strangest.  Was  any  other  Englishman  ever  escorted 
to  his  death  by  his  nephew  and  his  son-in-law  ?  '  The 
words  of  dying  men  enforce  attention  like  deep  harmony.' 
Those  of  Arundel  must  have  sounded  then  and  afterwards 
in  the  minds  of  Huntingdon,  Kent,  and  Nottingham,  and 
his  prediction  was  fulfilled.  Kent  and  Huntingdon  came 
to  the  same  death,  and  Nottingham  died  in  exile. 

In  those  fierce  days  and  long  afterwards,  politics  was  a 
war-game  played  not  as  now  with  mere  salaries  and  dignities; 
but  with  the  lives  and  whole  fortunes  of  men  at  stake. 
Ten  years  earlier,  Arundel  had  caused  death  and  exile  to 
be  inflicted  upon  men  at  least  as  virtuous  as  himself.  But 
Arundel  was  on  the  popular  side,  and  among  the  people 
soon  arose  the  incredible  legend  that  the  light-hearted 
Richard  was  haunted  by  horrible  dreams  in  which  the  Earl 
of  Arundel  appeared  to  him  in  dreadful  and  menacing  aspect. 

On  September  21,  the  day  of  Arundel's  execution,  a  royal 
direction  was  given  to  the  Earl  Marshal,  Lord  Nottingham, 
to  bring  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  up  for  trial.  On  the  24th 
an  answer  was  received  from  Calais  that  the  Duke  had  died 
there  in  prison.  He  was  then  declared  by  Parliament 
to  be  a  traitor,  and  his  property  was  confiscated  to  the 
King.  All  men  believed  that,  as  was  afterwards  proved, 
Gloucester  had  been  secretly  strangled  or  smothered  in 
prison  to  avoid  the  spectacle  of  an  uncle  doomed  to  death 
and  publicly  executed  at  the  behest  of  a  royal  nephew. 


116  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

On  October  6  a  royal  order  was  sent  to  the  two  Arch- 
bishops that  they  should  direct  all  the  clergy  of  their  dioceses 
to  offer  up  public  prayers  for  the  repose  of  the  soul  of  Thomas, 
Duke  of  Gloucester, who — said  the  missive — had  been  appealed 
of  treason,  and,  before  he  died,  had  confessed  his  guilt. 
On  the  14th  a  direction  was  given  to  the  Earl  Marshal  as 
Governor  of  Calais,  to  deliver  the  dead  body  of  the  Duke 
to  the  King's  Clerk,  Richard  Maudeljoi,  to  be  brought 
home  and  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey.  But  on  October  31, 
the  King,  from  Westminster,  wrote  to  Eleanor,  Duchess 
of  Gloucester,  that  the  body  was  not  to  be  taken  to  the 
Abbey,  but  to  Bermondsey  Priory,  there  to  await  further 
orders.  Probably  demonstrations  were  feared.  Eventually 
it  was  taken  to  Pleshy,  and  there  interred  in  the  Collegiate 
Church  which  the  Duke  had  founded  in  1393.  Later,  in 
the  reign  of  Henry  IV,  the  coffin  was  removed  to  Westminster 
and  placed  in  a  low  floor  sepulchre  in  the  Chapel  of  Edward 
the  Confessor  between  the  shrine  and  the  tomb  of  Edward  III. 
A  richly  imaged  brass  which  covered  it  disappeared  so 
late  as  the  eighteenth  century.^ 

The  third  accused  magnate,  Thomas,  Earl  of  Warwick, 
was  tried  on  September  28.  He  was  not  put  to  death, 
but  his  estates  were  confiscated,  and  he  was  sentenced  to 
life  imprisonment  in  the  Isle  of  Man.  He  saved  his  life  by 
confessing  to  the  treasonable  intents  of  himself  and  his  allies. 

Richard,  Earl  of  Arundel,  by  his  will,  dated  December  5, 
1375,  founded  the  collegiate  church  at  Arundel,  which  his 
son  afterwards  built.  Among  other  bequ«ests  in  this  will, 
the  Earl  bequeathed  '  to  my  very  dear  sister  of  Hereford 
my  cup  with  hearts,  and  to  my  very  dear  sister  of  Kent  my 
cup  with  trefoils,  that  is  to  say,  if  they  be  kind  (naturelles) 

^  One  would  like  to  know  how  this  valuable  brass  disappeared.  It  was  still 
there  in  1707,  for  there  is  a  picture  of  it  in  Sandford's  Genealogical  History,  published 
in  that  year.     Who  robbed  the  Abbey  and  despoiled  the  dead  after  that  late  date  ? 


I 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  117 

and  such  as  they  ought  in  reason  in  aid  and  furtherance  of 
my  will,'  otherwise  they  may  have  'none  of  my  aforesaid 
bequest.'  It  looks  as  though  the  Earl  did  not  place  much 
confidence  in  either  very  dear  sister. 

Now  came  a  great  creation  of  titles  for  the  ruling  set. 
The  King  first  declared  that  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,  and 
Thomas  Mowbray,  Earl  of  Nottingham,  had  '  loyally  used 
themselves  towards  the  King  in  coming  (in  1388)  from  the 
Duke  of  Gloucester  and  the  Earl  of  Arundel  and  Warwick, 
traitorously  assembled,  in  defence  of  the  King.'  Then, 
*  On  Saturday  in  Michaelmas  week  the  King,  sitting  there, 
crowned  in  his  royal  majesty  and  holding  in  his  hand  the 
royal  sceptre,  created  his  cousin,  Henry  of  Lancaster  and 
Earl  of  Derby,  to  be  Duke  of  Hereford,  and  gave  to  him 
the  charter  of  his  creation,  which  was  read  in  open  Parlia- 
ment. And  thereupon  the  King  girded  the  Duke  with  a 
sword  and  set  over  his  head  a  cap  of  honour  and  dignity 
of  a  Duke  and  received  of  him  his  homage.'^  With  the 
same  ceremonial,  the  Earl  of  Rutland,  the  Duke  of  York's 
son,  was  made  Duke  of  Albermarle,  John  Holland,  Earl  of 
Huntingdon,  was  made  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  his  nephew, 
Thomas  Holland,  third  Earl  of  Kent,  was  made  Duke  of 
Surrey,  and  the  Earl  of  Nottingham  was  made  Duke  of 
Norfolk.^  John  Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  was  created 
Marquis  of  Dorset,  with  use  of  a  circlet  instead  of  a  cap. 
Lord  Despenser  was  made  Earl  of  Gloucester,  and  Lord 
Scrope,  Earl  of  Wiltshire.  The  estates  of  the  vanquished 
were  distributed  among  the  victors.  A  substantial  part  of 
the  Earl  of  Arundel's  wide  estates  was  granted  to  Thomas 
Holland,  the   new  Duke  of  Surrey,  who   also  got   Warwick 

^  Tower  records. 

^  According  to  a  contemporary  Latin  annalist,  the  people  {vulgares)  derisively 
called  the  new  Dukes  '  non  duces  sed  dukettos,'  '  not  dukes  but  dukelets.' — 
Annales  Rich.  ii.  p.  223.  Holinshed  says  that  these  creations  were  made  at  Christ- 
mas, at  Lichfield,  where  the  King  kept  the  feast,  but  he  seems  mistaken  in  this. 


118  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Castle,  with  a  special  grant  of  the  valuable  tapestry  there, 
representing  the  combat  of  Sir  Guy  with  the  Dragon.  Other 
portions  of  the  Arundel  and  Warwick  spoils  went  to  the  new 
Dukes  of  Exeter  and  Norfolk.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  ob- 
tained from  the  estates  of  his  late  father-in-law  Lewes 
town  and  castle.  To  John  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter, 
were  assigned  the  castle,  manor,  lordship,  and  town  of 
Arundel,  with  lands  in  Sussex  and  other  counties,  and  with 
all  the  goods,  vessels,  and  utensils  in  the  said  castle.^ 
He  also  obtained  Reigate  Castle.  The  Hollands  were  thus 
placed  on  a  far  finer  landed  basis  than  they  had  ever  had 
before.  The  Duke  of  Exeter  was  also  given  charge  of 
the  late  Earl  of  Arundel's  son  and  heir.  The  boy  after 
a  time  escaped  with  the  aid  of  one  William  Scott,  and  fled 
oversea  to  join  his  uncle,  the  exiled  and  deposed  Archbishop 
Fitz-Alan  of  Canterbury,  at  Utrecht  or  Cologne.  He  came 
back  to  England  two  years  later  with  that  prelate  and  Henry 
of  Bolingbroke  and  enjoyed  a  fearful  revenge  against  the 
destroyer  of  his  father. 

The  Earl  of  Kent  probably  chose  the  title  of  Surrey 
for  his  dukedom  because  he  had  received  a  large  part  of 
the  Arundel  estates  in  that  county  which  had  once  belonged 
to  the  lover  of  Isabel  de  Holland,  the  famous  John,  Earl 
de  Warenne  and  Surrey.  John  Holland,  no  doubt  chose 
the  title  of  Duke  of  Exeter  because  he  aimed  at  being 
a  magnate  of  the  south-west.  He  aheady  had  large 
estates  in  Devonshire,  Cornwall,  and  Sussex  by  grants 
from  the  Crown,  and  had  built  a  great  house  on  the  river 
Dart,  about  twenty  miles  from  Exeter.  When  created 
Duke,  he  was  also  made  Governor  of  Exeter  Castle. 
These  western  possessions,  with  a  short  interval  of  seques- 
tration, continued  in  the  hands  of  the  Hollands  till  the 
end  of  the  War  of  the  Roses. 

1  Pat.  21  Ric.  II,  p.  143. 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  119 

After  the  Michaelmas  proceedings  at  Westminster, 
Parhament  was  adjourned,  to  meet  again  at  Shrewsbury 
in  the  middle  of  February  1398,  on  the  day  after  the  feast  of 
St.  Hilary.  A  special  summons  to  attend  was  sent  to  the 
King's  Viceroy  in  Ireland,  Roger  de  Mortimer,  Earl  of  March, 
husband  of  Alianora  Holland  of  Kent,  and  heir-presumptive 
to  the  Crown,  who  was  so  soon  to  die  in  an  obscure  skirmish 
in  the  west.  Shrewsbury  was  a  well-chosen  place  of  meeting, 
for  there  Parliament  would  be  under  the  influence  of  the 
King's  wild  but  loyal  subjects  in  Cheshire,  Lancashire,  and 
Wales.  When  it  met,  one  or  two  measures  were  passed 
reversing  the  proceedings  or  declarations  of  the  '  Merciless 
Parliament '  of  1388.  Before  it  broke  up,  Parliament  voted 
a  subsidy  on  wool  to  the  Crown,  and  a  Commission  of  twelve 
peers  and  commoners,  including  the  two  Hollands,  was 
appointed  to  '  examine  and  answer  certain  petitions  to  the 
King  '  with  which  this  particular  Parliament  had  not  had 
time  to  deal,  and,  generally,  to  wind  up  incompleted  business. 
Some  historians  seem  to  have  vastly  exaggerated  the  con- 
stitutional or  unconstitutional  import  of  this  procedure. 

For  a  space  after  the  well-designed  and  efficient  stroke 
of  state  of  1397,  Richard  seemed  all-powerful. 

'  In  those  days,'  says  Froissart,  'there  was  none  so  great 
in  England  that  durst  speak  against  anything  the  King 
did.  He  had  a  Council  to  his  liking,  who  exhorted  him  to 
do  what  he  list ;  he  kept  in  his  wages  two  thousand  archers, 
who  watched  over  him  day  and  night.'  Froissart  also 
says  that  Richard  had  confidence  only  in  his  brother,  the 
Earl  of  Huntingdon — now  Duke  of  Exeter — ^and  the  Earls 
of  Rutland  and  Salisbury.  It  was  the  supreme  hour  of 
John  Holland,  chief  organiser  and  promoter  of  the  whole 
recent  well-managed  blow  against  the  leaders  of  the  high 
aristocratic  ring,  who  were  supported  by  the  London  middle 
class.     Now,  however,  took   place   an   event  pregnant  with 


120  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

the  downfall  of  the  new  regime,  the  famous  quarrel  between 
the  new  Dukes  of  Hereford  and  Norfolk. 

On  January  25,  1398,  Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  now  Duke 
of  Hereford,  '  humbly  kneeling  on  his  knees  before  the  King,* 
in  public  audience,  craved  and  received  pardon  for  his 
offences  of  1387  and  1388.  As  he  had  already,  at  Westminster, 
been  exonerated,  and  had  even  received  a  dukedom,  this 
ceremonial  was  an  unnecessary  as  well  as  a  dangerous 
humiliation  to  inflict  upon  a  proud  man  of  the  blood  royal, 
but  Richard  enjoyed  this  kind  of  rite,  which  John  Holland 
also  underwent  in  1386.  The  ceremony  probably  had 
to  do  with  the  Norfolk  affair.  In  the  Parliament  at  Shrews- 
bury Hereford  accused  Norfolk  of  having  said  to  him  as 
they  rode  together,  in  December  last  on  the  road  from 
Windsor  to  London,  that  the  King  indeed  used  fair  words, 
but  intended  to  destroy  or  exile  them  and  others  when  a 
favourable  opportunity  came.  Hereford  and  Norfolk,  who 
(as  Derby  and  Nottingham)  had  supported  the  Duke  of 
Gloucester  against  the  King  in  1387,  and  the  King  against 
Gloucester  in  1397,  had  certainly  every  reason  to  distrust 
both  Richard  and  each  other.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  denied 
the  allegation,  and  challenged  Hereford  to  ordeal  by  battle. 
The  King,  after  a  later  hearing  at  Windsor,  decreed  that 
this  sensational  encounter  should  take  place  on  Gosford 
Green,  in  the  very  centre  of  England,  near  Coventry,  on 
April  29,  1398. 

The  Duke  of  Albemarle,  says  Holinshed,  as  High  Con- 
stable, and  Thomas  Holland,  Duke  of  Surrey,  appointed 
to  act  as  Earl  Marshal,  since  the  actual  Earl  Marshal  was 
a  combatant,  '  entered  into  the  lists  with  a  great  company 
of  men  apparelled  in  silk,  embroidered  with  silver,  every 
man  having  a  tipped  staff  to  keep  the  field  in  order.  About 
the  hour  of  prime  the  Duke  of  Hereford  came  to  the  barriers 
of  the  lists  mounted  on  a  white  courser,  barded  with  green 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  121 

and  blue  velvet  embroidered  sumptuously  with  swans 
and  antelopes  of  goldsmith's  work,  armed  at  all  points. 
The  Constable  and  Marshal  came  to  the  barriers,  demanding 
who  he  was.  He  answered,  '  I  am  Henry  of  Lancaster, 
Duke  of  Hereford,  who  am  come  hither  to  do  mine  endeavour 
against  Thomas  Mowbray,  Duke  of  Norfolk,  as  a  traitor 
untrue  to  God,  the  King,  the  realm,  and  me.'  Then  he 
swore  upon  the  Gospels  that  his  cause  was  just,  made  the 
sign  of  the  cross  on  his  horse,  sheathed  his  naked  sword, 
drew  down  his  visor,  entered  the  lists,  descended  from  his 
horse,  sat  down  in  a  chair  of  green  velvet  at  one  end  of 
the  lists,  and  awaited  his  adversary.  '  Soon  after  him  entered 
the  King  in  great  triumph,  accompanied  with  all  the  peers 
of  the  realm,  and  in  his  company  was  the  Earl  of  St.  Pol, 
who  was  come  out  of  France  in  post  to  see  this  challenge 
performed,'  After  a  proclamation  for  the  maintenance 
of  order  during  the  combat,  a  herald  cried,  '  Behold  here 
Henry  of  Lancaster,  Duke  of  Hereford,  appellant,  who 
is  entered  into  the  lists  royal  to  do  his  devoir  against  Thomas 
Mowbray,  Duke  of  Norfolk,  defendant,  upon  pain  to  be 
found  false  and  recreant.' 

'  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  hovered  on  horseback  at  the  entry 
of  the  lists,  his  horse  being  barded  with  crimson  velvet, 
embroidered  richly  with  lions  of  silver  and  mulberry  trees, 
and  when  he  had  made  his  oath  before  the  Constable  and 
Marshal  that  his  quarrel  was  just  and  true,  he  entered  the 
field  manfully,  saying  aloud,  "  God  aid  him  that  hath  the 
right,"  and  sat  him  down  in  his  chair,  which  was  of  crimson 
velvet.' 

The  young  Duke  of  Surrey  measured  their  spears  to  see 
that  they  were  of  equal  length,  handed  one  himself  to  Hereford, 
and  sent  the  other  across  the  lists  by  a  knight  to  Norfolk. 
Then  the  herald  commanded  the  champions  to  mount  and 
prepare  for  battle,  and  their  chairs  were  removed. 


122  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Now  the  two  dukes  had  their  spears  in  rest  and  had  begun 
to  advance  to  the  encounter,  when  the  King,  who  sat  in  a  lofty 
seat,  threw  down  his  truncheon,  and  the  heralds  shouted  to 
arrest  the  fight.  The  two  dukes  sat  again  in  their  chairs  two 
mortal  hours  while  the  King  consulted  with  his  Council, 
and  then  Sir  John  Bushy  read  out  the  royal  decision,  which 
must  have  come  as  a  huge  disappointment  to  the  multitude 
which  had  assembled  to  see  so  fine  a  fight,  including,  according 
to  Holinshed,  ten  thousand  men-at-arms,  and  no  doubt  all 
the  fashion  and  beauty  of  the  wealthy  Midlands. 

Richard  pronounced  judgment  before  trial.  Norfolk 
was  to  go  into  exile  for  life,  Hereford  for  ten  years,  which 
the  King  afterwards  reduced  to  six.  This  policy  Richard 
adopted,  Froissart  says,  upon  the  advice  of  John  Holland, 
Duke  of  Exeter,  who  thought  that  in  this  way  the  King  would 
be  rid  of  two  powerful  and  dangerous  subjects,  and  that  the 
life  sentence  upon  Norfolk  would  please  the  people,  because 
Norfolk  was  unpopular,  while  the  sentence  upon  the  adored 
Bolingbroke  would  not  be  severe  enough  to  give  rise  to  much 
displeasure.  In  fact,  Bolingbroke's  admirers  said  that 
it  would  not  hurt  him  much  ;  he  could  well  amuse  himself 
abroad,  where  he  had  many  friends,  and  he  could  make  long 
visits  to  his  sisters,  the  Queens  of  Castile  and  Portugal. 

Froissart  remarks  that  the  news  of  the  proposed  combat 
between  the  Earl  of  Derby  and  the  Earl  Marshal,  '  made  a 
great  noise  in  foreign  parts  ;  for  it  was  to  be  for  life  or  death, 
and  before  the  King  and  the  great  barons  of  England.'  It 
was  spoken  of  variously.  Some  said,  '  Let  them  fight  it 
out !  These  English  knights  are  too  arrogant,  and  in  a  short 
time  will  cut  each  other's  throats.  They  are  the  most 
perverse  nation  under  the  sun,  and  their  island  is  inhabited 
by  the  proudest  people.'  But  others,  more  wise,  said, 
'  The  King  of  England  does  not  show  great  sense,  nor  is  he 
well  advised  when,  for  foolish  words  not  deserving  notice, 


TOMB  OF    JOHN    PLAXTAGKXET,  DUKE    OF    LANCASTER,  AND    HIS    WIFE 

IN  ST.  Paul's  cathedral,  destroyed  in  the  fire  of  1666 

Reproduced  from  Saiidford's  '  Geuealogical  History  of  the  Kings  of  England,'  1707 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  123 

he  permits  two  such  valiant  lords  of  his  kindi-ed  thus  to 
engage  in  mortal  combat.  He  ought  to  have  said,  when  he 
first  heard  the  charge,  '  You,  Earl  of  Derby,  and  you.  Earl 
Marshal,  are  my  near  relations.  I  command,  therefore,  that 
you  harbour  no  hatred  against  each  other,  but  live  like  friends 
and  cousins  that  you  are.  Should  your  stay  in  this  country 
become  tiresome,  travel  into  foreign  parts,  to  Hungary  or 
elsewhere,  to  seek  for  deeds  of  arms  and  adventure.' 

Hereford  after  the  sentence  looked  melancholy,  but 
seemed  to  accept  his  fortune  resignedly.  The  day  in  October 
1398  that  he  mounted  his  horse  to  ride  down  to  Dover, 
there  was  great  popular  demonstration  in  his  favour.  '  Forty 
thousand  men,'  says  Froissart,  '  were  in  the  streets  bitterly 
lamenting  his  departure,  and  the  leading  citizens  rode  with 
him  as  far  as  Dartford.'  '  A  wonder  it  was  to  see,'  says  Hohns- 
hed, '  what  number  of  people  ran  after  him  in  every  town  and 
street  where  he  came,  before  he  took  to  sea,  lamenting  and 
bewailing  his  departure,  as  who  should  say  that,  when  he 
departed,  the  only  shield,  defence,  and  comfort  of  the  Common- 
wealth was  gone.'  One  can  imagine  the  scenes  in  the  old 
streets  of  Rochester,  Canterbury,  and  Dover.  Henry  was 
v/ell  received  at  Paris  by  the  French  King  and  the  royal 
dukes.  He  was  a  widower,  and  dallied  with  the  thought  of 
marrying  the  fair  Marie,  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Berri, 
but  Richard  used  diplomatic  means  to  avert  this  alliance, 
sending  over  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  for  that  purpose.  The 
Duke  of  Exeter  was  now  appointed  Governor  of  Calais  in 
succession  to  the  banished  Norfolk,  and  the  rumour  at  once 
spread  that  this  was  a  preliminary  step  to  the  surrender  of 
Calais  to  the  French. 

During  the  winter  1398-9,  the  Court  was  mainly  at  West- 
minster. About  Christmas,  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster, ended  his  unsatisfactory  life  and  career.  He  was 
buried  with  his  first  wife  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  under  a 


124  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

great  monument  which  was  destroyed  in  the  fire  of  1666. 
Richard,  whose  extravagant  Court  always  needed  more 
means  of  support,  who  was  unwilUng  to  summon  a  Parha- 
ment  and  ask  for  a  subsidy,  and  who  had  already  exhausted 
the  patience  of  all  classes  of  his  subjects  by  various  feudal 
and  commercial  exactions,  now  took  possession  of  the  revenues 
of  the  vast  Lancaster  estates  on  the  ground  that  they  belonged 
to  the  Crown  so  long  as  the  exile  of  the  successor  to  them 
should  continue.  The  Duke  of  Exeter  must  have  advised 
this  fatal  step  against  his  brother-in-law,  and  he  received 
some  grants  from  the  revenues.  Froissart  remarks  that,  if^ 
after  the  death  of  the  old  Duke  of  Lancaster,  Richard  had  at 
once  recalled  Henry  from  exile,  placed  him  in  possession  of 
his  estates,  recognised  him  as  the  greatest  person  in  England 
after  himself,  and  had  promised  to  take  his  advice  in  all 
things,  he  would  have  done  well,  and  would  have  averted  his 
doom.  But  those  who  know  from  modern  experience  hoAV 
strong  is  the  passion  of  power  will  not  be  surprised  that  such 
was  not  the  advice  given  to  the  King  by  John  Holland, 
Duke  of  Exeter. 

Richard  fatuously  chose  to  leave  England  for  a  military 
expedition  into  Ireland  at  the  very  moment  when  he  had 
desperately  injured  and  offended  his  skilful,  powerful,  and 
exiled  cousin,  the  darling  of  the  Londoners  and  most  popular 
of  English  nobles.  Before  he  departed  he  enjoyed  the  last 
great  festivity  of  his  reign.  The  glorious  Banquet  of  the 
Knights  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter  at  Windsor  Castle  on 
the  day  of  St.  George,  April  23,  1399,  marks  the  culmination 
of  the  fortune  of  the  Lancastrian  Hollands.  It  was  Richard's 
custom  to  hold  this  festivity  every  year.  Ladies  were  hono- 
rary members,  and  appeared  in  robes  of  uniforni  colour  and 
pattern  supplied  by  the  royal  wardrobe,  and  were  called 
Ladies  of  the  Order.  The  Countesses  of  Kent  and  Derby 
were  new  companions  in  1388,  and,  in  1389,  the  third  Duchess 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  125 

of  Lancaster  (Katherine  Swynford)  and  the  Countess  of 
Huntingdon,  her  step-daughter. 

This  year  the  banquet  of  St.  George's  Day  was  celebrated 
with  great  splendour  and  noble  company.  The  knights 
present,  all  apparelled  in  robes  of  scarlet,  were  King  Richard, 
the  Dukes  of  York,  Bavaria,  Brittany,  Guelders,  Surrey. 
Exeter,  and  Albemarle,  the  Marquess  of  Dorset,  the  Earls 
of  Northumberland,  Salisbury,  Worcester,  Gloucester,  and 
Wiltshire,  the  Count  of  Ostravant,  Sirs  William  Beauchamp, 
Peter  Courtenay,  John  de  Bourchier,  William  Arundel, 
Simon  Felbrigge,  and  Henry  Percy.  The  ladies  were  Queen 
Isabel  of  England,  a  child  of  twelve.  Queen  Philippa  of 
Portugal,  Henry  Bolingbroke's  sister,  the  Duchess  of  Guelders, 
and  those  of  York,  Ireland,  and  Exeter  ;  the  Marchioness  of 
Dorset,  and  Alice,  Dowager  Countess  of  Kent,  the  perilous 
Constance,  Lady  Despenser,  who  was  Albemarle's  sister,  the 
Countesses  of  Oxford,  Salisbury,  Westmoreland,  and  Glou- 
cester ;  the  Ladies  Mohun,  Poyninges,  Beauchamp,  Fitz- 
walter,  Gommenys,  Blanche  Braddeston,  Agnes  Arundel,  de 
Roos,  de  Courcy,  and  de  Trivet. 

The  violently  victorious  Hollands  were  present  in  force. 
The  Dukes  of  Exeter  and  Surrey  represented  the  men  of  the 
clan  ;  among  the  women  the  Duchess  of  York  was  Surrey's 
sister,  the  beautiful  Joan  Holland,  and  the  Marchioness  of 
Dorset  (before  and  later  known  as  the  Countess  of  Somerset) 
was  another  sister,  Margaret  Holland.  Joan  and  Margaret 
were  now  between  twenty  and  thirty  years  old,  in  full  flower 
of  beauty,  fair  daughters  of  the  house  of  Kent.  Their 
mother,  Alice,  Countess  of  Kent,  born  Fitz-Alan,  was  also 
there,  notwithstanding  the  recent  execution  of  her  brother. 
Lord  Arundel. 

At  the  annual  banquet  of  the  Order  there  was  occasionally 
missing  a  knight  who  had  sat  in  the  Hall  at  Windsor  on  the 
previous  year,  and  had  been  subsequently  put  to  death  at  the 


126  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

instance  of  some  of  his  brethren.  So  Sir  Simon  Burley,  the 
Earl  of  Arundel,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  had  disappeared. 
On  the  present  occasion,  two  knights,  the  Dukes  of  Lan- 
caster and  Norfolk,  were  in  exile,  and  the  Earl  of  Warwick 
was  captive  in  the  Isle  of  Man.  Some  of  those  present  may 
have  had  the  sense  of  a  distant  gathering  storm.  But  if, 
at  the  splendid  feast  in  Windsor  Hall  on  St.  George's  Day, 
1399,  there  had  been  present  a  seer  endowed  with  second 
sight,  as  at  that  famous  supper  before  the  French  Revolution, 
his  predictions  would  have  cast  gloom  and  horror  over  the 
brilliant,  triumphant  assembly,  and  chilled  the  blood  of 
April  dancing  through  their  veins.  Five  months  later,  the 
gentle-minded,  cultivated,  and  charming  King,  little  more 
than  thirty  years  of  age,  who  sat  at  the  centre  of  the  table, 
was  deposed  from  the  throne  ;  nine  months  later,  he  and  the 
brave  and  powerful  Exeter,  the  young,  chivalrous  Surrey, 
the  poetic  and  accomplished  Earl  of  Salisbury,  the  Earls  of 
Gloucester  and  Wiltshire,  all  lay  slain  in  their  graves.  The 
Duke  of  Brittany  had  ended  his  stormy  career  and  changing 
fortunes  before  the  close  of  the  year.  Four  years  later, 
on  July  21,  1403,  another  famous  knight  present  at  this 
feast.  Sir  Henry  Percy,  the  gallant  '  Harry  Hotspur,'  was 
slain  as  he  furiously  ranged  that  bloody  field  '  in  the  plain  near 
Shrewsbury,'  attempting  to  reach  and  kill  the  usurping 
Bolingbroke.  His  head  was  fixed  on  a  gate  of  York,  and  the 
four  quarters  of  his  body  on  gates  of  London,  Bristol, 
Newcastle,  and  Chester. 

This  doom-preceding  banquet  was  on  April  23.  On  the 
16th  King  Richard  had  signed  his  w^ill,  written  in  choice 
Latin.  It  contained  thoughts  on  life  and  death,  an  expression 
of  religious  faith,  and  the  most  detailed  and  minute  directions 
for  the  ritual  of  his  funeral  at  Westminster  Abbey.  He 
bequeathed  £10,000  to  his  nephew  the  Duke  of  Surrey, 
and  30,000  marks  to  his  brother  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  both 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  127 

of  whom  were  among  the  executors  appointed  by  the  will. 
The  King  was  at  Bristol  on  April  27,  back  at  Westminster 
Palace  on  the  29th,  and  on  May  29  he  was  at  Milford  Haven, 
and  a  few  days  later  he  sailed  for  Ireland  on  the  expedition 
intended  to  crush  the  Irish,  who  had  lately  defeated  and 
slain  Roger  Mortimer,  Earl  of  March,  his  Viceroy  and  heir- 
presumptive.  The  Dukes  of  Surrey  and  Exeter  were 
with  him.  The  latter  brought  140  men-at-arms  and  500 
archers. 

On  July  4  the  new  Duke  of  Lancaster  landed  with  a  few 
followers  in  Yorkshire,  and  in  two  or  three  weeks  was  at  the 
head  of  an  army  of  60,000  men,  and  in  possession  of  almost 
every  part  of  the  kingdom.  The  force  which  the  honest  but 
helpless  Duke  of  York  gathered  to  oppose  his  brother's  son, 
melted  away,  as  also  did  the  troops  which  Richard  hastily 
brought  back  from  Ireland.  Richard  found  himself  exactly  in 
the  position  of  James  II  nearly  three  centuries  later,  suddenly 
abandoned  by  everyone  and  impotent.  Even  one  of  his  recent 
Lords  Appellant,  the  Earl  of  Rutland,  now  Duke  of  Albe- 
marle, a  cousin  whom  Richard  '  loved  beyond  measure,' 
betrayed  him,  as  John  Churchill  betrayed  his  benefactor. 

The  Earl  of  Wiltshire,  K.G.,  was  beheaded  on  July  30, 
The  Hollands  remained  almost  alone  at  Richard's  side. 
The  Duke  of  Exeter  seemed  the  best  negotiator,  since  his 
wife  was  sister  to  Henry  of  Lancaster.  He  left  Richard  at 
Conway,  and  went  with  his  nephew,  the  Duke  of  Surrey,  to 
Henry  at  Chester  to  ask  his  intentions.  Henry  detained 
them  there  for  a  few  days  until  he  had  secured  the  person  of 
King  Richard  at  Flint  Castle.  According  to  De  Wavrin's 
account,  he  then  sent  for  the  Duke  of  Exeter  and  said  to  him, 
'  Brother-in-law,  it  would  be  well  that  you  should  return  to 
Calais,  the  government  of  which  shall  not  be  taken  from 
you  unless  we  learn  that  there  is  something  in  you  which  we 
do  not  know  at  present.     And  there  we  charge  you  to  remain 


128  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

until  we  shall  have  arranged  with  my  Lord  the  King  about 
those  matters  which  you  and  I  discussed  the  other  day.  And, 
on  your  life,  take  care  not  to  let  anyone  of  the  French  party 
enter,  and  speak  to  none,  by  letters  or  otherwise,  until  we 
let  you  know.' 

The  Duke  of  Exeter,  adds  this  chronicler,  '  without 
showing  sign  of  grief,  took  leave  of  the  Duke,  for  well  he 
understood  how  things  were.  He  left  the  fair  town  of 
Chester,  and  rode  so  much  that,  without  going  to  see  his 
wife,  he  came  to  Dover,  whence  he  set  out  to  sea,  and  came 
to  Calais  ;  but  know  ye  that  sorrow  and  sadness  were  so 
great  in  him  that  no  one  could  express  it,  which  grief  and 
displeasure  he  had  to  endure,  for  there  was  nothing  else  to 
be  had  for  the  present  ;    so  he  was  forced  to  dissemble.' 

Certainly  John  Holland,  fallen  so  swiftly  from  his  estate 
as  the  most  powerful  man  in  England,  and  full  of  fears 
for  the  future,  must  have  ridden  gloomily  down  that  Dover 
road  which  he  had  traversed  so  gaily  on  his  way  to  and 
from  King  Richard's  wedding,  and  to  and  from  the  grand 
tournament  at  St.  Inglevert.  If  de  Wavrin  is  correct,  it  was 
a  bold  stroke  of  confidence  to  let  him  go  to  Calais,  seeing 
how  close-allied  the  Richardian  party  was  with  the  French 
Government.  But  Henry  moved  cautiously  and  advisedly, 
and  no  doubt  felt  secure  of  the  allegiance  of  the  Calais 
garrison. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter  was  soon  back  in  London  for  one 
of  the  most  eventful  meetings  of  Parliament  in  English 
history.  Parliament  met  in  September  1399  to  receive 
the  forced  resignation  of  Richard  and  sanction  the  succession 
of  Henry.  There  was  a  passionate  and  stormy  scene.  Sir 
John  Bagot,  then  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower,  was  brought 
to  the  bar,  and  made  a  declaration  that  it  was  by  the  advice 
and  instigation  of  the  Duke  of  Albemarle  that  the  lords 
were  arrested  by  the  King,  and  that  the  Duke  of  Gloucester 


VICISSITUDES  OF  FORTUNE  129 

was  murdered  at  Calais  by  the  order  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk. 
Albemarle  rose  and  denied  the  charge,  and  offered  to  vindicate 
his  innocence  by  combat.  Lord  Fitzwalter  and  twenty 
other  lords  jumped  up  to  accept  the  challenge.  The  Duke 
of  Surrey,  young  Thomas  Holland,  rose  and  said  that  any- 
thing which  Albemarle  had  done  was  by  constraint,  and 
offered  to  vindicate  him  in  fight.  There  was  a  furious 
scene.  All  these  challengers  flung  down  their  hoods  by 
way  of  token,  and  the  hoods  were  delivered  to  the  Constable 
and  Marshal  to  be  kept. 

Henry  IV  was  crowned,  and  the  first  Parliament  of 
the  new  reign  met  on  October  14.  It  resolved  on  the  17th 
that  the  late  advisers  of  the  deposed  King  should  be  put 
in  prison.  The  Duke  of  Surrey  was  sent  to  the  Tower, 
and  afterwards  to  Wallingford;  the  Duke  of  Exeter  was 
imprisoned  in  Hertford  Castle ;  Albemarle,  Gloucester,  and 
Salisbury  were  confined  elsewhere.  The  accused  lords 
were  brought  before  Parliament  on  October  29.  Albemarle 
again  denied  connivance  in  Gloucester's  murder  ;  Surrey 
pleaded  that  in  1397  he  had  been  too  young  to  take  a  real 
part  in  these  affairs  ;  Exeter  also  denied  connivance.  He 
said,  however,  that  he  had  heard  King  Richard  say  that 
Gloucester  would  be  put  to  death.  All  these  lords  naturally 
threw  the  guilt  on  to  the  ex-Governor  of  Calais,  the  exiled 
Norfolk,  who  had  died  at  Venice.  Their  sentence  was  far 
milder  than  they  could  have  expected,  and  the  new  King 
used  his  utmost  influence  to  save  them  from  the  popular 
hatred.  The  three  dukes  were  sentenced  to  lose  their 
titles  of  Albemarle,  Surrey,  and  Exeter,  and  became  again 
Rutland,  Kent,  and  Huntingdon.  The  new-made  Marquis 
of  Dorset  and  the  Earl  of  Gloucester  became  again  the 
Earl  of  Somerset  and  Lord  Despenser.  Lands  and  possessions 
acquired  since  1397  by  royal  concession  were  taken  away 
from  them,  a  more  serious  loss  than  that  of  new-minted 


130  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

titles.  They  were  released  on  sureties  being  given,  and 
thus  bound  over  to  keep  the  peace. 

The  Commons  murmured  at  this  clemency,  for  which, 
indeed,  Henry  nearly  paid  dearly.  They  wished  the  Lords 
Appellant  to  be  put  to  death.  '  But,'  says  Holinshed, 
*  the  King  thought  it  best  rather  with  courtesy  to  reconcile 
them  than,  by  putting  them  to  death,  secure  the  hatred 
of  their  friends  and  allies,  which  were  many  and  of  no  small 
power.' 

Henry  IV  was,  after  all,  brother-in-law  to  John  Holland, 
Earl  of  Huntingdon,  and  first  cousin  to  Rutland.  He  had 
also  in  1397  acted  more  or  less  in  co-operation  with  their 
party  against  Gloucester,  Arundel,  and  Warwick,  and  had 
shared  in  the  subsequent  distribution  of  honours  of  Richard  II, 
so  that  his  position  with  regard  to  these  lords  was  delicate. 
Also  he  was  a  true  statesman,  cautious,  abiding  his  time, 
undiverted  from  his  aims  by  passion,  and  striking  at  the 
right  moment.  The  Earl  of  Huntingdon  had  been  defeated 
in  the  great  game  by  a  brain  superior  to  his  own.  He  was 
like  Hector  to  Achilles.  He  himself  had  given  proof  of 
vigour,  daring,  energy,  and  decision  in  the  proceedings  in 
1397,  but  in  later  policy  either  he  had  shown  want  of  judg- 
ment, or  else  he  had  been  unable  to  control  the  childish 
impulses  of  his  brother,  King  Richard.  The  restored  Arundel, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  an  opening  sermon  to  the 
Parliament  which  dethroned  Richard,  took  for  his  text, 
'  Vir  dominabitur  vobis,'  '  a  man  shall  rule  over  you ' 
(1  Reg.  9),  and  said,  with  truth,  that  the  reign  of  Richard 
had  been  that  of  a  child,  whereas  that  of  Henry  would  be 
that  of  a  man.  Young  and  rash  counsellors  would  now, 
he  said,  be  replaced  by  the  wise  and  old. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   HOLLAND   REVOLT 

Much  you  had  of  land  and  rent, 
Your  length  in  clay's  now  competent ; 
A  long  war  disturbed  your  mind. 
Here  your  perfect  peace  is  signed. 

Of  what  is't  fools  make  such  vain  keeping  ? 
Sin'  their  conception,  their  birth  weeping  ; 
Their  life  a  general  mist  of  error, 
Their  death  a  hideous  storm  of  terror. 

Webster,  Duchess  of  Malp,. 

Could  the  two  Hollands,  after  Richard's  deposition,  have 
been  content  to  lead  quiet  lives  on  their  hereditary  estates 
they  would  have  been  unmolested,  and  the  young  Earl  of 
Kent,  at  any  rate,  would  soon  have  been  taken  into  royal 
favour,  as  was  afterwards  his  younger  brother,  and  might 
have  had  a  successful  career  in  civil  and  military  employment. 
This  kind  of  cool  wisdom  was  not  in  them  ;  and  not  even 
for  a  few  weeks  could  they  remain  inactive  and  submissive 
under  their  astute  and  clever  relative.  They  had  not  the  gift 
of  patience,  and  could  not  even  await  the  inevitable  reaction 
which  would  have  given  them  the  ghost  of  a  chance.  Their 
attempt  was  even  more  hopeless  than  that  of  Viscount  Dun- 
dee, in  1689.  They  had  just  seen  the  whole  realm  abandon 
Richard  II  and  turn  to  Henry  of  Lancaster.  They  may, 
indeed,  have  thought  with  some  reason  that,  if  they  waited 
longer,  there  would  be  no  Richard  to  restore  ;  so  that  if  they 
were  to  strike  at  all,  they  must  strike  at  once.     For  dramatic 

131 


132  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

purposes,  it  is  well  that  they  acted  as  they  did,  and  put  their 
fortune  to  the  touch  to  win  or  lose  it  all. 

The  tale  of  their  revolt  is  variously  told  by  the  chroniclers, 
French  and  English.  The  best  account  of  it  is  probably 
that  pieced  together  by  Mr.  Wylie  in  his  laborious  and  erudite, 
yet  amusing,  '  History  of  England  in  the  reign  of  Henry  IV.' 
He  is  a  great  master  of  the  records  of  the  reign,  and  the 
present  writer  quotes  him  freely.  It  is  vanity  and  waste 
of  time  to  tell  entirely  anew  in  different  words  a  story  which 
has  been  well  told  already. 

The  plot  began  on  Wednesday,  December  17,  1399.  The 
Earls  of  Huntingdon,  Kent,  Rutland,  and  Salisbury,  the 
deposed  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Roger  Walden,  and  the 
ex-Bishop  of  Carlisle,  met  in  the  house  of  William,  Abbot  of 
Westminster.  This  Abbot  was  supposed  to  be  a  supporter 
of  Henry  IV,  but  really  hated  him  because  he  had  heard  him 
say,  years  ago  when  he  was  Earl  of  Hereford,  that,  in  his 
opinion,  religious  men  had  too  much  property,  and  princes 
too  little.  Then  there  was  a  French  physician,  John  Paul, 
whom  Richard  had  left  at  Wallingford  as  one  of  the  guardians 
of  his  child  queen,  and  Sir  Thomas  Blount,  a  gentleman  of 
Oxfordshire  to  whom  Henry  IV,  only  a  month  earlier,  had 
given  a  grant  of  £20,  charged  on  the  revenues  of  the  City  of 
Hereford.  A  priest  called  Richard  Maudelyn  is  also  said  to 
have  been  there.  He  was  a  retainer  of  Richard  II,  and 
resembled  him  curiously  in  face  and  figure. 

The  first  idea  of  the  conspirators  was,  according  to  the 
chroniclers,  to  invite  the  King  to  a  tournament  to  be  held  at 
Oxford, and  therecapture  him, but  this  projectwas  abandoned. 
The  King  was  at  Windsor,  and  had  himself  sent  out  many 
letters  of  invitation  for  an  entertainment,  a  jousting  and 
'  mommying,'  which  was  to  be  given  there  on  January  6,  the 
Feast  of  the  Epiphany.  The  plan  of  the  conspirators  was 
this  :    armed  men  were  to  be  introduced  into  the  castle  at 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  133 

Windsor  under  the  disguise  of  guards  and  drivers  of  carts 
full  of  tilt  harness,  as  if  in  preparation  for  the  jousting.  The 
lords  in  the  plot  were  to  meet  at  Kingston  on  the  evening  of 
January  4,  and  ride  thence  in  the  night  with  their  followers 
the  short  distance  to  Windsor.  At  a  given  signal,  the  men, 
previously  entered  in  disguise,  were  to  kill  the  guards  and 
open  the  Castle  gates.  King  Henry  and  his  sons  would  then 
be  captured.  It  was  said  that  the  conspirators  intended  to 
kill  them  forthwith,  but  perhaps  they  meant  to  hold  them 
captive  until  Richard  was  restored.  After  this,  the  con- 
spirators intended  to  announce  that  Richard  was  free  and 
was  with  them,  passing  off  Richard  Maudelyn  in  that  part 
until  the  real  Richard  could  be  recovered  from  his  prison. 
The  idea  was  altogether  wild — the  kind  of  plot  a  man  might 
weave  in  his  dream.  They  rashly  imagined  that  Richard 
would  be  welcomed  back  by  a  sufficient  body  of  supporters 
and  that  all  the  solemn  legalities  of  the  late  Parliament 
could  be  undone.  They  did  not,  apparently,  realise  in  the 
least  how  unpopular  they  were. 

The  conspirators  drew  out  six  bonds,  in  which  they 
bound  themselves  to  be  true  to  each  other  and  to  restore 
Richard  or  die  in  the  attempt.  These  were  sealed  and 
sworn,  and  each  conspirator  kept  a  copy.  It  proved  im- 
possible to  keep  a  secret  of  this  kind  from  December  17 
until  January  4.  This  was  not  surprising  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon's  wife  was  King  Henry's 
sister,  and  that  the  Earl  of  Kent's  mother  was  Archbishop 
Arundel's  sister,  and  that  the  perfidious  Earl  of  Rutland 
was  in  the  plot,^  and  that  his  sister.  Lady  Constance,  was 
wife  of  one  of  the  conspirators. 

1  One  story  is  that  a  Holland  retainer  told  a  lady  of  light  character  that  some 
movement  was  on  foot,  and  that  she  retailed  the  information  to  her  next  admirer, 
one  of  the  King's  attendants.  If  we  are  to  chercher  la  fevime,  Constance,  daughter 
of  the  Duke  of  York,  sister  of  Rutland,  and  wife  of  Despenser,  was  more  likely 
the  traitress. 


134  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

'  There  was  evidently,'  says  Mr.  Wylie,  '  a  general  sense 
of  some  unknown  danger  impending,  but  nothing  seems 
to  have  been  known  for  certain  until  the  appointed  day, 
January  4.  The  King  with  his  four  sons  and  some  few 
friends  had  been  keeping  Christmas  in  retirement  at  Windsor. 
He  was  out  of  health  and  needed  rest.  The  Prince  of  Wales 
also  and  many  of  the  royal  household  were  ailing,  and  the 
usual  suspicions  of  poisoning  were  abroad.  Archbishop 
Arundel  had  been  expected  at  Windsor,  but  Henry  had 
sent  him  a  message  to  keep  out  of  the  way  at  Reigate. 
A  general  uneasiness  prevailed,  and  the  King  was  heard 
to  say  that  he  wished  that  Richard,  the  focus  of  all  intrigue, 
were  dead.  The  Duke  of  York,  the  Earls  of  Northumber- 
land, Westmorland,  Arundel,  and  Warwick,  with  others, 
approached  him  with  a  petition  that  his  wish  might  be 
carried  into  effect ;  but  he  refused  with  some  show  of  in- 
dignation, though  he  added  that  if  there  should  be  any 
rising  in  the  country,  Richard  should  be  the  first  to  die.' 

The  other  Lords  were  at  Kingston  on  January  4,  but 
Rutland  was  not  there.  A  letter  sent  to  him  in  haste  required 
him  without  fail  to  observe  his  oath  and  join  the  rest  at 
Colnbrook,  whence  the  newly  arranged  attack  on  Windsor 
was  to  be  carried  out  on  the  6th.  Rutland  had  made  up 
his  perfidious  mind  to  break  his  oath  and  ruin  his  friends 
in  order  to  save  his  own  life  and  property.  He  took  the 
letter  and  the  bond,  with  the  six  seals  attached,  to  his  father 
the  Duke  of  York  at  Windsor,  who  at  once  informed  the 
King.^  It  was  now  late  and  dim  in  the  Windsor  streets 
on   the   afternoon   of   January   4.     '  Horses   were    saddled. 

^  According  to  most  of  the  chroniclers,  the  Duke  of  York  saw  the  bond  sticking 
out  of  his  son's  dress  at  dinner,  seized  and  read  it ;  was  very  angry,  and  said  that 
he  would  at  once  inform  the  King,  upon  which  Rutland  anticipated  his  father  by 
galloping  off  to  Windsor  and  himself  making  a  full  confession.  Mr.  Wylie  does  not, 
like  earlier  historians,  accept  this  version  ;  but  if  true,  it  would  make  the  conduct 
of  Rutland  a  shade  or  two  less  black. 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  185 

The  King  with  his  sons  and  two  attendants  threw  himself 
promptly  into  the  adventure,  daring  all  the  chances  of  capture 
or  ambuscade  by  the  way.'  He  took  the  road  to  London* 
and  arrived  there  in  the  dark  at  nine  o'clock  at  night. 
Rumour  had  now  spread  far  and  wide,  and  on  the  way  he 
met  the  Mayor  of  London,  who  told  him  the  news,  exaggerated 
by  panic,  that  the  rebels  were  in  the  field  with  6000  men. 
'  Once  in  London,  he  threw  himself  on  his  people.'  Letters 
were  at  once  issued  to  the  sheriffs  of  all  counties  to  arrest 
those  traitors — Thomas,  Earl  of  Kent,  John,  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don, and  the  rest.  Like  letters  were  sent  to  the  Governor 
of  Calais,  who  was  instructed  to  keep  a  close  watch  on 
French  movements,  for  the  father  of  Richard's  queen  might 
well  be,  in  his  own  interests,  and,  perhaps  was,  in  the  plot. 
Orders  were  sent  to  the  Channel  Islands  to  look  out  for 
French  ships,  and  to  all  the  ports  that  no  ships  should  be 
allowed  to  cross  the  sea.  The  Sheriffs  of  Leicester,  Shrop- 
shire, Stafford,  Derby,  and  Nottingham — counties  where 
the  rebels  might  be  strong — were  directed  to  call  out  their 
local  forces.  High  pay  was  offered  in  London  for  military 
service  for  fifteen  days,  and,  by  the  evening  of  Monday, 
January  5,  more  than  16,000  archers  and  bill-men  had 
been  enrolled.  On  Tuesday,  the  6th,  the  King  had  20,000 
men  under  arms  at  Hounslow,  and  rode  out  to  review  them. 
Meanwhile,  Kent  and  Salisbury  and  their  friends,  finding, 
or  suspecting,  that  their  plot  had  been  discovered,  rode, 
after  all,  from  Kingston  to  Windsor  on  the  night  of  January  4, 
without  waiting  for  Rutland,  and  the  6th.  They  reached 
Windsor  in  the  early  morning  hours  of  the  5th  too  late. 
It  was  above  twelve  hours  after  Henry  had  left.  They 
were  at  the  head  of  400  or  500  armed  followers.  They 
were  admitted  into  the  Castle,  and  searched  it  and  the  town 
for  the  King,  and,  says  the  chronicler,  '  deden  moche  harme 
thereaboughts.' 


136  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

They  had  missed  their  game,  but  still  tried  to  raise  the 
country.  They  sent  messengers  in  all  directions  to  say  that 
Windsor  Castle  was  in  their  hands,  that  Henry  was  a  fugitive, 
and  that  Richard  was  free  and  was  assembling  an  army. 
The  young  Earl  of  Kent  rode  on  the  5th  to  Sonning  on  the 
Thames,  where  was  residing  Richard's  queen,  Isabella,  a  girl 
of  thirteen.  According  to  the  chronicler,  Kent  entered  the 
house  wild  and  excited.  He  pulled  the  royal  badges  of  King 
Henry's  servants  from  the  necks  of  the  Queen's  attendants 
and  threw  them  on  the  ground,  and  said :  '  Benedicite  !  What 
makes  Henry  of  Lancaster  fly  before  me,  he  who  used  to 
boast  so  much  of  his  courage  ?  Know  all  of  you,  that  he 
has  fled  before  me  to  the  Tower  of  London  with  his  sons  and 
friends.  I  intend  to  go  to  Richard  who  was,  and  is,  and  will 
be,  our  true  King.  He  has  escaped  from  prison,  and  is  now 
at  Pontefract  with  100,000  men,' 

After  that,  the  young  Earl  of  Kent  rode  to  join  his  friends 
at  the  rendezvous  at  Colnbrook  where  they  had  now  increased 
their  forces  by  a  certain  number  of  allies.  The  question 
was  whether  they  should  march  on  London  ;  a  body  of  them 
had  akeady  gone  in  that  direction  as  far  as  Brentford. 

'  At  Colnbrook  they  were  joined  by  the  Earl  of  Rutland, 
whose  dealings  seem  as  yet  to  have  been  unsuspected.  He 
told  them  that  Henry  was  approaching  with  forces  too 
large  for  them  to  cope  with.  A  consultation  ensued,  and 
it  was  decided  not  to  advance  farther  to  the  east,  but  to 
fall  back  to  the  west,  where,  with  all  Wales  and  Cheshire 
at  their  back,  they  could  alone  hope  to  make  a  stand. 

*  In  all  speed  they  drew  off  westward,  but  at  Maidenhead 
Henry's  advanced  troops  were  upon  them.  The  Earl  of  Kent 
made  a  successful  stand  at  Maidenhead  Bridge,  and  kept  the 
assailants  off  till  all  the  party  and  the  baggage  were  in  safety. 
The  Earl  of  Salisbury,  meanwhile,  led  off  the  bulk  of  the 
following  through  Henley  and  Oxford  to  Woodstock,  where 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  137 

the  Earl  of  Kent  soon  joined  them,  having  stolen  off  from 
Maidenhead  unperceived  in  the  night.  He  travelled  by 
Wallingford  and  Abingdon,  spreading  still  the  rumour  of 
his  sham  success.  The  whole  force,  now  much  disheartened, 
retired  during  the  7th  hastily  to  Cirencester  whither  Sir 
Thomas  Blount,  the  ex-Bishop  of  Carlisle,  and  others  of 
their  friends,  had  preceded  them.  Another  body  found  their 
way  round  to  join  them  by  St.  Albans  and  Berkhampstead, 
and  the  whole  force  encamped  in  some  fields  outside  the 
town  of  Cirencester.' 

The  French  chronicler,  De  Wavrin,  says  that  the  rebel 
lords  themselves,  with  some  followers,  took  lodgings  at  the 
best  hostel  in  Cirencester — no  doubt  in  the  grande  place  in 
front  of  the  great  church  which,  though  mostly  rebuilt  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  stands  still  where  it  then  did.  An  archer  of 
King  Henry's  body-guard,  on  his  way  from  Wales,  happened 
to  put  up  at  the  same  hostelry  that  night,  and  had  a  fire  lit 
in  a  room  apart.  The  Earl  of  Kent  came  into  the  room  and 
asked  the  archer  who  he  was.  The  archer  recognised  the 
Earl,  and  replied  :  '  My  lord,  I  come  from  Wales,  whither  I  was 
sent  by  the  King.'  At  these  words,  the  Earl  took  off  the 
badge  the  archer  wore  and  threw  it  into  the  fire,  saying : 
'  See  what  I  do  in  contempt  of  Henry  of  Lancaster.  You 
traitor  !     You  came  here  to  spy,  but  you  shall  be  hanged.' 

The  archer  got  away  and  told  the  Bailiff  of  Cirencester 
who  the  strangers  were.  The  Bailiff  collected  forty  archers 
and  came  to  the  hostelry,  and  told  Kent  and  the  rest  that  they 
must  deem  themselves  under  arrest,  and  not  leave  the  inn  till 
the  King  was  informed  and  gave  orders.  Then  the  fight  began. 
Mr.  Wylie  says  :  '  In  the  night  the  townspeople,  headed  by  the 
Bailiff,  John  Cosyn,  surrounded  the  house  in  which  the  rebel 
leaders  were  sleeping,  barred  up  the  entrances  with  beams  and 
timber,  and,  having  closed  all  the  approaches,  began  to  assail 
the  inmates  with  showers  of  arrows,  lances,  and  stones,  the 


138  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

women  helping  in  the  streets.  A  fierce  attack  was  kept  up 
from  day-break  through  doors  and  windows,  the  disheartened 
troops  outside  the  town  having  melted  away,  while  the  small 
band  of  leaders  in  the  crowded  building  were  left  to  defend 
themselves  as  best  they  might  against  the  fury  of  the  towns- 
folk. By  nine  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  January  8  the 
mob  had  broken  in,  and  the  whole  party  surrendered  under  a 
promise  that  their  lives  should  be  spared  until  they  should 
have  an  audience  with  the  King.  They  were  then  lodged 
in  the  Abbey  of  the  Austin  Canons  in  the  centre  of  the  town, 
and  news  of  the  capture  was  despatched  to  Henry  at  Oxford. 

'  Already  vast  crowds  had  gathered  into  the  town  from 
all  the  country  round,  but  in  the  afternoon,  about  three 
o'clock,  when  alarm  and  excitement  were  high,  a  fire  broke 
out  in  some  buildings  in  another  part  of  the  town.  Supposing 
that  this  was  the  work  of  the  conspirators,  who  might  make 
their  escape  whilst  the  citizens  were  busied  with  the  flames,^ 
the  mob  rushed  wildly  to  the  Abbey,  and  demanded  with 
threats  of  violence  that  the  leading  conspirators  should  be 
given  up.  Sir  Thomas  Berkeley,  who  had  taken  over  the 
custody  of  the  rebels  and  was  making  arrangements  to 
conduct  them  to  a  place  of  greater  safety,  resisted  for  a 
time,  but  was  over-borne,  and  on  the  night  of  January  8, 
the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Salisbury  were  brought  out  and  by 
torch-light  ignominiously  beheaded  by  the  rustic  plebeians  in 
the  streets.' 

The  monkish  chronicler  of  St.  Albans,  Walsingham — that 
great  hater  of  the  Hollands  and  their  friends — says  '  the  Lord 
thus  paid  them  the  penalty  due  to  their  faithlessness  and 
unbelief.'  He  adds  that  '  both  had  been  faithless  to  their 
King,  who  had  just  shown  such  favour  to  them ;  but  the 
Earl  of  Salisbury,  John  Montacute — the  friend  of  the  Lollards, 

^  One  contemporary  account  says  that  the  fire  was  the  work  of  one  of  their 
friends  with  that  object,  but  the  explanation  in  the  text  seems  more  probable. 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  189 

the  derider  of  images — died  miserably,  refusing  the  sacrament 
of  confession,  if  the  common  account  be  true.'  ^ 

The  party  of  Richard  were  all  suspected  of  new  ideas, 
and  it  was,  on  the  other  hand,  the  first  Parliament  of  Henry 
IV,  which  passed,  immediately  after  the  Revolution,  the  first 
statute  in  England  authorising  the  burning  of  heretics.  It 
was  Henry's  reward  to  the  Archbishop  Arundel  for  his 
services.  The  enmity  of  the  monastic  orders  to  the  Lollards 
was  natural,  because  an  essential  part  of  Wycliff's  open 
teaching  had  been  that  kings  and  lords  had  the  right  to 
deprive  of  its  temporal  possessions  a  Church  which  they 
deemed  to  be  corrupt,  and  his  lay  follower.  Lord  Cobham, 
gave  a  practical  point  to  the  teaching  by  statistical  calcula- 
tions, showing  how  many  feudal  knight-soldiers  the  King 
could  maintain  for  foreign  war  if  he  confiscated  the  monastic 
lands. 

Another  contemporary  French  chronicler  gives  this 
different  portrait  of  the  Earl  of  Salisbury.  Mr.  Wylie  thus 
translates  him  in  Saxon  style. 

'  He  was  humble,  sweet,  and  courteous  in  all  his  ways 
and  had  every  man's  voice  for  being  loyal  in  all  places  and 
right  prudent.  Full  largely  he  gave  and  timely  gifts.  He 
was  brave  and  fierce  as  a  lion.  Ballads  and  songs  and 
roundels  and  lays  right  beautiful  he  made.  Though  but 
a  layman,  still  his  deeds  became  so  gracious  that  never,  I 
think,  of  his  country  shall  be  a  man  in  whom  God  put  so 
much  of  good,  and  may  his  soul  be  set  in  Paradise  among  the 
saints  for  ever.' 

Thus  by  a  provincial  mob  were  slain  these  two  gallant 
young  lords,  loyal  to  their  rightful  King,  Richard ;  disloyal 

^  Lord  Salisbury  was  said  to  have  taken  down  all  the  images  of  saints  about  his 
house  except  one  figure  of  St.  Catherine  which,  because  it  was  particularly  revered 
by  his  retainers,  he  allowed  to  remain  standing  in  his  brewhouse.  All  his  ballads, 
Bongs,  roundels,  and  lays  are  unfortunately  lost. 


140  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

to  the  level-headed  usurper.  The  official  record  judiciously 
stated  that  they  were  '  taken  and  beheaded  by  the  King's 
loyal  lieges  without  process  of  law.'  One  of  the  confederates. 
Lord  Despenser,  the  ex-Earl  of  Gloucester,  husband  of 
Constance  of  York,  escaped  from  Cirencester,  but  was  cap- 
tured and  beheaded  by  a  mob  at  Bristol  on  January  15,  and 
his  head  was  sent  to  London. 

The  bodies  of  the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Salisbury  were  buried 
in  the  Abbey  Church  of  Cirencester,  and  their  heads  were  sent 
in  a  basket  to  King  Henry — even  as  the  head  of  Robert  de 
Holland,  Kent's  great-grandfather,  had  been  sent  to  Henry 
of  Lancaster. 

The  King  was  at  Oxford.  The  treacherous  Rutland  was 
now  with  him  and  had  personally  directed  the  despatch  of 
troops,  together  with  stores  of  shields  and  arrows,  to  Ciren- 
cester, Gloucester,  and  Monmouth,  to  be  used  against  the 
associates  to  whom  he  had  three  weeks  before  sworn  fealty. 
The  King,  at  the  Carmelite  Monastery  outside  Oxford,  re- 
ceived the  heads  of  the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Salisbury,  and 
about  thirty  more  heads  of  rebels  killed  at  Cirencester.  He 
sent  these  on  to  London  to  be  fixed  up  there — some  in  sacks, 
and  some  slung  on  poles  between  men's  shoulders.  These 
ghastly  trophies  were  borne  through  the  I^ondon  streets 
on  January  16.  The  King  himself  re-entered  London  in 
triumph  on  the  following  day  and  was  met  by  the  Arch- 
bishop and  a  solemn  procession  of  eighteen  Bishops  and 
thirty -two  Abbots,  who,  with  religious  pomp,  conducted  him 
to  St.  Paul's,  where  the  Te  Deum  was  sung.  The  people  of 
Cirencester  were  rewarded  by  the  appointment  of  a  Royal 
Commission  to  inquire  into  the  usurpations  and  encroach- 
ments of  the  Abbot  of  the  Monastery  in  that  town.  The 
worthy  Bailiff,  John  Cosyn,  not  only  had  a  tale  to  tell  which 
must  have  lasted  him  till  he  died,  but  received  an  annuity  of 
100  marks  for  life.      Four  does  from  the  Forest  of  Bradon 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  141 

were  to  be  presented  to  the  townsfolk  every  year  to  com- 
memorate their  loyal  services  for  ever. 

Two  days  before  Henry  so  gloriously  entered  London, 
John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  came  to  his  violent 
end.  According  to  the  English  chronicler,  Walsingham, 
this  Earl  had  neither  taken  part  in  the  raid  on  Windsor, 
nor  accompanied  the  rest  to  Cirencester,  but  had  remained 
in  London  watching  events  until  after  the  failure  of  the 
attempt  on  Windsor.^  Then  he  escaped  in  a  small  boat 
down  the  Thames,  but  was  driven  by  the  weather  to  land. 
He  first  went  to  Hadley  Castle,  the  house  of  the  Earl  of 
Oxford.  '  Finding  himself  beset  with  spies,  he  stole  out 
of  the  Castle  and  hid  himself  in  a  mill  in  the  marshes,  waiting 
for  the  weather  to  abate.  He  was  accompanied  by  two 
of  his  faithful  followers — his  esquire,  Sir  Thomas  Shelley  ^ 
of  Aylesbury,  and  his  butler,  Hugh  Cade.  For  two  days 
and  nights  he  lurked  about  disguised.  Then,  in  desperation, 
he  tried  the  river  again,  but  he  M^as  again  driven  ashore, 
and  took  shelter  in  the  night  at  the  house  of  a  friend,  John 
Prittlewell,  at  Barrow  Hall,  near  Wakering  in  the  flats  near 
Shoebur3^ 

'  But  by  this  time,  the  hue  and  cry  of  the  country  was 
on  him.  Acting  on  the  King's  proclamation,  the  men  of 
Essex  surrounded  the  house.  The  Earl  was  captured  while 
sitting  at  a  meal,  and  sent  to  Chelmsford.  Here  the  mob 
would  have  despatched  him  but  for  the  intervention  of 
Joan  de  Bohun,  Countess  of  Hereford,  who  sent  him  under 


^  A  French  chronicler  says  that  Huntingdon  had  gone  to  Cirencester  and  had 
escaped  thence  when  the  townspeople  attacked  the  party.  But,  as  Mr.  Wylie 
points  out,  it  is  not  likely,  if  this  were  so,  that  he  would  have  returned  to  the  Thames 
below  London  through  the  midst  of  his  enemies  ;  he  wovdd  rather  have  tried  to 
escape  oversea  from  the  Severn  or  Wales  or  Devonshire.  Thus  the  English  account 
is  more  credible  here. 

*  Sir  Thomas  Shelley  was  afterwards  attainted.  He  was  a  brother  of  Sir 
William  Shelley,  from  whom  descended  all  the  Shelleys  of  Sussex. 


142  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

a  strong  guard  to  her  fortress  of  Pleshy,  and  reserved  him 
for  the  sweetness  of  her  private  revenge.'  ^ 

John  Holland  had  now,  indeed,  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  his  deadliest  foe.  This  Countess  Joan  was  the  widow 
of  the  last  of  the  de  Bohuns,  Earls  of  Hereford.  She  had 
no  sons,  but  two  daughters — Mary  and  Eleanor.  Mary 
had  been  the  first  wife  of  Henry  IV,  whence  his  ultimate 
choice  of  title  as  Duke  of  Hereford.  Eleanor  had  been 
the  wife  of  Thomas,  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  had  brought 
to  him  the  Castle  of  Pleshy  and  other  de  Bohun  possessions. 
Eleanor,  the  Duchess,  was  no  longer  living  in  January  1400. 
The  loss  of  her  husband  had  been  followed  by  that  of  her 
only  son,  Humphrey,  who  had  died  in  captivity  in  Ireland. 
Eleanor,  broken-hearted,  had  taken  the  veil  at  the  Convent 
of  Barking  in  Essex,  where  she  may  have  met  another  nun 
— her  maternal  cousin,  the  Lady  Bridget  Holland  of  Kent. 
She  died  there  on  October  3,  1399,  and  was  buried  in  St. 
Edmund's  Chapel  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Thus  Joan, 
Countess  of  Hereford,  w  as  not  only  mother  of  the  late  Duchess 
Eleanor,  whose  ducal  husband  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  had 
been  foremost  in  destroying,  but  her  other  son-in-law  was 
Henry  IV,  against  whose  throne  and  life  Huntingdon  had 
just  been  conspiring.  As  though  all  this  were  not  sufficient, 
Joan,  Countess  of  Hereford,  was  born  a  Fitz-Alan.  She 
was  sister  of  Richard,  tenth  Earl  of  Arundel,  whom  Hunting- 
don had  taken  part  in  sentencing  and  had  himself  escorted 
to  the  scaffold  in  September  1397 ;  and  she  was  sister 
also  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  who  had  been  con- 
demned for  treason,  deposed,  appointed  to  an  obscure 
and  impossible  Scottish  see,  and  driven  into  exile. 

It  is  true  that  Joan's  sister,  Alice  Fitz-Alan,  had  married 
Thomas  Holland,  second  Earl  of  Kent,  the  brother  of  Hunt- 
ingdon.     That  she  held  captive  her  sister's  brother-in-law 
1  From  Wylie's  Henry  IV.    Pleshy  is  about  seven  miles  from  Chelmsford. 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  143 

may  only  have  added  a  more  poignant  flavour  to  Joan's 
revenge.  Certainly  John  Holland  had  no  chance  of  escape 
at  all  when  he  found  himself  once  more  at  Pleshy  Castle, 
and  in  the  power  of  Joan,  Countess  of  Hereford.  The 
following  account  of  his  last  hours  is  given  by  the  French- 
Burgundian  chronicler,  Jean  de  Wavrin,  Lord  of  Forestal, 
who  wrote  in  his  old  age,  between  1455  and  1471,  a  chronicle 
of  English  History.  One  never  knows  how  far  these 
chroniclers  draw  on  their  poetic  imagination  for  details  ;  but 
De  Wavrin  was,  in  his  youth,  fighting  on  the  English-Bur- 
gundian  side  in  the  wars  in  France  and  so  had  plenty  of 
opportunity  to  learn  from  Englishmen  about  events  within 
living  memory.  His  early  history  of  England  is  very 
mythical,  but  about  events  which  happened  in  or  near 
his  own  time  internal  evidence  shows  that  he  took  great 
pains  to  get  the  best  information  he  could.  Men  of  the 
world  like  Froissart  and  De  Wavrin  are  far  better  authorities 
than  monastic  chroniclers,  to  whom  stories  came  distorted 
by  ecclesiastical  prejudice  in  the  seclusion  of  monasteries. 
In  any  case,  the  story  is  well  and  dramatically  told,  and 
this  is  how  De  Wavrin  tells  it.^ 

'  The  Earl  of  Huntingdon  being  thus  taken,  the  Countess 
wrote  to  the  King,  who  was  then  in  London,  all  that  had 
happened,  and  that  he  would  be  pleased  immediately  to  send 
the  Earl  of  Arundel,  his  cousin,  to  see  vengeance  taken  for  his 
father,  for  her  intention  was  to  have  the  said  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don hanged  and  drawn.  King  Henry  rejoicing  at  the  news, 
when  he  had  read  the  letter,  called  to  the  young  Earl  of 
Arundel  and  said  to  him  :  "  Fair  cousin,  do  you  go  and  see  your 
aunt  yonder,  and  bring  me  all  the  prisoners  she  has,  alive 
or  dead."  '  (A  royal  order  dated  January  10,  1400,  to  the 
Governor  of  the  Tower  of  London  to  receive  the  Earl  of 
Huntingdon  as  prisoner,   is   extant.)     '  At  which   embassy 

^  From  Edward  Hardy's  translation.     London,  1891. 


144  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

the  Earl  of  Arundel  much  rejoiced,  mounted  his  horse,  and 
made  such  haste  that  he  came  to  the  town  where  his  aunt 
the  Countess  was,  who  had  collected  around  there  more  than 
8000  peasants,  all  armed  and  supplied  with  weapons,   and 
she  caused  the  noble   Earl  of  Huntingdon  to  be  brought 
before  them  to  be  put  to  death ;  but  there  was  certainly  no 
one  in  all  that  company  but  what  had  pity  on  him,  for  he  was 
a  very  fair  prince,  tall  and  straight,  and  well  formed  in  all 
his  limbs,  who  was  there  before  them  with  his  hands  bound. 
At  this  very  hour  the  Earl  of  Arundel  arrived  at  the  place 
and  saluted  his  aunt,  and  seeing  there  present  the  Earl  of 
Huntingdon,  Duke  of  Exeter,  he  spoke  thus  to  him :   "  My 
lord,  what  say  you  ?     Do  you  not  repent  that,  by  the  advice 
of  yourself  and  others,  my  father  was  put  to  death,  and  that 
you  have  so  long  held  my  land,  and,  besides,  have  wickedly 
governed  my  sister  and  myself  till,  by  very  poverty,  I  have 
been  obliged  to  depart  from  the  kingdom  of  England ;  and  if 
it  had  not  been  for  my  cousin  of  Clarence,  I  should  have  died 
of  want.     And  thou,  villain,  dost  thou  not  remember  hov/ 
I  have  often  taken  off  and  cleansed  thy  shoes  when  thou 
hadst  to  taste  before  King  Richard,  and  thou  treatedst  me 
as  if  I  had  been  thy  drudge.     But  now  the  hour  has  come 
Avhen  I  will  have  vengeance  on  thee."     And  then  he  caused 
the  Earl  to  be  brought  in  front  of  the  line  of  townsmen  that 
they  might  kill  him.     The  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  seeing  himself 
in  this  position  and  looking  piteously  at  those  who  were 
going  to  kill  him,  he  said  to  them  :    "  My  lords,  have  pity  on 
me,  for  I  have  never  done  ill  in  anything  to  any  of  this 
country."     And  there  was  none  of  them  who  would  have 
wished  to  do  him  any  harm,  or  who  felt  not  great  pity  for 
him,   excepting  the  Earl  of  Arundel  and  the  Countess  of 
Hereford,  who  said  to  her  men  :    "  Cursed  be  ye  all,  false 
villains,  who  are  not  brave  enough  to  put  a  man  to  death." 
There  then  drew  near  an  esquire  of  the  lady  who  offered 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  145 

himself  to  behead  the  said  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  and  the 
Countess  ordered  him  to  do  it  forthwith,  so  the  esquire,  axe 
in  hand,  came  forward,  and,  throwing  himself  on  his  knees 
before  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  said  :  "  My  lord,  pardon  me 
your  death,  for  my  lady  has  commanded  me  to  deliver  you 
from  this  world."  Then  the  Earl,  who  had  his  hands  bound, 
fell  on  his  knees  and  spoke  thus  to  him  who  had  asked  pardon 
for  his  death.  "  Friend,  art  thou  he  who  is  to  put  me  out  of 
this  world  ?  "  "  Yes,  my  lord,"  said  the  esquire,  "  by  the 
command  of  my  lady."  And  the  Earl  said  to  him,  "  Friend, 
why  dost  thou  wish  to  take  away  the  life  God  has  given  me  ? 
I  have  done  no  harm  to  thee  or  thy  lineage,  and  thou  canst 
see  very  well  that  there  are  here  seven  or  eight  thousand  people, 
of  whom  there  is  none  who  wisheth  to  harm  my  body  except- 
ing thee.  Ah,  my  friend  !  Why  canst  thou  find  it  in  thy 
heart  and  thy  conscience  to  slay  me  ?  "  Then  the  Earl  began 
to  weep  a  little,  saying  :  "  Alas  !  If  I  had  gone  to  Rome,  where 
our  Holy  Father  the  Pope  sent  for  me  to  be  his  Marshal, 
I  should  not  have  been  in  this  danger,  but  it  is  too  late. 
I  pray  God  to  pardon  my  sins."  When  the  esquire  had 
heard  the  piteous  words  of  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  such 
dread  took  possession  of  him  that  he  began  to  tremble,  and 
turned  to  the  Countess,  weeping,  said  to  her  :  '  My  lady,  for 
God's  mercy,  pardon  me  ;  for  I  will  not  put  the  Earl  of  Hun- 
tingdon to  death  for  all  the  gold  in  the  world."  Then  the 
lady  in  great  anger  said  to  him  :  "  Thou  shalt  do  what  thou 
hast  promised,  or  I  will  have  thy  own  head  cut  off."  Where- 
upon the  esquire  hearing  the  lady,  was  much  dismayed,  and 
returned  to  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  saying  :  "  My  lord,  I 
pray  of  your  mercy,  pardon  me  your  death."  Then  the  Earl, 
throwing  himself  on  his  knees,  spoke  thus  :  "  Alas  !  is  there  no 
help  for  me  but  I  must  die  ?  I  pray  to  God  and  the  Virgin 
Mary  and  all  the  Saints  in  Paradise  to  have  mercy  on  me." 
At  v/hich  words  the  esquire  swung  up  his  axe  and  struck  the 


146  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Earl  such  a  blow  with  it  that  he  fell  to  the  earth  badly 
wounded  on  the  breast  and  face,  but  directly  the  esquire 
had  withdrawn  the  axe  the  Earl  sprang  to  his  feet,  saying  : 
"  Man,  why  dost  thou  this  ?  For  God's  sake,  deliver  me 
quickly."  And  then  the  esquire  gave  him  eight  blows  with 
the  axe  before  he  could  strike  home  on  the  neck.  Then  said 
the  Earl  again  :  "  Alas  !  why  dost  thou  this  ?  "  And  then  the 
esquire  drew  a  little  knife  with  which  he  cut  the  throat  of  the 
Earl  of  Huntingdon.'  It  was  about  sunset  on  that  January 
afternoon,  says  Walsingham,  when  the  deed  was  done.  John 
Holland  was  about  forty-eight  or  forty-nine  years  old  when 
his  violent  life  came  to  this  violent  end. 

Next  came  the  triumph.  The  Earl  of  Arundel  '  entered 
London,  his  trumpets  sounding  and  his  minstrels  before  him, 
and  between  the  said  Earl  of  Arundel  and  the  minstrels 
came  the  said  prisoners  and  those  who  carried  on  a  pole 
the  head  of  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  Earl  of  Huntingdon.  The 
Londoners  showed  great  joy  at  this  adventure,  and  cried 
all  along  the  roads  and  streets,  "  God  save  our  noble  King 
Henry  and  the  Prince,  his  son,  and  all  the  noble  council."  On 
this  very  day  there  arrived  in  London  the  Earl  of  Rutland 
who,  in  like  manner,  was  having  borne  before  him  the  head 
of  Lord  Despenser,  likewise  set  on  a  pole,  his  trumpeters 
and  minstrels  before  him,  and  a  cart  in  which  were  twelve 
prisoners  bound  hand  and  foot,  who  were  all  sent  to  the 
Tower  of  London,  and  right  behind  came  the  said  Earl  of 
Rutland  with  a  great  force  of  men-at-arms,  and  so  he  guarded 
the  prisoners  to  the  Tower.' 

There  was  nothing  to  be  said  in  defence  of  that  double- 
dyed  traitor  Rutland,  who  entered  London  by  the  Oxford 
Road,  following  the  head  of  his  sister's  husband,  but  certainly 
there  was  retributive  justice  in  the  procession  which  on  the 
same  day  came  out  of  Essex  by  Mile  End  and  Whitechapel, 
whose  hero  was  the  youthful  Earl  of  Arundel,  and  whose 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  147 

glorious  trophy  the  head  of  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon 
Less  than  three  years  earlier,  Holland,  in  the  day  of  his  power, 
'  riding  a  great  horse,'  had  conducted  the  Earl  of  Arundel's 
father  through  London  to  the  scaffold.  Now  Huntingdon's 
head  was  borne  along  the  streets  with  joyful  music  sounding 
before,and  the  young  Earl  of  Arundel  riding  behind.  His  body 
was  buried  in  the  collegiate  church  which  had  been  founded 
at  Pleshy  by  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  where  that  murdered 
Duke  was  himself  buried.  His  head  was  fixed,  with  those 
of  other  leaders  of  the  rising,  over  the  Kentish  end  of  London 
Bridge,  to  remain  exposed  '  as  long  as  it  should  last  and 
endure.'  But,  in  little  more  than  a  month,  on  February  19, 
it  was  taken  down,  restored  to  the  Earl's  widow,  and  buried 
with  the  body  at  Pleshy. 

The  antiquary,  John  Weever,  in  his  book  on  '  Funerall 
Monuments,'  published  in  1631,  says  that  '  within  the 
last  few  years  the  upper  part  of  the  collegiate  church  at 
Pleshy  was  taken  down.  This  part  of  the  church  was 
beautified  with  divers  rich  funeral  monuments,  which  were 
hammered  to  pieces,  bestowed  and  divided  according  to 
the  discretion  of  the  inhabitants.  Upon  one  of  the  parts 
of  a  dismembered  monument,  carelessly  cast  here  and  there 
in  the  body  of  the  church,  I  found  these  words  : 

'  Here  lyeth  John  Holland,  Erie  [sic]  of  Exeter,  Erie 
of  Huntingdon  and  Chamberlayne  of  England, 
who   dyed  .  .  .' 

Such  fates  attend  rich  monuments  and  the  bones  of 
famous  men.  The  great  Castle  of  Pleshy  itself,  where  the 
Duke  of  Gloucester  came  out  that  summer  morning  into 
the  court  to  meet  Richard  II  and  Huntingdon,  and  where, 
on  a  cold  mid-winter  evening,  Huntingdon  was  slain  in 
the  presence  of  his  fierce  enemies,  the  Countess  of  Hereford 


148  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

and  young  Arundel,  yet  stood  for  some  time,  and  was  a 
favourite  residence  of  Margaret  of  Anjou,  queen  of  Henry  VI. 
It  had  quite  or  almost  vanished  long  years  before  John 
Weever  came  there.^  But  the  Castle  of  the  de  Bohuns  had 
been  built  within  some  far  more  ancient  and  far  less  perish- 
able British  earthworks,  which  still  denote  the  spot.  Pleshy 
is  an  unfrequented  village,  set  amid  homely  Essex  scenery, 
and  lying  two  miles  west  from  the  high  road  from 
Chelmsford  to  Dunmow,  and  about  seven  miles  from  the 
nearest  railway  station,  but  the  place  is  worth  a  visit.  One 
can  see  very  well  where  was  the  Castle  keep,  and  where 
the  entrance  gate  into  the  great  court,  and  where  was  the 
middle  of  the  court. 

John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  was  a  fine  fighting 
man,  bold  and  energetic,  who,  like  his  father  and  grand- 
father, rose  by  old  and  recognised  methods — those  of  war 
and  capture  of  woman  ;  and  he  died  right  well,  keeping  a 
crowd  at  bay,  so  noble  M^as  his  mien,  with  none  daring  or 
willing  enough  to  slay  him,  notwithstanding  his  attempt  to 
overthrow  the  hero  of  the  fickle  populace.  He  had  been  an 
ardent  sinner,  but  was  not  degenerate  ;  and  for  sins  there  is 
remedy,  even  in  the  hour  of  death,  but  for  degeneration  none. 
A  good  tree  sometimes  bears  bad  fruit,  but  a  bad  tree  never 
bears  good  fruit.  The  Gospel,  the  Church,  and  Nature,  teach 
that  the  distinction  between,  for  example,  the  malefactor  on 
the  right  cross  and  the  malefactor  on  the  left  cross  does 
not  coincide  with  the  distinction  between  what  we  call  good 

^  Henry  VIII  gave  the  college  buildings  and  the  endowments  to  a  gentleman  of 
his  chamber,  named  John  Gates,  who  puUed  down  one  part  of  the  church  for 
the  material.  There  were  in  this  church  also  some  monuments  of  the  Stafford 
family.  There  is  nothing  of  the  smallest  historic  interest  in  the  church  as  now 
restored.  All  that  remains  of  the  masonry  of  the  Castle  is  a  one-arched  brick 
bridge  leading  over  the  inner  moat  to  the  ancient  mound  on  which  the 
keep  once  stood,  and  some  brick  and  flint  foundations  of  the  keep  and 
of  the  gateway  which  once  stood  in  a  gap  of  the  outer  earthworks,  and  opened 
into  the  great  court  of  the  Castle,  where  a  few  cows  now  graze. 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  149 

deeds  and  what  we  call  evil.  In  the  hour  of  death  all 
deeds  vanish — good  and  bad  alike ;  nothing  remains  but 
the  doer  and  that  which  he  then  essentially  is.  Yesterday 
with  its  deeds,  good  and  bad,  is  now  as  non-existent  as  a 
day  a  thousand  years  ago.  Many  an  example  shows  that 
the  words  of  the  Calvinist  hymn,  '  As  a  man  lives  so  shall 
he  die,'  are  not  of  strict  necessity  and  always  true.  The 
Catholic  Church  in  absolving  the  sinner  who  dies  truly 
repentant  does  but  follow  in  noble  symbolism  the  unerring 
guidance  given  by  man's  unsophisticated  instinct. 

John  Holland  was  admired  and  liked  by  John  Froissart, 
who  knew  him  well  at  different  times  of  life,  and  terms  him 
a  '  vaillant  homme  d'armes  ' ;  and  by  the  other  '  gentilhomme  ' 
chronicler,  John  de  Wavrin,  who  told  with  so  much  sympathy 
the  story  of  his  last  hours.  Certainly  it  was  a  long  way 
from  Sir  John  Holland,  gloriously  riding  in  summer  at  the 
head  of  an  English  army  under  the  sun  of  Spain,  to  the 
Earl  of  Huntingdon  hiding  in  winter  among  dismal  muddy 
Essex  marshes,  his  last  aspiring  dream  dissolved,  and  hopes 
broken. 

Evidently,  no  one  much  regretted  the  death  of  the  man 
who  a  few  months  before  had  held  supreme  power  in  England  ; 
but  men,  and  women  perhaps  still  more,  were  a  little  sorry 
for  the  fate  of  Thomas  Holland,  the  young  Earl  of  Kent. 
It  was  thought  and  said  he  had  been  misled  by  bis  unscrupu- 
lous uncle  of  Huntingdon  working  on  his  chivalrous  feelings. 
He  was  about  twenty-four  years  old,  and  had  shown  gallant 
qualities  at  Maidenhead  Bridge  and  Cirencester.  Froissart 
tenderly  says  of  him  :  '  II  estoit  jeune  et  beau  fils.'  During 
his  brief  career,  the  young  Earl  founded  the  Carthusian 
monastery  called  Mountgrace,  of  which  the  spacious  remains 
still  exist  near  Northallerton  in  Yorkshire,  at  the  foot  of  a 
steep  rise  leading  to  moors  purple  with  heather  in  August. 
The  terms  of  foundation  show  that  the  young  Earl  of  Kent 


150  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

had  piety  towards  his  forbears  and  affection  for  kinsfolk 
and  friends.  The  deed  ordained  that  the  priors  and  monks 
of  the  house  should  always  in  their  orisons  recommend  to 
God  the  good  estate  of  King  Richard  II,  Queen  Isabel, 
himself  (the  founder),  and  his  wife  Joan  and  their  heirs  ;  also 
the  good  estates  of  John  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  John 
of  Ingleby,  and  Ellen  his  wife,  during  their  lives  in  this 
world,  and  also  their  souls  after  their  departure  hence ;  and 
the  soul  of  Queen  Anne,  first  wife  to  Richard  II ;  likewise  the 
souls  of  Edmund  of  Woodstock,  sometime  Earl  of  Kent, 
great-grandfather  of  the  founder,  Margaret  his  wife,  Joan, 
Princess  of  Wales,  Thomas  de  Holland,  Earl  of  Kent,  his 
grandfather,  Thomas  his  father,  and  Alice  his  mother  ;  and 
lastly  the  souls  of  Thomas  de  Ingleby  and  Catherine  his 
wife,  and  Margaret  de  Aldenburgh,  &c. 

The  headless  body  of  Thomas,  third  Earl  of  Kent,  was 
entombed  at  Cirencester  Abbey  until  July  1412,  when  at  the 
prayer  of  Lucia  di  Visconti,  the  widowed  Countess  of  Edmund, 
fourth  Earl,  Henry  IV  permitted  it  to  be  removed  to  the 
new  and  still  unfinished  Abbey  of  Mountgrace.^ 

There  stood  his  monument  for  more  than  a  hundred 
years  while  Carthusian  monks  chanted  solemn  orisons,  and 
then  perished  in  the  vast  and  wanton  destruction  which 
overwhelmed  the  monastic  churches  of  England,  and  deprived 
us  of  countless  memorials  and  sculptured  effigies  of  our 
knightly  ancestors  and  their  beauteous  and  stately  ladies. 
With  what  solemn  indignation  did  that  mighty  Warwick- 
shire antiquary.  Sir  William  Dugdale,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
book  on  the  Baronage,  denounce  this  history-destroying 
devastation  !  An  old  writer  estimated  that  out  of  45,000 
churches,  monastic  and  parish,  which  existed  in  England 
before  the  Reformation,  only  10,000  were  left,  beside  all 
the    vast    number    of    chapels    and    chantries     destroyed. 

^  The  Abbey  was  not  completed  until  about  1440. 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  151 

This  number  seems  hardly  credible,  but  those  destroyed 
certainly  included  by  far  the  greater  number  of  cathedral- 
like churches  containing  the  most  interesting  monuments.^ 
At  the  Revolution  there  was  a  similar  destruction  of 
monastic  churches  and  monuments  in  France.  Most  of 
the  memorial  brasses  were  stolen  from  the  churches  which 
survived  in  England.  All  this  is  more  the  pity  because 
the  art  of  portrait  painting  was  in  that  age  very 
immature,  whereas  carving  of  monumental  effigies  was  in 
high  perfection.  What  could  be  more  lifelike  than  the 
image  of  the  Black  Prince  at  Canterbury  or  that  of  Richard  II 
at  Westminster  ?  But  of  all  the  leading  personages  who 
figured  in  the  interesting  and  dramatic  reign  of  Richard,  how 
many  are  known  to  us  in  this  way  ?  There  are  effigies  of 
Richard  II  and  Queen  Anne  at  Westminster ;  of  Henry 
Bolingbroke  and  Margaret  Holland  and  her  two  husbands 
at  Canterbury ;  of  the  poet  John  Gower  in  the  Abbey 
Church  of  St.  Mary  in  Southwark.  Are  there  many  others  ? 
The  figure  of  John  Gower  is  very  lifelike,  with  the  dignified 
gown  worn  by  elder  men  after  discarding  the  fantastical 
costume  of  the  youth  of  that  period,  the  forked  and 
carefully  cut  beard,  the  hair  falling  below  the  ears  and 
rolled  up  at  the  end.  He  supplies  a  good  idea  of  how  men 
of  his  time  must  have  appeared. 

The  attempt  of  the  Hollands  and  their  friends  to  restore 

'  Within  the  walls  of  York,  besides  the  cathedral — to  take  one  instance — there 
were  in  the  reign  of  Henry  V,  41  parish  churches,  17  chapels,  16  hospitals  (in  the 
old  sense),  and  8  monastic  houses,  and  also  the  great  monastic  house  just  outside 
the  Bar  Gate.  In  the  Tudor  period,  18  of  the  parish  churches  and  all  the 
monasteries,  hospitals,  and  chapels,  were  laid  in  the  dust.  Even  the  strong 
old  Protestant  writer  Strype  says  of  the  man  whom  he  calls  '  the  good  Duke  of 
Somerset '  (the  Protector)  :  '  It  must  be  reckoned  among  his  failures,  the  havoc 
he  made  of  sacred  edifices.  It  was  too  barbarous,  indeed,  the  defacing  ancient 
monuments,  and  rooting  out  thereby  the  memory  of  men  of  note  and  quality 
in  former  times  of  which  posterity  is  wont  to  be  very  tender  {Ecclest.  Mem.  i. 
12).  Strype's  feelings  as  historian  and  antiquarian  almost  get  the  best  here  of 
his  admiration  for  the  Protestant  '  good  duke.'     But  '  failures '  indeed  ! 


152  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Richard  caused  the  secret  murder  of  the  unhappy  king  in 
Pontefract  Castle,  a  week  or  ten  days  after  the  rising. 
Archbishop  Fitz-Alan  of  Arundel,  rejoicing  over  the  Ciren- 
cester affair,  vindictively  \^Tote  on  January  10,  1400,  that 
the    Earls    of   Kent   and  Salisbury  had  been  beheaded  by 

*  Sancta  Rusticitas  que  omnia  palam  facit.'  ('  Saint  Rusticity 
who  does  all  things  openly.')  This  rude  openness  of  the 
Archbishop's  new  and  singular  saint  was  at  any  rate  better 
than  the  secret  murder  of  Richard,  covered  by  the  cold 
official  falsehood,  supported  by  the  exhibition  of  his  dead 
face  to  the  London  public,  that  the  late  king  had  died  a 
natural  death. 

In  those  days  of  weak  governments,  full  of  apprehension 
because  without  standing  army  or  police,  a  king  deposed  was 
a  king  murdered.  It  was  an  incident  of  change  of  govern- 
ment. '  Come,  let  us  sit  upon  the  ground  and  tell  sad  stories 
of  the  deaths  of  kings.'  Even  before  he  landed  in  England, 
Henry  of  Lancaster  well  knew  that  he  would  have  to  slay  his 
cousin.  Froissart  relates  a  conversation  at  Paris  between 
him  and  Archbishop  Arundel,  who  urged  upon  him  the  venture. 
Henry  did  not  immediately  reply,  but,  leaning  on  a  window 
that  looked  into  the  garden,  mused  awhile,  and  then,  turning 
to  the  Archbishop,  said  that,  if  he  complied,  he  would  have 
to  put  Richard  to  death.  '  For  this,'  he  added,  '  I  shall  be 
blamed  by  all  men,  and  I  would  not  willingly  do  so  if  any 
other  means  could  be  adopted.'  The  Archbishop  replied, 
in  full  accord  with  later  '  constitutional  principles,'  that 
Henry  would  act  on  the  advice  of  counsellors,  and  so  would 
avoid  any  personal  responsibility. 

Froissart,  after  relating  the  story  of  Richard's  death,  says  ; 

*  I  was  in  the  city  of  Bordeaux  and  sitting  at  the  table,  when 
King  Richard  was  born,  which  was  on  a  Wednesday,  about 
ten  of  the  clock.  The  same  time  there  came  there,  where  I 
was,  Sir  Richard  Pountchardon,  Marshal  then  of  Aquitaine, 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  153 

and  he  said  to  me,  "  Froissart,  write  and  put  in  memory  that 
as  now  my  Lady  Princess  is  brought  abed  with  a  fair  son  on 
this  Twelfth  Day,  that  is,  the  day  of  the  Three  Kings,  and  he 
is  son  to  a  king's  son,  and  shall  be  a  king."  This  gentle 
knight  said  truth,  for  he  was  King  of  England  twenty-two 
years ;  but  when  this  knight  said  these  words,  he  knew  full 
little  what  should  be  his  end.' 

John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  left  three  sons — 
Richard,  John,  and  Edward — and  a  daughter,  Constance. 
This  daughter  was  married  first  to  the  Earl  Marshal,  beheaded 
at  York  for  treason  in  1405,  son  and  heir  to  that  Earl  of 
Nottingham,  for  a  time  Duke  of  Norfolk,  who  had  the  quarrel 
with  Bolingbroke,  and  secondly  to  Lord  Gray  de  Ruthyn,  who 
was  ancestor  of  a  new,  long,  and  dull  line  of  Earls  of  Kent. 
One  of  these  later  Earls  of  Kent,  so  descended  from  Constance 
Holland,  sat  on  the  commission  which  condemned  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots,  and  he  was  present  at  her  execution  in 
the  castle  hall  of  Fotheringay.  Mary  held  the  Crucifix  and 
said :  '  As  Thy  arms,  O  God,  were  stretched  out  upon  the 
Cross,  so  receive  me  into  the  arms  of  Thy  mercy  and  forgive 
me  my  sins.'  '  Madam,'  said  the  Earl  of  Kent,  '  you  would 
better  leave  such  popish  trumperies  and  bear  Him  in  your 
heart.'  Mary  replied :  '  I  cannot  hold  in  my  hand  the 
representation  of  His  sufferings,  but  I  must  at  the  same  time 
bear  Him  in  my  heart.'  An  Earl  of  Kent  of  the  nobler 
and  earlier  line  would  not  so  have  insulted  a  dying  queen 
and  woman. 

The  Earl  of  Huntingdon's  widow,  Elizabeth,  was,  after 
all,  sister  of  King  Henry  IV,  and  for  this  reason,  although 
the  estates  were  confiscated  for  his  treason,  manors  were 
re-granted  sufficient  for  the  maintenance  of  his  children,  the 
King's  nephews  and  niece,  who  were  brought  up  at  their 
late  father's  Hall  of  Dartington,  near  Totnes  in  Devonshire. 
Elizabeth  mourned  so  little  for  the  husband  who  had  tried 


154  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

to  overthrow  her  brother,  that  within  two  months  after  his 
death  she  married,  without  the  consent  of  the  King  and  to 
his  displeasure,  a  certain  gentleman  called  Sir  John  Cornwall, 
more  noted  for  his  great  bodily  strength  than  for  any  other 
qualities.     He  was  afterwards  made  Lord  Fanhope. 

Waleran,  Count  of  St.  Pol  and  Luxemburg — he  who  had 
married  Maud  la  Belle,  sister  of  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don— was  pleased  to  add  an  epilogue  of  comedy  to  the  tragedy 
of  King  Richard  and  the  Hollands.  It  was  the  supreme 
glory  of  this  Picard  lord  to  have  married  the  half-sister 
of  the  King  of  England,  and  he  was  exceeding  wrath  at  the 
overthrow  of  his  royal  brother-in-law.  His  own  great  time 
had  come  to  an  end,  and  he  could  no  longer  enjoy  visits  to 
Eltham  Palace  and  play  the  proud  role  of  diplomatic  agent 
between  the  kings  of  France  and  England.  After  meditating 
on  these  things  for  a  year,  the  Count,  in  1402,  sent  King 
Henry  this  insolent  letter  : 

'  Most  high  and  puissant  Prince  Henry,  Duke  of  Lancaster, 
I,  Waleran  of  Luxembourg,  Coimt  of  St.  Pol,  considering  the 
love,  affinity,  and  alliance  which  I  had  for  the  most  noble 
and  puissant  Prince  Richard,  King  of  England,  whose  sister 
I  have  married,  in  the  destruction  of  which  noble  King  you 
are  notoriously  inculpated  and  very  greatly  dishonoured, 
and,  moreover,  the  great  shame  I  and  my  offspring  descending 
from  me  may,  or  might,  have  in  time  to  come,  and  also  the 
indignation  of  God  Almighty,  and  of  all  reasonable  and 
honourable  persons,  if  I  do  not  hazard  myself  with  all  my 
power  to  avenge  the  destruction  of  him  to  whom  I  was  thus 
allied  ;  wherefore  by  these  present  letters,  I  make  known  to 
you  that  in  all  ways  that  I  can  and  that  shall  be  possible  to 
me,  I  will  requite  you  henceforth,  you  and  yours,  and  all  the 
damage  as  well  by  myself  as  by  my  relations,  all  my  men  and 
subjects,  that  I  can  do,  I  will  do  to  you,  by  sea  and  by  land, 
always  without  the  Kingdom  of  France,  for  the  becoming 


THE  HOLLAND  REVOLT  155 

reason  of  the  thing  above  discoursed  of,  not  in  anywise  for 
the  matters  which  have  taken  place  and  are  to  take  place 
between  my  most  dread  and  sovereign  Lord  the  King  of 
France  and  the  Kingdom  of  England.  And  this  I  certify 
you  by  the  impression  of  my  seal.  Given  in  my  castle  of  St. 
Pol  on  the  eleventh  day  of  February,  year  one  thousand  four 
hundred  and  two.' 

The  noble  Count  did  not  get  a  satisfactory  answer  to 
this  letter,  the  composition  of  which  must  have  given  much 
trouble  to  him  and  his  legal  advisers. 

'  When  King  Henry,'  says  John  de  Wavrin,  '  had  received 
and  caused  to  be  read  this  letter,  and  had  understood  the 
contents  of  it,  he  thought  a  little,  and  then  said  to  the 
messenger  :  "  My  friend,  return  to  your  country,  and  say 
to  your  master  the  Count  of  St.  Pol,  that  of  his  anger  and 
threats,  I  take  not  much  account,  and  say  to  him  that  my 
intention  is  so  to  meet  his  threats  that  he  will  have  much 
to  do  to  protect  his  person,  his  subjects,  and  his  country." 

'  Then  the  messenger,  hearing  the  answer  of  the  King, 
without  replying,  departed,  and  came  to  Dover,  where  he 
embarked  in  a  boat  and  came  to  Calais  and  thence  to  Aire, 
where  he  found  Count  Waleran  his  master.  When  the 
Count  had  heard  the  messenger  touching  the  answer  of 
King  Henry,  he  was  much  troubled  in  his  heart,  but  passed 
it  off  as  well  as  he  could,  and  to  keep  his  word  he  prepared 
himself  to  make  war  on  the  said  King  Henry  and  on  all 
whom  he  might  think  wished  him  well.  Also  he  caused 
to  be  made  in  his  Castle  of  Bohaing,  the  effigy  of  the  Earl 
of  Rutland,  son  of  the  Duke  of  York,  blazoned  with  his 
arms  and  a  portable  gibbet,  which  he  caused  to  be  taken 
secretly  into  one  of  his  fortresses  in  the  country  of  Boulogne, 
and  soon  afterwards  the  said  Count  ordered  his  people — 
namely,  Robert  de  Reubetagnes,  Aliane  de  Bectune,  and 
other  skilled  men  of  war,  who  by  his  command  placed  the 


156  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

said  gibbet  and  effigy  by  night  close  to  the  Gates  of  Calais, 
where  the  same  gibbet  was  by  them  set  up  and  the  effigy 
of  the  said  Earl  of  Rutland  there  hanging  by  the  feet  down- 
wards. After  this  was  done,  the  two  gentlemen  returned  to 
the  place  whence  they  had  come.  When  it  came  to  pass 
in  the  morning  that  the  people  of  Calais  opened  the  gates 
they  were  much  amazed  to  see  this  gibbet,  and  at  once 
demolished  it,  and  brought  it  into  the  town,  and  from  this 
time  were  the  English  at  Calais  even  more  inclined  to  do 
damage  to  the  Count  of  St.  Pol,  and  his  country  and  his 
subjects  than  they  were  before.' 

The   Burgundian   chronicler   thus   solemnly   relates   this 
valorous  feat  of  arms. 


CHAPTER  VII 

EDMUND    HOLLAND,    FOURTH   EARL   OF    KENT,    AND 
HIS    SISTERS 

Twist  ye,  twine  ye  !  even  so, 
INIingle  shades  of  joy  and  woe, 
Hope,  and  fear,  and  peace,  and  strife. 
In  the  thread  of  human  life. 

Walteb  Scott. 

Thomas  Holland,  third  Earl  of  Kent,  slain  by  the  Ciren- 
cester folk,  left  a  young  widow,  the  Countess  Joan,  but 
no  children.  Henry  IV  gave  means  of  support  to  Joan, 
who  lived  till  1444.  The  earldom  passed  to  the  younger 
brother,  Edmund  Holland,  who  was  about  sixteen  in  1400, 
when  he  became  fourth  Earl  of  Kent.  Most  of  the  Kent 
and  Huntingdon  estates  had  been  confiscated  either  before 
or  after  the  revolt,  and  both  branches  of  the  family  depended 
mainly  on  the  King  for  support.  Henry  IV  was  placable 
by  temperament,  and  wished  to  win  the  great  houses  to 
the  support  of  his  dubious,  though  parliamentary,  title. 
As  soon  as  the  young  Earl  of  Kent  came  of  age,  he  was 
made  high  steward  and  received  a  command  at  sea.  He 
was  made  Knight  of  the  Garter  in  1403.  Two  years  later 
he  first  saw  war  in  a  naval  expedition  commanded  by  Thomas 
of  Lancaster,  one  of  the  King's  sons,  and  himself,  two  youths 
scarcely  of  age.  He  fought  gallantly  in  an  unsuccessful 
attack  on  Sluys,  and  was  twice  hit  so  badly  that  the  French 
believed  him  killed. 

Edmund    was    a    youth    distinguished    and    charming ; 

157 


158  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

'  inclytus  et  amabilis,'  the  chronicler  calls  him.  Like  his 
late  uncle,  John,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  he  won  renown  in 
the  lists.  In  1405,  when  he  was  about  twenty-one,  he  was 
challenged  to  a  match  by  a  Scottish  champion,  Alexander 
Stewart,  Earl  of  Mar,  bastard  son  of  the  famous  Earl  of 
Buchan,  the  '  Wolf  of  Badenoch,'  himself  a  son  of  King 
Robert  II.  The  Earl  of  Mar  came  down  from  Scotland 
with  a  special  safe  conduct,  and  the  fray  was  fought  in 
Smithfield  before  London's  beauty  and  fashion.  The  Earl  of 
Kent  defeated  the  Northerner,  no  doubt  with  vast  applause, 
winning  the  double  event — the  combat  on  horse  and  the 
combat  on  foot. 

Edmund,  when  still  hardly  more  than  a  boy,  was  under  the 
spell  of  the  Lady  Constance,  sister  to  the  second  Duke  of 
York,  the  whilom  Earl  of  Rutland,  who  had  betrayed  Kent's 
dead  brother.  Constance  was  widow  of  the  Lord  Despenser 
who  had  taken  part  in  the  Holland  revolt  of  1400,  and  had 
been  beheaded  by  the  mob  at  Bristol.  It  was  this  fair  and 
immoral  lady  who  was  concerned  in  the  Yorkist  plot  of  1405, 
and  smuggled  the  two  Mortimer  boys  out  of  Windsor  Castle, 
and  afterwards,  correctly  no  doubt,  accused  her  own  brother, 
the  Duke  of  York,  of  treason,  and  tried  to  get  one  of  her 
admirers  to  prove  her  allegation  by  ordeal  of  battle  against 
him.  A  daughter  named  Eleanor  was  the  fruit  of  the  love 
affair  between  Edmund  of  Kent  and  Constance  of  York. 
This  high-born  passion-child  married  Lord  Audley,  of  a  family 
which  continues  to  this  day,  and  in  1431  she  unsuccessfully 
tried  in  Court  of  Law  to  prove  herself  legitimate. 

But  now  the  young  Earl  of  Kent  had  to  discard  this 
entanglement  with  the  widow  of  a  rebel  lord  whose  estates 
had  been  confiscated,  and  make  a  rich  marriage  for  the  sake 
of  his  impoverished  house.  Holinshed  says  that,  '  Edmund 
Holland,  Earl  of  Kent,  was  in  such  favour  with  the  King, 
that  he  not  only  advanced  him  to  high  office  and  great 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS        159 

honours,  but  also,  to  his  great  cost  and  charges,  obtained  for 
him  the  Lady  Lucia,  daughter  and  one  of  the  heirs  of  Lord 
Bernabo  of  Milan,' 

Bernabo  was  brother  of  Gian  Galeazzo  de  Visconti,  whose 
daughter  Violante,  had,  as  his  second  wife,  married  Lionel, 
Duke  of  Clarence,  son  of  Edward  III  and  uncle  of  Henry  IV. 
That  marriage  was  celebrated  at  Milan  in  1368  and  was 
the  most  glorious  affair.  Violante  was  beautiful,  and  Lionel 
far  renowned  as  the  handsomest  of  his  good-looking  race. 
Violante  had  for  her  dowry  100,000  florins.  There  was  a 
gorgeous  banquet  of  thirty  courses,  the  very  leavings  of 
which,  said  the  enraptured  Italian  chronicler,  would  have 
fed  10,000  men.  Francesco  Petrarcha,  the  poet  laureate 
of  Italy,  was  there,  and  '  for  the  honour  of  his  learning,  was 
seated  among  the  highest  nobility,'  who  were  far  more  highly 
honoured  by  his  presence.  There  were  two  hundred  English 
among  the  guests.  During  one  course  were  presented,  as  gifts 
to  the  guests,  '  seventy  goodly  horses,  caparisoned  with  silk 
and  silver,  and  during  others,  silver  vessels,  falcons,  hounds, 
armour  for  horses,  costly  coats  of  mail,  breastplates  glistening 
of  massy  steel,  corslets  and  helmets  adorned  with  rich  crests, 
apparel  embroidered  with  costly  jewels,  soldiers'  belts,  and 
lastly,  certain  gems  of  curious  art  set  in  gold,  and  purple 
and  cloth  of  gold  for  mens'  apparel  in  great  abundance.' 

Unhappily,  the  Duke  of  Clarence  was  so  exhausted  by 
Italian  banqueting  and  love-making  that  he  died  in  Piedmont 
two  months  after  his  wedding,  or  he  was  poisoned  by  an 
enemy,  some  said.  But  such  was  the  wealth  and  extrava- 
gance of  these  Lombard  Viscontis,  into  whose  family  the 
young  Earl  of  Kent  was  now  to  marry.  They  could  spare  one 
of  their  numerous  daughters  for  an  Earl  of  Kent  to  please 
the  King  of  England,  but  they  were  keen  to  make  much 
greater  alliances.  One  of  their  daughters  had  married  into 
the  royal  family  of  France,  and  a  marriage  had  at  one  time 


160  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

been  talked  of  between  Richard  II  and  another  daughter 
of  Bernabo,  and  Michael  de  la  Pole  had  been  sent  to  Milan 
in  1379  to  treat  of  it.  These  two  Viscontis  had  amassed 
their  great  fortunes  by  taxing  the  people  of  the  rich  Lombard 
plain.  Bernabo  was  a  tyrant,  and  called  the  '  Scourge  of 
Lombardy  '  ;  but  all  the  same  was  a  good  patron  of  art  and 
letters.  He  had  twenty-nine  children.  When  Henry  IV, 
as  Earl  of  Derby,  was  on  his  return  from  Jerusalem  in  1393, 
he  came  to  Milan,  and  Lucia  Visconti,  then  fifteen  years  old, 
was  so  much  smitten  by  this  magnificent  English  stranger — 
he  was  then  twenty-six — that  six  years  later  when  they  wanted 
her  to  marry  a  German  Prince,  Frederick  of  Thuringia, 
she  cried,  and  would  not  let  her  maid  put  on  her  most  showy 
frock,  vowing  that  she  would  wait  till  her  life's  end  to  marry 
Henry  of  Derby,  even  if  she  had  to  die  three  days  after  she 
was  wed.^  Other  proposals  were  made  for  her  hand,  but  for 
one  reason  or  another  she  did  not  marry  till  she  was  twenty- 
nine.  The  Earl  of  Kent  was  then  about  twenty-three,  or 
six  years  younger  than  his  Italian  wife.  Edmund  Holland 
was  contracted  to  the  Lady  Lucia  at  Milan  in  the  summer 
of  1306,  and  was  married  to  her  in  London  on  January 
24,  1307,  in  the  Church  of  St.  Mary  Overy,  now  called 
Southwark  Cathedral,  where  the  poet  Gower,  to  whom 
Richard  II  was  so  kind,  had  been  buried  two  years  earlier. 

The  forsaken  Lady  Constance  Despenser  was  sufficiently 
forgiving  to  attend  this  wedding.  It  was  a  grand  social 
affair.  The  King  himself  gave  away  the  bride — his  former 
girl  adorer — at  the  door  of  the  church,  and  after  the  ceremony 
the  guests  all  repaired  to  a  grand  banquet  at  the  neighbour- 
ing palace  of  the  Bishop  of  Winchester.  According  to 
Holinshed,  Don  Alfonso  of  Cainuola  paid  in  the  church  to 
the  Earl  of  Kent  100,000  ducats  on  behalf  of  Bernabo  of 

^  Sine    Mailandisch-Thuringische    HeiratK's    geschichte  ans  den    Zeit    Konig 
Wenzels.     Dresden,  1895. 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       161 

Milan  as  a  dowry.  Perhaps,  however,  Don  Alfonso  only 
gave  promissory  and  unhonoured  notes,  for  in  the  following 
year  the  Earl  of  Kent  was  without  means,  and  deep  in 
debt.  Edmund  survived  not  his  marriage  long.  In  1408 
he  was  appointed  '  Admiral  for  the  North  and  West  '  in 
place  of  the  Earl  of  Somerset,  his  brother-in-law,  and  soon 
afterwards  was  sent  with  a  fleet  to  coerce  Olivier  de  Blois, 
Count  of  Penthievre,  who  owned  the  island  of  Breton  off 
the  coast  of  Brittany,  was  in  rebellion  against  his  suzerain, 
the  Duke  of  Brittany,  had  been  a  kind  of  Channel  pirate, 
and  had  refused  to  pay  a  sum  due  to  the  English  Crown. 
The  Earl  of  Kent,  notwithstanding  his  supposed  rich  marriage, 
was  in  debt,  and  to  raise  £200  on  this  occasion  from  the 
moneylenders  at  Southampton,  he  had  to  pawn  his  spoons, 
forks,  spice-plates,  goblets  and  potellers,  his  silver  gilt 
basins  with  the  arms  of  Kent  and  Milan,  his  salt  cellars 
inlaid  with  the  lodged  hart,  his  cups  dotted  with  pearls,  and 
'  balusters  or  pounced  with  ivy  and  the  lids  enamelled 
with  falcons  and  mounted  with  fretlets  of  roses,  apples 
eagles,  green  flowers  and  doves.' 

The  fleet  sailed  early  in  June  1408,  and  the  island  and 
castle  were  captured.  But  the  young  Earl  of  Kent  was 
wounded  to  death.  Riding  recklessly  near  the  walls  without 
wearing  his  '  basinet '  or  iron  cap,  he  was  struck  on  the 
head  by  a  shot  from  the  castle,  and  died  of  the  wound  a 
few  days  later,  September  5,  1408.  His  body  was  brought 
home  and  buried  near  that  of  his  father  at  Brunne,  or  Bourne, 
Abbey  in  the  fens  of  Lincolnshire.  Edmund  was  the 
fourth  of  his  family,  since  the  Hollands  had  emerged  from 
Lancashire,  to  meet  a  violent  death.  He  died  with  no 
assets,  without  a  will,  and  deep  in  debt.  His  widow  Lucia 
received  in  1412  an  annuity  of  £333  6s.  8d.  from  manors  in 
Lancashire,  which  confirms  the  supposition  that  most  of 
her  dowry  had  never  been  received  or  had  been  spent  at 


162  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

once  in  clearing  off  her  husband's  previous  debts.  She 
married  again.  The  Elizabethan  chronicler,  Grafton,  is 
responsible  for  the  following  statement.  He  does  not  put 
the  matter  as  prettily  as  he  should  have  done. 

'  This  Lucye,  after  the  death  of  her  husbande,  by  whom 
she  had  none  issue,  was  moved  by  the  King  to  marry  hys 
bastard  brother  the  Erie  of  Dorset,  a  man  very  aged  and 
evil-visaged,  whose  person  neyther  satisfied  her  phantasie 
nor  whose  face  pleased  her  appetite.  Wherfore  she,  pre- 
ferring her  owne  minde  more  than  the  Kinge's  desyre, 
delighting  in  him  which  should  more  satisfie  her  wanton 
desire  than  gayne  her  any  profite,  for  verye  love  tooke  to 
husbande  Henry  Mortimer,  a  goodly  young  esquire,  and 
bewtifull  bachelor.  For  which  cause  the  King  was  not 
onely  with  her  displeased,  but  also  for  marying  without 
his  license,  he  fined  her  at  a  great  some  of  money,  which 
fine  King  Henry  V  both  released  and  pardoned  and  also 
made  him  loiight  and  promoted  him  to  great  offices  both 
in  England  and  in  Normandy.' 

Lucia  died  on  April  4,  1424,  and  was  buried  in  the  church 
of  the  Austen  Friars  in  Bread  Street,  London.  She  seems 
to  have  been  a  pious  soul,  who  lived  an  unhappy  life,  full 
of  disappointments.  By  her  will  she  bequeathed  her  body 
to  be  buried  wheresoever  it  should  please  God.  She  left 
a  thousand  crowns  to  the  Abbey  of  Brunne  in  Lincolnshire, 
where  her  husband  lay  buried,  and  a  hke  sum  to  the  Priory 
and  Convent  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  Aldwych  Without,  London, 
upon  condition  'that  they  should  provide  a  fitting  priest 
to  celebrate  divine  service  daily  to  the  end  of  the  world, 
in  every  of  these  hereafter  named  religious  houses,  viz. 
St.  Mary  in  Overy  in  Southwark,  the  Carthusian  Minoresses, 
and  Holy  Trinity  Without,  Aldgate,  and  Abbey  of  Brunne, 
as  also  in  the  four  houses  of  the  Friars  Mendicants  in  London, 
for  the  health  of  the  souls  of  King  Henry  IV  and  King 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       163 

Henry  V.  Likewise  for  the  souls  of  Edmund,  late  Earl  of 
Kent,  her  husband,  as  also  for  her  own  soul,  and  the  souls 
of  all  the  faithful  deceased.  And  that  in  every  one  of  those 
houses  they  should  yearly  celebrate  the  anniversary  of  him 
the  said  Edmund  and  her  the  said  Lucia.  Likewise  that  every 
brother  and  sister  in  each  of  those  houses  should  every  day 
say  the  psalm  of  De  Profundis  with  the  wonted  orison  for 
the  dead,  for  the  souls  of  him  the  said  Edmund,  and  her 
the  said  Lucia,  by  name.  Moreover  that  in  each  of  those 
houses  they  should  once  every  month  in  their  Quire,  say 
Placebo  and  Dirige  by  note  for  the  souls  of  them,  the  said 
Edmund  and  Lucia  by  name,  and  once  every  year  a  Trental 
of  St.  Gregory  for  their  said  souls  by  name.' 

'  Poor  Lucia  fondly  imagined  that  these  orisons  would 
continue  '  until  the  end  of  the  world '  !  They  lasted  barely 
a  hundred  years.  She  also  left  a  thousand  crowns  to  the 
Provost  and  Canons  of  Our  Lady  de  la  Scala  at  Milan,  not 
forgetful  of  the  land  of  her  girlhood,  and  another  thousand 
crowns  to  the  church  where  her  father  was  buried. 

Edmund  and  Lucia  had  been  married  only  a  year  and  a 
half,  and  they  had  no  children.  The  Kent  title  therefore  died 
out  in  the  Holland  line,  though  it  was  afterwards  revived  in 
favour  of  the  Greys  of  Ruthyn,  who  long  held  it.^ 

Edmund's  sisters  and  the  young  Earl  of  March,  the  son 
of  one  sister  who  had  died,  became  co-heirs  to  his  valueless 
possessions. 

Thomas  Holland,  second  Earl  of  Kent,  besides  his  sons 
Thomas  and  Edmund,  the  third  and  fourth  Earls,  and  two 
other  sons  who  died  young,  had  six  daughters.  One  would 
have  liked  to  see  this  family  in  their  glorious  youth  in  some 

^  The  Greys  of  Ruthyn  were  connected  with  the  Hollands  by  the  marriage 
of  Constance,  daughter  of  John  Holland,  first  Duke  of  Exeter.  They  remained 
Earls  of  Kent  till  the  last  of  their  male  line,  who  became  Duke  of  Kent  in  1710 
and  died  in  1740,  and  all  the  Kent  titles  died  with  him.  The  barony  of  Grey 
of  Ruthyn  continued  through  a  female  descent  and  still  exists. 


164  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

country  estate.  There  is  evidence  to  show  that  they  were 
vigorous  and  beautiful.  Some  of  the  sisters  became  of 
importance  in  the  descent  of  the  royal  line  of  England. 
Their  names  were  : 

1.  Alianora. 

2.  Johanna,  or  Joan. 

3.  Margaret. 

4.  Eleanor. 

5.  Elizabeth. 

6.  Bridget. 

Bridget  became  a  nun,  but  the  other  five  sisters  married 
men  of  importance.  The  eldest,  Alianora,  married  Roger 
Mortimer,  Earl  of  March,  who  was  son  of  Edmund  Mortimer, 
Earl  of  March,  and  of  Philippa,  daughter  of  Lionel,  Duke 
of  Clarence,  the  third  son  of  Edward  III.  Roger,  Earl  of 
March,  was  killed  in  the  wars  in  Ireland  in  1398.  He  was  at 
the  time  formally  recognised  as  heir  presumptive  to  the 
Crown  in  default  of  children  to  Richard  II,  by  virtue  of 
his  mother,  Philippa,  whose  father  was  senior  in  order  of  birth 
to  the  Duke  of  Lancaster.  If  Richard  II  had  died  in,  say, 
1390,  England  would  therefore  have  had  a  King  Roger  of  the 
House  of  Mortimer,  and  a  Queen  Eleanor  of  the  House  of 
Holland.  Henry  IV  would  probably  never  have  been 
King,  and  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  might  have  been  avoided. 
This  Roger,  Earl  of  March,  left  four  children,  namely  : 

Anne,  who  was  nine  years  old  on  her  father's  death. 

Edmund,  who  was  six. 

Roger,  who  was  then  four. 

Eleanor,  who  was  younger. 
By  strict  right  or  custom,  as  received  in  England,  that 
right  by  which  Edward  III  had  claimed  the  crown  of  France, 
the  boy  Edmund  should  have  become  King  on  the  deposition 
of  Richard  II.  The  right  was  put  aside  by  Parliament  in 
favour  of  Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  and  this  passing  over  the 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       165 

Mortimer  claim  was  ostensibly  the  cause  of  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses,  the  real  cause  being  the  Yorkist  ambition.  The  two 
Mortimer  boys,  as  possible  centres  of  conspiracy,  were  taken 
away  from  their  mother  by  Henry  IV  and  kept  at  Windsor 
Castle.  The  attempt  made  in  1405  by  that  ambiguous  lady, 
Constance  Despenser,  and  her  brother,  the  treacherous  Duke 
of  York  (formerly  Rutland  and  Albemarle)  to  smuggle  them 
away  to  Wales  was  foiled.  The  boys  were  recaptured  in  a 
wood  near  Cheltenham  and  placed  in  safer  keeping.  Edmund 
was  kept  many  years  a  prisoner  in  an  Irish  castle,  and  died 
there.  The  two  unfortunate  youths  were  both  dead  before 
1425,  and  left  no  children.  The  claim  then  passed  to  their 
elder  sister  Anne.  She  and  her  sister  had  been  left  with  their 
mother,  Alianora,  born  Holland,  who,  after  her  husband  the 
Earl  of  March's  death,  married  Lord  Powys  and  died  in  1405. 

Anne  Mortimer  was  married  to  Richard,  Earl  of  Cambridge, 
younger  brother  of  the  existing  Duke  of  York  and  son  of 
Edmund  Langley,  not  by  Joan  Holland,  but  by  his  first  wife, 
the  Spanish  Princess.  This  Earl  of  Cambridge  was  beheaded 
at  Southampton  in  1415  for  his  share  in  the  Yorkist  conspiracy 
against  Henry  V.  His  elder  brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  died 
the  same  year  at  Agincourt  without  leaving  sons.  Richard 
Plantagenet,  the  son  of  the  Earl  of  Cambridge  and  Anne 
Mortimer,  and  so  grandson  of  Alianora  Holland,  became 
Duke  of  York  and  was  killed  at  the  Battle  of  Wakefield  in 
1460.  He  was  father  to  Edward  IV  and  Richard  III  and 
grandfather  to  Elizabeth  of  York,  who  married  Henry  VII 
and  so  reunited  the  Roses.  Thus,  Alianora  Holland  was  an 
ancestress  of  Henry  VIII  and  his  successors,  Edward  VI, 
Mary,  aiid  Elizabeth,  and  through  the  daughter  of  Henry  VII, 
who  married  James  of  Scotland,  was  also  an  ancestress  in  the 
Stewart  line. 

Another  daughter  of  Thomas  Holland,  second  Earl  of 
Kent,  was  Johanna,  or  Joan,  a  Beauty  who  married  four  times. 


166  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Her  first  husband,  whom  she  married  in  1393,  was  much  older 
than  herself,  Edward  Ill's  son,  the  easy-going  and  ineffec- 
tive Edmund  of  Langley,  Duke  of  York,  whose  first  wife 
had  been  Isabella  of  Castile.     He  was  then  about  fifty  and 
Joan   not  twenty.     Froissart    remarks    that   the    Duke   of 
Gloucester,   who  was  jealous   of  his  brother  the  Duke  of 
Lancaster,  '  cared  nothing  for  his  brother  the  Duke  of  York, 
a  prince  that  loved  his  ease,  and  was  without  malice  or  guile, 
wishing  only  to  live  in  quiet ;   also  he  had  a  fair  lady  to  wife, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Kent,  who  was  all  his  pleasure,  and 
with  whom  he  spent  most  of  his  time  that  was  not  filled  by 
hunting  and  other  diversions.'     Froissart,  who  had  not  been 
in  England  for  twenty-seven  years,   arrived  at  Dover  on 
July   16,  1394,  a  year  after  Joan's  marriage,  and  met  the 
Court  two  days  later  at  Canterbury.     All  his  old  friends  were 
dead,  and  he  knew  no  one  at  first,  but  he  rode  in  the  train  of 
the  King  by  Ospringe  and  Leeds  Castle,  and  thence,  crossing 
again  the  chalk  downs,  to  Eltham,  conversing  on  the  way 
about  the  events  of  the  times  with  Sir  William  de  Lisle  and 
Sir  Richard  de  Sturry.     At  Leeds  Castle  the  Duke  of  York, 
to  whom  he  had  letters  of  introduction,  presented  him  to 
the  King,  and    a  few  days  later   at  Eltham  Froissart  had 
an  opportunity  to  present  Richard  his  book  on  L'Amour 
handsomely    written    and    illumined    and    ornately    bound, 
studded  and  clasped.^   No  doubt  he  also  addressed  at  Eltham 
his   compliments   to   the   young   and   beautiful  Duchess   of 
York  and  told  her  how  well  he  remembered  her  grandfather, 
'  ce  bon  chevalier,'   Sir  Thomas  Holland,  and  her  grand- 
mother, the  Princess  Joan  of  Kent.     He  stayed  over  three 
months  at  Court,  moving  about,  at  Eltham  and  Shene  and 
Chertsey  and  Windsor,  and  must  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  the 

^  A  'fair  book,  fair  illumined  and  ■\^Titten,  and  covered  with  crimson  velvet, 
with  ten  buttons  of  silver  and  gilt,  and  roses  and  gold  in  the  midst,  with  two  great 
clasps,  gilt,  richly  wrought.' 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       167 

Holland  family.  The  impression  given  by  Froissart  of  the 
first  Duke  of  York,  the  most  amiable  of  his  race,  tallies  well 
with  that  conveyed  by  the  rhyming  chronicler,  Hardyng  : 

That  Edmund,  hight  '  of  Langley,'  of  good  chere 
Glad  and  merry,  and  of  his  own  aye  lyved 
Without  wronge,  as  chronicles  have  breved  ; 
When  all  the  lords  to  council  and  to  parleyment 
Went,  he  wolde  to  hunt,  and  also  to  hawkeying. 
All  gentyll  disporte,  as  to  a  lord  appent. 
He  used  aye,  and  to  the  pore  supportyng, 
Wherever  he  was,  in  any  place  bidyng, 
Without  surprise  or  any  extorcyon 
Of  the  porayle,  or  any  oppressyon. 

It  is  a  picture  of  the  eternal  English  country  gentleman, 
and  it  is  a  pleasing  trait  that  when  other  lords  went  to  quarrel 
in  Parliament,  Edmund  of  Langley  would  go  hunting.  He 
is  Shakespeare's  '  good  old  York.'  In  '  Richard  II '  the 
widowed  Duchess  of  the  murdered  Gloucester  sends  a  tragic- 
ally poignant  and  discouraging  invitation  to  him  through  his 
brother,  John  of  Gaunt  : 

Commend  me  to  thy  brother,  Edmund  York. 

Lo  !  this  is  all  :    nay,  yet  depart  not  so ; 

Though  this  be  all,  do  not  so  quickly  go  ; 

I  shall  remember  more.     Bid  him — ah,  what  ? — 

With  all  good  speed  at  Plashy  visit  me. 

Alack  !  and  what  shall  good  old  York  there  see 

But  empty  lodgings  and  unfurnish'd  walls. 

Unpeopled  offices,  untrodden  stones  ? 

And  what  hear  there  for  welcome  but  my  groans  ? 

Therefore  commend  me  ;    let  him  not  come  there. 

To  seek  out  sorrow  that  dwells  every  where. 

The  Duke  of  York  had  to  leave  his  hawks  and  hounds 
and  to  die  in  1402,  having  had  no  children  by  the  beautiful 
Joan  Holland,  who  next  married  Sir  William  de  Willoughby, 
Lord  D'Eresby.     He  also  died,  and  then  she  married  Henry 


168  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Scrope,  Earl  of  Masham,  whose  head  was  cut  off  at  Southamp- 
ton in  1415  together  with  that  of  the  Earl  of  Cambridge,  who 
was  both  her  own  stepson  and  the  husband  of  her  niece 
Anne  Mortimer,  for  his  share  in  the  Yorkist  conspiracy. 
Joan,  after  these  adventures,  aimed  lower  and,  fourthly, 
married  Henry  Bromflete,  a  Yorkshire  gentleman  whose 
father  had  been  chief  butler  to  Richard  II,  and  had  then, 
with  official  adaptability  to  change  of  government,  become 
Controller  of  the  Household  to  Henry  IV.  After  this  varied 
career,  the  Lady  Joan  died  in  1434. 

The  second  Earl  of  Kent's  third  daughter  was  the  Lady 
Margaret  Holland.  She  is  a  lady  of  much  importance  in  the 
genealogy  of  the  Kings  of  England.  She  married  first, 
John  Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  who  was  the  eldest 
illegitimate-born  son  of  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lancaster, 
and  of  Katherine  Swynford.  The  Duke's  sons  by  this 
Katherine,  namely  (1)  the  said  John  Beaufort,  Earl  of 
Somerset,  (2)  Henry,  who  became  the  famous  Cardinal 
Bishop  of  Winchester,  and  (3)  Thomas,  the  Beaufort  who 
fought  at  Agincourt  and  was  created,  for  life,  Duke  of  Exeter, 
were  made  legitimate  by  special  Act  under  King  Richard  IL 
There  was  also  a  daughter,  Joan,  who  married  Ralph  Nevill, 
first  Earl  of  Westmorland. 

In  Parliament,  on  January  22,  1397,  the  King  '  as  sole 
Emperor  of  the  realm  of  England  '  (says  the  Tower  Record), 
*  for  the  honour  of  his  blood  royal,  willed  that  Sir  John 
Beaufort,  with  his  brothers  and  sister,  should  be  legitimate, 
and  created  him  to  be  Earl  of  Somerset. 

*  Whereupon,  the  said  John  was  brought  before  the  King 
in  Parliament  between  two  Earls,  viz.  of  Huntingdon  and 
Marshall  (Nottingham)  arrayed  in  a  robe  as  in  a  vesture  of 
honour,  with  a  sword  carried  before  him,  the  pummel  thereof 
being  gilded.  And  the  charter  of  his  creation  was  openly 
read  before  the  Lords  and  Commons,  after  which  the  King 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       1G9 

girded  him  with  the  sword  aforesaid,  took  his  homage  and 
caused  him  to  be  set  in  his  place  in  the  ParHament  between 
the  Earls  Marshall  and  Warr.' 

John  Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  took  a  leading  and  active 
part  with  his  brother-in-law,  Thomas  Holland,  third  Earl  of 
Kent,  and  with  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  and  their 
allies,  in  the  overthrow  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  his 
party  in  the  summer  of  1397.  He  was  raised  by  Richard  II 
at  Michaelmas  to  the  title  of  Marquess  of  Dorset,  and  was 
deprived  of  that  title  after  the  accession  of  his  half-brother, 
Henry  of  Lancaster,  becoming  again  Earl  of  Somerset. 
John  Beaufort  took  no  hand  in  the  Holland  revolt,  and 
remained  in  royal  favour  in  the  new  reign.  He  died  on 
Palm  Sunday,  in  the  year  1410. 

Margaret  Holland  of  Kent  bore  to  him  the  following  children : 

1.  Henry  Beaufort,  who  succeeded  his  father  in  1410  as 
second  Earl  of  Somerset,  and  died  1418,  s.p. 

2.  John,  who  became  Duke  of  Somerset,  and  died  in 
1444,  without  sons. 

3.  Edmund,  who  succeeded  him  as  second  Duke.  He 
was  leader  of  the  Lancastrian  party,  and  was  slain  at 
St.  Albans  in  1455.^ 

4.  Joan,  who  married  James  I  of  Scotland. 

5.  Margaret,  who  married  Courtenay,  Earl  of  Devon. 
These  Beauforts   died  out  in  the  legitimate   male  line, 

but  John,  the  first  Duke,  left  a  daughter,  Margaret  Beau- 
fort, who  was  thus  granddaughter  of  Margaret  Holland. 
This  was  the  Lady  Margaret  famed  for  her  goodness,  religion, 
and  understanding,  who  married  Edmund  Tudor,  Earl  of 
Richmond,  and  so  became  mother  of  Henry  VII  and  ances- 
tress of  the  royal  house  of  Tudor.  Child  of  the  bright 
and  tender  re -dawn  of  Art  and  Letters,  so  soon,  like  the 

^  Edmund  Beaufort's  two  sons  were  Henry  Beaufort,  third  Duke,  beheaded  after 
Hexham  fight  in  1463,  and  Edmund,  fourth  Duke,  murdered  after  Tewkesbury,  1-471 . 


170  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

glorious   morning  of  Shakespeare's  sonnet,  to  be  overcast 
by  northern  gloom,  she  endowed  two  chairs  of  divinity,  and 
founded  at  Cambridge  the  fair  colleges  of  Christ  and  St. 
John.     On  her  death,  a  beautiful  funeral  sermon — whence  it 
appears  that  she  was  a  very  perfect  lady — was  preached  by  her 
chaplain,  John  Fisher,  who  in  his  saintly  old  age  was  martyred 
for  being  unable  to  admit  that  her  grandson  Harry  was 
supreme  head  of  the  Church  in  England.     Lady  Margaret 
had   lived   through  the   Wars  of   the  Roses   and  had  seen 
the  woes  of  kings,  and  the  crimes  which  they  must,  or  do, 
commit  in  the  name  of  State  Policy.    Fisher  says  of  her  : 
'  She   never   yet   was   in  that   prosperity,  but   the   greater 
it  was  the  more  always  she  dreaded  the  adversity.     For 
when  the  king,  her  son,  was  crowned  in  all  that  great  triumph 
and  glory,  she  wept  marvellously  :   and  likewise  at  the  great 
triumph  of  the  marriage  of  Prince  Arthur,  and  at  the  last 
coronation  wherein  she  had  felt  great  joy,  she  let  not  to  say  that 
some  adversity  would  follow  ;  so  that  either  she  was  in  sorrow 
by  reason  of  the  present  adversities,  or  else  when  she  was  in 
prosperity  she  was  in  dread  of  the  adversity  for  to  come.'  ^ 
Well  might  the  Lady  Margaret  feel  dark  forebodings  when 
she  witnessed  the  marriage  of  Prince  Arthur,  laden  with  such 
disaster,  and  yet  more  at  the  coronation  of  her  lusty  young 
grandson  Henry,  who  resembled  not  her,  nor  her  son  his 
excellent  father  Henry  VII,  but  the  bad  York-Woodville 
breed.     She  would  have  wept  the  more  had  she  known  for 
certain  that  he  would  slay  her  confessor,  destroy  venerable 
foundations  which  she  loved,  and  break  England  away  from 
the  visible  unity  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

When  she  died,  five  days  after  this  coronation,  it  was 
a  symbol  of  the  passing  away  of  a  more  chivalrous  and, 
as    some  would   say,  a  nobler  age.     Her  admirable    effigy, 

^  Henry  VII's  eldest  son  Arthur  was  born  in  1486,  was  married  to  Katherine 
of  Aragon  as  a  boy,  and  died  in  1502.  The  second,  Henry,  was  born  in  1491 
and  crowned  June  24,  1509.  Their  grandmother.  Lady  Margaret,  Countess 
of  Richmond,  was  born  1443  and  died  on  June  29,  1509. 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS        171 

with  a  delicately  carved  hart  at  her  feet,  lies  in  front  of  a 
vanished  altar  in  the  chapel  built  by  her  son  at  Westminster, 
and  behind  hers  is  the  monument  of  her  charming,  ill- 
fated,  descendant,  Mary  Stewart,  Queen  of  Scots. 

After  the  death,  in  1410,  of  her  first  husband,  John  Beau- 
fort,   Earl    of    Somerset,    the    legitimated    half-brother    of 
Henry   IV,   Margaret   Holland   married   Thomas,    Duke   of 
Clarence,  whole  brother  of  Henry  V,  and  so  half-nephew 
of  her  first  husband.     This  royal  duke  had  won  fame  in 
previous  campaigns  in  France,  but  was  killed  in  1421  in 
the  disaster  which  befell  the  English  near  Beauge.     In  this 
same  fight  a  son  of  Margaret  by  her  first  husband,  John 
Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  and  also  her  first  cousin  John 
Holland,  second  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  were  taken  prisoners, 
so  that  the  news  must  have  given  a  shock  to  high  English 
society,  and  especially  to  Margaret,  Duchess    of   Clarence. 
The  Duke  of   Clarence  had  desired  to  be  buried   like   his 
father,  King  Henry  IV,  in  Canterbury  Cathedral.     Margaret's 
first   husband,    the    Earl    of   Somerset,    was   already   there 
interred.     The  body  of  the  slain  Clarence  was  brought  home 
from  France.     *A  new  hearse  was  provided  and  a  hundred 
torches  were  burned  that  night  in  various  sacred  places  in  the 
Cathedral.'     The  funeral   cost   £85,   a  great   sum  in  those 
days.     Margaret  died,  more  than  sixty  years  old,  on  Decem- 
ber 31,  1440.     She  had  made  for  her  husbands  and  herself 
a   fine   monumental    tomb,    which   still   stands,    not   much 
injured,  in  St.  Michael's  Chapel  at  the  south-east  end  of  the 
nave.     Her  figure  lies  between  those  of  her  two  husbands, 
who  are  both  fully  armed,  whence  the  chapel  is  usually  known 
as  the  '  Warriors'  Chapel.'     The  face  of  Margaret,  though  she 
is  shown  as  an  elderly  woman,  indicates  that  in  her  youth 
she  too  was  beautiful.     On  her  head  is  a  ducal  coronet ;  on 
her  robes  are  depicted  the  arms  of  England  within  a  bordure 
argent.     Her  personal  device  was  represented  in  a  window 
of  the  Cathedral — namely,  a  white  hart  couchant,  gorged 


172  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

•with  a  golden  coronet  and  chain  under  a  tree.     It  was  the 
device  of  her  grandmother,  the  Fair  Maid  of  Kent. 

Margaret  Holland,  Duchess  of  Clarence,  five  years  before 
her  death,  heard  of  the  tragedy  which  befell  her  daughter 
Joan,  Queen  of  Scotland.  The  story  of  James  I  of  Scotland 
and  Joan  Beaufort  is  well  known  but  is  worth  repeating 
in  a  history  of  the  Hollands.  James,  son  and  heir  of 
Robert  III,  the  first  Stewart  King  of  Scotland,  was,  for 
some  political  reason,  sent  at  twelve  years  old  in  a  ship  to 
France.  The  ship  was  captured  off  Flamborough  Head 
by  an  English  rover,  hailing  from  Cley,  in  Norfolk.  The 
boy  was  taken  to  London.  Henry  IV  said  that  he  could 
learn[^  French  in  England  as  well  as  in  France,  and  kept  him 
in  strict  custody.  This  happened  early  in  1406,  and  the 
same  year  James's  father.  King  Robert,  died  and  the  boy 
became  King  of  Scotland.  Henry  IV  refused  all  demands 
by  the  Scots  for  the  restitution  of  their  boy  King,  and  kept 
James  close  guarded,  but  gave  him  a  far  better  education 
than  he  could  have  obtained  in  wild  and  barbarous  Scotland. 
He  learned  all  gentle  accomplishments,  law,  and  manners, 
and  music,  and  to  write  poetry.  While  he  was  a  prisoner 
at  Windsor  Castle  in  the  Central  Keep,  or  Round  Tower,  he 
sometimes  saw  from  his  window  the  lovely  Joan  Beaufort, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Somerset  and  Margaret  Holland, 
walking  or  sitting  with  her  maidens  in  the  garden  below, 
and  became  enamoured.  The  poet  King  thus  describes  his 
feelings  in  touching  verse  : 

And  therewith  kest  I  down  mine  eye  again 

Where  as  I  saw,  walking  under  the  Tower 

Full  secretly  new  comen  her  to  pleyne 

The  fairest  or  the  freshest  yonge  flower 

That  ever  I  saw,  methought,  before  that  hour, 

For  which  sudden  abate,  anon  astert 

The  blude  of  all  my  body  to  my  herte. 


TOSIB  OF  IMARGAKET  HOLT>AND,  DAUGHTER  OF  THE  SECOND  EARL  OF  KENT, 
WITH  HER  TWO  HUSBANDS,  JOHN  BEAUFORT,  EARL  OF  SOMERSET,  AND 
THOMAS,    DI'KE    OF    CLARENCE,    IN    CANTERBURY    CATHEDRAL 

Keproduced  from  Sandford's  'Genealogical  nistorv  of  the  Kings  of  Eneland,'  1707 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       173 

And  though  I  stude  abasit  throw  a  lite, 
No  wonder  was  ;    for  why,  my  wittis  all 
Were  so  ourcome  with  plesance  and  delight, 
Only  throw  latting  of  my  eyen  fall, 
That  suddenly  my  herte  became  her  thrall, 
For  ever,  of  free  will  :  for  of  menace 
There  was  no  token  in  her  swete  face. 

And  in  my  head  I  drew  right  hastily 
And  eft  sones  I  leant  it  forth  again 
And  saw  her  walk  that  very  womanly 
With  no  wight  mo,  but  only  women  twain 
Then  gan  I  study  in  myself  and  sayn. 
Ah  Sweet,  are  ye  a  worldly  creature, 
Or  heavnly  thing  in  likeness  of  nature  ? 

Or  are  ye  god  Cupid's  own  princess 

And  comen  are  to  loose  me  out  of  band  ? 

Or  are  ye  very  Nature  the  goddess 

That  have  depainted  with  your  heavnly  hand 

This  garden  full  of  flouris  as  they  stand  ? 

What  sail  I  think  !     Alas,  what  reverence 

Sail  I  minister  to  your  excellence. 

Gif  ye  a  goddess  be,  and  that  ye  like 

To  do  me  pain  I  may  it  nocht  astert : 

Gif  ye  be  worldly  wight  that  doth  me  sike. 

Why  list  God  mak  you  so,  my  dearest  herte 

To  do  a  silly  prisoner  this  smart 

That  lufis  you  all,  and  wote  of  nocht  but  woe  ? 

And  therefore  mercy  sweet  !  sen  it  be  so. 

'  Of  menace  there  was  no  token  in  her  swete  face.'  These 
are  the  words  of  one  who  had  seen  menace  in  faces  less 
beauteous.  It  was  a  love  affair  at  the  '  fair  Castle  of  Windsor ' 
such  as  Joan  Beaufort's  great-aunt,  Lady  Maud  Holland, 
had  there  with  a  less  strictly  guarded  captive,  the  young 
Count  of  St.  Pol,  nearly  fifty  years  earlier. 


174  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

James  was  kept  in  captivity  for  eighteen  years,  until,  in 
1424,  it  suited  the  poHcy  of  Cardinal  Beaufort,  who  was  then 
virtually  ruler  of  England,  that  the  Scottish  King  should 
marry  his  niece  and  return  to  Scotland.  James  was  then 
about  thirty-one  years  old.  The  marriage  of  James  and 
Joan  was  celebrated,  like  that  of  Edmund  Holland  and  Lucia 
Visconti,  in  the  church  of  St.  Mary  Overy,  and  again  the 
banquet  was  in  the  palace  of  the  Cardinal  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester. Joan's  uncles  and  mother  and  other  kinsfolk  gave  her 
great  gifts,  '  Plate,  jewels,  gold  and  silver,  rich  furniture, 
cloths  of  arras  such  as  at  that  time  had  not  been  seen  in 
Scotland,  and,  amongst  other  gorgeous  ornaments,  a  set 
of  hangings  in  which  the  labours  of  Hercules  were  most 
curiously  wrought.  And  being  thus  furnished,'  adds  the 
chronicler,  '  of  all  things  fit  for  her  estate,  her  two  uncles, 
the  Cardinal  Beaufort  and  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  accompanied 
her  and  King  James  into  his  own  kingdom  of  Scotland,  where 
they  were  received  of  his  subjects  with  all  joy  and  gladness. ' 
The  joy  and  gladness  lasted  not^  long.  James  returned 
to  his  kingdom  a  cultivated  gentleman  with  English  ideas 
as  to  government  and  the  protection  of  the  people  against 
powerful  oppressors.  It  was  almost  as  though  a  prince  had 
gone  with  civilised  notions  and  intentions  to  modern  Albania. 
James  I  tried  to  introduce  reform  into  Scotland,  and  had 
some  degree  of  success.  Drummond  of  Hawthornden  said 
of  him :  '  Of  the  former  Kings  of  Scotland  it  might  be  said 
the  nation  made  the  King,  but  this  King  made  that  people 
a  nation.' 

He  was  a  man  of  action  as  well  as  a  poet  and  a  musician. 
He  passed  salutary  laws  and  executed  powerful  robber  chiefs, 
both  in  the  Highlands  and  the  Lowlands,  but  his  reward 
was  murder.  At  Christmas  1435,  notwithstanding  omens 
and  sinister  and  mysterious  warnings,  he  went  to  Perth 
to  spend  the  feast  at  the  monastery  of  the  Black  Friars.     An 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       175 

aristocratic  conspiracy  had  been  formed  to  take  his  hfe. 
Its  chief,  Sir  Robert  Graham,  a  dark  and  determined  char- 
acter, aided  by  confederates  in  the  court,  made  his  way,  with 
armed  followers,  on  the  night  of  February  20  into  the  royal 
chamber,  where  James  was  conversing  with  the  Queen  and 
her  ladies  before  retiring  to  rest.  He  heard  the  fierce 
approach  of  the  murderers,  tore  up  some  planks  and  hid 
himself  in  a  recess  below  the  floor,  while  a  gallant  girl, 
Katharine  Douglas,  tried  to  bar  with  her  arm  the  door  from 
which  the  bolts  had  been  treacherously  removed.  The  King 
was  discovered,  dragged  out,  and  pierced  with  many  swords, 
while  the  Queen  clung  to  him,  till,  wounded  herself,  she  was 
torn  violently  away.  James  was  but  forty-four  years  old. 
It  was  a  far  cry  from  the  dreadful  night  scene  in  the  gloomy 
Black  Friars  at  Perth  to  the  splendid  marriage  banquet  in 
the  palace  of  Cardinal  Beaufort,  or  the  tender  love  idyll  in 
the  fair  royal  gardens  of  Windsor. 

James  left  a  six-year-old  child,  who  was  crowned  James  II 
of  Scotland,  and  for  some  years  the  boy  king  and  his  mother 
were  in  the  hands  of  one  or  another  of  the  ferocious  feudal 
factions.  It  was  then  almost  impossible  for  high-born 
women  to  live  unprotected  and  alone  in  Scotland,  and  in 
1439  Queen  Joan  married  Sir  James  Stewart,  known  as 
'  The  Black  Rider,'  and  bore  him  three  sons.  She  died  on 
July  15,  1445,  at  Dunbar,  and  was  buried  by  the  side  of 
King  James  I  in  the  Carthusian  Convent  at  Perth,  which 
was  destroyed  at  the  Reformation. 

Thus  through  her  daughter,  Joan,  Queen  of  Scotland, 
Margaret  Holland  was  an  ancestress  of  the  Stewart  line  as 
through  her  son,  John  Beaufort,  Earl  of  Somerset,  she  was 
ancestress  of  the  Tudor  line.  Since,  by  the  marriage  of  James 
of  Scotland  to  Margaret,  daughter  of  Henry  VII,  these  two 
lines  were  fused,  Margaret  Holland  was  by  two  streams 
issuing  from  her  body  an  ancestress  of  our  royal  line.     This 


l76  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

line  also  having  received  a  rivulet  coming  from  Margaret's 
sister  Alianora,  through  the  York  descent,  and  the  marriage 
of  Henry  VII  to  Elizabeth  of  York,  there  was  a  good  deal 
of  not  very  remote  Holland  blood  in,  for  instance,  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  and  her  grandson,  Charles  I  of  England  and 
Scotland.  Possibly  these  unfortunate  sovereigns  derived 
from  the  Hollands  their  genius  for  adopting  the  unpopular 
and  losing  side. 

Eleanor,  fourth  of  the  six  daughters  of  the  Earl  of  Kent, 
and  the  most  fortunate,  perhaps,  of  her  family,  married 
Thomas  Montacute,  Earl  of  Salisbury,  son  of  that  brave 
and  cultivated  third  Earl  of  Salisbury  who  died  in  the  first 
days  of  1400  with  her  brother  the  third  Earl  of  Kent,  at 
Cirencester.  The  fourth  Earl  of  Salisbury,  says  the  historian 
Banks,  '  was  concerned  in  so  many  military  exploits,  that 
to  give  an  account  of  them  all  would  be  to  write  the  history 
of  the  reign  of  Henry  V.  Suffice  it  then  to  say  that,  as  he 
lived,  so  he  died,  in  the  service  of  his  country,  being  mortally 
wounded  when  commanding  the  English  army  at  the  siege 
of  Orleans  in  1428.'  Salisbury  was  examining  the  defences 
of  the  town  when  he  was  wounded  in  the  face  by  a  stone 
shot  from  the  walls,  and  died  in  a  week.  John  de  Wavrin, 
after  narrating  his  death,  says  of  this  Earl,  '  He  was  a  good 
prince  and  was  feared  and  loved  by  all  his  people,  and  he 
was  also  accounted  in  his  time  throughout  France  and 
England  the  most  expert,  clever  and  successful  in  arms 
of  all  the  commanders  who  had  been  talked  about  during 
the  last  two  hundred  years  ;  besides  this,  there  were  in 
him  all  the  virtues  belonging  to  a  good  knight ;  he  was 
mild,  humble  and  courteous,  a  great  almsgiver  and  liberal 
with  what  belonged  to  him  ;  he  was  pitiful  and  merciful 
to  the  humble,  but  fierce  as  a  lion  or  a  tiger  to  the  proud  ; 
he  well  loved  men  who  were  valiant  and  of  good  courage, 
nor  did  he  ever  keep  back  the  services  of  others,  but  gave 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       177 

to  each  his  due  according  to  his  worth.'  In  short,  the 
husband  of  Eleanor  Holland  was  the  very  type  of  a  noble 
gentleman  and  great  captain.  He  died  eight  days  after  he 
was  wounded,  and  was  buried  at  Mehun  on  the  Loire, 
and  his  death  marked  the  close  of  English  success  in 
France. 

Lord  Salisbury  left  no  son,  and  thus  the  earldom  came 
to  an  end  of  its  tenure  by  the  old  Norman  line  of  the  Monta- 
cutes,  or  Montagus  ;  but  Eleanor  Holland  gave  him  a  daughter, 
the  Lady  Alice  Montacute,  who  was  married  to  Sir  Richard 
Nevill,  K.G.,  second  son  of  Ralph  Nevill,  Earl  of  Westmor- 
land. This  Richard  Nevill  obtained  the  revival  of  the 
Earldom  of  Salisbury.  He  was  a  Yorkist,  and  being  taken 
prisoner  at  the  defeat  at  Wakefield,  his  head  was  cut  off 
and  placed  on  a  pole  over  a  gate  at  York.  His  eldest  son 
was  also  slain  in  that  Lancastrian  victory.  His  second  son 
and  successor,  also  named  Richard,  had  married  Anne 
Beauchamp,  heiress  of  the  Beauchamps,  Earls  of  Warwick, 
and  obtained  for  himself  the  title  of  Earl  of  Warwick,  by 
which  name,  and  not  that  of  Salisbury  or  Westmorland, 
he  is  known  in  history  as  '  Warwick  the  Kingmaker.' 
Thus  this  Nevill  hero  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  a  great 
fighter,  whom  Shakespeare  represents  as  a  better  judge  of 
a  pretty  girl,  a  horse,  or  hawk,  than  of  political  questions, 
was  a  grandson  of  Eleanor  Holland,  and  great  grandson 
of  the  second  Earl  of  Kent.  He  was  a  second  cousin  once 
removed  to  the  Henry  Holland,  second  Duke  of  Exeter, 
against  whom  he  fought  in  the  civil  war  until  Warwick 
changed  the  colour  of  his  rose  from  white  to  red,  and  then 
they  fought  side  by  side  in  the  disastrous  battle  of  Barnet 
Field. 

The  fifth  daughter  of  the  second  Earl  of  Kent,  named 
Elizabeth,  married  another  Nevill,  a  half-brother  of  the 
Richard  Nevill  who  married  Alice  de  IMontacute.     This  was 


178  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

John  Nevill,  eldest  son  by  his  first  marriage  of  the  great 
northern  lord  of  Raby  and  first  Earl  of  Westmorland,  Ralph 
Nevill.  This  Ralph  Nevill  married  first  Margaret,  daugh- 
ter of  Hugh,  Earl  of  Stafford,  and  secondly  Joan  Beaufort, 
daughter  of  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lancaster.  By  his  first 
wife  he  had  two  sons  and  six  daughters,  and  by  his  second 
nine  sons  and  four  daughters,  twenty-one  children  in  all. 
From  this  numerous  brood  descended  the  tribe  of  Nevills. 
The  present  lords  of  Abergavenny  descend  from  Edward, 
his  sixth  son  by  Joan  Beaufort. 

One  of  Ralph  Nevill's  daughters  by  Joan  Beaufort  was 
Cecily,  who  married  Richard,  Duke  of  York,  and  became 
mother  to  Edward  IV,  Richard  III,  and  to  Anne,  who 
married  Henry  Holland,  third  Duke  of  Exeter. 

The  John  Nevill  who  married  Elizabeth  Holland,  died, 
before  his  father,  in  1422.  Their  son  Ralph  Nevill,  second 
Earl  of  Westmorland,  married  a  daughter  of  Henry  Lord 
Percy,  the  famous  '  Hotspur,'  and  his  son  John  Lord  Nevill, 
who  also  died  before  his  father,  married  Anne,  daughter  of 
John  Holland,  second  Duke  of  Exeter.  Thus  the  two  lines 
of  the  Hollands  blended  with  two  lines  of  the  great  clan  of 
Nevill. 

Lady  Bridget,  sixth  and  last  daughter  of  the  second 
Earl  of  Kent,  became  a  nun  in  the  ancient,  wealthy,  and 
famous  Benedictine  Convent  of  Barking  in  Essex,  always 
the  most  fashionable  house  in  England  for  great  ladies. 
Some  small  remains  of  it,  a  church,  a  gateway,  and  a  piece 
of  wall,  can  still  be  seen  by  those  who  travel  on  electric  tram- 
car  in  the  obscure  far  east  of  London. 

This  then,  is  the  close  of  the  story — the  little  that  can  be 
recovered  from  darkness  out  of  dim  old  chronicles — of  those 
Hollands  who  became  Earls  of  Kent,  and  for  a  fleeting  moment 
held  the  Dukedom  of  Surrey.  The  ten  children  who  once 
lived   together,  high-born,  beautiful   and   vigorous,    in   the 


EDMUND  HOLLAND  AND  HIS  SISTERS       179 

manors  of  the  second  Earl  of  Kent,  experienced  great  fortune 
and  misfortune.  Thomas  had  been  killed  by  the  rustic  crowd 
at  Cirencester,  Edmund  by  the  French  in  war,  two  other 
sons  had  died  young ;  Alianora's  husband,  the  Earl  of  March, 
had  been  slain  in  Ireland;  Joan's  third  husband.  Lord 
Scrope  had  been  beheaded  for  high  treason;  Eleanor's 
husband,  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  was  wounded  to  death  before 
the  walls  of  Orleans ;  Margaret's  second  husband,  the 
Duke  of  Clarence,  had  been  slain  in  battle  in  France ;  and 
she  lived  to  know  of  the  murder  of  her  royal  son-in-law  in 
Scotland,  though  not  long  enough  to  hear  that  her  second 
son  Edmund  Beaufort,  Duke  of  Somerset,  was  slain  at 
St.  Albans.  In  those  days  the  saying  was  true,  '  Rara  in 
nobilitate  senectus.' 

The  Hollands  of  the  younger  branch  derived  from  the 
marriage  of  Sir  Thomas  Holland  with  the  Fair  Maid  of  Kent, 
those  who  became  Earls  of  Huntingdon  and  Dukes  of  Exeter, 
continued  for  a  while  longer  in  the  male  line,  and  the  follow- 
ing two  chapters  relate  their  story,  after  which  this  leisurely 
chronicle  must  return  to  other  and  less  distinguished  descend- 
ants from  the  Hollands  of  UphoUand  in  the  County  of 
Lancaster. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

JOHN   HOLLAND,    SECOND    DUKE    OF   EXETER 

Fair  stood  the  wind  for  France, 
When  we  our  sails  advance. 
Nor  now  to  prove  our  chance 
Longer  will  tarry ; 
But,  putting  to  the  main, 
At  Caux  the  mouth  of  Seine, 
With  all  his  martial  train. 
Landed  King  Harry. 

Drayton. 

John  Holland,  first  Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  Duke  of 
Exeter,  had  been  deprived  of  both  titles  :  of  the  dukedom 
immediately  after  the  deposition  of  Richard,  and  of  the 
earldom  on  his  revolt  and  death.  By  Elizabeth  of  Lancaster 
he  left  a  daughter,  Constance,  and  three  sons — Richard, 
John,  and  Edward.  Richard  and  Edward  both  died  un- 
married. Richard  lived  just  long  enough  to  come  of  age  and 
into  possession  of  the  great  estates — some  twenty  manors 
in  Devonshire,  Cornwall,  and  Somerset — which  had  apparently 
been  restored  by  the  Crown  ;  but  he  died  young,  and  the 
estates  passed  to  John  when  he  came  of  age.  John  was 
born  in  1394,  and  was  six  years  old  when  his  father  tragically 
died  at  Pleshy.  Something  is  known  of  his  christening, 
thanks  to  an  inquisition  made  in  the  sixth  year  of  Henry  V.-*- 
Thomas  Codling  testified  that  the  '  Abbot  of  Tavistock,  in 

^  These  inquisitions  were  made  when  a  minor,  entitled  to  a  manor  held  directly 
from  the  Crown,  came  of  age  ;  he  had  to  prove  his  age,  as  the  Crown  was  entitled 
to  profits  during  a  minority.  As  to  these  particular  inquisitions,  see  Cal.  Inquis, 
'post  mortem,  vol.  iv.  p.  24. 

180 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER    181 

the  County  of  Devon,  being  one  of  the  godfathers,  immediately- 
after  the  baptism  gave  him  a  cup  of  gold,  with  a  circle  about 
it,  framed  after  the  fashion  of  a  lily,  and  ten  pounds  of  gold 
therein ;  and  to  the  nurse,  twenty  shillings.  Also  that  the 
Prior  of  Plympton,  who  was  the  other  godfather,  gave  him 
twenty  pounds  in  gold,  and  forty  shillings  to  the  nurse. 
And  Joan,  the  wife  of  Sir  John  Pomeraie,  carried  him 
to  the  chancel  to  be  christened — the  same  Sir  John 
Pomeraie,  her  husband,  and  Sir  John  Dynham,  knight, 
conducting  her  by  the  arms.  Likewise,  that  twenty-four 
men  did  proceed  before  them  with  twenty-four  torches  ; 
which  torches,  as  soon  as  he  was  baptized  by  that  name,  were 
kindled.'  Evidently  it  was  a  provincial  baptism  intended  to 
be  worthy  of  the  baby  nephew  of  the  reigning  king.  He  was, 
indeed,  in  every  way  a  high-born  babe.  On  the  side  of  his 
mother,  Elizabeth  of  Lancaster,  the  small  John  Holland 
was  great-grandson  of  King  Edward  III,  and  also  descended 
in  two  separate  lines,  through  John  of  Gaunt  and  his  wife, 
Blanche,  from  King  Henry  III.  By  another  line,  through 
his  paternal  grandmother,  the  Fair  Maid  of  Kent,  he 
descended  from  King  Edward  I. 

The  reason  why  the  baptism  was  in  Devonshire  was 
that  John  Holland  was  born  at  Dartington  Hall,  close  to 
Totnes.  This  was  a  manor  which  had  fallen  in  to  the  Crown 
through  the  failure  of  heirs  of  the  Lords  Audley,  its  previous 
holders,  and  had  been  granted  by  King  Richard,  with  many 
other  manors  in  the  western  shires,  to  John  Holland,  Earl 
of  Huntingdon,  the  ill-fated  father  of  the  present  John. 
That  Earl  intended  to  make  Dartington  his  chief  seat,  and 
built,  or  rebuilt,  the  house.  Some  of  his  work  still  remains, 
in  a  ruined  condition,  adjacent  to  the  more  modern  buildings. 
Dartington  Hall  stands  high  above  the  beautiful  banks 
of  the  Dart  river.  It  consisted  formerly  of  two  large  quad- 
rangular courts,  divided  by  a  great  hall,  kitchen,  and  other 


182  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

buildings.  John  Holland's  great  hall,  with  the  kitchen 
and  entrance  porch,  is  still  standing,  but  the  roof  was  taken 
off  in  the  nineteenth  century.  It  measures  seventy  feet 
in  length  by  forty-five  in  width,  with  side  walls  rising  thirty 
feet  to  the  spring  of  the  roof,  and  the  pitch  of  the  roof  was 
fifty  feet  from  the  ground.  The  windows  are  large  and 
pointed,  and  the  outside  is  embattled  and  buttressed.  On 
the  walls  are  still  visible  spandrel  angels,  carved  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  bearing  effaced  coats  of  arms,  and  in  the  roof 
of  the  portal  of  the  hall  is  carved  a  rose  and  a  hart  couchant 
— the  device  of  the  Fair  Maid  of  Kent.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  there  was  still  painted  glass  in  the  windows,  and  in 
one  the  picture  of  the  Duchess  of  Exeter,  praying  for  the 
soul  of  her  son.  After  the  extinction  of  the  Hollands,  in 
the  reign  of  Edward  IV,  Dartington  Hall,  after  inter- 
vening ownerships,  passed,  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  into 
the  hands  of  the  Champernownes,  who  built  a  long  low  house 
at  right  angles  to  the  Hall ;  and  they  still  cling  to  the  place 
— which  has  now,  however,  a  decayed  and  deserted  appear- 
ance.^ Sir  John  Pomeraie,  or  Pomeroy,  who  took  part  in 
the  christening  with  Joan,  his  wife,  was  a  neighbour  of 
Norman  descent  living  at  Berry  Pomeroy,  a  stately  castle,  of 
which  the  ruins  are  to  be  seen  at  the  summit  of  a  high  cliff 
three  miles  south  of  Totnes.  The  Sir  William  Pomeroy  of 
the  year  1549  led  the  insurgent  Catholic  gentry  and  peasantry 
of  Devonshire  against  the  Protestant  Reform  Government, 
and  the  Pomeroy  estates  were  then  confiscated  for  that 
treason. 

John  Holland  and  his  elder  brother,  Richard,  and  his 
younger  brother,  Edward,  and  their  sister,  Constance,  were 
bred  as  children  at  Dartington,  and  sported  by  the  banks 
of  the  Dart,  and  rode  their  ponies  about  the  lovely  Devon 

^  The  present  Champernownes,  however,  assumed  the  name,  inheriting  the 
place  through  a  female  descent.     The  last  in  the  male  line  died  in  1774. 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER     183 

country.  John  soon  received  royal  favours,  notwithstanding 
his  father's  treason  of  1400.  After  all,  the  boy  was  the  nephew 
of  Henry  IV,  and  the  first  cousin  of  Henry  V.  The  latter 
young  hero  succeeded  to  the  throne  on  March  20,  1413, 
when  John  was  nineteen,  and  made  him  on  the  corona- 
tion occasion  a  knight  of  the  new  Order  of  the  Bath. 
John  took  the  symbolic  bath,  with  fifty  other  novices  of  the 
Order,  on  April  8.  All  night  they  watched  their  arms  in 
the  chapel  of  the  Tower,  and  next  morning  rode  as  escort 
to  the  King  through  the  City  by  way  of  Cheapside  to 
Westminster  Abbey  for  the  Coronation. 

In  1415,  John  Holland  was  made  Knight  of  the  Garter  ; 
and  in  1417,  his  elder  brother  having  died,  the  Earldom  of 
Huntingdon  was  restored  to  him  by  Act  of  Parliament. 
The  lost  Dukedom  of  Exeter  was  now  with  the  Beauforts. 
Thomas  Beaufort,  brother-in-law  of  Margaret  Holland,  had 
been  created  Duke  of  Exeter  for  life  only,  on  November  18, 
1410,  and  he  did  not  die  till  December  30,  1426.  It  was  this 
Duke  who  distinguished  himself  at  the  Battle  of  Agincourt, 
and  is  celebrated  in  Shakespeare's  heroic  verse. 

With  the  accession  of  Henry  V,  glorious  times  had 
come  for  loyal  kinsmen  of  the  House  of  Lancaster.  Henry  IV 
had  come  into  power  partly  upon  the  tide  of  opposition 
to  the  peace  with  France  policy  espoused  by  Richard  II 
and  his  Holland  brethren,  and  had  said  to  his  first  council  ; 
'  Now  we  will  have  peace  with  the  Flemings  and  war  with 
every  one  else.'  But  his  throne  had  been  too  insecure,  and 
threatened  by  too  many  internal  conspiracies,  to  allow  him 
to  gratify  the  dominant  English  passion  for  invasion  of 
France.  Probably  he  desired  it  little  himself ;  he  had 
had  very  friendly  relations  with  the  House  of  France ; 
and  he  seems  to  have  cherished  a  vague  idea  of  crusading 
against  the  Turkish  infidels.  With  the  accession  of  Henry  V 
— ^young,  handsome,  and  popular,  with  his  laurels  to  win — the 


184  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

lovers  of  war  were  again  in  the  ascendant,  and  the  Orleanist- 
Burgundian  feud  beyond  the  sea  gave  an  opportunity  for 
a  re-assertion  of  the  English  claims. 

Lord  Bacon,  in  his  '  Discourse  of  the  Government  of 
England,'  observes  that  '  Scotland  was  a  country  yet  in- 
competent for  the  King's  appetite.  France  was  the  fairer 
mark  and  better  game,  and  though  too  big  for  the  English 
gripe,  yet  the  Eagle  stooped  and  spread  himself  so  well 
as  within  six  years  he  fastened  on  the  sword  and  sceptre 
and  a  daughter  of  France,  and  might  have  seized  the  Crown, 
&c.'  In  Bacon's  time  it  was  still  unnecessary  to  put  forward 
great  moral  reasons  for  war. 

In  1414  the  King  held  a  Parliament  at  Leicester,  and  the 
question  of  foreign  policy  was  discussed.  The  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  advocated  the  invasion  of  France  to  subdue  that 
kingdom  to  the  British  Crown.  It  is  alleged  by  a  chronicler 
that  he  did  this  in  order  to  divert  attention  from  a  Bill  for 
the  confiscation  of  some  monastic  lands.  He  was  opposed 
by  the  Nevill,  Earl  of  Westmorland,  warden  of  the  Marches, 
who  argued  that  Scotland  should  first  be  conquered,  quoting 
the  saying  :  '  He  who  France  would  win,  must  with  Scotland 
first  begin.'  John  Holland,  or  perhaps  his  eldest  brother,  not 
yet  dead,  seems  to  have  replied,  and  the  assembly  voted  for 
war  with  France  by  acclamation,  shouting :  '  War,  war, 
France,  France.' 

On  June  16,  1415 — almost  exactly  four  hundred  years 
before  the  day  of  Waterloo — young  Holland  was  riding 
with  his  royal  cousin  through  the  City  of  London  after  a 
service  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  down  the  road  to 
Southampton.  Near  Winchester,  in  the  Bishop's  Hall 
at  Wolvesey  Castle,  the  King  received  the  French  Embassy, 
which  had  come  in  hot  haste  via  Dover  to  negotiate,  and 
had  followed  the  Court  from  London  along  the  south-western 
road.     *  The   King,'  says  the   chronicler,   '  leant   against  a 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER    185 

table,  bareheaded  and  clad  from  head  to  foot  in  cloth  of  gold, 
with  a  chair  placed  beside  the  throne,  which  was  splendidly 
draped  with  gold  trappings.  At  his  right  hand  stood  his 
three  brothers,  together  with  the  Duke  of  York,  Sir  John 
Holland,  and  others ;  and  on  his  left,  the  Chancellor,  Bishop 
Beaufort,  together  with  Bishops  Courtenay  and  Langley,  who 
introduced  the  envoys,  all  of  whom  knelt  as  they  entered.' 
Henry  received  the  envoys  again  on  the  next  day,  and  gave 
them  a  banquet.  Negotiations  continued  until  July  6,  and 
then  broke  down.  The  Frenchmen  offered  much,  but  were 
not  able  to  accede  to  the  immense  English  demand  for 
the  best  half  of  France — all  Aquitaine,  Normandy,  Anjou, 
Touraine,  Poitou,  and  Maine. 

•  At  Southampton,  the  King  discovered  a  new  Yorkist 
plot  against  his  throne  and  life.  The  leading  conspirators 
were  Richard,  Earl  of  Cambridge,  brother  to  the  Duke  of 
York  and  cousin  to  the  King,  Lord  Scrope  of  Masham, 
and  Sir  Thomas  Grey  of  Heton.  An  inquest  of  twelve 
jurors  of  the  county  found  that  the  Earl  of  Cambridge  and 
Sir  Thomas  Grey  had  conspired  to  proclaim  the  Earl  of 
March  as  King,  and  to  call  in  a  Scottish  army,  and  that 
Lord  Scrope  was  guilty  of  treason  also.  Grey  was  forthwith 
beheaded,  but  Cambridge  and  Scrope  claimed  trial  by  their 
peers,  and  a  commission  was  appointed  on  which  John 
Holland  sat,  and  these  lords  were  also  found  guilty  and 
beheaded.  Thus  it  was  John  Holland's  duty  to  assist 
in  condemning  to  death  the  Earl  of  Cambridge,  who  was 
the  stepson  of  his  first  cousin,  Joan  Holland,  and  Lord 
Scrope,  who  was  the  same  Joan's  present  husband.  The 
Duke  of  York,  no  doubt,  was  behind  this  conspiracy,  but 
nothing  could  be  proved  against  him.  The  man  who,  as 
Earl  of  Rutland,  had  been  an  appellant  against  Gloucester, 
Arundel,  and  Warwick,  who  had  shared  in  the  honour  and 
plunder  derived  from  that  stroke  of  state,  who  had  been 


186  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

loved  by  Richard  and  had  forsaken  him  on  his  fall,  had  then 
joined  in  the  conspiracy  of  the  Hollands,  and  had  betrayed 
them  to  Henry  IV,  who  had  conspired  against  the  King  in 
the  Mortimer  plot,  and  had  been  denounced  by  his  own 
sister  and  given  her  the  lie,  was  really  capable  of  anything. 
He  escaped,  for  the  time  being,  from  punishment  of  his 
sins  and  treacheries,  and  went  on  to  Agincourt,  where  he 
was  one  of  the  very  few  Englishmen  of  rank  who  fell.  He 
was  knocked  down  by  a  stroke  from  the  battle-axe  of  the 
gallant  Duke  d'Alencon,  who  had  cut  his  way  to  the  Royal 
standard  and  to  Henry  V  himself.  The  Duke  of  York  was 
not  wounded  by  the  blow,  but,  being  fat,  was  smothered 
inside  his  armour  in  the  press  :  '  smouldered  to  death,'  says 
the  chronicler,  '  by  much  hete  and  thronggidd.'  He  well 
deserved  this  end  for  his  base  betrayal  of  the  Hollands. 

After  these  executions,  Henry  V  crossed  the  Channel 
with  about  30,000  men  and  besieged  Harfleur,  which  sur- 
rendered on  September  22  ;  then  marched  for  Calais  with 
9000  men,  and  on  his  way  won  the  Battle  of  Agincourt. 
Holland  took  a  leading  part  in  the  siege  of  Harfleur,  but  it 
does  not  appear  whether  he  was  with  that  division  of  the 
army  which  won  that  glorious  victory. 

In  the  autumn  of  this  year  the  young  Earl  of  Huntingdon 
was  made  a  Knight  of  the  Garter,  filling,  curiously  enough, 
the  vacancy  caused  by  the  death  of  Thomas,  Earl  of  Arundel 
— the  same  who,  as  a  vindictive  boy,  had  presided  over  the 
execution  of  Huntingdon's  father,  fifteen  years  earlier* 
and  had  made  that  triumphant  entry  into  London  preceded 
by  the  head  of  his  foe.  The  following  year,  14^16,  there  was 
a  banquet  of  the  Order  at  Windsor — famous  because  it  was 
honoured  by  the  presence  of  Sigismund,  the  Holy  Roman 
Emperor,  who  was  installed  as  a  knight.  The  Emperor 
landed  at  Dover  on  May  1,  and  on  the  2nd  was  escorted 
by  800  men  of  his  own  Imperial  cavalry  and  many  great 


SEAL    OF    JOHN    HOLLAND,    EARL    OF    HUNTINGDON    AND    DUKE    OF 
EXETER    AS    LORD    HIGH    ADMIRAL    OF    ENGLAND 

Original  Seal  measures  2|  inches  iu  diameter 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER     187 

English  lords,  of  whom  Huntingdon  was  one,  to  Canterbury, 
and  thence  by  short  stages  in  four  days  along  the  Roman 
road  to  London,  there  to  meet  the  victor  of  Agincourt. 

In  the  same  summer  of  1416,  John  Holland  had  a  com- 
mission at  sea  with  the  Duke  of  Bedford,  Henry's  brother, 
and  they  relieved  Harfleur,  which  was  being  besieged  by 
the  French.  In  1417,  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  as  Holland 
had  now  formally  become,  was  sent  by  the  King  to  clear 
the  Channel  of  hostile  ships  before  the  second  expedition 
made  the  passage. 

'  The  King,'  says  the  chronicler,  '  before  he  crossed  over 
himself,  sent  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  to  search  and  scour 
the  seas.  The  lusty  Earl,  called  John  Holland  (son  to 
the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  otherwise  Duke  of  Exeter,  beheaded 
in  the  time  of  Henry  IV,  and  cousin  to  the  King),  with  a 
great  many  ships,  searched  the  sea  from  the  one  coast  to 
the  other,  and  in  conclusion  encountered  with  nine  of 
those  great  carracks  of  Genoa,  the  which  the  Lord  Jacques 
the  Bastard  had  retained  to  serve  the  French  King,  and 
set  on  them  sharply.' 

After  a  running  fight  for  most  of  a  summer's  day,  three 
of  the  carracks  and  the  Lord  Jacques  himself  were  captured, 
three  were  bulged  in  and  left  as  wrecks,  and  three  got  away. 
Huntingdon  then  returned  to  Southampton,  where  he 
found  the  King,  who  thanked  him  greatly.  In  1418,  Hunting- 
don commanded  one  side  of  the  English  investing  army 
at  the  long  siege  of  Rouen.  The  city  was  reduced  by  famine 
to  surrender  on  January  16,  1419.  Later  in  that  year,  in 
May,  he  was  with  Henry  during  the  negotiations  with  the 
French  near  Meulan,  on  the  Seine.  In  July  he  took  part  in 
the  capture  of  Pontoise.  Then  he  was  Governor  of  Gournai, 
in  Normand}^  and  ravaged  the  country  thereabouts,  '  with 
fire  and  sword.'  In  1420  he  besieged  Clermont  unsuccess- 
fully and  ravaged  those  regions  also.     In  the   same  year 


188  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

he  was  in  a  battle  near  Mons,  in  which  the  French  were 
severely  defeated.  The  agreement  was  now  made  with  the 
French  King  by  which  Henry  V  was  to  marry  his  daughter 
Catharine,  and  be  the  next  heir  to  the  Kingdom  of  France, 
the  Dauphin  being  set  aside.  In  December  1420,  Henry 
entered  Paris  in  state  with  the  King  of  France.  The  two 
kings  rode  in  from  Corbeuil  side  by  side.  They  were  im- 
mediately followed  by  Henry's  brothers,  the  Dukes  of 
Clarence  and  Bedford.  In  the  next  group  rode  John  Holland, 
Earl  of  Huntingdon,  first  cousin  of  the  King  of  England. 
Then  came  a  long  retinue  of  English  and  French  lords. 
Philip,  Duke  of  Burgundy,  Henry's  powerful  ally,  and  the 
richest  Prince  in  Europe,  rode  at  the  head  of  a  splendid 
procession  of  his  own.  They  were  met  at  the  gate  by  repre- 
sentative citizens  of  Paris,  and  passed  through  streets 
bright  with  tapestry  and  rich  with  cloths  of  divers  colours. 
Then  met  them  a  procession  of  clergy,  and  conducted  the 
two  kings  to  Notre  Dame,  where  they  made  their  orisons 
before  the  High  Altar.  Wine  flowed  night  and  day  in 
the  streets,  and  the  people,  freed,  as  they  vainly  thought, 
from  the  horrors  and  privations  of  war,  shouted  for  joy. 
Are  not  all  these  things  related  in  the  chronicles  of  .Jean 
de  Wavrin,  seigneur  of  Forestel,  of  Enguerrand  de  Mon- 
strelet,  and  others  ? 

The  Dauphin  and  his  party  continued  to  resist  the 
transfer  of  the  succession  to  the  Crown  of  France.  In  1421 
the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  was  in  the  Angevin  country  with  a 
force  commanded  by  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  his  own  maternal 
first  cousin,  and  the  husband  of  his  first  cousin,  Margaret 
Holland,  and  brother  of  Henry  V.  On  March  22,  the  English 
— a  fashionable  and  aristocratic  company  of  warriors — were 
chasing  a  mixed  force  of  French  led  by  the  Seigneur  de 
la  Fayette,  and  5000  Scottish  allies  led  by  the  Earl  of 
Buchan.     The    English    leaders     and     horsemen,     pressing 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER     189 

too  rapidly  upon  their  retreating  foes,  left  their  indispensable 
bowmen  behind,  and  got  into  marshy  ground  by  a  river. 
Then  the  enemy,  seeing  their  advantage  in  numbers  and 
position,  and  the  absence  of  the  dreaded  archers,  suddenly 
turned  and  assailed  them.  Twelve  hundred  English  were 
killed,  among  them  the  Duke  of  Clarence ;  and  300 
were  taken  prisoners,  among  them  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon 
and  his  cousin,  the  Earl  of  Somerset.  It  was  a  rich  haul 
for  the  French  and  Scots.  It  was,  financially,  unlucky 
for  them  that  Clarence  was  killed,  not  taken.  He  was 
killed  as  he  was  trying  to  remount  his  horse  after  a 
fall,  with  a  spear,  by  John  Swinton,  a  Scot,  and  he  had 
round  '  his  helmet  a  circlet  of  precious  stones,'  which  the 
Scot  took,  and  sold  to  John  Steward  at  Derby  for  1000 
angels.  Huntingdon  ransomed  himself,  but  the  price  which 
he  had  to  pay  impaired  his  fortune,  and,  at  a  later  date, 
he  applied  for  a  grant  from  the  Crown  :on  '.this  :account. 

Henry  V  died  at  Vincennes  on  August  31,  1422,  and 
Henry  VI,  at  nine  months  old,  became  King  of  England 
and  France  under  the  recent  treaty.  The  Duke  of  Bedford, 
his  uncle,  was  made  Regent  or  '  Protector  '  by  Parliament, 
with  a  council  to  assist  him.  The  Dauphin,  Charles,  on  the 
other  side,  was  proclaimed  King  of  France  at  Poitiers,  and 
so  the  war  went  on,  with,  at  first,  new  successes  for  the 
English. 

The  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  after  his  costly  release,  con- 
tinued to  flourish  during  the  Regency.  In  1430  he  was 
retained  to  serve  the  Crown,  with  three  knights,  seventy- 
six  men-at-arms,  and  240  archers ;  crossed  from  Dover  to 
Calais,  and  was  sent  with  a  force,  by  the  Duke  of  Bedford 
conamanding  in  France,  to  assist  the  Burgundians  at  the 
siege  of  Compiegne.  It  was  during  this  siege,  before 
Huntingdon's  arrival,  that  the  wondrous  maid,  Joan  of 
Arc,  was  captured  during  a  sortie  from  the  gates. 


190  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

The  Earls  of  Huntingdon  and  Arundel  commanded  the 

English  reinforcements — about  2000  in  number.     In  October, 

4000    French   advanced    in    order    to   revictual   the   town. 

The    Burgundian-English    besiegers    marched    three    miles 

to  meet  them,  and  there  was  some  fighting  in  the  forest, 

towards  the  old  castle  of  Pierrefonds.     The  French  found 

a  way  into  the  town  with   provisions,   and  they  made  a 

successful  sortie  upon  the  siege  works  of  their  enemy.     The 

English    and    Burgundians     quarrelled,    and    Huntingdon 

and  Arundel  marched  away  declaring  that  the  pay  to  the 

English  promised  by  the  Burgundians  was  in  long  arrear. 

Consequently    the    Burgundians,    in    face    of   the    increased 

French,  had  to  retire  also,  and  so  much  in  haste  that  they  left 

their  valuable  siege  artillery  behind.     In  the  following  year, 

1431,    the    Earl     of    Huntingdon    was    doubtless     present 

when    the    nine-year-old    boy,    Henry    VI,    was    crowned 

King  of  France   by  Cardinal   Beaufort  in   Notre   Dame   in 

Paris.     The    affair  was    not    a    success,   and   the    Parisians 

grumbled  much  that  the  festivities  were  so  meagre  and  badly 

arranged. 

The  failure  of  the  long  siege  of  Compiegne  was,  after 
Orleans  and  Rheims,  the  most  important  sign  of  the  turn 
of  the  tide  against  the  English-Burgundian  allies  in  France. 
The  Burgundians  grew  weary  of  endless  war,  and  the 
English  had  a  series  of  small  disasters  and  loss  of  places.  In 
1435  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  was  one  of  the  English  Ambas- 
sadors sent  to  the  Court  of  Philip,  Duke  of  Burgundy,  at 
Arras,  to  assist  at  the  negotiations  for  peace  which  were 
then  taking  place  between  the  Burgundians  and  the  French. 
In  order  to  maintain  his  dignity  and  to  impress  the  foreigners, 
Huntingdon  obtained  licence  from  the  Crown  to  carry  with 
him  gold,  silver,  plate,  and  jewels,  twenty-four  pieces  of 
woollen  cloth,  and  other  things  to  the  value  of  £6000.  The 
other   members   of  the  Embassv  were    Cardinal  Beaufort, 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER      191 

Bishop  of  Winchester,  the  Archbishop  of  York,^  the  Bishop 
of  St.  Davids,  the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  William  Lyndewoode, 
Lord  Privy  Seal,  and  four  others.  Their  instructions  were 
to  offer  the  French  all  France  south  of  the  Loire,  except 
Gascony  and  Guyenne,  and,  if  they  would  not  accept  this, 
to  offer  next  that  the  French  should  retain  all  that  they 
actually  possessed,  and  nothing  more. 

This  congress,  held  at  Arras  from  July  to  September 
1435,  was  a  very  great  affair.  It  had  been  initiated  by  the 
Pope  and  the  Council  then  sitting  at  Bale,  who  were  anxious, 
as  the  Church  authorities  had  been  throughout  these  long 
wars,  to  terminate  the  miseries  and  impoverishment  of 
France,  and  to  re-unite  Christian  Princes  against  the  ever- 
advancing  Turks  who  threatened  Constantinople  both 
from  the  south  and  the  north.  The  Papal  Legation  arrived 
towards  the  end  of  July  at  Arras,  attended  by  fifty 
horse.  The  great  Duke  Philip  rode  into  his  good  town 
of  Arras  at  the  head  of  a  glittering  cavalcade  of  800 
horse.  The  Duchess  and  her  son  arrived  another  day,  well 
attended  by  valiant  knights  and  lovely  Burgundian  ladies. 
The  English  Embassy  brought  500  horse.  On  July  31, 
arrived  the  French  Ambassadors  with  900  horse.  There 
were  also  diplomatic  agents  from  the  Emperor  of  the  West, 
and  from  Sicily,  Spain,  Portugal,  Denmark,  Poland,  and  the 
Italian  Republics.  It  was  the  first  great  European  peace 
conference. 

Jean  la  Fere,  the  Burgundian  chronicler,  was  there — 
enjoying  himself  very  much. 

'  On  this  day,'  he  says,  '  there  entered  into  the  said 
town  of  Arras,  the  Bishop  of  Liege,  accompanied  by  noble 
knights,  squires,  gentlemen,  and  others,  richly  apparelled, 
to  the  number  of  246  horse  [all  white  horses,  says  another 

^  This  Archbishop  was  John  Kemp,  of  the  Kemps  of  Olantigh  in  Kent.  He 
was  afterwards  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 


192  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

account],  and  went  to  the  hotel  of  the  Duke.  On  the  same 
day  the  Enghsh  Embassy  entered  the  town  of  Arras,  for  which 
cause  the  Duke  mounted  on  horseback  to  go  and  meet  them 
very  nobly  accompanied  by  his  servants,  counts,  barons, 
knights,  and  squires.  Likewise  there  assembled  all  the 
Cardinals,  and  all  the  Archbishops  and  Bishops,  who  were 
in  the  said  town,  and  went  to  meet  the  said  Embassy.  In 
which  Embassy  were  the  Cardinal  of  Winchester,  the  Count 
of  Suffolk,  the  Count  of  Huntingdon,  and  several  others 
who  came  from  the  Kingdom  of  England.^  All  the  said 
company  accompanied  them  as  far  as  the  Church  of  Notre 
Dame  in  the  City,  where  the  said  Cardinals  and  Lords  of 
England  were  lodged.  And  there  great  honours  and  reve- 
rences were  made,  and  then  they  separated.  The  Cardinal 
of  Winchester  and  the  Count  of  Huntingdon  were  nobly 
accompanied  by  noble  barons,  knights,  and  squires,  very 
richly  and  notably  apparelled  and  mounted,  to  the  number 
of  500  horse  or  thereabouts.' 

The  Duke  of  Burgundy,  three  or  four  days  later,  gave 
a  dinner  at  his  hotel — '  a  very  noble  dinner,'  says  Jean  la 
Fere — '  to  which  were  invited  the  noble  lords  of  England, 
the  ambassadors.  At  the  high  table  sat,  in  this  order,  the 
Archbishop  of  York,  the  Cardinal  of  Winchester,  the  Duke, 
the  Duke  of  Guelders,  the  Bishop  of  Liege,  the  Duke  of 
Vuillon,  the  Count  of  Suffolk,  the  Count  of  Huntingdon ;  and 
then  at  the  other  tables,  according  to  their  rank,  the  noble 
barons,  knights,  and  squires,'  and  among  them,  Jean  le 
Fere,  making  his  notes.     '  How  they  were  served,'  he  adds, 

1  Jean  la  Fere  may  have  mistaken  the  Archbishop  of  York  for  the  Cardinal- 
Bishop  of  Winchester,  since  it  seems  that  the  latter  did  not  arrive  till  later, 
towards  the  end  of  August.  According  to  Enguerrand  de  Monstrelet,  the  Earl  of 
Huntingdon  did  not  come  at  fii'st,  but  with  the  Cardinal.  It  was  difficult  to  be 
accurate  in  those  things  when  there  were  no  morning  newspapers  or  printed  lists 
at  banquets.  See  Barante,  Dues  de  Bourgogne,  vol.  i.  p.  560,  and  Sir  James  Ramsay, 
Lancaster  and  York. 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER    193 

*  need  not  be  asked,  for  the  Duke,  while  he  lived,  was  a 
treasure  of  honour.' 

From  July  to  September,  480  years  ago,  the  ancient 
town  of  Arras  overflowed  with  rich  attire,  beauty,  gal- 
lantry, love-making,  and  diplomacy.  The  proceedings  were 
enlivened  by  jousts  and  dancing.  The  congress  met  for 
business  on  August  31,  in  the  hall  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Waast, 
the  Cardinal  of  Santa  Croce  presiding  in  the  name  of  the 
Pope.  The  French  offered  that  if  the  English  would  re- 
nounce their  claim  to  the  French  throne,  and  give  up  Paris 
and  other  possessions,  they  should  be  allowed  to  keep  Aqui- 
taine.  Afterwards  they  offered  to  cede  also  the  dioceses  of 
Avranches,  Bayeux,  and  Evreux  in  Normandy,  if  the  English 
would  also  release  without  ransom  their  princely  captive, 
Charles,  the  poetic  Duke  of  Orleans.  The  crisis  came 
in  the  last  week  of  August  and  the  first  of  September,  after 
the  arrival  of  Cardinal  Beaufort,  who  was  seen  one  day 
arguing  so  hotly  with  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  that  perspi- 
ration streamed  down  his  face.  The  final  offer  of  the  English 
was  that  each  side  should  retain  the  possessions  which  they 
actually  held.  This  the  French  refused,  and  the  English 
Embassy  left  Arras  on  September  6.  Negotiations,  how- 
ever, went  on  between  the  French  and  Burgundians,  and 
led  to  a  formal  treaty  of  peace  between  them,  disastrous 
to  the  English,  who  were  not  able  to  hold  their  possessions 
in  France  without  allies.  On  April  10  in  the  following 
year  (1436)  they  were  badly  defeated  at  St.  Denis,  and, 
three  days  later,  lost  Paris  under  the  combined  effect  of  an 
assault  from  without  the  city  and  a  popular  rising  from 
within.  The  Parisians  were  delighted  to  be  rid  of  them. 
According  to  a  French  chronicler,  the  people  said  :  '  Ah ! 
one  could  see  the  English  were  not  in  France  to  stay.  They 
have  never  been  seen  to  sow  a  field  of  wheat,  or  build  a 
house  ;    they  destroyed  their  lodgings  without  ever  thinking 


194  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

of  repairing  them.  No  one  but  their  Regent,  the  Duke  of 
Bedford,  cared  for  making  buildings  and  giving  work  to 
the  poor.  He  was  worth  more  than  them,  and  would  have 
wished  for  peace,  but  the  natural  character  of  these  English 
is  always  to  make  war  with  their  neighbours  ;  also  they 
all  come  to  a  bad  end  ;  and,  thank  God,  more  than  70,000 
of  them  have  already  died  in  France.'  Enguerrand  de 
Monstrelet,  writing  of  the  final  campaign  of  Charles  VII, 
says :  '  It  was  evident  that  Heaven  was  against  the 
English,  and  they  were  deserving  of  it ;  for  it  is  true 
that  they  have  always  encroached  on  their  neighbours,  as 
well  in  the  Kingdom  of  France,  as  in  Scotland,  Ireland, 
Wales,  and  elsewhere.  Many  violences  have  been  most 
unjustly  done  by  them.'  Within  fifteen  years  from  the 
treaty  at  Arras,  the  English  had  lost  every  place  they 
had  ever  held  in  France,  except  Calais.  Cardinal  Beaufort 
would  have  done  far  better  to  close  with  the  offer  of  Aquitaine 
and  a  handsome  slice  of  Normandy.^  But  a  curse  was  now 
upon  the  English. 

In  1436  Huntingdon  was  joined  in  a  commission  with 
the  Earl  of  Northumberland  to  guard  the  '  east  and  west 
borders  '  towards  Scotland.  He  was  also  made  Lord  High 
Admiral  of  England  and  Lieutenant  of  Aquitaine.  In  1438 
he  was  retained  to  serve  the  King  in  Guyenne  for  six  years, 
with  sixteen  knights,  280  men-at-arms,  and  2000  archers. 
The  English  in  Guyenne  were  much  harassed  by  soldiers  of 
fortune,  who  collected  '  companies '  and  were  in  pay  of  the 
French  King  or  lived  on  the  country.  One  day  Lord  Hun- 
tingdon found  himself  in  presence  of  such  a  force  captained 
by  Rodrigue  de  Villandrando,  son  of  a  poor  escudero,  or 
squire,  near  Valladolid,  who  had  become  a  famous  partisan 

^  This  Cardinal  was  a  very  mundane  prelate,  and  the  terrible  chief  responsibility 
for  the  burning  of  Joan  of  Arc,  now  Beata,  rests  on  him.  He  might  well,  as  he  did, 
order  to  be  written  on  his  tomb  in  Winchester  Cathedral  :  '  Tribularer  si  nescierem 
misericordias  tuas  '  ('  I  should  be  troubled  did  I  not  know  Thy  mercies '). 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER    195 

leader.  Huntingdon  wished  to  see  him — curious  to  know 
what  kind  of  man  it  was  who  had  raised  himself  from  a 
low  estate  to  power  and  glory — and  invited  him  to  an  inter- 
view at  a  place  between  the  two  armies  on  the  banks  of  a 
stream  called  the  Leyre.     The  Spaniard  rode  up  to  the  spot. 

*  I  wished  to  see  you  in  person,'  said  Huntingdon,  '  since 
the  fates  have  brought  us  together  here.  Will  it  please 
you  to  eat  a  few  mouthfuls  of  bread  and  drink  a  cup  or 
two  of  wine  with  me  ?  And  after  that,  the  battle  will  fare 
as  it  please  God  and  my  lord  St.  George.' 

But  the  Captain  Rodrigue  replied  :  '  If  that  is  all  you 
wish,  it  is  certain  that  I  will  not  do  so,  for,  should  fortune 
make  us  encounter  in  this  fight,  I  should  lose  a  great  part 
of  the  anger  I  ought  to  have  in  fighting.  I  should  strike 
my  sword  less  fiercely  against  thine,  remembering  that  I 
had  eaten  bread  with  thee.' 

Lord  Huntingdon,  according  to  the  Spanish  chronicler, 
was  so  much  struck  by  these  words  and  by  the  look  of  the 
speaker,  that,  because  of  them,  and  also  because  his  force 
held  the  worse  position,  he  decided  not  to  fight  on  that 
occasion,  although  superior  in  numbers,  saying,  according 
to  the  Spanish  chronicler :  '  One  had  best  not  fight  with  a 
Spanish  head  at  the  time  of  its  fury.'  ('  Non  es  de  pelear 
con  cabeza  espanola  en  tiempo  de  su  yra.')  This  invitation 
to  a  drink  before  battle  seems  to  have  been  a  practice  of 
the  sportsman-like  English.  Even  the  great  Duke  of  Bedford 
sent  a  herald  with  a  like  invitation  to  the  Franco-Scottish 
commander,  Douglas,  before  the  Battle  of  Verneuil.  But 
the  serious  Spaniard  regarded  fighting  as  more  of  a  business 
and  less  of  a  game  than  did  the  English.^ 

In   1441    Huntingdon   presented  a  petition  to  the  King 

1  This  account  is  taken  from  the  Spanish  chronicler  Hernando  del  Pulgar, 
quoted  in  the  Rodrigue  of  M.  Quicherat.  The  Spanish  account  says  that  the 
Englishman  was  Talbot,  but  M.  Quicherat  shows  by  dates  that  this  was  an  error 
and  that  it  must  have  been  Huntingdon. 


196  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

stating  that  the  lands  which  King  Richard  had  granted  to 
his  father  to  maintain  his  dignity  as  Earl  were  then  worth 
2000  marks  a  year,  but  now  only  500,  which  shows  that 
these  estates,  or  some  of  them,  had  long  ago  been  restored 
after  confiscation.  Also  that  he  had  been  put  to  heavy 
expense  for  his  ransom  when  taken  prisoner  in  France  in  1421 
on  the  King's  service.  He  was  accordingly  given  500  marks 
a  year,  charged  on  the  port  revenues  of  London,  Bristol, 
and  Hull.  In  the  same  year  he  was  made  one  of  a  Royal 
Commission,  whose  reference  was  to  inquire  '  of  all  manner 
of  treason  and  sorceries  which  might  be  hurtful  to  the  King's 
person.' 

The  Earl  of  Huntingdon  was,  in  politics,  opposed  to 
his  half-uncle,  the  haughty  Cardinal  Beaufort.  Humphrey, 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  addressed  in  1440  a  protest  to  the  King 
in  which,  amongst  other  complaints  against  the  Cardinal, 
he  alleged  that  the  Cardinal  and  the  Archbishop  of  York 
'  have  had  and  have  the  governance  of  your  Highness, 
which  none  of  your  true  liegemen  ought  to  usurp,  nor  take 
upon  them,  and  have  also  estranged  from  your  Highness, 
me  your  sole  uncle,  my  cousin  of  York,  my  cousin  of  Hunting- 
don, and  many  other  lords  of  your  kin,  to  have  knowledge 
of  any  great  matter  that  might  touch  your  high  estate.'  ^ 

On  January  6,  1443,  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon, 
attained  what  was,  probably,  the  main  object  of  his  ambition. 
He  was  created  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  so  recovered  the  title 
which  his  father  had  borne  from  1397  to  1399.  The  warrant 
gave  him  the  privilege  that  he  and  his  heirs  male  should 
'  have  place  and  seat  in  all  parliaments  and  councils  '  next 
after  the  Duke  of  York  and  his  heirs  male.  In  1446,  the 
Duke  of  Exeter  was  made  Lord  High  Admiral  for  life,  and 

^  Lord  Bacon  calls  this  Cardinal  Beaufort  '  so  great  a  man  both  for  birth,  parts 
of  nature,  riches,  spirit,  and  place  as  none  before  him  had  ever  had  the  like ;  for  he 
was  both  Cardinal,  Legate,  and  Chancellor  of  England.' 


il 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER    197 

in  1447,  Constable  of  the  Tower  of  London,  which  was  the 
last  of  the  numerous  high  appointments  in  his  very  success- 
ful career. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter  was  thrice  married,  in  each  case 
to  a  widow.  His  first  wife  was  Anne,  widow  of  the  Edmund 
Mortimer,  Earl  of  March,  who  had  died  young  without 
children,  the  son  of  Roger,  Earl  of  March,  and  his  wife, 
Alianora  Holland.  Anne  was  the  daughter  of  Edmund, 
Earl  of  Stafford,  the  younger  brother  of  that  Ralph  Stafford, 
whom  John  Holland,  first  Earl  of  Huntingdon  had  killed 
in  a  fit  of  passion  at  Beverley.  Thus  the  second  John 
Holland  married  the  niece  of  his  father's  victim.  By  her 
he  had  a  son  named  Henry  Holland,  who  became  third 
Duke  of  Exeter,  in  whose  unhappy  fate,  as  in  that  of  the 
third  Earl  of  Kent,  who  also  married  a  Stafford,  the  super- 
stitious might  have  seen  a  curse  in  this  alliance  between 
Staffords  and  Hollands.^ 

Anne's  mother  was  a  daughter  of  Thomas  Plantagenet, 
Duke  of  Gloucester ;  so  that  Anne  was  a  cousin  of  Henry  V. 
She  died  in  1432.  Shortly  afterwards,  Huntingdon  married 
Beatrice,  widow  of  Thomas,  Earl  of  Arundel — that  same 
Earl  whom  the  first  John  Holland  had  held  in  cus- 
tody as  a  boy,  and  who  had  presided  at  his  execution. 
Beatrice  was  an  illegitimate,  or  perhaps  legitimated,  daughter 
of  John  I,  King  of  Portugal,  by  Donna  Agnese  Perez.  By 
her,  Exeter  had  a  daughter  called  Anne,  who  married 
first,  John,  Lord  Nevill,  eldest  son  of  the  first  Earl  of  West- 
morland, who  died  before  his  father,  and  secondly  Sir  John 
Nevill,  the  uncle  of  her  first  husband.     Sir  John  was  slain 

^  The  Staffords  were  an  unlucky  race.  They  took  first  the  Lancastrian  and 
then  the  Yorkist  side.  They  became  at  this  time  Dukes  of  Buckingham,  an  ill- 
fated  title  whether  borne  by  them  or  afterwards  by  the  Villiers.  The  first  Duke 
of  Buckingham  was  put  to  death  by  Richard  III,  and  the  second  Duke  by  Henry 
VIII.  The  Staffords  came  to  an  obscure  and  melancholy  end  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  having  been  great  people  since  the  Norman  conquest. 


198  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

at  Towton  battle  in  1461,  leaving,  by  Anne  Holland,  a  son, 
Ralph,  who  became  third  Earl  of  Westmorland.  From 
him  descended  the  Nevill  Earls  of  Westmorland  do^vn  to 
Earl  Charles,  who  took  part  in  the  Catholic  rising  against 
Queen  Elizabeth  in  1570,  was  attainted  and  lost  his  earldom. 
He  died  in  France,  in  exile,  in  1584,  leaving  only  daughters. 

Beatrice,  Countess  of  Huntingdon,  died  at  Bordeaux  on 
October  23,  1439,  and  was  buried  by  her  first  husband  at 
Arundel.  Huntingdon  then  married,  lastly,  Anne,  widow  of 
Sir  John  Fitz  Lewis,  and,  before  that,  widow  of  Sir  Richard 
Hankford.  She  was  daughter  of  John  Montacute,  third 
Earl  of  Salisbury,  who  married  Eleanor  Holland  of  the 
Kent  line,  and  was  slain  at  Orleans.  The  Duke  of  Exeter 
left  no  children  by  his  third  wife,  and  had  only  the  two 
legitimate  children,  Henry  and  Anne,  already  mentioned. 
But  he  had  two  bastard  sons,  William  and  Thomas,  to 
each  of  whom  he  left  an  annuity  of  £40  by  his  will. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter  died  on  August  5,  1447,  at  the  age  of 
fifty-three.  He  was  the  most  long  lived,  the  most  successful, 
and  the  most  prudent  of  his  fortunate-unfortunate  line. 
The  chronicler,  Thomas  of  Elmham,  calls  him  '  circumspectae 
probitatis  miles  nobilissimus,  militaris  industriae  multiplici 
fulgore  coruscans,  leonini  pectoris  magnanimitate  praeful- 
gidus.'  The  style  is  flamboyant,  like  that  of  the  co-tempo- 
rary architecture,  but  it  expresses  the  fact  that  this  Holland 
was  a  cool-headed,  trustworthy,  and  brave  soldier,  who 
deserved  his  rewards.  He  was  happy  in  the  era  of  his  active 
career  lying  between  the  storms  of  the  reign  of  Richard  II 
and  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  and,  coinciding  with  energy  turned 
to  foreign  war,  and  with  the  duration  of  English  Empire  in 
France. 

By  his  will,  dated  July  16,  1447,  he  directed  his  body 
to  be  buried  in  a  chapel  of  the  Church  of  St.  Catharine,  beside 
the  Tower  of  London,  at  the  north  end  of  the  High  Altar, 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER    199 

in  a  tomb  there  ordained  for  him  and  Anne,  his  first  wife,  as 
also  for  his  sister  Constance,  and  Anne,  his  other  wife,  then 
living.  He  bequeathed  to  the  High  Altar  of  the  said  church 
a  cup  of  byril  garnished  with  gold,  hearts,  and  precious  stones, 
to  use  for  the  Sacrament ;  also  a  chalice  of  gold,  with  the 
whole  furniture  of  his  chapel.  And  he  appointed  that  another 
chalice,  two  candlesticks  of  silver,  with  two  pair  of  vestments, 
a  Mass-book,  a  pax-bred,  and  a  pair  of  cruets  of  silver  should 
be  delivered  to  that  little  chapel,  where  he  so  intended  to  be 
buried  with  his  wife  and  sister,  for  the  priests  that  should 
celebrate  divine  service  therein,  and  pray  for  their  souls. 
To  the  priest  and  clerks,  and  other  of  the  House  of  St.  Catha- 
rine, for  their  great  labour  and  observance  on  the  day  of  his 
obit,  and  the  day  of  his  burying,  he  bequeathed  forty  marks, 
ordaining  that  four  honest  and  cunning  priests  should  be 
provided,  yearly  and  perpetually,  to  pray  for  his  soul  in  the  said 
chapel,  and  for  the  soul  of  Anne,  his  wife,  the  soul  of  his  sister 
Constance,  and  the  soul  of  Anne,  his  present  wife,  when  she 
should  pass  out  of  this  world,  and  for  the  souls  of  all  his 
progenitors.  To  his  daughter,  Anne,  he  bequeathed  his  white 
bed  with  popinjays,  &c. — the  same  solemn  white  bed,  perhaps, 
which  John  of  Gaunt  in  his  will  bequeathed  to  his  daughter 
Elizabeth,  Duchess  of  Exeter. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter's  third  wife,  Anne  Montacute,  lived 
until  the  year  1457.  In  her  will,  made  April  20  that  year, 
may  be  discerned  a  touch  of  the  coming  change  of  religion  in 
England,  towards  which  Lord  Salisbury,  her  father,  had 
inclined.  She  bequeathed  her  body  to  be  buried  in  the  same 
chapel,  '  expressly  forbidding  her  executors  from  making 
any  great  feast,  or  having  a  solemn  hearse  or  any  costly 
lights,  or  largess  of  liveries,  according  to  the  glory  or  vain 
pomp  of  the  world,  at  her  funeral ;  but  only  to  the  worship  of. 
God  after  the  discretion  of  Mr.  John  Pynchebeke,  doctor 
of  divinity,  and  one  of  her  executors.'     She  bequeathed  six 


200  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

and  eightpence  to  the  master  of  St.  Catharine  if  he  were 
present  at  the  Dirige  and  Mass  on  the  day  of  her  burial, 
and  made  some  small  bequests  to  the  priests,  sisters,  and 
bedesmen  of  that  college.  Her  executors  were  '  to  find  an 
honest  priest  to  say  Mass,  to  pray  for  her  soul,  her  lord's 
soul,  and  all  Christian  souls  in  the  said  chapel  for  seven  years 
after  her  decease,  for  doing  which  he  should  have  yearly  twelve 
marks ;  and  to  say  daily.  Placebo,  Dirige,  and  Mass,  when  so 
disposed.' 

The  history  of  this  Church  of  St.  Catharine's  by  the  Tower 
is  curious.  The  Hospital  and  Church  of  St.  Catharine  was 
founded  by  Mathilda,  the  queen  of  King  Stephen.  It  was 
to  be  the  collegiate  home  of  certain  religious  brethren  and 
sisters,  who  were  to  celebrate  divine  offices  and  pray  for 
souls,  and  the  patronage  and  control  was  always  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  the  reigning  Queen  of  England.  Philippa, 
queen  of  Edward  III.  was  a  great  benefactress,  and  added 
to  the  endowments.  Owing  to  this  royal  patronage,  the 
Hospital  escaped  the  storm  of  the  Reformation.  It  was, 
indeed,  at  first  suppressed,  but  placed  upon  a  new  charter 
by  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  Duke  of  Exeter's  byril  cup  and 
golden  chalice  vanished  in  those  days  of  plunder.  The 
church  was  untouched  by  the  Fire  of  London  in  1666.  In 
1825  it  was  necessary  to  remove  the  Church  and  Hospital 
buildings  in  order  to  make  the  London  docks.  New  buil- 
dings and  a  new  chapel  were  erected  facing  Regent's  Park, 
near  Gloucester  Gate,  and  the  tomb  of  John  Holland,  Duke 
of  Exeter,  was  with  great  care  and  with  much  cost  removed 
and  set  up  against  the  north-eastern  corner  of  this  chapel. 
It  is  a  strikingly  fine  monument,  in  the  Late  Pointed  style, 
highly  decorated  with  carvings  of  angels  and  strange  beasts, 
and  with  coloured  devices.  Recumbent  on  the  monu- 
ment are  the  figures  of  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  two  noble- 
looking  ladies,  all  in  perfect  preservation,  and  evidently  most 


JOHN  HOLLAND,  SECOND  DUKE  OF  EXETER     201 

faithful  representations  from  life.  The  figure  of  the  Duke 
lies  on  the  outside  of  the  table,  and  those  of  the  two  ladies 
on  his  left  hand.  All  these  figures  wear  coronets.  Three 
leaden  coffins  were  removed  with  the  monument  from  St. 
Catharine's  by  the  Tower. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  his  skull  was  replaced  in  the  coffin 
before  it  was  removed.  A  contemporary  journalistic  account 
says  :  '  We  were  yesterday  led  to  examine  a  tomb  in  the  very 
ancient  church  of  St.  Catharine,  which  workmen  are  now 
pulling  to  pieces  for  the  purpose  of  forming  a  new  dock. 
It  was  the  tomb  of  John,  Duke  of  Exeter,  who  was,  we 
believe,  cousin  to  Henry  V.  His  skull  is  now  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  surveyor.  The  cranium  is  small  and  retiring, 
which  those  who  profess  to  be  learned  in  such  matters  say 
is  evidence  of  royalty  and  legitimacy,  as  well  as  of  valour. 
The  teeth  are  remarkably  perfect.'  ^  So  may  a  great  Duke's 
skull  some  day  be  handed  round  among  workmen,  and  come 
into  possession  of  a  surveyor. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter's  will  contemplated  that  he,  his 
sister,  and  his  first  and  third  wives,  should  be  buried  under 
the  same  monument,  his  second  wife  having  already  been 
buried  by  her  first  husband  at  Arundel.  But  his  sister  was 
buried  elsewhere,  the  Lady  Constance  Holland,  who  married 
first  the  Earl  Marshal,  commonly  called  second  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  who  was  beheaded  at  York  with  Archbishop  Scrope, 
in  1405,  for  conspiring  against  Henry  IV,  and  afterwards  she 
married  Lord  Grey  of  Ruthin.  The  two  dames  represented 
on  the  tomb  are  the  Duke's  first  wife,  Anne  Stafford,  and  his 
third  wife,  Lady  Anne  Montacute. 

*  The  figure  of  the  Duke  on  the  tomb  does  not  show  a  small  and  retiring 
cranium  at  all,  but  a  fine  straiglit  forehead.  Possibly  the  skull  in  question  belonged 
to  one  of  his  wivea. 


CHAPTER  IX 

HENRY    HOLLAND,    THIRD    DUKE    OF    EXETER 

Richard  Plantagenet  of  York  : 

Let  him  that  is  a  true-born  gentleman, 
And  stands  upon  the  honour  of  his  birth, 
If  he  suppose  that  I  have  pleaded  truth. 
From  off  this  brier  pluck  a  white  rose  with  me. 

Somerset : 

Let  him  that  is  no  coward,  nor  no  flatterer, 
But  dare  maintain  the  party  of  the  truth. 
Pluck  a  red  rose  from  oS  this  thorn  with  me. 

Shakespeare,  Henry  VI,  Pt.  1.  Act  IL 

Henry  Holland  was  born  in  the  Tower  of  London  on 
June  27,  1430.  We  know  something  of  his  baptism  from 
the  evidence  taken  by  the  Inquisition  made  when  he  came 
of  age.  His  aunt,  the  Lady  Constance,  widow  of  the  Earl 
Marshal,  Duke  of  Norfolk,  carried  him  in  her  arms  from 
the  Tower  to  '  Cold  Harbour,'  and  thence  in  a  barge  to 
St.  Stephen's,  Westminster,  where  he  was  christened.  This 
house,  called  '  Cold  Harbour,'  is  shown  in  a  picture  of  London 
viewed  from  the  south  side,  made  in  1616,  and  is  there 
underwritten  '  Cole  Harbour.'  A  large  and  lofty  house 
it  was,  of  several  stories,  with  gables  and  small  irregular 
windows,  standing  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  near  All 
Hallows  Lane,  just  east  of  the  existing  Cannon  Street  rail- 
way bridge.  Stow,  in  his  history  of  London,  written  at  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century  spells  it  '  Coal  Harbour,'  and 

202 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    203 

gives  its  history  in  much  detail.  In  the  reign  of  Edward  II 
the  house,  then  spelled  '  Cold  Harbrough,'  belonged  to 
Sir  John  Abel,  and  after  passing  through  other  hands  was, 
in  1397,  the  town  house  of  John  Holland,  Earl  of  Hun- 
tingdon. It  was  '  the  fair  and  stately  house  behind  All  Hallows 
Church  in  Thames  Street,'  where  Richard  II  and  his  friends 
dined  with  John  Holland  before  the  eventful  ride  to  Fleshy. 
Cold  Harbour  continued  to  be  the  town  house  of  the  Hol- 
lands of  Huntingdon  and  Exeter,  until  this  branch  of  the 
race  ended  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  At  one  time,  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  it  belonged  to  the  Bishops  of  Durham, 
but  the  Crown  deprived  Bishop  Tunstal  of  it  in  1553,  and 
gave  it  to  the  Earl  of  Shrewsbury.  In  the  following  century 
the  then  Earl  of  Shrewsbury — the  house  having  fallen  into 
decay  and  the  situation  being  no  longer  in  fashion — '  took 
it  down,  and  in  the  place  thereof  built  a  great  number  of 
small  tenements,  now  let  out  '  (says  Stow)  '  for  great 
rents  to  people  of  all  sorts.'  The  site  is  now  covered  with 
warehouses,  and,  although  there  are  plenty  of  barges, 
none  of  them  ever  convey  princely  babes  to  fashionable 
baptisms. 

Little  is  known  of  Henry  Holland's  further  life  until 
the  Wars  of  the  Roses  began.  He  was  married  to  Anne, 
daughter  of  the  Duke  of  York,  and  sister  to  the  Princes 
who  afterwards  became  Edward  IV  and  Richard  III.  A 
poet  of  the  day,  in  a  long  account  of  that  family,  wrote : 

To  the  Duke  of  Excestre  Anne  married  is. 
In  her  tender  youth. 

He  could  not,  like  his  ancestors  for  three  generations,  win 
early  distinction  in  the  wars  in  France,  for  by  the  time  he 
was  twenty-one,  the  English  had  been  driven  out  of  France. 
Their  last  hold  on  Normandy  was  lost  in  1450,  and  they 
were  expelled  from  their  most  ancient  possession,  Bordeaux, 


204  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

in  1453.  Now  they  held  not  an  acre  oversea  beyond 
Calais  and  its  environs.  Such  was  the  end  of  their  hun- 
dred years'  effort  to  annex  France,  and  of  all  the  misery 
thereby  caused.  They  now  turned  fierce  swords  against 
each  other. 

In  1449,  although  but  nineteen,  the  Duke  of  Exeter 
had,  like  his  father  before  him,  become  Lord  High  Admiral. 
In  this  capacity  he  aided  the  Opposition  Lords,  Warwick 
and  Salisbury,  against  the  dominant  Earl  of  Suffolk,  a 
favourite  of  the  beautiful  and  vigorous  young  Queen,  Margaret 
of  Anjou.  When  Suffolk  was  trying  to  escape  to  France, 
Exeter  placed  some  ships  of  war  at  the  disposition  of  the 
confederate  lords.  Suffolk  was  caught  at  sea  and  rudely 
beheaded  by  sailors  of  a  barque  called  the  '  Nicholas 
of  the  Tower,'  off  Dover.  A  few  years  later,  Exeter 
appeared  as  a  strong  Lancastrian,  and  remained  on  that 
side  till  his  death,  although  his  wife  was  a  lady  of  the 
House  of  York. 

Now  began  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  which  ruined  so  many 
great  families,  and,  among  them,  the  House  of  Holland.  In 
1453  when  the  Duke  of  Exeter — who  was  then,  barring  the 
York  claim,  heir-presumptive  to  the  Crown — was  in  his  twenty- 
fourth  year.  Queen  Margaret  bore  on  October  13,  seven  years 
after  her  marriage,  a  son,  who  was  named  Edward.  The 
rumour  spread  that  he  was  not  really  Henry's  son,  and  his 
birth  brought  to  a  head  the  dormant  question  of  the  superior 
claim  of  the  York  family  to  the  throne.  The  Lancastrians 
were  led  by  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  the  son  of  Margaret 
Holland,  and  grandson  of  John  of  Gaunt  by  the  Katherine 
Sw5nnford  amour.  At  the  close  of  1453  the  quarrel  came 
to  a  crisis ;  Somerset  was  sent  to  the  Tower,  and  soon  after- 
wards King  Henry  having  fallen  into  an  imbecile  condition, 
Parliament  declared  Richard,  Duke  of  York,  Protector  of 
the  Kingdom.     In  1454  Ralph  Lord  Cromwell  'demanded 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    205 

in  full  Parliament  the  surety  of  the  peace  of  the  Duke  of 
York  against  Henry  Duke  of  Exeter,  the  which  was  granted.' 
The  Lancastrian,  nobles  gathered  round  the  Queen  and  in  a 
few  months  she  recovered  power.  Early  in  1454  the  Duke  of 
Exeter  was  in  the  north,  acting  on  her  behalf.  John  Studeley 
wrote  to  the  Pastons  in  Norfolk  on  January  19,  1454  :  '  Item, 
the  Duke  of  Exeter,  in  his  own  person,  hath  been  at  Tuxforth 
and  Doncaster  in  the  north  country,  and  there  the  Lord 
Egremont  met  him,  and  the  two  been  sworn  together,  and  the 
Duke  is  come  home  again.'  Somerset  was  set  free,  but  the 
Duke  of  York,  popular  in  the  south,  raised  his  standard  and, 
on  April  22,  1454,  the  Red  Rose  and  the  White  fought  in  the 
streets  and  suburbs  of  St.  Albans.  The  Duke  of  Somerset 
was  slain  and  his  followers  defeated.  Exeter  is  not  named 
as  having  been  in  this  action.  On  July  24  the  Privy  Council 
charged  the  Duke  of  York  to  keep  the  Duke  of  Exeter  in 
custody  in  Pomfret  Castle.  In  1456  there  was  reaction,  and 
the  Duke  of  York  had  to  resign  the  Protectorship.  In 
January  1458,  a  conference  between  the  high  opposing  nobles 
was  held  in  London,  and  they  arrived  from  the  provinces 
attended  by  great  armed  retinues.  The  new  Duke  of 
Somerset  and  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  with  800  followers 
lodged  outside  Temple  Bar  and  in  Holborn.  On  March  27 
there  was  what  the  chronicler  Fabian  calls  '  a  dissimulated 
Loveday.'  The  King  and  Queen  wearing  crowns  and  royal 
robes  attended  by  all  the  prelates  and  peers,  walked  in  solemn 
state  to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.  The  great  lords  were  arranged 
in  antagonistic  couples.  The  Duke  of  Somerset  and  his  foe 
the  Earl  of  Salisbury  headed  the  procession,  and  next  came 
Henry  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  his  cousin  and  enemy, 
Richard  Nevill,  Earl  of  Warwick.  Behind  the  King,  who 
walked  alone,  came  the  Duke  of  York  holding  Queen 
Margaret  by  the  hand,  which  must  have  been  a  great  trial 
to  her.     A  poet  of  the  time,  foolishly  happy,  wrote  in  the 


206  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

unromantic    and   prosaic   style   of  south-English  folk-bards 
of  all  times  : 

Our  sovereign  lord,  God,    keep  alway  ! 

And  the  Queen  and  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 

And  other  that  have  laboured  to  make  this  loveday, 

O  God  !  Preserve  them,  we  pray  heartily. 

And  London  for  them  full  diligently  ; 

Rejoice  England  !     In  concord  and  unity. 

This  loveless  love  lasted  not  long.  Almost  the  same 
day  there  was  an  affray  in  the  London  streets  between 
Warwick's  men  and  the  King's.  The  Duke  of  Exeter  had 
already  been  alienated  because  his  hereditary  command  of 
the  fleet  had  been  taken  away  as  part  of  the  arrangement 
and  given  to  the  Earl  of  Warwick.  Botomer,  in  his  letter 
of  February  1,  1458,  to  the  Pastons,  says  :  '  The  Duke  of 
Exeter  hath  taken  great  displeasure  that  my  Lord  Warwick 
occupieth  his  office,  and  taketh  the  charge  of  the  keeping 
of  the  sea  from  him.'  The  Duke  was  inadequately 
appeased  by  the  grant  of  £1000  from  the  exchequer,  and 
henceforward  was  a  most  unswerving  foe  to  the  Yorkists, 
married  though  he  was  to  Anne,  daughter  of  Richard  Duke 
of  York. 

Exeter's  deposition  from  command  at  sea  was  partly 
a  concession  to  popular  feeling,  for  in  the  preceding 
year,  1457,  he  had  failed  to  protect  the  Channel  Coast  from 
French  raids,  under  the  able  Pierre  de  Breze,  Seneschal  of 
Normandy,  who  had  sacked  Sandwich  in  Kent  and  burned 
Fowey  in  Cornwall. 

Civil  dissensions  came  to  a  new  crisis  in  1459.  Queen 
Margaret's  friends  raised  a  force  in  loyal  Cheshire  and  Lanca- 
shire. The  Duke  of  Exeter,  Lord  Beaumont,  and  others 
took  the  field,  according  to  the  well-informed  and  trust- 
worthy contemporary  writer,  Jean  de  Wavrin,  at  the  head  of 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    207 

15,000  or  16,000  men,  all  horse.  On  the  other  side,  the 
Earl  of  Salisbury  and  his  son  Richard,  Earl  of  Warwick, 
raised  a  more  democratic  force.  Warwick  was  especially 
successful  in  recruiting  because  he  knew  how  to  address 
the  coEomoners  in  familiar  and  persuasive  language.  Their 
little  army  consisted  of  about  6000  or  7000  men,  among 
whom  there  were  only  twenty-five  knights,  and  no  mounted 
men-at-arms.  It  was  a  plebeian  force  of  archers.  The  two 
Earls  came  across  the  aristocratic  army  led  by  Exeter  and 
Beaumont,  at  Blore  Heath,  on  the  borders  of  Derbyshire 
and  Lancashire,  on  April  29,  1459.  Their  men  took  up  a 
good  position,  entrenched  and  staked  themselves  in,  and 
awaited  attack.  The  Duke  of  Exeter  charged  with  his  division 
of  horse,  and  was  met  by  so  vigorous  an  arrow  fire  that 
between  five  and  six  hundred  of  his  men  were  killed  or 
wounded.  He  withdrew  out  of  range,  charged  again,  and 
lost  another  hundred  men.  Lord  Beaumont  then  dismounted 
his  division — about  four  thousand  in  number — and  advanced 
against  the  Yorkist  position  on  foot,  and  fought  for  half  an 
hour,  but  had  the  worst  of  it.  One  of  his  knights,  who  led 
five  hundred  men,  was  so  much  disgusted  that  Exeter's 
horse  did  not  charge  a  third  time,  as  he  had  expected,  that  he 
began  to  fight  on  the  side  of  the  Warwickers.  In  the  end, 
the  Lancastrians  had  lost  Lord  Audley,  killed,  and  Lord 
Dudley,  captured,  and  over  two  thousand  men,  and  the 
Yorkists  less  than  a  hundred,  and  the  latter  retained  pos- 
session of  the  field.  It  was  the  old  story  of  the  wars  in 
France — the  superiority  of  English  bowmen  over  mounted 
chivalry. 

The  Duke  of  York  with  Salisbury  and  Warwick,  then 
raised  the  rebel  standard  at  Worcester.  A  royal  army, 
with  the  King,  advanced  against  them  and  pursued  them  to 
Ludlow,  where  the  Yorkist  force  dissolved.  In  November 
1459,  the  King  held  a  Parliament  at  Coventry,  to  which  the 


208  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Duke  of  Exeter  was  summoned  as  leading  peer,  and  an  Act 
of  Attainder  was  passed  against  the  Duke  of  York  and  his 
chief  alHes. 

In  January  1460  the  Duke  of  Exeter  was  at  York.  In 
the  French  Records  there  is  this  curiously  spelt  document. 
'  The  yere  of  Our  Lord,  MCCCCLX,  the  XX  day  of  Janvier 
at  the  City  of  York,  in  the  presence  of  the  most  excellente 
Princess  Margaret,  Queen  of  England  and  of  Ffrance  and 
Lady  of  Ireland,  by  the  lords  whose  names  were  under- 
written hit  was  graunted  and  promysed  that  they  shal 
labour  by  alle  moyennes  resonable  witoute  inconvenience 
to  the  moost  high  and  migghty  Prince  Henry  VI,  King  of 
England  and  of  France  and  Lord  of  Ireland,  thaire  souver ain 
lord  that  suche  articles  as  were  commoved  at  the  College 
of  Lyncluden  in  the  royaulme  of  Scotland,  the  Vth  day  of  the 
saide  moneth,  the  yere  above  said,  that  it  may  please  his  grace 
they  may  take  gude  and  effectual  conclusion.  Signe,  Excester, 
Somerset,  W.  Byschof  of  Carlyls,  Northumberland,  West- 
moreland, Devonshire,  John  Coventry,  Byschof  Nevyll, 
H.  Fitzhugh,  Roos,  Thomas  Seymour,  H.  Dacre.' 

After  the  Yorkist  dispersal  at  Ludlow,  the  Duke  of  York 
went  to  Ireland,  and  the  Earl  of  Warwick  to  France,  where  he 
held  possession  of  Calais  against  the  Duke  of  Somerset, 
who  lay  outside  the  walls  and  tried  in  vain  to  recover  the 
town.  Warwick  had  some  ships,  including  a  large  one 
which  he  obtained  by  descent  on  Sandwich  Haven,  and 
in  the  spring  of  1460  sailed  with  his  little  fleet  to 
Ireland  to  visit  the  Duke  of  York  and  concert  a  campaign. 
It  was  agreed  that  the  Duke  should  land  in  the  north,  and 
the  Earl  in  Kent.     Warwick  then  returned  towards  Calais. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter — who  had  been  on  business  at  York 
at  the  end  of  January — now  again  High  Admiral,  sailed  west 
from  Sandwich  in  Kent,  with  four  great  '  carracks  ' — one  of 
which,  called  the  Grace  Dieu,  was  his  Admiral  ship — and 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER     209 

ten  smaller  '  caravel '  vessels.  He  swore  a  vow  that  Warwick, 
his  enterprising  cousin,  should  never  get  back  to  Calais. 
Off  the  Devon  coast  he  came  in  sight  of  Warwick's 
numerically  inferior  squadron,  and  wished  to  engage.  The 
wind  was  blowing  from  the  south  or  south-west,  and 
Warwick  got  to  windward  of  Exeter.  The  Earl  called 
together  his  captains  and  asked  them  if  they  would  fight, 
and  they  replied  joyously  that  they  would  like  nothing  better. 
Exeter  got  a  different  response  from  his  captains.  They  re- 
fused to  fight,  turned  about  their  ships,  whether  by  his  order 
or  not,  and  ran  with  the  wind  into  Dartmouth.  Warwick 
did  not  pursue,  but  passed  on  up  Channel  to  Calais,  for  he 
had  only  just  enough  provisions  left  to  last  that  distance. 

The  chronicler,  Grafton,  says  '  the  captains  of  the  Duke 
of  Exeter's  fleet  murmured  against  him,  and  the  mariners 
dispraised  and  disdained  him,  glad  to  hear  of  the  Earl  of 
Warwick's  good  success,  by  which  occasion  he  neither  would 
nor  durst  meddle  once  with  the  Earl's  navy.'  This,  no  doubt, 
is  true.  Warwick  had  done  well  at  sea  against  the  French  as 
High  Admiral,  and  had  captured  the  hearts  of  the  sailors ;  nor 
could  Exeter  compete  with  him  either  in  wealth  and  power  of 
largess,  or  in  ingratiating  manners.  Warwick  was  a  good, 
bluff  orator,  and  threw  his  money  about  generously,  and  was 
the  popular  hero  along  the  shores  of  Kent  and  Essex  and  the 
Thames,  and  in  all  the  jolly  southern  and  midland  taverns. 

The  War  of  the  Roses  was  essentially  fought  between  the 
north  and  west  on  one  side,  and  the  south-east  and  midlands 
on  the  other  ;  a  line  of  division  of  feeling  which  seems  to  rest 
on  something  racial,  for  it  reappears  at  the  Reformation, 
in  the  Civil  War  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and,  more  or 
less,  in  modern  general  elections.^  '  The  Kentishmen,' 
says  a  good  old  chronicler,  '  desired  the  Earl  of  Warwick's 

^  Sir  Thomas  Malory,  a  Lancastrian,  says  that  they  of  London,  Kent,  Sussex, 
Surrey,  Essex,  Suffolk  and  Norfolk  '  held  the  most  part '  with  the  wicked  Mordred, 
against  King  Arthur. 

P 


210  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

return  and  longed  for  his  coming.'  They  had  not  long  to 
wait.  Warwick  landed,  together  with  Edward,  Earl  of 
March,  at  Sandwich  on  June  20,  1460,  and  was  met  by  the 
nobles  and  gentry  of  Kent  and  Archbishop  Bourchier, 
whom  he  had  already  seduced  at  Calais,  and  then  went  on 
to  London  by  Canterbury  and  Rochester.  Thousands  joined 
from  the  towns,  and  gentlemen  and  yeomen  poured  in  from 
every  side  road  to  swell  his  army.  Triumphantly  he  entered 
London  on  July  2,  cordially  received  by  the  City  authorities, 
and  was  reinforced  by  thousands  of  Londoners  and  Essex  men. 
He  left  the  Tower  blockaded,  and  marched  up  the  North  Road 
— scene  of  most  of  the  fighting  in  this  war — to  Northamp- 
ton, where  the  Lancastrians  with  King  Henry  had  assembled 
some  50,000  men.  Exeter,  according  to  one  account,  was 
with  them.  After  some  parleying,  there  was  a  great  battle, 
Warwick,  with  the  Earl  of  March,  assisted  by  the  treachery 
of  Lord  Grey  de  Ruthin,  who  deserted  to  the  Yorkists  at 
the  last  moment,  utterly  defeated  the  Lancastrians.  '  Ten 
thousand  tall  Englishmen,'  says  the  old  Tudor  chronicler, 
Hall,  '  were  slain  or  drowned  in  attempting  to  pass  the  river, 
and  King  Henry  himself,  left  all  lonely  and  disconsolate, 
was  taken  prisoner.^  Queen  Margaret  fled  into  Wales,  and 
there  soon  the  Duke  of  Exeter  came  to  join  her. 

Now  the  Duke  of  York,  returning  from  Ireland,  entered 
London  and  claimed  the  throne  by  virtue  of  his  descent 
from  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  through  that  Duke's  daughter 

^  Jean  de  WavTin,who  was  living  at  the  time  in  Northern  France,  and  had  the 
best  sources  of  information,  says  that  12,000  Lancastrians  were  killed  at  North- 
ampton. Why,  then,  should  Professor  Oman  of  Oxford,  living  in  the  twentieth 
century,  say,  without  giving  his  authority,  that  only  300  were  killed  here  ?  (See 
Political  History  of  England,  vol.  iv.  p.  393.)  As  to  incidents  in  the  Wars  of 
the  Roses,  the  present  writer  has  mainly  followed  Wavrin,  who  was  at  this  time 
completing  his  life  and  his  chronicle.  Internal  evidence  shows  that  he  took 
great  pains  to  be  accurate  by  getting  information  from  Englishmen  who  had 
been  engaged  in  the  affairs  described,  as  also  did  his  contemporary,  de  Comines. 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    211 

Philippa,  and  the  Mortimers.^  This  descent  was  superior 
to  that  of  Henry  VI,  if  descent  through  two  female  Hnks  were 
admitted  ;  nor  could  any  Englishmen  deny  this  female  prin- 
ciple upon  which  the  English  kings  still  claimed  the  throne 
of  France.  The  House  of  Lords  had  to  choose  between  the 
Parliamentary  title  of  Lancaster  and  the  legitimist  claim 
of  York.  They  compromised  by  agreeing  that  Henry  VI 
should  nominally  retain  the  crown  for  life,  but  that  on 
his  death  it  should  devolve  not  upon  Edward,  his  son,  but 
upon  Richard  Plantagenet,  Duke  of  York.  The  proud  and 
powerful  lords  of  the  Red  Rose — the  Northumberlands,  Dacres, 
Nevills,  and  Cliffords — were  of  another  opinion ;  and  Queen 
Margaret  and  Henry  Beaufort,  Duke  of  Somerset,  who  had 
his  father's  death  to  avenge,  were  soon  at  the  head  of  a  new 
feudal  army.  They  might  have  said  in  the  words  of  Walter 
Scott's  cavalier  lay  : 

Go  tell  the  bold  traitors  in  London's  proud  town 

That  the  spears  of  the  North  have  encircled  the  Crown. 

Henry  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  was  with  them — now 
thirty  years  old  and  a  good  warrior  by  land,  whatever  his 
failures  by  sea.  He  fought  in  the  battle  of  Wakefield  on 
December  30,  1460,  where  the  Duke  of  York's  southern  army 
was  gloriously  defeated,  himself  slain,  and  his  young  son, 
Rutland,  taken  and  killed  by  the  fierce  Lord  Clifford.  Exeter 
must  have  seen  with  mingled  feelings  the  head  of  the  Duke, 
father  of  his  own  young  wife,  scornfully  adorned  with  a 
paper  crown  and  spiked  on  a  pole  over  a  gate  of  York. 

This  was  the  hour  of  Margaret's  triumphant  revenge. 
Lord  Bacon  observes  in  his  '  Historical  Discourse  '  that '  wha 

^  The  reader  remembers,  of  course,  the  great  fact  that  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence, 
was  third  son  of  Edward  III,  John  Duke  of  Lancaster  fourth  son,  and  Edmund, 
Duke  of  York  fifth  son,  and  that  the  second  son,  William  of  Hatfield,  died  without 
issue. 


212  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

the  French  could  not  effect  by  arms  in  their  own  field,  they 
did  upon  English  ground  by  a  Feminine  Spirit,  which  they 
sent  over  to  England  to  be  their  Queen,  and,  in  one  civil 
war,  shedding  more  English  blood  by  the  English  sword  than 
they  could  formerly  do  by  all  the  men  of  France,  were  revenged 
upon  England  to  the  full  at  the  Englishmen's  own  charge.' 

Ill  fortune  has  strangely  attended  English  Kings  who 
married  French  Princesses.  Henry  V  died  young,  within 
three  years  from  marriage  ;  Edward  II,  Richard  II,  Henry  VI, 
and  Charles  I  were  detlironed  and  murdered. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter,  ever  loyal  to  the  fierce  Feminine 
SjDirit,  received  a  grant  of  the  late  Duke  of  York's  Castle 
of  Fotheringay,  where  his  own  wife,  Anne,  had  been  born 
in  1439.  And  now  the  victorious  Margaret,  with  Somerset, 
Exeter,  Northumberland,  Clifford,  and  the  rest,  marched 
southward,  and  the  northerners  sacked  every  town  on  the 
road  after  they  had  crossed  the  Trent.  On  February  16, 
1461,  they  defeated  Warwick's  army,  which  lay  across  the 
road  at  St.  Albans,  and  threatened  London.  The  opportunity 
was  lost  owing  to  the  attitude  of  the  Londoners,  and  to 
the  hesitation  of  gentle  and  religious  Henry.  He  had  been 
brought  out  of  the  Tower  to  battle  by  the  Yorkists,  had  been 
recaptured  on  the  field  by  his  wife,  had  been  shocked  at  the 
treatment  of  St.  Albans  by  the  northern  troops,  and  liked 
not  the  idea  of  a  sack  of  London.  Relieving  forces  arrived, 
and  the  I^ancastrians  returned  to  Yorkshire  with  their 
King  and  their  plunder.  Edward,  now  Duke  of  York,  only 
twenty-one  years  old — a  vigorous  fighting  man,  extremely 
good-looking,  affable,  and  immensely  popular  among  the 
southern  English — at  the  request  of  a  deputation  of  select 
peers  and  prelates  and  London  citizens,  enthroned  himself 
at  Westminster  on  March  4,  as  Edward  IV.  Parliament 
was  not  consulted  by  these  Legitimists.  Meanwhile,  the 
Red  Rose  chiefs  collected  a  great  host  round  the  warrior 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    213 

Queen  and  King  Henry  at  York,  and  the  White  Rose 
King  left  London  on  March  12  and  went  north  to  fight 
them.  When  the  armies  met,  the  Lancastrians  had  about 
60,000  men,  and  the  Yorkists  between  40,000  and  50,000, 
but  the  numerical  inferiority  of  the  southerners  was  com- 
pensated by  better  training  and  archery.  They  were  more 
disciplined  and  were  led  by  veteran  officers  who  had  learned 
war  in  France. 

The  first  action  was  fought  by  Edward's  vanguard 
on  Saturday  March  28,  against  a  Lancastrian  out-post, 
for  the  possession  of  the  North  Road  Bridge,  or  Ferrybridge, 
across  the  river  Aire.  The  Yorkists  forced  the  passage 
by  six  o'clock  that  evening,  and  here  the  fierce  and  zealous 
Lord  Clifford  was  killed  by  an  arrow  through  his  throat, 
together  with  some  3000  men  on  the  two  sides.  Edward's 
army  crossed  the  river  all  through  that  night,  and  ranged 
themselves  in  order  of  battle  on  the  other  side. 

The  main  body  of  the  northern  host  marched  from 
York,  when  news  came  of  Edward's  approach,  and  took 
up  a  position  eight  miles  south  of  that  city  and  two  miles 
north  of  the  Aire  River,  along  a  ridge  between  the  villages 
of  Towton  and  Saxton.  The  great  battle  began  about  nine 
o'clock  on  the  morning  of  Palm  Sunday.  The  northerners 
advanced  with  banners  flying,  and  loud  shouts  of  '  King 
Henry.'  Exeter  and  Somerset  commanded  on  the  right, 
and  the  Earl  of  Northumberland  led  the  centre,  where  floated 
the  royal  standard  ;  the  Earls  of  Dacre  and  Devon  com- 
manded on  the  left.  The  south  wind  blew  a  shower  of 
snow-sleet  in  the  faces  of  the  Lancastrians  and  disconcerted 
the  aim  of  their  archers,  while  the  shooting  of  the  better- 
trained  southern  bowmen  was  all  the  more  effective.  The 
Lancastrian  arrows  fell  short  and  stuck  in  the  ground,  im- 
peding the  advance  of  their  men-at-arms.  But  a  rush  of 
14,000  men,  half  of  them  Welsh,  in  Exeter's  division,  broke 


214  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Lord  Fauconberg's  horse  and  drove  them  in  flight  for  miles. 
On  the  left,  Dacre  and  Devon  pressed  hard  on  Warwick, 
who  was  himself  wounded.  But  in  the  centre,  young  King 
Edward  prevailed,  after  a  long  and  fierce  fight,  over  the 
main  Lancastrian  host. 

'  Here,'  says  the  Burgundian  writer,  '  was  the  battle 
furious  and  the  slaying  great  and  pitiable,  for  the  father 
spared  not  son,  nor  son  the  father.'  At  noon  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk  arrived  with  a  fresh  Yorkist  contingent,  and  assailed 
the  Lancastrians  on  their  left  flank.  At  the  end  of  six  hours 
of  hacking  and  hewing,  the  Lancastrian  centre  and  left, 
about  three  o'clock,  were  rolled  up  and  driven  into  a  little 
river  (the  Cock)  to  their  right  rear,  and  here  was  murderous 
killing  and  drowning.  The  stream  ran,  they  say,  so  red  with 
blood,  that  even  the  water  of  Wharfe  River,  into  which 
it  flowed  two  miles  away,  was  discoloured.  No  fiercer, 
bloodier  battle  has  ever  been  fought  on  English  soil  than  that 
on  this  cold  Palm  Sunday,  celebrated,  as  an  old  chronicler 
says,  '  with  lances  instead  of  palms.'  The  Dukes  of  Exeter 
and  Somerset  escaped,  probably  because  they  led  the  '  victor 
vanward  wing,'  but  Northumberland,  Dacre,  and  Devon, 
and  all  the  flower  of  the  Red  Rose  nobles  and  gentlemen,  and 
a  vast  multitude  of  their  followers,  perished  this  fatal  day. 

'  Witness  Aire's  unhappy  water, 
Where  the  ruthless  Clifford  fell. 
And  where  Wharfe  ran  red  with  slaughter 
On  the  day  of  Towton's  field, 
Gathering  in  its  guilty  flood 
The  carnage  and  the  ill-spilt  blood 
That  forty  thousand  lives  could  yield. 
Cressy  was  to  this  but  sport, 
Poitiers  but  a  pageant  vain, 
And  the  work  of  Agincourt 
Only  like  a  tournament.'  ^ 

^  Robert  Southey. 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER     215 

This  horrible  disaster  was,  the  Burgundian  chronicler 
thinks,  just  retribution  for  the  treason  by  which  Henry  IV, 
sixty-two  years  earlier,  had  deprived  Richard  II  of  the 
throne,  and  caused  him  to  be  murdered  ;  for,  he  remarks, 
'  Chose  mal  acquise  ne  peult  avoir  longue  duree.' 

William  Paston,  writing  from  London  on  April  4  to  his 
brother,  John  Paston  in  Norfolk,  says  that  '  a  letter  of  cre- 
dence,' sent  by  King  Edward  '  under  his  sign  manual  *  to  his 
mother,  the  Duchess  of  York,  had  arrived  at  eleven  o'clock 
that  day,  Easter  Eve,  and  '  was  seen  and  read  by  me,  William 
Paston.'  The  letter  was  probably  despatched  from  York  on 
the  Wednesday  or  Thursday,  after  the  heralds  had  had  time 
to  count  the  dead  and  to  identify  their  chiefs.  It  announced 
that  the  King  had  '  won  the  field,'  and  had  upon  the  day 
after  the  battle  '  been  received  into  York  with  great  solemnity 
and  processions,'  and  that  '  King  Henry,  the  Queen,  the 
Prince,  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  Lord 
Roos  be  fled  into  Scotland  and  they  be  chased  and  followed.* 
This  official  despatch  gave  the  names  of  the  leading 
chiefs  slain  on  both  sides,  and  added  that  28,000  other 
of  the  opponents  had  been  slain,  as  '  numbered  by  the 
heralds.'  ^     The  number  of  the  rank  and  file  slain  on  the 

^  See  Fenn's  Paston  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  216.  Croyland  says  that  those  who 
buried  the  dead  said  that,  taking  both  sides,  33,000  fell.  Wavrin,  the  well-informed 
contemporary,  says  that  the  Lancastrians  had  60,000  men  and  that,  on  both  sides, 
36,000  were  killed.  Hearn's  fragment  says  33,000 ;  Fabian,  30,000  ;  Hall,  for  the 
two  days'  fighting,  36,776.  The  chronicler  Stow  (1631)  says  '  the  whole  number 
slain  was  accounted  by  some  to  be  33,000,  but  by  others  some  35,091  ;  The  precision 
of  that  last  '  one '  is  pleasing.  The  official  figure  for  the  Lancastrian  dead,  given  in 
Edward's  despatch,  is  probably  about  correct.  But  since  there  is  this  first-rate 
evidence  that  28,000  Lancastrians  were  killed,  why  does  Pi-ofessor  Oman  say  in 
the  Political  History  of  England,  vol.  iv.  p.  406,  that  there  were  only  '  15,000,  or 
20,000,' of  them  in  the  battle?  Has  modern  Oxford  some  inspired  source  of 
information  better  than  that  of  the  heralds  who  actually  counted  the  dead  ? 
There  are  good  reasons  for  thinking  that  in  the  fifteenth  century  the  population 
of  many  parts  of  rural  England  was  much  greater  than  it  is  now.  Except  at 
harvest  time  there  would  have  been  no  great  difficulty  in  raising  two  armies  of 
60,000  and  40,000  or  50,000  respectively  for  a  four  or  five  weeks'  campaign. 


216  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Yorkist  side  is  not  stated  in  this  despatch,  but,  according  to 
other  accounts,  amounted  to  something  Hke  seven  or  eight 
thousand. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter,  after  his  flight  from  Towton  Field 
to  Scotland,  tried,  with  his  usual  ill  success,  to  head  a  resis- 
tance in  Wales.  Henry  Wyndesore,  writing  from  London  on 
October  14,  1461,  to  John  Paston  at  Norwich,  tells  him  as  an 
item  of  public  news  that  '  all  the  castles  and  holds,  both  in 
South  Wales  and  North  Wales,  are  given  and  yielded  up  into 
the  King's  hand  ;  and  the  Duke  of  Exeter  and  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke  are  fled  and  taken  the  mountains,  and  divers 
lords  with  great  puissance  are  after  them.  And  the  most 
part  of  gentlemen  and  men  of  worship  are  come  in  to  the 
King.'  It  is  not  known  what  happened  to  the  hunted 
fugitives  among  the  autumnal  Welsh  mountains. 

Parliament  now  passed  an  Act  to  confirm  Edward's 
right  to  the  Crown,  and  Acts  of  Attainder  against  the  Queen, 
the  Dukes  of  Somerset  and  Exeter,  the  Earls  of  Northumber- 
land, Devonshire,  Wiltshire,  and  Pembroke,  the  Lords 
Beaumont,  De  Roos,  Rougemont,  Dacre,  Nevill,  and 
Hungerford,  and  a  hundred  and  fifty  knights,  esquires, 
and  priests.  Their  estates  were  confiscated  and  divided 
among  the  chiefs  of  the  victorious  faction.  A  number 
of  slain  Lancastrian  lords  were  included  in  the  Act,  in 
order  that  the  '  corruption  of  blood '  effected  thereby 
might  bar  any  future  claim  by  their  heirs  against  the  new 
grantees. 

The  Dukes  of  Exeter  and  Somerset,  however,  seem  to 
have  succeeded  in  making,  for  the  time,  some  kind  of  arrange- 
ment with  the  victorious  Government,  doing  homage  in 
exchange  for  part  of  their  estates — at  any  rate,  this  was 
certainly  the  case  with  Somerset.  But  when  undaunted 
Queen  Margaret  made  her  new  attempt  from  France  in  the 
autumn  of  1462,  the  Duke  of  Exeter  joined  her.     Margaret 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    217 

was  supplied  by  Louis  XI  of  France  with  three  ships  and 
800  Frenchmen  under  Pierre  de  Breze,  all  landed  in 
Northumberland,  near  Bamborough,  on  October  21.  The 
Castles  of  Bamborough,  Dunstanborough,  and  Alnwick, 
had  already  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  northern  Lancastrian 
lords.  King  Edward  IV,  an  excellent  soldier,  marched 
north,  and  by  January  6,  1463,  had  captured  all  three 
castles.  Later  in  the  year,  Alnwick  and  Bamborough  again 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Scot-aided  Lancastrians.  They 
besieged  also  Norham  Castle,  but  Warwick  and  his  brother. 
Lord  Montague,  relieved  it.  Margaret  fled  to  Scotland,  and 
eventually,  in  March  1464,  went  by  sea  to  Sluys,  thence  to 
Bruges,  where  she  lodged  with  the  Carmelite  nuns,  and  then 
to  Barre  in  Lorraine.  During  these  hunted  wanderings,  she 
and  her  son  had  fearsome  adventures  in  the  wilds  of  North- 
umberland, related  by  chroniclers,  her  abode  in  the  generous 
robbers'  cave,  and  so  forth.  She  gave  some  account  of  them 
to  the  Duchess  of  Bourbon  at  St.  Pol  in  the  presence  of 
Georges  Chastellain,  the  herald  of  the  Golden  Fleece.  Henry 
Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  was  with  the  Queen  in  these 
wanderings,  or  part  of  them,  and  went  with  her  to  Sluys. 
After  fighting  so  ardently  and  long  against  his  usurping 
brother-in-law,  the  last  representative  of  the  once  great 
House  of  Holland  was  now  a  completely  ruined  man.  From 
1463  to  1470,  like  other  Lancastrian  lords  who  had  not 
changed  the  colour  of  their  rose,  he  lived  destitute  in  foreign 
lands.  The  Burgundian  chronicler,  de  Wavrin,  says  that  at 
one  time  he  was  an  exile  in  Ireland,  but  he  was  after  this,  at 
any  rate,  in  Flanders. 

At  first,  some  of  the  exiled  Lancastrians  received  a  slight 
assistance  from  the  Duke  of  Burgundy.  The  glorious  Duke 
Philip  of  Burgundy  had  married  the  Infanta  of  Portugal, 
whose  mother  was  Philippa,  daughter  of  John  of  Gaunt, 
Duke  of  Lancaster,  and  sister  of  Elizabeth,  who  married 


218  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

John  Holland,  first  Duke  of  Exeter.  The  heart  of  the 
Duchess  was  English,  and  she  had  before  his  first  mar- 
riage with  a  French  princess,  wished  her  son  Charles  to 
marry  into  the  House  of  England.  At  one  time  she  had 
wished  him  to  marry  Anne  of  York,  who  became  Duchess 
of  Exeter. 

Duke  Philip  was  proud  of  his  Lancastrian  connection, 
and  still  more  so  was  his  son,  the  Count  of  Charolais,  who  had 
this  blood  in  his  veins.  De  Commines  says  that  Charles 
of  Charolais  cordially  hated  the  Yorkists  after  they  had 
dethroned  his  nearest  English  relatives.  But  the  Dukes  of 
Burgundy,  for  trade  and  political  reasons,  as  lords  of  the 
weaving  Flemish  cities  supplied  with  English  wool,  were 
bound  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the  de  facto  Government 
of  England,  and  in  1467  Charles,  who  had  lost  his  first  wife, 
Isabelle  de  Bourbon,  and  succeeded  in  that  year  to  the 
dukedom,  entered  into  a  contract  of  marriage  with  Margaret 
of  York,  sister  of  Edward  IV,  and  sister,  also,  of  Anne  of 
York,  the  faithless  wife  of  the  exiled  and  ruined  Duke  of 
Exeter.  Charles  said,  in  1467,  to  the  Constable  of  St.  Pol, 
who  came  to  him  on  behalf  of  the  King  of  France  :  '  Is  it  not 
true  that  my  relationship  and  affections  were  for  the  House 
of  Lancaster  and  for  King  Henry  against  the  House  of  York 
and  King  Edward  ?  If  now  I  wish  to  marry  Madame 
Margaret,  is  it  not  necessity  which  has  inspired  me  with  this 
design  ?  ' 

This  marriage,  so  fatal  to  the  Lancastrians,  was  the 
more  necessary  because  that  deadly  and  subtle  enemy  of 
Burgundy,  Louis  XI,  was  soliciting  the  hand  of  Margaret  of 
York  for  one  of  his  sons.  After  this  marriage,  Charles  of 
Burgundy,  though  hating  the  Yorkists  as  well  as  ever,  had 
to  be  careful  not  visibly  to  favour  the  Lancastrian  exiles 
or  countenance  their  conspiracies.  John  Paston,  the  younger, 
was  at  Bruges  on  July  8,   1468,  and  wrote  to  his  mother 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    219 

describing  the  marriage  there  of  the  Duke  and  Margaret  of 
York.^  He  says  :  '  The  Duke  of  Somerset  and  his  bands 
departed  well  beseen  out  of  Bruges  on  the  day  before 
that  my  lady  the  Duchess  came  thither,  and  they  say 
that  he  is  [going]  to  Queen  Margaret  that  was,  and  shall 
no  more  come  here  again,  nor  be  holpen  by  the  Duke.' 
This  Somerset  was  Edmund  Beaufort,  the  fourth  Duke, 
son  of  Edmund  who  fell  at  St.  Albans,  and  brother  and 
successor  of  the  third  Duke,  Henry  Beaufort,  who  was 
beheaded  after  Hexham  fight  in  1464.  He  was  himself 
destined  to  be  beheaded  after  Tewkesbury.  No  doubt 
Exeter  was  one  of  those  who  rode  out  of  Bruges  with  him, 
probably  on  a  sorry  horse. 

Philippe  de  Commines,  at  that  time  a  servant  of  the 
Duke,  observes  in  his  memoirs  that  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses, 
'  three  score  or  four  score  persons  of  the  blood  royal  were 
cruelly  slain.  Those  that  survived  were  fugitives,  and 
lived  in  the  Duke  of  Burgundy's  court ;  all  of  them  young 
gentlemen  whose  fathers  had  been  slain  in  England,  whom 
the  Duke  of  Burgundy  had  generously  maintained  before 
this  marriage  as  his  relations  of  the  House  of  Lancaster. 
Some  of  them  were  reduced  to  such  extremity  of  want  and 
poverty,  before  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  received  them,  that 
no  common  beggar  could  have  been  poorer.  I  saw  one 
of  them,  who  was  Duke  of  Exeter,  but  he  concealed  his  name, 
following  the  Duke  of  Burgundy's  train,  bare-foot  and  bare- 
legged, begging  his  bread  from  door  to  door.  This  person 
was  the  next  '  [in  succession,  he  means,  to  the  crown 
after  Prince  Edward  of  Wales]  '  of  the  House  of  Lan- 
caster ;  he  had  married  King  Edward's  sister,  and,  being 
afterwards  known,  had  a  small  pension  allowed  him  for  his 
subsistence.     There  were   also    some    of  the  family  of  the 

^   A  description  of  these  marriage  festivities  is  given  in  immense  detail  by 
Olivier  de  la  Marche. 


220  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Somersets,  and  several  others,  all  of  them  slain  since  in 
the  wars.' 

De  Commines  adds,  with  much  justice  :  '  The  fathers 
and  relations  of  these  persons  had  plundered  and  destroyed 
the  greater  part  of  France,  and  possessed  it  for  many 
years,  and  afterwards  they  turned  their  swords  upon  them- 
selves, and  killed  one  another  ;  those  who  were  remaining 
in  England,  and  their  children,  have  died,  as  you  see  ;  and 
yet  there  are  those  who  affirm  that  God  does  not  punish 
men  as  He  did  in  the  days  of  the  children  of  Israel,  but 
suffers  the  wickedness  both  of  princes  and  people  to  remain 
unpunished.' 

Certainly,  if  this  be  so,  the  Hollands  had  no  right  to 
complain  of  retributive  justice  ;  they  had  taken  their  full 
share  in  the  ravaging  of  France.  Yet  one  can  feel  for  the 
victims  of  even  just  retribution,  when  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
are  visited  upon  the  children  ;  and  it  is  rather  a  touching 
picture,  this  authentic  vision  of  the  chief  of  the  once  haughty 
House  of  Holland,  begging  bare-foot  for  his  bread,  too 
proud  to  reveal  his  name.  The  contrast  was  the  more 
poignant  in  that,  in  these  last  years  of  Duke  Philip  le  Bon, 
the  Court  of  Burgundy  was  by  far  the  most  wealthy  and 
splendid  and  luxurious  in  Christendom,  and  that  the  Duke 
of  Exeter  was  second  cousin  to  the  Count  de  Charolais, 
Duke  Philip's  son  and  heir,^  who  succeeded  in  1467.  It 
seems  strange  that  Henry  Holland,  who  had  landed  in 
Flanders  with  Queen  Margaret  in  1463,  should  have  been 
allowed  by  the  richest  and  most  magnificent  and  bountiful 
of  dukes  to  fall  into  such  complete  distress  and  oblivion, 
and  when  rediscovered  should  only  have  received  a  small 
pension.  But  unsuccessful  relatives  had  best  not  put  their 
trust  in  Princes. 

^  Brantome  says  :    '  Je  crois  qu'il  ne  fiit  jamais  quatre  plus  grand  dues,  les 
una  apres  les  autres,  comme  furent  ces  quatre  dues  de  Bourgogne.' 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    221 

For  weary  years  the  Duke  of  Exeter  lived  in  Flemish 
cities,  consuming  his  heart  in  poverty  and  despair,  and  then 
for  a  brief  space,  Fortune  turned  her  wheel.  In  1470  his 
'  king-making '  and  vain-glorious  cousin,  Richard  Nevill, 
Earl  of  Warwick,  who  thought  himself  treated  with  vile 
ingratitude  by  Edward  IV,  and  was  especially  indignant 
because  that  popular  King  preferred  to  take  counsel  of 
'  low  born  men '  rather  than  of  great  lords,  quarrelled 
with  his  Yorkist  allies  and,  after  various  manceuvrings, 
retired  to  France.  He  was  well  received  by  Louis  XI,  who, 
since  the  Burgundian- Yorkist  marriage  alliance,  had  been 
hoping  to  obtain  through  a  Lancastrian  restoration  a  Govern- 
ment in  England  more  favourable  to  himself.  By  the 
advice  of  that  astute  monarch,  Warwick  gave  his  daughter, 
Anne  Nevill,  in  marriage  to  Edward,  son  of  Henry  VI,  the 
exiled  Prince  of  Wales.  Another  of  Warwick's  daughters  had 
already  been  married  to  George  Duke  of  Clarence,  younger 
brother  of  Edward  IV,  a  prince  of  feeble  character,  who  on 
this  occasion  followed  for  awhile  his  father-in-law  against 
his  royal  brother.  Warwick  now  was  ready  to  attempt 
a  restoration  of  the  House  of  Lancaster.  Calais  was  again 
in  his  possession,  and  de  Commines  saw  its  old  fishy  and 
narrow  streets  full  of  men  wearing  the  Nevill  badge  of  the 
bear  and  ragged  staff.  Warwick  borrowed  ships  from 
Louis  XI,  landed  with  a  small  force  at  Dartmouth  on  Sep- 
tember 13,  1470,  and  at  first  was  completely  successful. 
Edward  IV,  gallant  and  energetic  in  war,  was  indolent 
and  improvident  in  peace.  '  King  Edward,'  says  Philippe 
de  Commines,  who  knew  him  well,  '  was  a  very  young  prince, 
and  one  of  the  handsomest  men  of  his  age  at  the  time  he 
had  overcome  all  his  difficulties  ;  so  he  gave  himself  up 
wholly  to  pleasures  and  took  no  delight  in  anything  but 
ladies,  dancing,  and  festivities,  and  the  chase,  and  in  this 
voluptuous  course  of  life,  if  I  mistake  not,  he  spent  almost 


222  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

sixteen  years  till  the  quarrel  happened  between  him  and 
the  Earl  of  Warwick.'  ^  Warwick's  raid  took  Edward 
by  surprise.  He  had  suddenly  to  quit  his  hunting  and 
love-making,  and  escape  from  the  east  coast  to  Holland. 
Warwick  entered  London,  and  the  imbecile  Henry  was 
brought  out  of  the  Tower  of  London  and  proclaimed  King 
once  more.  At  the  beginning  of  this  brief  Restoration, 
the  Duke  of  Exeter  was  engaged  on  a  diplomatic  mission. 
De  Commines  says  : 

'  That  very  day  on  which  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  received 
the  news  of  King  Edward  being  in  Holland,  I  was  come 
from  Calais  and  found  him  (the  Duke)  at  Boulogne,  having 
heard  nothing  of  that  nor  of  King  Edward's  defeat.  The 
first  news  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  heard  was  that  he  was 
killed,  and  he  was  not  at  all  concerned  about  it,  for  his 
affection  was  greater  for  the  House  of  Lancaster  than  for 
that  of  York,  and  there  were  at  that  very  time  in  his  court 
the  Dukes  of  Exeter  and  Somerset,  and  several  others  of 
King  Henry's  party,  so  that  he  thought  by  their  means 
to  be  easily  reconciled  to  that  family,  but  he  dreaded  greatly 
the  Earl  of  Warwick.  Besides,  he  knew  not  after  what 
manner  to  carry  himself  to  King  Edward,  whose  sister  he 
had  married,  and,  moreover,  they  were  brethren  of  the  same 
Orders,  for  the  King  wore  the  Golden  Fleece  and  the  Duke 
the  Garter.' 

It  was  an  awkward  situation  for  the  Duke  of  Bur- 
gundy. For  trade  and  other  reasons,  it  was  essential 
to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  English  Government,  and 
for    the  moment    it   was    not    clear   which   dynasty   would 

'  '  After  his  final  success  over  Warwick,'  says  de  Commines,  Edward  IV  '  fell 
again  to  his  pleasures,  and  indulged  himself  in  them  more  recklessly  than  ever. 
From  this  time  he  feared  nobody,  but  grew  very  fat,'  &c.  After  the  treaty  of 
Pecquigny  in  1475,  Edward  lived  happily  on  50,000  gold  crowns  paid  to  him  by 
Louis  XI,  annually,  at  the  cost  of  the  unhappy  French  tax-payer,  as  an  insurance 
against  new  English  invasions. 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER     223 

prevail.  It  was  all  the  more  important  to  make  no  error, 
because  the  Duke  was  being  hard  pressed  in  war  by  the 
French. 

King  Edward  arrived  at  the  Duke's  court  at  St.  Pol 
in  January  1471,  and  urged  him  to  grant  assistance  for  the 
recapture  of  England.  On  the  other  hand,  says  de  Commines, 
'  the  Dukes  of  Exeter  and  Somerset  violently  opposed  it, 
and  used  all  their  artifices  to  keep  him  firm  to  King  Henry's 
interest.  The  Duke  was  in  suspense,  and  knew  not  which 
side  to  favour  ;  he  was  fearful  of  disobliging  either,  because 
he  was  engaged  in  a  desperate  war  at  home  ;  but  at  length 
he  struck  in  with  the  Duke  of  Somerset  and  the  rest  of  their 
party,  upon  certain  promises  which  they  made  him,  against 
the  Earl  of  Warwick,  their  ancient  enemy.^  King  Edward 
was  present  at  the  place  and  was  much  dissatisfied  to  see 
how  unsucessfully  his  affairs  bent ;  yet  he  was  given  all  the 
fair  words  imaginable,  and  told  that  all  was  dissimulation 
to  keep  off  a  war  against  two  kingdoms  at  once ;  for  if  the 
Duke  were  once  ruined,  he  would  not  be  in  a  position  to 
assist  him  afterwards,  if  he  were  even  so  inclined  to  do  so. 
However,  finding  King  Edward  bent  upon  return  to  England, 
and  being  unwilling,  for  many  reasons,  absolutely  to  dis- 
please him,  the  Duke  pretended  publicl}^  that  he  would 
give  him  no  assistance,  and  issued  a  proclamation  forbidding 
any  of  his  subjects  to  accompany  him,  but  privately  he 
sent  him  50,000  florins,  and  furnished  him  with  three  or 
four  great  ships,  which  he  ordered  to  be  equipped  for  him 
at  Terveene  in  Holland,  which  is  a  free  port  where  all  persons 
are  received ;  besides  which,  he  hired  secretly  fourteen 
Esterling  ^  ships  for  him,  which  were  well  armed  and  were 
engaged   to   transport    him   into   England,    and    serve    him 

1  '  Their  ancient  enemy,'  but  present  ally.     They  had  to  promise  to  throw 
over  Warwick,  or  keep  him  down,  after  success. 

^  The  German  shipo-v^ners  were  known  as  Esterlings. 


224  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

fifteen  days  afterwards,  all  which  supply  was  very  great 
considering  those  times.' 

After  this  artful  arrangement,  the  Duke  expressed  to  de 
Commines  the  opinion  that  '  the  affairs  of  England  could  not 
go  amiss  for  him,  since  he  was  sure  of  friends  on  both  sides.* 
He  had  shown  on  this  occasion  a  caution  and  cunning  which 
were  worthy  of  his  enemy  Louis  XI,  and  did  not  justify 
his  nickname  of  '  Le  Temeraire.'  It  had,  indeed,  been  a 
very  curious  position.  The  Duke  of  Burgundy  was  the 
husband  of  Margaret,  one  sister  of  Edward  IV,  and  the  Duke 
of  Exeter  was  husband  of  Anne,  another  sister.  Edward 
was  thus  soliciting  aid  from  one  brother-in-law,  and  was 
violently  opposed  by  the  other. 

The  Duke  of  Exeter,  always  unsuccessful,  returned  to 
England  in  time  to  take  part  in  the  crowning  disaster  of 
Barnet.  King  Edward  left  Bruges  with  his  brother  Richard 
of  Gloucester,  Lord  Rivers,  Lord  Hastings,  and  others,  and 
about  1200  men,  and  on  March  2  embarked  at  Flushing.  He 
was  held  up  by  adverse  winds  for  a  few  days,  but  on  March  12 
touched  at  Cromer  in  Norfolk.  He  found  Norfolk  full  of 
enemies,  and  sailed  on  to  Ravenspur  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Humber,  where,  like  Bolingbroke  in  1399,  he  landed.  He 
marched  straight  to  York,  where  he  arrived  on  March  16, 
and  had  a  mixed  reception.  Some  were  for  him  and  more 
against  him.  In  order  to  keep  quiet  these  last,  he  gave  out 
that  he  had  returned  only  in  order  to  claim  his  hereditary 
duchy  of  York.  Then  he  marched  south  by  Tadcaster  and 
Wakefield,  passing  old  battle-fields,  to  Doncaster  and  Notting- 
ham. The  Duke  of  Exeter  and  Lord  Oxford  had  raised  a 
force  of  4000  men  in  the  Eastern  Counties,  and  lay  across 
the  road  at  Newark.  They  retired,  however,  on  Edward's 
approach,  and  so  did  the  Earl  of  Warwick  from  Leicester. 
Warwick  threw  his  force  into  Coventry,  a  fortified  town,  and 
refused  battle  to  Edward  who  arrived  before  the  walls  on 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    225 

March  30.  Edward  passed  on  to  Warwick  town,  and  met  at 
Daventry  his  brother  Clarence,  with  4000  men,  who  made 
submission  to  him. 

Clarence — '  false,  fleeting,  perjured  Clarence ' — had,  says 
the  French  chronicler,  found  himself  uncomfortable  amongst 
his  new  Lancastrian  friends.  During  Edward's  absence 
abroad  an  active  intrigue  to  undermine  his  faith  to  his  father- 
in-law,  Warwick,  had  been  kept  on  foot  by  his  mother 
(Cecily  Nevill),  and  by  his  sisters,  the  Duchess  of  Burgundy, 
and  Anne,  Duchess  of  Exeter — the  last  faithless  in  every  sense 
to  her  husband.  Edward  in  Flanders,  through  the  Duchess 
of  Burgundy  and  the  other  two  ladies  in  England,  had 
played  upon  the  fears  and  feelings  of  his  weak  brother. 

After  this  scene  of  submission,  or  reconciliation,  Edward 
attended  Mass — it  was  Palm  Sunday — in  the  Church  of  St. 
Anne  at  Daventry.  Here  happened  a  good  omen.  A  sacred 
image  of  St.  Anne  was  fixed  to  one  of  the  pillars  in  a  shrine 
covered  by  folding  doors  fastened,  except  when  the  image 
was  exhibited  for  devotion,  by  iron  clamps.  When  Edward 
drew  near,  the  doors  flew  open  of  themselves  and  disclosed 
the  gracious  saint.  It  was  important  to  have  miraculous 
signs  in  a  time  when  many  powerful  people  were  only  anxious 
to  know  beforehand  which  would  be  the  winning  side,  so  as 
to  join  it  betimes. 

Edward  challenged  Warwick  once  more  beneath  the 
walls  of  Coventry,  and  then  marched  south.  He  rode  with 
his  army  into  London  on  the  Thursday  before  Easter  Sunday, 
April  11,  1471,  and  was  well  received  by  the  middle-class 
citizens.  According  to  de  Commines,  this  was  due  partly 
to  the  great  debts  which  he  owed  to  the  merchants  who 
could  only  hope  to  get  paid  through  his  restoration,  and 
partly  to  the  ladies  of  quality  and  citizens'  wives,  who  loved 
his  good  looks  and  gallantries,  and  were  on  his  side  to  a 
woman,  and  forced  their  husbands  and  brothers  and  cousins 

Q 


226  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

to  be  so  also.     The   sympathies   of  the  poorer  class   were 
probably  more  with  Warwick. 

On  entering  London,  Edward  first  went  to  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral,  and  then  to  Westminster  Abbey,  where  '  he  made 
his  prayers  devoutly  to  God,  to  his  glorious  mother,  to  St. 
Peter,  and  to  St.  Edward.'  Then  he  paid  a  visit  to  his  wife, 
the  Queen,  who  was  already  in  London.  On  the  Saturday, 
he  marched  with  his  army  out  of  London  and  drove  Warwick's 
advance  parties  in  on  their  main  body,  who  were  now  a  mile 
and  a  half  north  of  the  village  of  Barnet,  near  where  the  road 
to  St.  Albans  branches  from  the  north  road  to  Hatfield. 
Edward  then  passed  through  Barnet,  and,  under  cover  of 
darkness,  established  his  force  on  the  far  side,  close  to  the 
enemy's  line.^  Both  armies  had  the  new  implements  of 
cannon,  but  Warwick  had  many  more  than  Edward.  He  had 
them  fired  at  intervals  all  night,  but  they  did  no  damage  owing 
to  a  mistake  as  to  Edward's  position.^ 

Next  morning,  that  of  Easter  Sunday,  April  14,  Edward 
rode  through  his  army  just  before  daybreak  encouraging 
his  men.  Edward,  who,  like  Warwick,  posed  as  a  jovial 
democrat,  once  told  Philippe  de  Commines  that  when  he 
saw  that  a  battle  was  won,  he  used  to  mount  his  horse  and 
shout  to  his  men  to  spare  the  common  people  and  kill  the 
gentlemen.  He  did  not  do  so  on  this  occasion,  because 
he  was  angry  with  the  common  people  for  the  hearty  good 
reception  which  they  had  given  to  Warwick  on  his  last 
landing.  Warwick  had  always  been  mightily  popular, 
partly  by  reason  of  his  lavish  expenditure  on  eating  and 

^  Edward's  sister,  Margaret,  Duchess  of  Burgundy,  in  a  letter  to  her  mother-in- 
law,  written  a  week  later,  says  that  Edward  began  the  battle  with  his  face  to  the 
village,  and  ended  it  with  his  back  to  the  other  side.  But  she  wrote  on  not  very 
good  oral  information  and,  according  to  Wavrin,  it  was  as  in  the  text. 

*  Warkworth's  chronicle  says  :  '  Near  Barnet,  on  Holy  Saturday,  eche  of  them 
•  loosede  gonnes  at  other  all  the  nyght.  And  fought  on  Easter  day  in  the  mornynge 
unto  X  of  clokke  the  forenone.'  A  pretty  way  in  which  to  spend  the  Feast  of 
Easter  ! 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    227 

drinking.  '  When  he  came  to  London,'  says  Stow,  '  he  held 
such  an  house  that  six  oxen  were  eaten  at  a  breakfast,  and 
every  tavern  was  free  of  his  meat ;  for  he  who  had  any 
acquaintance  in  that  house,  he  should  have  as  much  boiled 
and  roast  as  he  might  carry  on  a  long  dagger.'  When 
Edward  and  Warwick  quarrelled  it  was  a  rift  in  the  popular 
party. 

This  was  the  last  fight  in  which  the  Holland  banner 
was  seen  in  battle.  Exeter  commanded  the  Lancastrian  right 
wing,  mainly  consisting  of  his  East  Anglian  levies  ;  Oxford 
led  on  the  left  wing,  and  Warwick  in  the  centre.  Before 
the  battle  the  lords  and  gentlemen  of  both  sides  dismounted, 
sent  to  the  rear  their  horses,  according  to  English  custom, 
and  fought  on  foot.  A  thick  mist  hung  over  the  field 
that  morning,  raised,  it  was  said,  by  the  incantations  of 
Friar  Bungay,  a  skilful  magician.  Between  5  and  6  a.m., 
Edward  advanced  through  the  fog,  displaying  banners  and 
sounding  trumpets,  his  archers  shooting  as  they  went  forward. 
The  fighting  was  fierce,  and  on  their  right  the  Lancastrians 
had  the  best  of  it  at  first,  and  some  of  the  fugitive  Yorkists 
never  stopped  till  they  came  to  London,  spreading  news  of 
a  defeat.  But  Warwick's  right,  after  this  success,  '  fell  to 
ryfling,'  and  did  not  turn  to  the  aid  of  their  centre  and  left. 
It  is  said  that  Exeter's  men,  in  the  course  of  the  confused 
fight,  shot  at  the  Earl  of  Oxford's,  mistaking  in  the  mist  their 
badge  of  a  star  for  the  badge  of  a  sun  worn  by  Edward's 
men,  and  that  Oxford's  men  suspecting  treachery  left  the 
field.  Edward,  valiant  and  bold,  was  fighting  in  person  in 
the  midst  of  the  battle,  and  killed  many  with  his  own  royal 
hand.  His  brothers,  Clarence  and  Richard  of  Gloucester, 
also  fought  bravely,  and  so  did  Lord  Rivers,  Lord  Hastings, 
and  others  of  the  Edwardian  set.  On  the  other  side.  Lord 
Montagu,  Warwick's  brother,  did  great  feats,  until  at  last  he 
was  killed.     Warwick  saw  or  heard  of  his  brother's  fall,  was 


228  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

dejected  and  unmanned,  and  in  the  end  was  himself  slain. 
Exeter  fought  '  manfully,'  but  was  sore  wounded  in  the 
middle  of  the  fight.  The  battle  lasted  some  four  hours,  and 
then  the  Lancastrians  were  driven  off  the  ground.  It  was 
one  more  success  for  better  discipline  and  training  against 
numbers.  Edward  had  no  more  than  9000  men  against  about 
30,000  :  '  Comme  il  fut  sceu  de  vray  non  plus  n'en  avoit,' 
says  de  Wavrin.  This  looks  as  though  the  Londoners  had 
not  joined  Edward  largely. 

King  Edward  returned  to  refresh  himself  at  Barnet, 
and  then  marched  in  triumph  to  London.  He  entered  St. 
Paul's  as  vespers  were  being  sung,  and  offered  up  his  own 
banner  and  that  of  Warwick  as  a  thank-offering.  Meanwhile, 
his  brother-in-law,  Henry  Holland,  last  Duke  of  Exeter, 
lay  sore  wounded  amid  the  slain.  Wavrin  says  :  '  Aussi 
fut  abattu  le  due  d'Excestre,  tenant  le  part  de  W^arewick, 
moult  fort  navre  et  tenu  pour  mort  avec  les  occis  qui  en  grant 
nombre  estoient  non  cognoissant  que  ce  feust  il.' 

Presently  plunderers  despoiled  the  slain,  and  stripped 
him  naked.  But  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  that 
blood-stained  Easter  Sunday,  there  came  to  the  field  an  old 
retainer  of  his,  named  Ruthland,  who  lived  in  or  near  Barnet. 
He  searched  for  his  lord's  body  and  when  he  found  it,  saw 
that  he  was  not  dead,  and  took  him  to  his  own  house  where 
his  wounds  were  attended  to  by  a  surgeon,  and,  on  a  later  day, 
conveyed  him  into  sanctuary  at  Westminster  Abbey. 

Edward  IV,  meanwhile,  in  a  proclamation  dated  April  27, 
1471,  proclaimed  the  leading  Lancastrians  to  be  '  open  and 
notorious  traitors  and  rebels  and  enemies.'  The  list  names 
Queen  Margaret  and  Edward  her  son,  and  '  Henry,  late  Duke 
of  Exeter,  Edmund  Beaufort  calling  himself  duke  of  Somerset,' 
the  Earls  of  Oxford  and  Devonshire,  Viscount  Beaumont, 
seven  knights,  two  squires,  three  Clerks,  and  one  Friar. 
A  mist  hangs  over  the  subsequent  fate  of  Henry  Holland, 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER    229 

Duke  of  Exeter.  According  to  the  chronicler  Fabian, 
who  was  followed  by  most  subsequent  historians,  his  body- 
was  found  a  few  months  later  floating  in  the  sea  between 
Calais  and  Dover  and  none  knew  how  it  came  there. 
Sir  James  Ramsay,  in  his  learned  book  '  Lancaster  and  York,' 
vol.  ii.  p.  370,  has,  however,  shown  that  Exeter  was  in  the 
Tower  of  London  after  his  sanctuary  and  was  living  until  June 
1475.^  Sir  James  adds  that  the  Duke  '  apparently  was  set 
at  liberty  to  join  the  expedition  '  (to  France,  in  1475), 
*  though  his  name  does  not  appear  on  the  Muster  Rolls,  and 
on  the  expedition  he  died,  drowned  at  sea  on  the  way  to 
Calais,  the  last  male  of  his  aspiring  House,  and  the  only 
life  lost  in  the  campaign.' 

This  last  statement  rests  on  the  authority  of  Richard 
Grafton,  the  Tudor  continuator  of  Hardyng's  Chronicle,  who 
says  that  in  this  expedition  to  France  '  none  was  slain  saving 
only  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  the  which  man  was  in  sanctuary 
before,  and,  commanded  to  follow  the  King,  was  put  to 
death  by  drowning,  and  cast  over  a  ship  by  Sir  Thomas  St. 
Leger,  which  afterwards  married  his  wife,  contrary  to  the 
promise  made.'  The  '  afterwards  '  is  in  any  case  incorrect, 
as  St.  Leger  married  the  Duchess  long  before  1475. 

Sir  James  Ramsay,  following  the  line  indicated  by  Grafton, 
adds  in  a  footnote  :  '  If  there  was  any  foul  play  in  the  matter, 
suspicion  ought  to  rest  not  on  Edward,  but  on  his  sister  Anne, 
the  Duchess  of  Exeter,  and  her  second  husband  Sir  Thomas 
St.  Leger.'  The  argument  is  as  follows  :  Anne,  Duchess 
of  Exeter,  was  born  in  1439,  and  she  obtained  a  divorce 
from  the  Duke  on  November  12,  1467,  and  then  married 
Sir  Thomas  St.  Leger.  The  Duke  of  Exeter's  estates  were 
confiscated  in  1461,  after  Towton,  when  his  wife  was  twenty- 

1  On  June  21,  1471,  a  bill  of  6s.  8d.  was  paid  to  William  Sayer,  purveyor  to  the 
Tower  of  London  for  food  for  '  Henry,  called  Duke  of  Exeter,'  for  seven  days,  from 
May  26,  and  again  6.s.  8d.  for  the  week  beginning  May  31. — Rymer,  vol.  xi.  p.  71 3* 


230  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

two  years  old,  and  after  that  he  was  in  exile.  As  she  was  the 
sister  of  King  Edward  IV,  the  Holland  estates  in  Devonshire 
and  other  south-western  counties  and  elsewhere  were  re- 
granted  to  her  to  hold  as  a  woman  sole.  An  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment, passed  in  146'1,  enabled  that  '  such  gifts  and  grants 
as  the  King  shall  make  to  Anne,  his  sister,  wife  to  Henry, 
Duke  of  Exeter,  shall  be  to  all  intents  good  in  law  to  the  only 
use  of  the  said  Anne,  and  that  she  plead  and  be  impleaded  by 
the  name  of  Anne,  Duchess  of  Exeter.'  (Tower  Records.) 
In  August  1467,  there  was  a  settlement  or  re-settlement  of 
the  Exeter  estates.  King  Edward  granted  to  Anne,  his  sister, 
sundry  castles,  manors,  &c.,  in  Wales,  Cornwall,  Devon, 
Somerset,  and  Wilts,  and  other  counties,  to  herself  for  life, 
with  remainder  to  her  daughter  by  the  Duke  of  Exeter,  the 
Lady  Anne  Holland,  in  general  tail,  and  then,  in  default  of 
that  daughter  living  and  having  issue,  to  the  Duchess  Anne 
in  general  tail.  On  November  12,  1467,  the  Duchess  obtained 
a  divorce  from  the  Duke  and  then  married  Sir  Thomas  St. 
Leger,  by  whom  she  had  a  daughter  also  named  Anne. 
'  But,'  says  Sir  James  Ramsay,  '  we  find  it  alleged  that  the 
re-settlement  of  1467  was  obtained  at  the  instance  of  Sir 
Thomas  St.  Leger  to  enable  his  daughter  to  succeed  Anne 
Holland  and  her  issue.  If  this  was  so,  Anne  St.  Leger  must 
have  been  born  before  her  mother's  divorce  from  the  Duke. 
The  Duke's  liberation  would  be  very  inconvenient  to  the 
St.  Legers.' 

According  to  one  old  historian.  Lady  Anne  Holland, 
while  she  was  still  a  child,  was  contracted  about  1465  to 
Thomas  Woodville,  a  brother  of  Edward  IV's  queen,  and 
this  was  one  of  the  grievances  of  the  Earl  of  Warwick, 
who  had  marked  down  this  hish-born  heiress  for  a 
kinsman  of  his  own.  This  match  did  not  come  off,  and 
some  time  after  1467,  Anne  Holland  died  unmarried, 
and  her  mother,  the  Duchess  of  Exeter,  died  in  1476.     The 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER     231 

way  now  stood  open  for  the  advancement  of  Anne  St  Leger. 
An  Act  of  Parliament  in  1482  recites  the  facts,  and  states 
that  Anne  St.  Leger  was  now  intended  to  be  married  to 
Thomas,  son  of  the  Marquess  of  Dorset,  and  the  King  by- 
authority  of  the  Act  confirmed  to  Anne  the  estates  comprised 
in  the  settlement  of  1467.^ 

One  can  well  understand  that,  in  those  unscrupulous 
days,  when  things  so  stood,  Anne  Holland,  hapless  girl,  should 
have  died  in  favour  of  Anne  St.  Leger  ;  all  the  more  since  she 
was  also  in  the  Lancastrian  line  of  succession  to  the  throne. 
The  Duke  of  Exeter's  misfortune  in  having  a  wife  of  the 
faithless  and  wicked  House  of  York  bore  natural  fruits.  But 
Grafton's  words,  '  contrary  to  the  promise  made,'  indicate 
that,  according  to  tradition,  on  which  he  was  writing,  St.  Leger's 
murder  of  Exeter,  if  he  were  the  murderer,  was  instigated 
by  higher  authorities.  Edward  IV,  or  his  courtiers,  or 
perhaps  the  unscrupulous  Duke  of  Gloucester,  can  hardly 
be  acquitted  of  Exeter's  death,  because  they  had  as  much 
interest  in  it  as  the  St.  Legers,  or  even  more.  There  is  no 
good  proof  that  Exeter  was  in  the  expedition  of  1475,  and 
it  rather  is  probable  that  he  was  removed  from  the  Tower 
to  that  convenient  prison  at  Calais  and  drowned  in  the  sea, 
or  otherwise  murdered  and  thrown  into  the  sea.  In  some 
violent  way,  in  any  case,  the  last  man  of  legitimate  birth 
of  this  branch  of  the  Hollands  came  to  his  end  at  the  age  of 
forty-five.  It  is  singular  that  the  first  Holland  Duke  of 
Exeter  should  have  lost  his  life  in  trying  to  dethrone  his 
royal  brother-in-law  of  the  House  of  Lancaster,  and  that  the 
third  Duke  should  have  lost  his  in  the  result  of  an  attempt 
to  dethrone  his  royal  brother-in-law  of  the  House  of  York. 

Henry  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  is  rather  a  dim  figure  in 
history,  and  his  continuous  failures  make  one  feel  that  his  was 

^  Anne  St.  Leger  was  eventually  married  to  Sir  George  Manners,  Lord  de  Ros, 
and  from  whom  descend  the  present  Lords  de  Ros  and  Dukes  of  Rutland. 


232  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

not  a  formidable  personality.  He  was  like  the  Jacobite 
lords  of  a  later  time — a  loyal  and  brave  adherent  of  a  doomed 
and  unpopular  cause.  There  is  something  pale  and  dreamlike 
about  the  whole  record  of  this  Holland,  especially  about  his 
last  years.  He  does  not  stand  out  in  bold  relief  like  his 
grandfather.  Perhaps  it  is  for  want  of  an  historian  like 
Froissart.  There  were  certainly  excellent  dynastic  reasons 
and  motives  of  high  policy  for  his  disappearance  from  the 
scene.  After  that  Edward,  Prince  of  Wales,  had  been  killed 
by  his  Yorkist  cousins,  in  1471,  at  the  battle  of  Tewkesbury, 
Henry  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter,  stood  first  in  succession  to 
the  Crown  on  the  Lancastrian  side.  His  claim  was  superior 
to  that  which  Henry  Tudor,  Earl  of  Richmond,  successfully 
asserted  against  Richard  III  on  Bosworth  Field.  Holland 
descended  from  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  John,  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster, by  a  marriage  previous  to  that  which  the  Duke  con- 
tracted with  Katherine  Swynford,  whence  came  the  Beauforts, 
and  from  them,  through  Margaret  of  Richmond,  Henry  VII. 
Also  the  first  Beauforts  were  born  of  a  doubly  illegitimate 
union,  though  they  were  afterwards  legitimated.  The  Duke  of 
Exeter,  if  he  had  lain  concealed  and  had  not  gone,  or  been 
taken  to,  Westminster  Abbey,  might  easily  have  escaped,  as 
he  did  after  Towton  Field,  and  again  after  the  campaign  in 
Northumberland.  He  might  have  lived  beyond  the  sea 
until  1485,  when  he  would  have  been  fifty-five  years  old, 
the  year  when  the  wicked  House  of  York,  having  almost 
devoured  itself  like  a  sinful  clan  in  a  Greek  tragedy,  fell 
amidst  the  applause  of  a  weary  and  indignant  nation.  Had 
this  been  his  fortune,  to  him,  and  not  to  Henry  Tudor, 
would  most  naturally  have  fallen  the  duty  of  asserting 
in  arms  the  Lancaster  claim.  In  that  event  there  might 
have  been,  for  better  or  worse,  a  Royal  House  of  Holland 
instead  of  a  House  of  Tudor.  This  very  claim  made  almost 
certain  his  murder,  for    it  was  deadly  to   possess  a  claim 


HENRY  HOLLAND,  THIRD  DUKE  OF  EXETER     233 

even  more  remote  than  that  of  Henry  Holland.  Henry  VII 
himself  told  de  Commines  that  ever  since  he  had  been  five 
years  old  till  Bosworth  Field,  he  had  been  either  hiding  or 
in  exile. 

The  three  allied  Houses  of  Lancaster,  Beaufort,  and 
Holland  fell  together  in  the  storm  of  the  Roses.  The  existing 
Dukes  of  Beaufort  descend  from  an  illegitimate  son  of  Henry 
Beaufort,  Duke  of  Somerset,  who  was  beheaded  after  Hexham 
fight.  Thus  the  modern  Beauforts  have  for  one  of  their 
ancestresses  that  important  lady,  Margaret  Holland,  daughter 
of  the  second  Earl  of  Kent,  who  was  also  an  ancestress  of 
the  Tudors  and  Stewarts. 

A  Lancashire  historian,^  reflecting  on  the  poor  body 
found  floating  off  Dover,  remarks  that  '  such  was  the 
melancholy  end  of  this  branch  of  the  great  feudal  House  of 
Holland,  the  most  powerful  of  subjects  and  the  most  un- 
fortunate of  men.'  The  Hollands,  indeed,  ran  a  brilliant 
and  disastrous  course,  but  they  never  really  were  a  '  great 
feudal  house,'  in  the  sense,  at  least,  of  the  Fitz- Alans, 
Percys,  Nevills,  Staffords,  Mortimers,  Beauchamps,  Monta- 
cutes,  Mowbrays,  or  Bohuns.  They  were  the  descendants 
of  Thurstan  de  Holland,  who,  only  two  hundred  years 
before  the  Battle  of  Barnet,  was  a  Lancashire  squire  of  no 
high  descent  or  great  possessions,  and  throughout  their 
history  they  were  probably  in  the  view  of  great  Norman- 
descended  lords  merely  Saxon-derived  adventurers,  or  soldiers 
of  fortune,  who  had  married  much  above  themselves,  and 
whose  importance  was  adventitious  rather  than  intrinsic'  ^ 

Beltz,  in  his  stately  and  admirable  '  Memorials  of  the 
Order  of  the  Garter,'  expresses  mild  surprise  that  seven 
Hollands   in   three   generations    should   have   been  Knights 

^  J.  Croston,  in  his  History  of  Samlesbury  Hall,  once  a  Holland  property. 

^  The  Saxon  name  of  Thurstan — rather  common  in  old  Lancashire — as  well  as 
their  original  social  standing,  makes  it  almost  certain  that  the  Hollands  were  of 
English  and  not  of  Norman  descent. 


234  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

of  that  noble  Society,  for,  says  he  very  coldly,  they  '  derived 
no  particular  lustre  from  ancestry,'  and  came  of  '  a  gentle 
but  inconsiderable  stock.'  But,  then,  Mr.  Beltz's  ideals 
as  to  the  origin  of  species  were  very  lofty.  The  seven 
Hollands,  K.G's,  with  their  numbers  in  the  list,  were  : 

Sir  Thomas  Holland,   1st    Earl    of   Kent,   14th  Knight. 
Sir   Otho  Holland,  23rd  Knight. 

Sir  Thomas  Holland,  2nd  Earl  of  Kent,  59th  Knight. 
Sir  John  Holland,   1st  Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  Duke 

of  Exeter,  69th  Knight. 
Thomas  Holland,  3rd  Earl  of  Kent  and  Duke  of  Surrey, 

89th  Knight. 
Edmund  Holland,  4th  Earl  of  Kent,  107th  Knight. 
John  Holland,  2nd  Earl    of    Huntingdon  and  Duke  of 

Exeter,  126th  Knight. 

The  third  Duke  of  Exeter  never  was  a  K.G.,  owing 
to  his  usual  ill-luck.  Probably  there  was  no  vacancy,  and 
then  the  Civil  War  intervened. 

The  following  tables  may  be  useful  illustrations  of  the 
alliances  of  the  Hollands  in  this  distinguished  period  of 
their  history.  Names  not  useful  for  the  purpose  are 
omitted. 


THE  HOLLANDS  AND  THE  HOUSES  OF  PLANTAGENET 

AND  LANCASTER 


Edward  I. 


Edward  n  =  Isabella  of  France 

Edward  III  =  Philippa  of  Hainault. 


Edmund,  =  Margaret,  d.  of 
Earl  o  f  I  Lord  Wake  of 
Kent.  Lydel. 


Edward,  =  Joan,  widow  of 


Prince 
Wales. 


of 


Sir  Thomas 
Holland,  Earl 
of  Kent. 


Eichard  11. 


John.  =  Blanche,  d.  of 

Duke  of  I    Henry,    Duke 

Lancas-       of    Lancaster, 

ter.  and  grandson 

I    of  Henry  III. 


j 
Joan  Plantagenet, 
the    Pair    Maid    of 
Kent. 


Sir  Thomas 
Holland, 
Earl  of 
Kent. 


Henry  IV.  BUzabeth  =  John  Holland, 

I  Earl  of  Huut- 

1  Henry  V.  ingdon,      &c., 

I  and    Duke    of 

Henry  VI.  Exeter. 

2nd  and  3rd  Dukes  of  Exeter. 


Thomas  Holland, 

2nd  Earl  of  Kent, 

eldest  son. 

I 

3rd  and  4th 

Earls  of  Kent. 


1  Margaret  Holland,  d.  of  2nd  Earl  of  Kent,  married  («.;;.)  Duke  of  Clarence,  brother  of  Henry  V,  as  her 
2ad  husband. 


THE  HOLLANDS  AND  THE  HOUSES  OF  MORTIMER 

AND  YORK 


Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence 


Philippa  of  Clarence  =  Edmund  Mortimer  (I), 
Earl  of  March ;  6. 1351, 
d.  1381. 


Edward  III  =  PhiUppa  of  Hainault. 

Edmund,  Duke  of  York  =  Isabella  =  2ndly,   1393,   Joan, 
Castile.      d.  of  Thomas  Hol- 
land,   2nd    Earl   of 
Kent. 

I 


Edward,  Duke 
of    Tork,    killed 
at       Agincourt, 
1415. 


Kichard,  Earl 
of  Cambridge 
(see  belote)  ;  be- 
headed 1415. 


Roger  Mortimer,  =  A  1  i  a  n  o  r  a,  d.  of 
2nd  Earl  of  March  ;  I  Thomas  Ho  Hand, 
6.  1374,  d.  1398.  2nd  Earl  of  Kent. 


Edmund  Mortimer  (II),  =  Anne,  d.  of  =  2ndly,  John  Holland, 


3rd  Earl  of  March ;  6. 1398, 
d.  1425  s.p. 


Edmund, 
Earl  of 
Stafford. 


2nd  Duke  of  Exeter. 


Anne  Mortimer  =  Eichard,  Earl  of 

I  Cambridge,  2nd 

son  of  Edmund, 

Duke  of  York ; 

beheaded  1415. 


Henry  Holland,  =  Anne,  d.  of  Duke 
3rd  Duke  of  I  of  York,  and  sister 
Exeter;  d.  1475.        of  Edward  IV. 

Anne  Holland  ;  d.  unmarried. 


Eichard,  Duke  of  York  ;  =  Cecily     Nevill, 
kiUed  at  Wakefield,  1460.   I    d.  of    Earl    of 
Westmorland. 


Edward  IV.  Eichard  III. 

I 
EUzabeth  =  Henry  VII. 


THE  HOLLANDS  AND  THE  HOUSE  OF  BEAUFORT 


Jolm  of  Gauat,  Duke  of  Lancaster  =  (3rd  wife)  Katharine  Swynford ;  6.  1350,  d.  1396. 
I 


John  Beaufort,  =  Margaret,  d.  of 


Earl  of  Somerset ; 
b.  1373,  d.  1410. 


Thomas  Hol- 
land, 2nd  Earl 
of  Kent. 


Henry  Beaufort ;  Thomas  Beaufort,  =  Margaret,    Joaa  Beaufort. 

6.    1375,    cl.   1447.  Duke  of  Exeter  ;  b.      d.  of   Sir 

Cardinal  and  Chan-  1377,    d.  1427.    No 

cellor.  issue. 


Thomas 

Nevill. 


Henry  Beaufort, 
Earl  of  Somerset; 
6. 1401,d.l418«.p. 


John  Beaufort, 
Duke  of  Somer- 
set; &.   1403,   d. 
1444. 
^1 


Margaret  Beaufort  =  Edmund  Tudor, 
I    Earl    of    Rich- 
mond. 

Henry  VH. 

House  of  Tudor. 


Edmund  Beaufort, 
2nd  Duke  of  Somer- 
set; 6.  1405,  kiUed 
at  St.  Albans  1455. 


Joan  Beaufort  =  James  I.  of 
I     Scotland. 


CecUy 


House  of  Stewart. 


Ralph,  L( 
Nevill  a 
Earl 
Westmo 
land. 

Nevill  =  Richa 

I    Duke 

York. 


Henry  Beaufort, 
3rd  Duke  of  Somer- 
set ;  beheaded  1464 
after  Hexham. 


Edmund  Beaufort, 
4th  Duke  of  Somer- 
set ;  murdered  after 
Tewkesbury  1471. 


Edward  IV.        Richard  H 

Elizabeth  =  Henry  Vn. 
I 
House  of  Tudor. 


THE  HOLLANDS  AND  THE  HOUSE  OF  NEVILL 


(1)  Margaret,  d.  of  Hugh,  Earl 
of  Stafford  ;  d.  1370. 


Ilalph  Nevill,  =  (3)  Joan  Beaufort,  d.  of  John  of 
cr.  Earl  of  Gaimt,   Duke    of  Lancaster, 


Westmor- 
land 1397;  d. 
1426. 


and  widow  of  Robert,  Lord 
Ferrers ;  d.  1440. 


John  Nevill ;  =  Elizabeth,    d.  of 


d.    vitd    palris 
1422. 


Thomas  Holland, 
2nd  Earl  of 
Kent;  d.  1423. 


Richard  Nevill, 
cr.  Earl  of  Salis- 
bury 1442.  Be- 
headed after 
Battle  of  Wake- 
field 1460. 


Richard  Nevill, 
Earl  of  Warwick 
and  Salisbury  (the 
King  Maker). 
Slain  at  Barnet 
1471. 


:  Alice,  d.  of  Thomas 
de  Montacute,  Earl 
of  SaUsbury,  and 
his  wife,  Eleanor 
Holland,  d.  of 
Thomas  Holland, 
2nd  Earl  of  Kent. 


:  Anne,  d.  of 
R  i  c  h  a  r  d 
Beauchamp, 
Earl  of 
Warwick. 


Isabel  =  Duke  of  Clarence, 
brother  of  Ed- 
ward IV. 


Cecily  =  Richard  Duke  of 
I         York. 


Edward  IV,  Richard  III, 
Duke  of  Clarence.  Anne  = 
Henry  Holland,  3rd   Duke  of 

Exeter. 


Arme  =  (1)  Edward,  son  of 
Henry  VI  and  Prince 
of  AVales ;  (2)  Richard, 
Duke  of  Gloucester, 
Richard  IH. 


Ralph  Nevill, 
2nd  Earl  of 
Westmorland ; 
d.  1484. 


•  Elizabeth,  d.  of 
Henry,  Lord 
Percy  (H  o  t- 
sp  u  r),  and 
widow  of  John, 
Lord  Clifford. 


Sir  John  Nevill, 
2nd  son  ;  slain  at 
Towton  1461. 


John,  Lord  Nevill; : 
d.   vivd   patris   s.p. 
1451. 


!  Anne,  d.  of  John 
Holland,  2nd 
Duke  of  Exeter. 


i  Anne,  d.  of  John 
Holland,  2nd 
Duke  of  Exeter, 
and  widow  of 
John,  Lord  NeviU 


Ralph  Nevill,  =  Matilda,  d.  of 


Sir     Roger 
Booth. 


3rd   Earl   of 
We  s  tmorland 
d.  1523. 


Earls  of  Westmorland  down 
to  Charles,  who  was  attainted 
and  lost  his  title  in  1570  for  his 
share  in  Catholic  rising ;  d.  1584, 
leaving  only  daughters. 


CHAPTER  X 

HOLLANDS   OF   SUTTON 

The  solemn  rites,  the  awful  forms, 
Founder  amid  fanatic  storms  ; 
The  priests  are  from  their  altars  thrust. 
The  temples  levelled  with  the  dust. 

WOEDSWOETH. 

While  the  Hollands  who  went  south  led  perilous  and  stormy 
lives,  and  were  at  last  killed  out,  other  branches  from  the 
old  Upholland  stem  remained  in  Lancashire,  and  were 
mainly  distinguished  by  the  tenacity  with  which  they 
adhered  through  centuries  to  various  patrimonial  estates. 
The  earliest  of  these  branches  was  that  of  the  Hollands  of 
Sutton. 

The  first  Robert  de  Holland,  owner  of  Upholland,  who 
lived  in  the  reign  of  Henry  III,  and  married  Cecily,  daughter 
of  Alan  de  Columbers,  had  by  her  three  sons.  From  one 
of  these,  Adam,  came  the  Hollands  of  Euxton  ;  from  another, 
Richard,  descended  the  Hollands  of  Sutton ;  and  from  the 
eldest  of  the  three,  Thurstan,  came  the  Barons  Holland, 
the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Huntingdon,  and  the  Hollands  of 
Denton,  Clifton,  &c. 

Richard  de  Holland  married  some  lady  not  known, 
and  had  for  a  son  Robert  de  Holland,  who  married  Agnes 
de  Molyneux.  This  Robert  acquired  from  John  de  Sutton, 
in  the  reign  of  Edward  I,  the  manor  and  estate  of  Sutton 
in  south-west  Lancashire,  which  remained  in  his  posterity 
until  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  and  part  of  it  still  longer. 

237 


HOLLANDS    OF    SUTTON 

Richard  de  Holland  =  d.  of  

(younger  son  of 
Robert  de  Holland 
of  UphoUand). 


Robert  de  Holland,  =  Agnes  de  Molyneux. 
living  1331.  I 


William  Holland,  =  Godith,  d.  of 
d.  before  1356.      I 


John  Holland,  =  Ellen,  d.  of 
living  in  1390. 


John  Holland,  =  d.  of 
d.  1402.         I 


Richard  Holland,  =  Elizabeth  Eltonhead. 
2  years  old  in  1402.    I 


Henry  Holland,  =  Jane  Ecclestone. 
living  in  1476. 


Hugh 
Holland. 


Four 
daughters. 


Richard  Holland, 
temp.  Henry  VIII. 


and  a  daughter. 


William  Holland,  =  Catharine 
living  1567.         I      Leigh. 


Two  other  sons, 
Richard  and  Ralph. 


Four 
daughters. 


Alexander  Holland,  =  Ann,  d.  of  John 


d.  1588. 


Bold  of  North 
Meals. 


Three  other  sons, 

Henry,  Thomas, 

and  Peter. 


Nine 
daughters. 


Richard  Holland,  =  Anne 
b.  1575,  alive  1611.    I 


Henry  Holland,  S.J. 


WiUiam  Holland  =  Margaret  Mileson. 


Thomas  Holland,  S.J. ; 
executed  1642. 


Richard  Holland,  =  Anne 
d.  1649.  I   Ewen. 


Alexander 
HoUand,  S.J. 


Henry  Three 

Holland.        daughters. 


Edward  Holland, 
b.  1640,  d.  1717. 


Richard. 


Anne. 


Thomas  Holland 
(alive  1717). 


Richard  Holland,  S.J. 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  239 

The  pedigree  of  the  Hollands  of  Sutton  in  the  table  herewith 
is  based  upon  the  part  pedigrees  given  in  Flower's  heraldic 
visitation  of  Lancashire  in  1567  and  Dugdale's  visitation 
in  1664,  and  upon  records  earlier  than  either  quoted  in  the 
Chetham  Society  Papers  and  the  '  Victorian  History  of 
Lancashire  '  and  other  books.^  Nothing  is  known  of  their 
history  until  the  sixteenth  century,  though  they  certainly 
handed  down  the  manor  with  unbroken  regularity.  In  that 
century  and  the  next  they  do  modestly  appear  on  the  page  of 
history. 

While  the  Hollands  of  Denton,  as  will  be  seen,  were 
after  the  Elizabethan  settlement  strong  Protestants,  and  even 
Puritans,  their  distant  kinsmen,  those  of  Sutton,  adhered 
staunchly  to  Rome.  There  was,  however,  one  striking 
exception :  Roger  Holland,  burnt  at  Smithfield  in  1558, 
appears  to  have  been  of  this  family.  An  account  of  him  is 
given  in  Foxe's  '  Acts  and  Monuments,'  -  commonly  called 
the  Book  of  Martyrs.  This  Roger  came  up  from  Lancashire, 
and,  as  was  then  common  enough  with  younger  sons  of  lesser, 
but  good  families,  became  a  London  apprentice,  with  one 
Master  Kempton,  at  the  Black  Boy  in  Watling  Street,  a 
merchant  tailor.     He  served  his  apprenticeship,  says  Foxe, 

^  A  note  in  the  Chetham  Society  publication  of  Lancashire  Inquisitions  says : 
'  The  Holands  of  Clifton  entered  at  the  Visitation  of  1567,  as  did  also  the  Holands 
of  Sutton  whom  the  Heralds  seem  to  have  treated  as  an  offshoot  from  Clifton, 
but  this  is  manifestly  erroneous,  as  Robert  de  Holand,  son  of  Richard  (younger 
brother  of  Thurstan,  the  grandfather  of  Sir  Robert  who  was  raised  to  the  peerage), 
acquired  in  the  reign  of  Edward  I  from  John  de  Sutton,  that  estate  which  was 
inherited  by  his  posterity-' 

2  There  is  no  direct  evidence  that  Roger  Holland  belonged  to  the  Hollands  of 
Sutton  Hall,  but  there  is  a  Lancashire  tradition  to  this  effect.  The  record  of  his 
trial  shows  that  he  belonged  to  a  well-connected  and  obstinately  Catholic  family 
in  Lancashire,  and  the  fact  that  one  of  his  kinsmen  present  at  the  trial  was  Mr. 
Ecclestone,  makes  it  seem  almost  certain  that  Roger  belonged  to  the  Sutton  family, 
since  we  know  that  Henry  Holland,  owner  of  Sutton,  who  was  living  in  1476, 
married  Jane  Ecclestone.  Roger  Holland  may  have  been  his  nephew  throut^h 
his  younger  brother,  Hugh.  The  learned  and  careful  authors  of  the  Victorian 
History  of  Lancashire  accept  the  relationship. 


240  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

'  with  much  trouble  to  his  master  in  breaking  him  from  his 
Hcentious  ways  which  he  had  before  been  trained  and  brought 
up  in,  giving  himself  to  riot,  dancing,  fencing,  gaming, 
banqueting  and  wanton  company,  and  besides  all  this,  being 
a  stubborn  and  obstinate  papist.'  i  One  day  he  lost  at  dice 
£30  belonging  to  his  master,  and  was  about  to  fly  to 
Flanders  or  France,  says  Foxe, '  but  first  disclosed  his 
disaster  to  '  a  servant  in  the  house,  an  ancient  and  discreet 
maid,  whose  name  was  Elizabeth,  which  professed  the 
gospel,  with  a  life  agreeing  to  the  same,  and  at  all  times 
rebuked  the  wilful  and  obstinate  papistry,  as  also  the 
licentious  living  of  the  said  Roger.'  Elizabeth  luckily 
happened  to  have  in  hand  £30  of  her  own,  the  fruit  of  a  recent 
legacy.  This  she  gave  to  Roger  Holland  on  condition  that  he 
would  reform  his  life,  forswear  wild  company,  never  gamble 
again,  attend  every  day  the  lecture  in  All  Hallows  and,  on 
Sunday,  the  sermon  in  St.  Paul's  (it  was  in  the  reign  of 
Edward  VI),  cast  away  '  all  books  of  papistry  and  vain 
ballads,'  get  a  Testament  and  prayer-book,  read  the  Scripture 
and  pray.  Roger  obeyed  these  conditions  and,  in  half  a 
year,  became  '  an  earnest  professor  of  the  truth,  and  detested 
all  papistry  and  evil  company.'  He  went  down  to  Lancashire 
and  tried  in  vain  to  persuade  his  father  and  kinsmen  to 
abandon  the  ways  of  their  benighted  ancestors.  His  father, 
however,  gave  him  £50,  and  on  his  return  to  London  he  repaid 
Elizabeth  her  £30,  and  said  to  her  :  '  Elizabeth,  here  is  thy 
money  I  borrowed  of  thee,  and  for  the  friendship,  goodwill 
and  counsel  I  have  received  at  thy  hands,  to  recompense 
thee  I  am  not  able  otherwise  than  to  make  thee  my  wife.* 
So  in  the  first  year  of  Queen  Mary's  reign,  Roger  Holland 

^  As  ever,  the  revellers  supported  the  Coaservative  cause,  and  sour  Puritans  or 
Radicals  complained  of  this.  An  official  report  of  1562  at  the  beginning  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign,  says  that  '  a  great  part  of  the  shires  of  Stafford  and  Derby  are  gener- 
ally illy  inclined  towards  religion  and  forbear  coming  to  church  and  participating 
of  the  Sacrament,  using  also  very  broad  speeches  in  alehouses  and  elsewhere.' 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  241 

married  the  '  ancient  and  discreet  maid.'  They  had  a 
baby,  who  was  baptized  in  their  own  house  by  Master  Rose, 
and  not  in  church  by  a  priest. 

In  1558,  the  last  year  of  Mary's  reign,  Roger  Holland  was 
brought  up,  on  the  charge  of  heresy,  before  Bishop  Chedsey, 
and  others.  Dr.  Chedsey,  '  with  many  fair  and  crafty 
persuasions,'  tried  to  '  attune  him  unto  their  Babylonical 
Church,'  but  Roger  stoutly  held  his  own,  using  strong  terms 
of  abuse  against  that  Church.  Afterwards,  he  was  examined 
before  Bishop  Bonner,  who  was  evidently  anxious  to  save  his 
life  if  possible,  within  the  law :  the  more  so,  because  Roger 
belonged  to  a  higher  class  family.  The  Bishop  said  that  he 
had  conceived,  from  private  talk  with  him,  that  Roger  was 
a  man  of  good  sense,  though  somewhat  over-hasty,  and 
added :  'See,  Roger,  I  have  a  good  opinion  of  you  that  you 
will  not,  like  these  lewd  fellows,  cast  yourself  headlong  from 
the  Church  of  your  parents,  and  your  friends  here,  that  are 
very  good  Catholics,  as  is  reported  to  me.'  These  friends 
in  the  Court  were  liOrd  Strange,  ancestor  of  the  Earl  of 
Derby,  Sir  Thomas  Jarrett,  Mr.  Ecclestone,  a  cousin  of  the 
Sutton  Hollands,  and  '  divers  others  of  worship,  both  of 
Cheshire  and  Lancashire,  that  were  Roger  Holland's  kins- 
men and  friends.'  Bishop  Bonner  spoke  so  kindly  that  these 
gentlemen  gave  him  '  thanks  for  his  good  will  and  pains  that 
he  had  taken  on  his  [Roger's]  and  their  behalf.'  But  Roger 
could  not  be  moved,  and  in  reply  to  the  test  question,  which 
at  last  the  Bishop  reluctantly  put,  said  :  '  As  for  the  Mass, 
transubstantiation,  and  the  worshipping  of  the  Sacrament, 
they  are  mere  impiety  and  horrible  idolatry.' 

He  was  then  condemned  to  be  burned  in  Smithfield,  with 
two  others,  under  the  old  statute  de  haeretico  comhurendo. 
At  the  last, '  embracing  the  stake,'  Roger  said,  according  to 
the  Foxe  narration  :  '  Lord,  I  most  humbly  thank  Thy 
Majesty  that  Thou  hast  called  me  from  the  state  of  death 


242  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

unto  the  light  of  Thy  heavenly  word,  and  now  into  the  fellow- 
ship of  Thy  saints,  that  I  may  sing  and  say  "  Holy,  holy,  holy. 
Lord  God  of  Hosts."  Lord,  into  thy  hands  I  commit  my 
wspirit.  Lord,  bless  these  Thy  people,  and  save  them  from 
idolatry.'  '  And  so  he  ended  his  life,  looking  up  into 
Heaven,  praying  and  praising  God,  with  the  rest  of  his 
fellow  saints.' 

So  Roger  Holland  died,  valiantly,  like  an  honest  English- 
man, refusing  to  save  his  life  by  going  back  upon  himself  and 
saying  that  he  accepted  a  doctrine  which  he  did  not  in  fact 
accept.  If  he  had  escaped  burning  for  a  few  months,  he 
would  have  escaped  it  for  ever.  His  burning,  and  that  of 
two  others  who  suffered  at  the  same  time,  was  the  last  that 
ever  took  place  in  Smithfield,  for  Queen  Mary  died  on 
November  17  in  this  same  year.  Had  she  only  died  in 
the  spring  instead  of  the  autumn,  Roger  Holland,  so  far 
from  being  burned,  would  have  seen  his  views  as  to  the  Mass 
substantially  adopted  by  the  Elizabethan  Government,  and 
embodied  in  milder  words  in  the  restored  Articles  of  the 
Church  of  England.^  He  would  have  beheld — perhaps  not 
with  complete  satisfaction — a  renovated  prelacy,  and,  after 
a  time,  as  a  prosperous  merchant  tailor  and  alderman, 
might  have  seen  Catholic  priests  hung,  drawn,  and  quartered 
for  celebrating  what  were,  in  his  opinion,  idolatrous  rites. 

The  other  Hollands  of  Sutton  did  not  follow  this  example. 
They  continued  to  be  Catholics,  and  suffered  accordingly  in 
person  and  estate.  Alexander  Holland,  who  then  owned 
Sutton  Hall,  was  noted  as  a  '  suspected  person  '  in  1584. 
A  year  earlier,  in  1583,  Robert  Holland,  said  to  belong  to 
this  family,  and  very  likely  a  brother  of  Alexander,  had  been 
convicted  at  the  Manchester  Quarter  Sessions  of  the  statu- 
tory crime  of  twelve  months'  non-attendance  at  his  parish 

1  Articles  28-31.  Many  modem  Anglicans,  it  is  true,  now  accept  the  full 
Catholic  doctrine  on  this  subject.  Under  the  Test  Act  everyone  for  150  years 
who  took  a  seat  in  either  House  of  Parliament,  including  the  bishops,  denied 
expressly  the  doctrine  of  '  Transubstantiation.' 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  243 

church,  was  fined  £240  (£20  for  each  month),  and  committed, 
together  with  '  a  great  number  of  Lancashire  gentlemen  and 
ladies,'  to  the  prison  for  recusants  at  Salford. 

He  was  unlucky  in  living  in  the  Manchester  district, 
where  there  was  a  majority  of  Puritan  magistrates.  In  the 
same  year,  according  to  an  official  report,  no  convictions 
of  recusants  could  be  obtained  at  the  Quarter  Sessions  held 
at  Lancaster,  Preston,  and  Wigan,  though  there  were  many 
charges  brought,  '  and  there  were  many  notorious  recusants 
in  every  of  the  said  divisions.'  Probably  in  these  three 
divisions  most  of  the  squires  who  met  at  sessions  were  them- 
selves more  or  less  concealed  Catholics,  and  others  had  been 
left,  by  repeated  changes,  in  a  state  of  religious  indifference, 
and  were  certainly  not  disposed  to  worry,  and  fine,  and 
send  to  prison,  neighbours    whom  they  met  out  hunting. 

The  apathy  of  the  magistrates  was  not  the  only  difficulty 
which  the  Government  had  to  encounter  in  Lancashire. 
As  late  as  1C02  the  Bishop  of  London  wrote  to  the  Secretary 
Cecil.  '  Also  they  in  Lancashire  and  in  those  parts  stand 
not  in  fear  by  reason  of  the  great  multitude  there  is  of  them. 
Likewise  I  have  heard  it  reported  publicly  among  them  that 
they  of  that  county  have  beaten  divers  pursuivants  extremely 
and  made  them  vow  and  swear  that  they  would  never  meddle 
with  any  recusants  more,  and  one  pursuivant  in  particular 
was  forced  to  eat  his  Avrit.'  This  last  feat  was  done  by  a 
Lancashire  Catholic  gentleman,  called  Geoffrey  Poole,  who 
captured  a  pursuivant  bearing  a  wTit  for  his  own  arrest, 
and  said  :  '  Look  here,  fellow  !  I  give  thee  thy  choice,  either 
eat  up  this  writ  presently,  or  else  eat  my  sword,  for  one 
of  the  two  thou  shalt  do  before  we  depart  hence.' 

In  1591  the  Government  took  vigorous  steps  to  remedy 
want  of  zeal  arnong  the  Lancashire  magistrates.  A  commis- 
sion was  issued  for  the  apprehension  of  seminary  priests  and 
Jesuits  and  for  '  reducing  recusants  to  conformity,'  and  on 
one  night  fifty  Lancashire  Catholic  gentlemen  were  seized  and 


244  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

committed  to  prison  on  the  vague  charge  of  harbouring 
priests  and  not  attending  church.  On  October  22,  an  order 
from  the  Lords  of  the  Council  was  issued  to  '  oure  verie, 
loving  friends,'  Sir  John  Byron,  High  Sheriff  of  Lancaster, 
Sir  Edward  Fytton,  Richard  Asheton,  Richard  Brereton, 
and  Richard  Holland  of  Denton,  directing  that  sessions  of  the 
peace  should  be  holden  before  November  22  following,  at 
which  every  justice  of  the  peace  should  be  required  to  take 
the  oath  of  supremacy,  and  ordering  the  removal  from  the 
commission  of  the  peace  of  every  justice  not  repairing  to 
church,  or  whose  wife,  or  son  and  heir,  if  he  lived  in  the 
county,  should  refuse  to  go,  or  not  usually  go,  to  church. 
Thus  the  magistracy  was  tuned  to  the  right  key. 

From  Salford  prison  Robert  Holland  was  taken  to 
London,  and  imprisoned  in  the  Marshalsea.  A  report  made 
in  1586,  by  Nicolas  Berden,  Walsingham's  prison  spy,  is 
extant,  in  which  the  prisoners  in  the  Marshalsea  are  classified 
in  several  groups  with  such  notes  as  '  mete  to  be  hung,' 
or  '  should  be  sent  to  Wisbech.'  Robert  Holland  and  several 
other  lay  gentlemen  are  bracketed  with  a  note  :  '  These  nether 
welthy  nor  wyse,  but  all  very  arrant.' 

After  much  suffering,  Robert  Holland  died,  like  so  many 
others,  in  that  insanitary  prison,  in  June  1586,  aged  forty- 
eight,  and  is  therefore  named  in  the  catalogue  of  '  confessors 
of  the  faith.' 

Edmund  Campion,  S.J.,  whose  brief  English  mission  lay 
chiefly  in  Lancashire,  wrote  in  a  letter,  dated  October 
1581  : 

'  The  heat  of  the  persecution  now  raging  against  the 
Catholics,  throughout  the  whole  realm,  is  now  fiery — such  as 
has  never  been  heard  of  since  the  conversion  of  England. 
Gentle  and  simple,  men  and  women,  are  being  everywhere 
haled  to  prison  ;  even  children  are  being  put  in  irons.  They 
are  despoiled  of  their  goods,  shut  out  of  the  light  of  day, 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  245 

and  publicly  held  up  to  the  contempt  of  the  people  in  pro- 
clamations, sermons,  and  conferences,  as  traitors  and  rebels.' 
And  further  he  writes  :  '  They  [the  Government]  have  filled 
all  the  old  prisons  with  Catholics,  and  now  make  new,  and 
in  fine,  plainly  affirm  that  it  were  better  so  to  make  a  few 
traitors  away  than  that  so  many  souls  should  be  lost.  Of 
their  martyrs  they  brag  no  more,  for  it  is  come  to  pass 
that,  for  a  few  apostates  and  coblers  of  theirs  burnt,  we  have 
bishops,  lords,  knights,  and  the  old  nobility,  patterns  of 
learning,  piety,  and  prudence,  the  flower  of  the  youth,  noble 
matrons,  and  of  the  inferior  sort  innumerable,  either  martyred 
at  once,  or  by  consuming  punishment  dying  daily.  At  the 
ver}^  writing  hereof,  the  persecution  rages  most  cruelly.  The 
house  where  I  am  is  sad  ;  no  other  talk  but  of  death, 
flight,  spoil  of  their  friends;  nevertheless,  they  proceed 
with  courage.' 

This  style  may  appear  to  some  moderns  to  have  too 
aristocratic  a  flavour,  because  of  its  reference  to  coblers. 
However,  and  this  is  one  defence  of  families  like  the  Hollands 
of  Sutton  for  not  obeying  the  laws,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  English  Reformation,  viewed  over  its  whole  course, 
was,  like  most  revolutions,  the  work  of  an  energetic  and 
capable  and  keenly  interested  minority,  operating,  through 
the  medium  of  an  undecided  public  opinion,  against  an 
established  system  which  was,  indeed,  corrupted  by  many 
abuses,  and  weakened  by  long  prosperity,  security,  monopoly, 
and  wealth. 

The  first  break  with  Rome  was  the  work  of  Henry  VIII 
and  one  or  two  advisers.  Parliament  and  the  Southern  Con- 
vocation, though  not  at  first  the  Northern,  passed  whatever 
their  formidable  monarch  required,  and  the  heads  of  a  few 
leading  opponents — like  Bishop  Fisher  and  Sir  Thomas  More — 
were  taken  off  ;  and  three  saintly  Carthusian  Priors,  and 
afterwards  some  great  abbots,  were  hung,  to  strike  intimida- 


246  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

tion.  In  Edward  VI's  reign  the  Service  and  Prayer-book, 
which  gave  so  lasting  and  strong  a  stamp  to  the  Church  of 
England,  was  drafted  by  a  Royal  Commission  of  selected 
bishops  and  divines — virtually  by  Cranmer  ;  it  was  formally 
at  most  submitted  to  Convocation,  and  was  made  law  by  Act 
of  Parliament.  Bishop  Burnet,  in  his  right  Protestant  and 
right  honest  history  of  the  English  Reformation,  says  that, 
in  Edward's  reign,  the  two  Archbishops,  Cranmer  and 
Holgate,  adopted  this  course  because  '  the  greater  part  of  the 
bishops  being  biassed  by  base  ends,  &c.,  did  oppose  them, 
and  they  were  thereby  forced  to  order  matters  so  that  they 
were  prepared  by  some  selected  bishops  and  divines,  and 
afterwards  enacted  by  King  and  Parliament.' 

Even  poor  and  remote  Lancashire  squires,  like  the 
Hollands  of  Sutton,  could  hardly  be  expected  to  revere 
Tudor  parliaments.  In  twenty-five  years,  from  1534  to  1559, 
Parliament  had  passed  the  measures  by  which  Henry  VIII 
broke  England  off  from  Rome :  the  later  reactionary 
Six  Articles  of  Doctrine  by  the  same  monarch ;  the  Act  of 
Edward  VI  establishing  a  book  of  common  prayer  in  direct 
opposition  to  those  Articles ;  the  repeal  under  Mary  in  1554 
of  Henry's  Acts  against  Rome  and  complete  restoration  of 
Catholicism,  and,  finally,  the  Elizabethan  legislation  renew- 
ing the  breach  with  Rome,  and  re-settling  religion  on  the 
Edwardian  lines,  very  slightly  modified. 

The  English  separation  from  the  visible,  organic,  and 
international  society  which  centres  at  Rome,  whatever  may 
seem  to  different  minds  its  merits  and  results,  was,  in  fact — 
both  under  Henry  VIII  and  under  Elizabeth — the  achieve- 
ment not  of  the  Church,  nor  of  the  nation,  but  of  a  strong, 
hard,  and  determined  Government,  pursuing  a  fixed  policy  by 
cruel  methods,  and  supported  by  a  section  of  mostly  new 
nobles  and  large  squires  eager  for  monastic  lands,  under 
Henry,   and   solidly  founded   upon   them   under  Elizabeth, 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  247 

by  a  very  powerful  and  energetic  section  of  the  urban  and 
commercial  middle  class,  and  by  a  number  of  real,  but  bitter 
and  narrow-minded,  Puritan  religionists. 

The  separation  of  England  from  the  main  body  of  the 
Catholic  Church  in  communion  with  the  Apostolic  See  of 
Rome  was,  no  doubt,  as  it  happened,  part  of  the  providential 
design  in  history,  and  this  thought  should  soften  animosities 
and  temper  recriminations.  But  nothing  is  less  true,  as  a 
matter  of  history,  than  to  say  that  the  Church  of  England 
deliberately  broke  itself  off,  if  by  '  Church  '  is  meant  the 
majority  of  clergy  and  laity.  In  Henry's  reign  the 
mass  of  the  clergy  and  laity  were  taken  by  surprise,  as 
indolent  conservatives  always  are.  The  long  previous 
decline  of  religious  fervour  had  left  them  without  much 
zeal  or  understanding,  and  there  was  general  agreement 
in  Europe  that  many  practical  reforms  were  needed,  such 
as  were  afterwards  advised  by  the  Council  of  Trent,  and 
more  or  less  carried  out  by  the  Popes.  Clergy  and  laity, 
intimidated  and  unable  to  marshal  their  ideas,  reluctantly 
acquiesced  at  first  in  the  bewilderingly  rapid  series  of 
actions  by  the  Government.  '  Upon  the  first  expulsion 
of  the  Pope's  authority,'  says  a  Protestant  writer  of  two 
generations  later,  '  and  King  Henry's  undertaking  of  the 
supremacy,  the  priests,  both  regular  and  secular,  did 
openly  in  their  pulpits  so  far  extol  the  Pope's  jurisdictio 
and  authority,  that  they  preferred  his  laws  before  the  King's, 
Whereupon  the  King  sent  his  mandatory  letters  to  certain 
of  his  nobility,  and  others  in  especial  office,  thinking 
thereby  to  restrain  their  seditions,  false  doctrines,  and 
exorbitancy.'  ^ 

After  the  reigns  of  Edward  VI  and  Mary  it  had  become 
clear  that  the  real  issue  at  stake  was  union  with  or  separa- 
tion from  the  main  body  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  oppo- 

^  Weever,  A  Discourse  on  Funeral  Monuments,  p.  80. 


248  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

sition  to  separation  from  the  Apostolic  See  took  definite 
shape.  The  final  breach  at  the  beginning  of  Elizabeth's 
reign  was  opposed  by  vote  in  the  House  of  Lords  by  every 
bishop  except  Kitchin  of  Llandaff,  who  alone  of  them  was 
consequently  not  deprived  of  his  see.^  It  is  admitted  by 
most  Protestant  historians  that  the  separation  thus  carried 
against  the  bishops'  vote  was  more  or  less  distasteful  to 
the  majority  of  the  clergy,  probably  to  the  great  majority. 
Some  of  these,  especially  in  the  higher  ranks,  also  refused 
to  take  the  oath,  and  were  deprived.  The  vast  majority  of 
the  clergy  did  conform ;  but  for  a  time,  till  the  generation 
died  out,  many  of  them  were  but  external  conformists,  and 
adhered  at  heart  to  the  old  religion.  These  were  usually 
called  by  Catholics  of  the  time  '  schismatics  '  as  distinct 
from  the  Puritan  '  heretics.' 

Elizabeth  and  her  advisers  were,  perhaps,  compelled 
by  the  circumstances,  at  home  and  abroad,  in  which  they  found 
themselves  to  make  their  compromise  between  the  conflicting 
religious  opinions  of  the  commercial  and  territorial  classes. 
But  the  separation  from  Rome,  and  still  more,  the  radical 
change  in  doctrine  and  ritual,  the  overthrow  of  the  old 
Catholic  doctrine  and  cult  of  the  altar,  was  disliked  by  the 
conservative  county  families,  and  by  most  of  the  yeomen 
and  farmers,  more  especially  in  the  region  of  the  Red  Rose 
party,  the  north  and  west  of  England.  There  is  plenty  of 
evidence  as  to  this,  apart  from  the  armed  risings  in  the  north 
and  west.  The  following  passage,  for  one  instance,  is  quoted  by 
Bishop  Milner  from  a  writer  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  one  Rishton. 
Speaking  of  the  state  of  parties  at  the  beginning  of  that  reign, 
Rishton  says  :  '  Item,  praeter  plurimos  ex  optimatibus  praeci- 
puis,  pars  major  inferioris  nobilitatis  erat  plane  Catholica. 

^  The  bishops  were  deprived  for  refusing  to  take  the  oath  of  supremacy,  which 
the  Act  thus  carried  against  their  vote  imposed  upon  all  the  clergy.  Many  of  the 
bishops  had,  of  course,  been  appointed  in  Mary's  reign. 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  249 

Plebeii  quoque  qui  agriculturam  per  totum  regnum  exereebant 
novitatem  istam  imprimis  detestabant.'  That  is:  'Except 
many  of  the  chief  aristocrats,  the  larger  part  of  the  lesser 
nobility  was  fully  Catholic.  The  lower  class  also,  who  were 
engaged  in  agriculture  throughout  the  kingdom,  at  first 
detested  this  novelty.'  And  the  population  was  then  quite 
four-fifths  agricultural.  It  was  what  one  would  expect, 
because  men  of  the  squire,  farmer,  and  yeoman  kind,  always 
are  conservative  and  attached  to  the  ways  of  their  fore- 
fathers. 

Bishop  Burnet  fully  admits  in  his  history  that  the 
changes  were  disliked  by  a  majority  of  the  clergy  and  laity, 
but  he  argues  that  minorities  are  usually  right,  and 
majorities  wrong,  in  their  views.  The  earlier  voluminous 
Protestant  writer,  Strype,  makes  the  same  admission  in 
many  passages,  well  supported  by  original  documents. 
The  Reformation  was  closely  connected  with  the  com- 
mercial development  of  England.  A  Catholic  writer  in 
Elizabeth's  reign,  quoted  by  Froude  in  his  '  English  Seamen 
of  the  Sixteenth  Century,'  said,  no  doubt  with  exaggeration, 
that  '  the  only  party  that  would  fight  to  the  death  for  the 
Queen,  the  only  real  friends  she  had,  were  the  Puritans — 
the  Puritans  of  London,  the  Puritans  of  the  sea-towns.' 

In  course  of  years  the  old  clergy  died  out,  and  were 
gradually  replaced  by  men  of  the  new  opinions — at  first 
a  most  queer  parsonhood.  Meanwhile  the  error  made 
by  Pius  V  in  issuing  his  Bull  of  excommunication  and 
deposition  against  Elizabeth,  the  patriotic  and  anti-Spanish 
motive,  so  closely  linked  with  the  English  Reformation 
(an  immensely  powerful  and  in  itself  meritorious  motive), 
the  monopoly  of  education  and  of  the  public  pulpits,  the 
invisibility  of  the  old  form  of  worship,  which  could  only 
be  carried  on  in  hunted  secrecy  and  under  severest  penalties 
involving  not  only  the  life  of  the  priest,  but  also — though  this 


250  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

was  rarely  carried  out — the  lives  of  those  who  '  harboured  * 
him,  and  the  discomforts,  disabilities,  and,  above  all,  the 
heavy  and  steady  special  taxation  inflicted  upon  '  popish 
recusants,'  drove  into  conformity  or  indifference  most  of  the 
recalcitrants,  and  thus  in  England,  as  in  other  European 
lands,  the  will  of  Government  prevailed.  Once  more  were 
fulfilled  the  words  of  the  prophet  conceriiing  the  rulers  of  this 
world  :  '  Diviserunt  sibi  vestimenta  mea  et  super  vestem  meam 
miserunt  sortes.'  '  Cujus  regio  ejus  religio,^  was,  then,  the 
maxim  adopted,  and  more  or  less  rigorously  enforced,  through- 
out Christendom,  both  in  Catholic  and  Protestant  states. 
The  Duke  of  Alva  was  enforcing  it  in  the  Netherlands  far 
more  cruelly  than  Elizabeth  in  England.  Out  of  these 
elements,  still  confused  in  the  sixteenth  century,  arose  the 
Reformed  Church  of  England,  which,  in  the  seventeenth,  bore 
a  fair  and  definite  aspect,  had  already  fully  evolved  its 
characteristic  theory,  and  had  by  this  time  gained  the  support 
of  the  majority  of  the  natural  Conservative  party,  though 
not  that  of  the  Radicals,  in  religion. 

Devout  and  learned  men,  educated  later  than  the  Eliza- 
bethan separation — such  as  the  '  judicious  '  Hooker,  Jeremy 
Taylor,  Isaac  Barrow,  George  Herbert,  Bishop  Bull,  Bishop 
Pearson,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  many  others,  who  were 
Catholics  by  native  inclination  and  temperament — now 
adorned  and  strengthened  the  Protestant  and  Reformed 
Church  of  England,  and,  with  the  practical  genius  of  their 
countrymen,  made  the  best  out  of  what  had  happened.  They 
were  the  founders  of  the  High  Church  party.  If  Henry  VIII 
and  his  successors  had  not  broken  off  England  from  com- 
munion with  Rome,  who  can  doubt  that  men  of  this  cha- 
racter, attached  to  established  and  traditional  institutions, 
would,  like  Bossuet,  have  been  firm,  though  temperate, 
adherents  to  the  Roman  See  ?  But  now  Conservative 
affections,    under    opposition    to    the    developing    religious 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  251 

radicalism  of  the  Puritans,  and  especially  under  the  stimulus 
of  the  Civil  War,  gathered  round  the  new  form.  Thought 
being,  as  Shakespeare  remarks,  the  '  slave  of  life,'  adapted 
itself  to  the  new  ways  of  its  master,  and  found  justification 
of  what  he  had  already  done.  In  its  inception,  however, 
and  in  itself,  the  actual  Tudor  breach  with  the  Inter- 
national Catholic  Church,  and  with  the  old  mould  of  religion, 
was,  it  must  be  repeated,  undeniably  in  the  nature  of 
revolutionary  action  carried  out  by  Government,  supported 
by  a  strong  and  energetic  Radical  minority,  in  opposition  to 
Conservative  traditions  and  feelings.  Anglican  Churchmen 
in  modern  England  seem  inclined,  on  the  whole,  mildly  to 
regret  that  the  action  of  Henry  VIII,  Edward  VI,  Elizabeth, 
and  their  advisers,  went  quite  so  far  as  it  did  ;  and  certainly 
modern  Conservatives,  at  any  rate,  ought  to  sympathise  with 
the  numerous  plain,  honest,  and  stubborn  country  families 
who  held  to  the  ways  of  all  their  forefathers  and  declined 
to  change  their  religious  allegiance  to  the  central  and  apostolic 
See  of  Rome,  their  doctrines  and  customs,  at  the  command  of 
a  violently  reforming  and  by  no  means  high  principled  secular 
Government.  These  mostly  obscure  families  stood  splendidly 
for  religious  freedom  and  for  Conservative  principle.  They 
only  had  to  attend  sometimes  the  parish  church,  receive 
Communion  there,  and  take  an  oath  or  two,  and  all 
English  life  was  open  to  them,  but  they  refused  the  immense 
temptation.  They  disobeyed  statutory  law,  but  they  were 
not  bound  in  the  Court  of  Conscience  to  accept  the  blended 
results  of  the  action  of  Henry  VIII  and  Thomas  Cromwell, 
Cranmer,  Somerset,  Elizabeth,  and  the  worldly-wise  Cecils. 
Principibus  placuisse  viris  non  ultima  laus  est. 

This  has  been  rather  a  digression,  but  it  was  necessary  to 
make  some  defence  of  the  recalcitrant  Hollands  of  Sutton, 
who,  like  many  old  Conservative  families,  obedient  to  the 
traditions  and   customs  of  all  their  fathers  and  forefathers. 


252  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

but  disobedient  to  the  new  laws  of  their  country,  adhered  to 
the  Church  of  Rome  long  after  Elizabeth  had  been  gloriously- 
buried  at  Westminster,  and  doomed  themselves  to  gradual 
extinction  or  complete  obscurity. 

Richard  Holland  of  Sutton,  who  was  twenty-five  years 
old  in  1600,  and  Anne  his  wife,  were  in  1597  and  1603  heavily 
fined  as  recusants — persons,  that  is,  who  would  not  attend 
the  parish  church.  Anne,  as  a  widow,  appears  on  the  Recusant 
Roll  in  1634.  A  younger  son  of  theirs,  Thomas  Holland, 
became  a  Jesuit  priest  and  a  Catholic  martyr.^  '  His 
parents,'  says  de  Marsys,  in  his  French  narrative,  '  had 
always  been  remarkable  for  their  piety,  their  constancy, 
and  their  faith.'  Thomas  Holland  was  born  at  Sutton  Hall 
in  1600.  He  was  put  to  death  in  the  company  of  two  ordinary 
malefactors — robbers — at  Tyburn,  on  December  12,  1642,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Civil  War,  when  the  usurping  power, 
dominant  in  London,  recommenced  these  cruel  punishments 
of  men  for  being  Catholic  priests  in  England,  for  they 
had  been  suspended  during  the  happy  period  in  which 
Charles  I  ruled  without  the  assistance  of  Parliament. 

There  are  full  accounts  of  this  tragedy  by  co-temporary 
writers.  One  is  the  '  Certamen  Triplex,'  written  in  Latin 
by  Father  Ambrose  Corbie,  and  published  at  Antwerp  in 
1645,  of  which  an  English  translation  was  published  in  1858. 
It  gives  the  story  of  Thomas  Holland  and  of  two  other 
priests  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  who  suffered  about  the  same 
time.  An  account  is  also  given  by  de  Marsys,  in  his  '  De  la 
Mort  Glorieuse,'  &c.,  also  published  in  1645.  On  these  are 
based  the  accounts  given  by  Bishop  Challoner  in  his  '  Memoirs 
of  Missionary  Priests,'  published  in  1742,  and  by  Foley,  S.J., 

^  The  name  of  this  Thomas  is  not  given  in  Dugdale's  pedigree  of  the  Sutton 
Hollands,  printedin  the  Visitation  of  1664.  Possibly  it  was  not  given  by  the  family, 
for  prudential  reasons.  But  he  is  stated  in  contemporary  accounts  to  have  been 
the  Bon  of  Richard  and  Anne  Holland  of  Sutton  in  Lancashire,  and  a  nephew  of 
Henry  Holland,  S.J.,  and  this  was  no  doubt  the  fact. 


THOMAS    HOLLAND,    S.J. 

Enlarged  and  clarified  photo^'rapli  from  the  original  miniature  portrait  at  Lanherne 
Convent  in  Cornwall 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  253 

in  his   '  Records   of  the   EngHsh   Province   of  the   Society 
of  Jesus.' 

When  still  very  young,  Thomas  Holland  went  to  St. 
Omer,  where  he  spent  six  years  in  the  English  College  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  which  had  been  founded  there  in  1593. 
He  was  much  esteemed  there,  and  was  elected  Prefect  of  the 
Sodality  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  In  August  1621,  he  was 
sent  to  the  English  College  of  the  Society  at  Valladolid 
to  study  philosophy.  While  he  was  there  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  afterwards  Charles  I,  came  to  Madrid  with  a  view  to 
marrying  the  Infanta  Maria.  Thomas  Holland  was  chosen, 
for  his  power  of  speech,  to  address  the  Prince  on  behalf 
of  the  young  Catholic  Englishmen  who  were  then  studying 
in  Spain.  He  made  a  Latin  oration,  of  which  the  Prince, 
in  replying,  admired  the  style  and  approved  the  sentiments. 

After  three  years  in  Spain,  Thomas  Holland  returned 
to  Flanders,  was  admitted  into  the  Society,  and  entered 
the  novitiate  of  the  English  Province  at  Watten  in  1620. 
He  then  studied  theology  at  the  College  of  Liege — '  the  House 
of  Divinity  of  the  English  Province  ' — and  was  ordained 
priest.  After  an  interval  at  Ghent,  he  was  appointed  Prefect 
of  Morals  and  Confessor  to  the  scholars  at  St.  Omer's.  He 
was  remarkably  successful  as  a  teacher  of  the  Divine  life. 
His  '  industry  in  promoting  spiritual  conversation  was 
observed  by  many,  not  only  abroad,  but  afterwards  in 
England,  who  remarked  that  he  was  absolutely  made  up 
of  spiritual  things,  and  called  him  a  walking  library  of  pious 
books.  He  was  long  remembered  by  the  youth  of  the 
seminary  with  particular  affection.'  Some  stories  about 
his  life  at  St.  Omer  were  given  by  Thomas  Cary,  S.J.,  one 
of  his  pupils,  and  then  of  Liege  College,  in  a  letter  which 
he  wrote  on  February  4,1643,  soon  after  Holland's  martyrdom. 
He  says,  among  other  things,  that  '  he  seemed  to  be  all 
inflamed,   and   his   eyes  would  almost   sparkle,   as   he   was 


254  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

speaking  of  Almighty  God  ;  and,  in  chiding  those  who  were 
immodest,  would  with  such  zeal  and  fervour  reiterate 
*'  Dominus  Deus  videt  nos,"  as  did  clearly  manifest  what  a 
lively  sense  and  feeling  he  had  of  His  Divine  Majesty.  And 
although  he  would  speak  sometimes  in  chiding  with  that 
voice  and  gesture  which  would  make  a  man  believe  he  was 
on  fire,  yet  we  did  see  clearly  that  he  was  not  angry,  but 
spake  only  out  of  zeal,  for  as  soon  as  he  had  ended  his  speech, 
he  was  as  present  to  himself,  and  as  meek  and  quiet  as  if 
he  had  not  been  in  the  least  moved.  .  .  .  He  was  an  exceed- 
ing good  ghostly  Father,  and  so  beloved  of  his  penitents 
that  four  or  five  years  after  his  departure  from  the  seminary 
his  name  was  famous  for  so  singular  a  talent,  and  divers 
of  his  penitents  did  protest  never  to  have  found  the  like, 
or  received  that  comfort  and  full  satisfaction  from  any  which 
they  had  from  him.  He  would  very  often  encourage  us 
in  confession  with  saying  "  My  soul  for  yours,"  and  that  in 
such  an  expression  as  we  might  see  it  proceeded  from  a 
true  and  noble  heart.' 

Thomas  Holland  took  his  final  vows  at  Ghent  on  May  26, 
1634,  and  in  the  following  year  was  sent  into  England,  and 
worked  there  for  more  than  eight  years,  mostly  in  London. 
Being  obliged  generally  to  keep  within  doors  he  lost  almost 
all  appetite  for  food  and  suffered  much  in  health.  '  Some- 
times for  months  together  he  was  unable  to  venture  out  of  his 
place  of  concealment,  or  to  walk  in  a  private  garden,  or  to 
inhale  the  fresh  air  from  an  open  window,  for  fear  of  being 
noticed  by  his  neighbours.  Notwithstanding  all  these 
disadvantages,  by  a  skilful  division  of  the  hours,  he  made 
this  exercise  of  his  patience  agreeable  to  himself  by  a  variety 
of  prayers  and  occupations,  and  useful  to  the  family  in  which 
he  was  residing  by  pious  conversation.  His  charity,  more- 
over, urged  him,  in  the  dusk  of  evening  or  in  the  grey  of  the 
dawn,  to  go  forth  and  console,  instruct,  and  strengthen  by 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  255 

sacraments,  such  Catholics  as  did  not  venture  or  were  unable 
to  keep  priests  in  their  houses  ;    and  also  to  visit  the  sick. 
He  was   very   ingenious   in   disguising   himself :     he  would 
change  his  hair,  his  beard,  and  his  clothes,  so  as  to  appear 
sometimes  as  a  merchant,  at  others  as  a  servant,  or  even  as 
a  man  of  the  world.     He  could  speak  French,  Flemish,  or 
Spanish,   as  occasion  required,   and  thoroughly  imitated  a 
foreign  and  imperfect  pronunciation  of  his  native  English, 
so  that  often,  when  assuming  another  character,  even  his 
most  intimate   acquaintance   did   not  recognise  him  before 
he    made    himself    known.      By    these    artifices,    rendered 
necessary  in  those  unhappy  times,  he  was  able  to  minister 
much  good  to  his  neighbour,  especially  during  the  last  two 
yeai's  of  his  life  among  the  destitute  Catholics  of  London.' 
The  pursuivants  were  always  on  his  track,  for  London — 
especially  under  the  Puritan  rebels — was  far  more  dangerous 
than  Lancashire ;  and  at  last  they  arrested  him  in  the  street 
on  October  4,  1642,  three  weeks  before  the  battle  of  Edge- 
hill.     He  was  in  prison  until  his  trial.     There  he  lived  '  with 
such  moderation  in  food,  sleep,  and  all  beside,  and  with  such 
singular  innocence  and  gentleness  of  life,  that  he  soon  gained 
the  affection  of  all  his  fellow-prisoners,  although  many  of  them 
were  hostile  to  the  faith.     He  very  seldom  used  his  bed  for 
taking  his  rest  :    sometimes  he  spent  the  night  reclining  in  a 
chair,  sometimes  in  walking  about  his  cell,  praying  or  medita- 
ting on  divine  things,  having  taken  off  his  shoes  that  he  might 
not  disturb  the  repose  of  others.     He  used  to  take  every 
opportunity  of  collecting  his  thoughts  ;  and,  betaking  himself 
to  a  cell,  or  to  some  unobserved  corner  of  the  prison  yard, 
would  there  recite  his  Office.     The  rest  of  the  day  he  would 
spend   in   profitable   conversation.     The   Catholics   affirmed 
that  nothing  which  he  had  said  or  done  would  not  beseem 
a  holy  man,  and  the  Protestants  were  much  grieved  when 
they  heard  that  he  was  sentenced  to  death.     Some  of  them 


256  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

declared  that  they  had  never  met  with  a  more  innocent 
man  ;  indeed,  they  said,  if  all  Jesuits  were  like  him,  they  did 
not  understand  how  men  could,  with  justice,  revile  them/ 

On  December  7,  Father  Holland  was  brought  before  the 
Court,  indicted  for  the  treasonable  offence  of  being  a  priest  in 
Roman  Orders.  Three  of  the  witnesses  against  him  were 
pursuivants,  or,  as  we  should  say,  detectives  ;  the  fourth 
was  an  apostate  priest,  Thomas  Gage,  brother  of  the  gallant 
and  loyal  Colonel  Sir  Henry  Gage  who  was  killed  fighting  for 
the  King,  near  Abingdon,  in  January  1644,  and  of  George 
Gage,  a  faithful  Catholic  piiest.  This  miserable  betrayer 
said  that  he  had  been  with  the  accused  at  St.  Omer's  for  five 
years,  and  gave  other  evidence.  Holland  admitted  that  he 
had  been  at  the  Colleges  of  St.  Omer  and  Valladolid,  but, 
without  denying,  said  that  it  had  not  been  proved  against 
him  that  he  was  an  ordained  priest,  or  had  celebrated  Mass. 
The  Judge  said :  '  Will  you  swear  that  you  are  not  a  priest 
now  ?  '  Holland  replied  :  *  It  is  not  the  custom  of  the 
English  law  for  the  accused  to  clear  himself  by  oath  ;  but 
either  the  crimes  laid  in  the  indictment  must  be  clearly 
proved,  or  else  the  accused  be  acquitted  and  set  at  liberty.' 
He  was  a  graceful  speaker,  and  his  defence  was  much 
applauded  by  those  in  Court. 

On  Saturday,  December  10,  Holland,  at  8  a.m.,  was  again 
placed  at  the  bar,  and  asked  what  he  had  to  say  why  sentence 
of  death  should  not  be  passed.  He  repeated  in  a  few  words 
his  defence  that,  according  to  the  law  of  England,  it  ought 
to  have  been  proved  by  witnesses  that  he  was  ordained  a 
priest,  or  at  least  that  he  '  had  exercised  at  some  time  sacer- 
dotal functions  by  preaching,  hearing  confessions,  or  cele- 
brating Mass.  But  my  accusers  have  brought  nothing  of  this 
sort  against  me,  nor  do  I  think  they  can  do  so  now  ;  nor  have 
they  been  able  to  mention  the  name  of  any  one  whom  I 
have  persuaded  to  change  his  religion,  or  whom  I  have  in 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  257 

any  way  deceived.'  '  I  confess,'  replied  the  Judge,  '  that  I 
find  nothing  in  your  Hfe  or  morals  to  displease  me.  By 
the  laws  it  is  enacted  that  whosoever,  being  a  subject  of  the 
King,  takes  Orders  by  authority  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and 
returns  into  England,  is  guilty  of  high  treason,  and  incurs 
the  penalty  of  death.  The  jury  have  found  you  guilty  upon 
this  charge  upon  presumption,  which  at  least  is  a  legitimate 
and  full  proof,  and  nothing  therefore  remains  for  me,  except, 
according  to  the  form  prescribed  by  law,  to  pass  such  sentence 
upon  you  as  is  appointed  for  priests  and  traitors.  You  will 
therefore  return  to  the  prison  whence  you  came,  and  thence 
be  drawn  to  the  place  of  execution  and  there  be  hanged  by  the 
neck  till  you  are  half  dead  ;  your  bowels  shall  then  be  taken 
out  and  burnt  before  your  face,  your  head  cut  off,  and  your 
body  divided  into  four  parts,  to  be  exposed  in  the  usual  places 
in  this  city  ;    and  so  may  the  Lord  have  mercy  on  your  soul.' 

Father  Holland,  with  grateful  and  humble  joy,  exclaimed 
'  Deo  gr alias,''  and  on  his  return  to  Newgate  begged  his 
Catholic  fellow-prisoners  to  join  with  him  in  a  Te  Deum 
by  way  of  thanksgiving. 

This  was  on  Saturday,  and  his  execution  was  fixed  for 
the  following  Monday,  December  12,  1642,  During  these 
few  hours  '  many  persons  came  to  visit  him  of  all  nations, 
ages,  sex,  and  condition — English,  Spanish,  French,  Flemish 
— whom  he  received  with  religious  modesty  mingled  with  ad- 
mirable cheerfulness  and  firmness.  He  addressed  them  in 
words  full  of  piety,  with  a  placid  countenance,  and  the 
foreigners  in  their  own  language,  aptly  and  skilfully,  to  the 
great  admiration  of  all.'  '  The  prison,'  says  the  narrator, 
'  assumed  more  the  appearance  of  a  fair  than  a  gaol.'  Some 
were  brought  there  by  curiosity,  some  by  piety,  some  by 
grief,  to  bid  farewell  to  so  good  a  friend  ;  some  to  receive 
a  last  sacrament  at  his  hands,  since  priests  under  sentence  of 
death  were    allowed  to  say  Mass  openly   in  prison.     Some 


258  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Catholics  brought  Protestant  friends,  hoping  that  they 
would  be  moved  by  the  Father's  discourse  and  example. 
To  one  such  Protestant  Father  Holland  said  :  '  You  expect, 
I  see,  that  I  should  say  something  to  you.  Now,  should  I 
tell  you  there  is  a  plurality  of  Gods,  you  would  justly  deem 
me  to  be  a  lying  man  ;  equally  might  you  consider  me  a  liar 
should  I  tell  you  that  faith  is  not  one.  There  is  only  one 
God,  one  faith,  one  religion,  one  Church,  in  which,  and  for 
which,  I  am  about  to  die.  Behold,  therefore,  how  great  an 
interest  you  have  in  following  and  embracing  this  one.'  The 
Protestant  was  struck  by  these  words,  which,  or  the  look  of 
the  martyr,  led  to  his  conversion  to  Catholicism.  The  Duke 
de  Vendome,  of  the  French  Royal  House,  who  was  in  London, 
offered  to  intercede  "svith  the  authorities,  but  Father  Holland 
begged  him  not  to  take  so  much  trouble  for  one  so  unworthy. 
A  Portuguese  nobleman,  who  said  that  he  was  descended  from 
the  Holland  family — probably  from  the  old  Earls  of  Kent — 
sent  a  painter  to  take  his  likeness.  This  Father  Holland  at 
first  declined,  until  the  nobleman  obtained  an  order  from  his 
religious  Superior  that  he  should  comply.^  At  the  end  of 
this  busy  Saturday,  which  had  begun  with  his  sentence,  the 
Father  said  to  those  present  :  '  Gentlemen  and  friends, 
allow  me,  I  beg  you,  to  collect  my  thoughts  for  a  short  time, 
and  to  pray  to  Almighty  God  for  you  and  for  myself.  And 
you,  again,  who  hear  me,  pray  the  same  God  to  give  you 
patience  and  perseverance  at  this  time.  Nor  let  the  insolent 
and  malicious  pride  of  a  few  persons  terrify  you,  who  have 
it  in  their  minds  not  only  to  take  away  the  faithful  servants 
of  God,  but  even,  if  they  could,  to  hurl  God  himself  from  his 

^  It  is  probably  this  portrait,  or  a  replica  of  it,  which  the  Teresian  nuns  at  Lan- 
heme  in  Cornwall  still  possess,  though  there  is  another  and  more  singular  story  as 
to  its  origin.  The  nuns  had  the  picture  as  long  ago  as  1645,  when  their  house  was 
at  Antwerp  The  photograph  in  this  chapter  is  from  this  miniature  at  I<anherne ; 
but  as  it  is  impossible  to  get  a  clear  photograph  from  the  old  miniature  it  has  gone 
through  a  clarifying  process.  In  this  is  lost  a  very  slight  auburn  beard  which 
appears  in  the  miniature,  but  which  in  an  unclarified  photograph  comes  out  as 
a  dark  smudge. 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  259 

throne.  Doubt  not  but  that  the  blood  of  martyrs  will 
appease  their  fury.  Do  you,  in  the  meantime,  remember 
me  in  your  prayers,  and  I  will  not  forget  you.' 

On  the  next  morning — that  of  the  Third  Sunday  in 
Advent — he  heard  several  confessions,  and,  after  celebrating 
Mass — (how  moving  these  last  celebrations  must  have  been  !) 
— he  administered  to  many  the  Sacrament.  During  this 
day  also  he  received  many  visitors.  Among  these  was  the 
Spanish  Ambassador,  to  whom  he  promised  that  in  gratitude 
for  all  the  kindness  shown  by  the  Spanish  Government 
to  English  Catholics,  he  would  offer  his  last  ]\Iass  for  the 
King  and  Kingdom  of  Spain.  He  sat  doAMi  to  supper  with 
his  friends,  but  would  take  nothing  but  an  egg  and  a  little 
wine.  This  he  said  would  give  him  a  little  more  blood 
to  shed  for  Christ.  '  So,  on  Monday  the  12th  of  December, 
Father  Holland,  having  said  Mass  very  early  in  the  morning, 
before  he  had  finished  his  thanksgiving,  received  the  news 
that  the  hurdle  was  at  the  door  ready  to  draw  him  to  Tyburn. 
He  descended  with  alacrity,  giving  his  benedictions  to 
the  bystanders.'  Neither  of  the  Sheriffs  of  London 
and  Middlesex  were,  as  usual,  present.  It  was  believed 
that  they  considered  it  to  be  a  judicial  murder  ;  the  Sheriff 
of  London  had  applied  to  the  Parliament  Executive  Com- 
mittee for  a  respite,  but  had  been  refused.  These  gentlemen, 
who  were  themselves  in  active  rebellion  against  their  King, 
had  usurped  and  abused  his  prerogative  of  mercy.  A 
Serjeant,  who  was  officially  walking  beside  the  hurdle  as 
two  horses  dragged  it  through  the  winter  mud  and  over  the 
stones,  told  people  who  asked  about  the  prisoner  that  '  he 
was  going  to  die  contrary  to  law,  right,  and  justice.' 

At  Tyburn  was  assembled  a  great  crowd.  The  Spanish 
Ambassador  was  present,  with  his  household.  Another 
priest  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  who  had  assisted  Father 
Holland  in  prison,  was  there  in  disguise,  and,  taking  his  hand, 
said  :    '  Be  of  good  cheer,  and  bear  yourself  bravely.'     To 


260  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

whom  he  replied  :    '  By  God's  grace  you  have  no  cause  to 
fear ;    my  courage  will  not  fail.' 

When  he  was  unbound  from  the  hurdle  he  stood  up  and 
said  to  the  people  that  he  would  speak  to  them,  and  say 
nothing  offensive  to  any  man.  '  But  what  am  I  doing  ? 
I  ought  to  begin  with  that  sign  by  virtue  whereof  Christians 
may  overcome  their  enemy.'  Then  fortifying  himself  with 
the  sign  of  the  Cross,  he  proceeded  :  '  No  one  can  possibly 
be  offended  at  this,  being  the  sign  of  a  Christian  man.' 
Then  he  went  on,  '  in  a  firm  yet  sweet  voice,'  expressing 
his  desire  that  God  would  pardon  his  enemies,  but  repeating 
his  view  that  his  condemnation  had  not  been  according  to 
the  English  rules  of  the  law-game.  '  However,'  he  concluded, 
'  I  confess  before  this  assembly  here  present  that  I  am  a 
Catholic  and  a  priest,  and,  by  the  infinite  goodness  of  God, 
a  religious  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  and  the  first  of  that 
Order  sentenced  to  death  since  the  beginning  of  the  present 
Parliament.  For  all  which  benefits  conferred  upon  me, 
though  undeserving  of  them,  I  give  the  greatest  thanks 
to  God  immortal.' 

He  then  began  to  explain  to  the  people  the  true  nature 
of  the  Roman  and  Catholic  Church ;  but  here  he  was  inter- 
rupted by  questions  and  statements  made  by  the  chaplain 
of  Newgate,  who  was  in  official  attendance.  The  chaplain 
then  told  him  to  speak  no  more  to  the  people,  but  to  say  his 
prayers  to  himself,  while  he  talked  to  the  two  robbers,  who 
were  also  to  be  hung.  '  Thus,  whilst  the  minister  was 
delivering  a  long  address  to  the  robbers,  and  praying  ex- 
temporaneously and  verbosely,  singing  also  some  psalms 
in  English,  Father  Holland,  turning  another  way,  communed 
with  God  with  a  quiet  and  composed  air.  At  length,  when 
the  minister  had  finished,  he  said  :  '  Mr.  Minister,  I  have 
not  interrupted  you  in  your  preaching  and  praying,  and 
now  in  your  turn  let  me  pray  to  God  with  a  loud  voice 
that  all  may  hear  what    I   say.'     The   chaplain  began  to 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  261 

cavil,  and  say  that  it  was  unnecessary,  because  he  had 
ah'eady  prayed  for  him  and  the  two  others.  '  But  I  will 
allow  you,'  he  said,  '  on  one  condition — that,  whenever 
you  fall  into  error,  I  may  interrupt  and  correct  you.'  The 
Father  accepted  the  condition,  and,  reverently  kneeling 
down,  signed  himself  with  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  using  the 
Latin  formula,  and  then  began  to  pray  in  English,  with  a 
clear  voice  and  earnest  piety,  first  returning  to  God  thanks 
for  all  His  benefits  from  his  birth,  and  especially  for  the 
greatest  favour  of  dying  for  his  religion  and  for  the  Catholic 
priesthood  ;  he  then  expressed  the  most  lively  sentiments 
of  faith,  hope,  and  charity,  asking  pardon  for  his  sins,  ac- 
knowledging that  he  was  nothing  of  himself,  and  could  do 
nothing  without  the  help  of  God,  offering  to  Him  his  memory, 
his  understanding,  and  his  will,  and  all  his  powers  and 
faculties  of  soul  and  body,  and  lastly  himself  and  his  life 
as  a  sacrifice.  '  Receive  me,'  he  said,  '  O  Father  of  Mercies, 
as  Thou  seest  me  ;  and  receive  these  my  unworthy  sufferings 
which  I  most  willingly  offer  to  Thee  in  union  with  the  most 
holy  Passion  of  Thy  only-begotten  Son,  to  be,  I  hope,  more 
acceptable  by  the  virtue  and  in  union  of  what  my  sweetest 
Redeemer  Jesus  suffered ;  together  with  the  merits  of 
all  who  have  been,  or  are,  or  shall  be  accepted  by  Thee.' 
Afterwards  he  said  :  '  I  forgive  my  judge  and  his  assessors 
who  condemned  me  ;  I  forgive  the  jury  who  brought  me 
in  guilty  on  a  capital  charge  ;  I  forgive  my  accusers  and  all 
others  who  in  any  way  are  the  cause  of  my  coming  to  a 
violent  death.'  He  added  prayers  for  the  King,  the  Queen, 
their  family  and  the  Parliament  and  nation,  for  whose 
good,  restoration  to  the  faith,  and  eternal  welfare,  he  said, 
'  if  I  had  as  many  lives  as  there  are  hairs  on  my  head,  drops 
in  the  ocean,  stars  in  the  firmament,  perfections  in  the  Lord 
of  Heaven,  I  would  most  willingly  lay  them  all  down  for 
this  purpose.'     This  the  spectators  applauded. 

'  Then,    turning    to    the    executioner,    he    said  :     '  Well, 


262  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Gregory,  I  also  willingly  pardon  you  for  carrying  out  my 
sentence,'  and  he  gave  him  all  the  money  he  had — two  gold 
crowns.  Then,  reopening  his  eyes,  which  had  been  closed 
for  a  short  time,  he  fixed  them  upon  the  priest  of  the  Society 
of  Jesus,  his  helper,  who,  on  this  signal,  as  had  been  previously 
agreed  upon,  gave  him  the  last  absolution,  so  that  he  heard 
the  final  words  of  the  formula.' 

The  cart  drove  away  from  beneath  him  and  he  was  left 
hanging.  A  Catholic  bystander  removed  the  cap  which 
had  been  placed  over  his  face,  and  revealed  a  countenance 
not  at  all  distorted,  but  having  an  angelic  expression.  The 
Newgate  chaplain,  fearing  the  effect  which  might  be  pro- 
duced on  the  people,  called  to  the  executioner  to  cut  him 
down  half  dead,  according  to  the  sentence ;  but  the  more 
humane  Gregory  pretended  to  be  busied  with  something 
until  life  was  quite  extinct,  and  the  rest  of  the  legally 
prescribed  butchery  could  be  effected  upon  a  dead  body. 

The  authorities  had  often  been  embarrassed  by  the 
undesired  effect  which  these  martyrdoms  produced  on  the 
people.  An  official  memorandum  of  1586,  endorsed  '  The 
means  to  stay  the  declining  in  religion  through  the  Seminaries 
offending  in  practice,'  said,  inter  alia :  '  The  execution  of 
them  [the  seminary  priests],  as  experience  hath  showed, 
in  respect  of  their  constancy,  or  rather  obstinacy,  moveth 
many  to  confession,  and  draweth  some  to  affect  their  religion, 
upon  conceit  that  such  an  extraordinary  contempt  of  death 
cannot  but  proceed  from  above,  whereby  many  have  fallen 
away.  And  therefore  it  is  a  thing  meet  to  be  considered 
if  it  were  not  convenient  that  some  other  remedy  be  put 
into  execution.'  It  might  be  a  memorandum  by  a  puzzled 
Roman  official  with  regard  to  early  Christian  victims  of 
religious  laws. 

Thomas  Holland  suffered  in  the  forty-second  year  of 
his  age.  '  In  stature  he  was  below  the  middle  size ;  he  had 
a   handsome   face,    florid   complexion,    auburn  beard,    dark 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  263 

hair,   large   and   prominent   eyes — the   expression   of  which 
was  subdued  by  his  sweet  and  pleasing  manners.' 

It  was  a  proof  of  the  respect  felt  for  this  martyr  that  no 
idle  ballads,  so  usual  on  such  occasions,  were  sung  in  the 
streets,  nor  were  any  insulting  words  uttered  against  him. 
A  Catholic  nobleman,  in  whose  house  Father  Holland  had 
lived,  testified  with  tears  that  of  all  the  priests  he  had  known, 
he  considered  this  Father  most  worthy  of  such  a  crown. 
A  Protestant  also  was  heard  to  say  :  '  When,  in  all  our  life» 
shall  we  see  another — when  shall  we  see  anyone  of  our 
religion — die  so  nobly  ?  ' 

Father  Corby  concludes  his  account  of  Thomas  Holland, 
in  the  '  Certamen  Triplex,'  by  saying :  '  His  true  character 
was  that  he  had  extraordinary  talents  for  promoting  the 
greater  glory  of  God,  and  that  he  made  extraordinary  use 
of  them.  His  knowledge  in  spirituals  was  such  that  he 
was  termed  the  library  of  piety,  Bibliotheca  pietatis.  And 
whenever  he  was  in  company,  whatever  the  subject  of 
the  conversation  happened  to  be,  he  would  by  a  dexterous 
turn  bring  it  to  some  moral  or  gospel  instruction  for  the 
advantage  of  the  company  ;  imitating  the  great  St.  Francis 
Xavier,  of  whom  it  used  to  be  said  that  in  his  conversation 
with  people  of  the  world,  '  he  would  go  in  at  their  door  and 
come  out  at  his  own.' 

Among  the  Stony  hurst  MS.  there  is  a  little  volume,  in 
handwriting,  of  an  ascetical  work  by  Father  Thomas  Cooke. 
Opposite  the  title-page  this  Father  wrote  a  note  that  this 
book  was  entirely  in  the  handwriting  of  Father  Thomas 
Holland,  Martyr,  and  that  it  was  done  while  Father  Holland 
was  studying  at  Liege,  where  Father  Cooke  was  at  that  time 
'  Confessor  Domi.'  He  says  :  '  So  far  from  my  asking  him^ 
to  do  it,  or  even  thinking  of  such  a  thing,  he.  Father  Holland, 
come  to  me  and  begged  and  intreated  that,  ill-suited — so  his 
humility  would  have  it — for  theological  studies,  I  would 
allow  him  to  spend  some  of  his  time  usefully  in  transcribing 


264  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

this  book.'  Two  observations,  it  may  be  added,  are  made  in 
the  Annual  Letter  of  the  Rector  of  the  College  of  Liege  for 
the  year  1642  :  one,  that  the  College  gloried  in  the  fact 
that  Thomas  Holland  received  Holy  Orders  in  it  ;  the  other, 
that  he  was  the  first  of  its  alumni  who  had  shed  his  blood  for 
Christ,  and  that  the  news  of  his  most  holy  death  was  received 
there  with  incredible  joy.^ 

Another  Lancashire  gentleman,  of  the  fine  old  Lancashire 
race  of  the  Barlows,  near  neighbours  of  the  Hollands  of 
Clifton  and  Denton,  who  lived  at  Barlow  Hall  in  Chorlton 
from  the  days  of  Edward  I  to  the  end  almost  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  met  the  same  fate  as  Thomas  Holland, 
at  nearly  the  same  time.  He  was  Edward  Barlow,  son  of 
Sir  Alexander  Barlow,  and  was  known  in  religion  as  '  Father 
Ambrose  of  the  Order  of  '  Saint  Benedict,'  and  in  1610  was 
at  the  English  College  of  Valladolid.  He  was  the  truest 
possible  saint,  and  his  character  is  very  beautifully  described 
by  Bishop  Challoner  in  his  '  Memoirs  of  Missionary  Priests.' 
For  twenty  years  he  laboured  in  Lancashire,  doing  nothing 
but  religious  good  to  Catholics,  and  suffered  martyrdom  at 
Lancaster,  to  please  or  appease  the  then  dominant  faction,  on 
September  10,  1641,  at  the  age  of  fifty-five.  He,  too,  was  a 
martyr  for  the  real  and  visible  unity  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
which  isj  according  to  St.  Augustine^  the  highest  outward 
or  sacramental  form  of  Caritas. 

The  other  Jesuit  priests  of  the  seventeenth  century 
belonging  to  the  Sutton  family  were  Henry  Holland,  an 
uncle,  and  Alexander,  a  nephew,  of  the  martyred  Thomas. 

Henry  Holland  was  born  in  1576.  He  went  to  the 
English  College  in  Rome,  where  a  note  in  the  Rectorial 
Diary  says  that  he  was  '  always  modest,  but  too  good  friends 
with  the  disobedient.'  He  became  a  priest  in  1603,  went  on 
the  English  mission  in  1605,  and  entered  the  Jesuit  Order 
in  1609.     All  his  many  years  in  England  he  was  employed 

^  Foley's  Records,  vii.  188. 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  265 

in  his  own  county  of  Lancashire.  There  he  made  numerous 
converts,  some  of  them  persons  of  note.  In  a  letter  about 
his  death,  dated  March  1656,  the  Rector  of  the  College  at 
Liege  wrote  :  '  He  alone  among  a  great  company  of  the  gravest 
Fathers  was  selected  to  hear  the  first  confession  of  that  very 
celebrated  man,  justly  ranked  among  the  most  learned 
men  of  his  day — Mr.  James  Anderton  of  Lostock,  the  author 
of  the  very  erudite  work  entitled  "  The  Apology  of  Protes- 
tants." '  It  was  also  said  of  him  that  '  by  his  candour  of 
manner,  innocence  of  life,  and  gentleness  in  dealing  with  his 
neighbour,  he  won  the  esteem  of  all  and  a  high  reputation 
for  sanctity.  So  much  so  that  the  leading  Catholics  in  all 
the  places  where  he  lived  entrusted  their  concerns  to  him 
for  his  advice.' 

The  full  and  curious  title  of  James  Anderton's    book  is, 

*  The  Protestants  Apologie  for  the  Roman  Chvrch. 
Diuided  into  three  seuerall  Tractes.'  The  first  edition 
was  published  in  1604,  and  led  to  some  heavy,  long- 
forgotten  controversy.  Rather  more  is  known  of  another 
member  of  the  same  old  Lancashire  family,  Lawrence  Ander- 
ton, brother  of  Squire  Christopher  Anderton  of  Lostock. 
Five  Andertons  of  the  Lostock  race  fell  later  in  the  Civil 
War  fighting  for  the  King  and  the  Conservative  cause. 
They  were  connected  by  an  earlier  marriage  with  the  Hollands 
of  Denton.  Lawrence  Anderton  was  a  scholar  at  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  took  his  degree  in  1597, 
and  so  eloquent  was  he  that  he  was  called  '  silver-mouthed 
Anderton.'  Anthony  a  Wood  says  that  he  was  disturbed 
by  doubts  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Reformation,  and  that 

*  his  mind  hanging  upon  the  Roman  Catholic  religion  he 
left  that  college,  and,  shipping  himself  beyond  the  seas, 
entered  into  Roman  Catholic  Orders,  and  became  one  of  the 
learnedest  among  the  papists.'  He  became  a  Jesuit  in  1604, 
worked  for  forty  years  on  the  mission  in  Lancashire,  wrote 
several  books,  and  died  in  1643  at  the  age  of  sixty-six.     He 


266  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

must  have  been  an  intimate  friend  and  colleague  in  that 
province  of  Father  Henry  Holland. 

According  to  one  account,  Henry  Holland  was  arrested 
in  1648,  tried,  and  condemned  to  die,  but  had  his  sentence 
commuted  to  perpetual  banishment.  According  to  a  more 
probable  statement  he  was  simply  recalled  by  his  superiors 
from  England  at  that  date  because  his  age  and  growing 
deafness  made  him  no  longer  suitable  for  active  work  in 
that  dangerous  period.  He  spent  his  remaining  years  in 
the  College  at  Liege,  and  died  there  on  February  29,  1656, 
at  the  age  of  eighty,  having  spent  forty-seven  years  of  his 
life  in  the  Society.  The  Rector  wrote  of  him  after  his  death  : 
'  Father  Holland  was  a  man  of  great  innocence  of  life 
and  extraordinary  piety.  He  bore  the  affliction  of  his 
deafness  with  equanimity  and  cheerfulness,  and  endeared 
himself  to  all  by  his  purity  of  life  and  sweetness  of  manners. 
His  deafness  prevented  his  enjoyment  of  conversation 
during  the  customary  times  of  recreation,  so  that  he  spent 
nearly  the  whole  of  his  time  in  prayer  with  God,  his  close 
union  with  Whom  was  frequently  manifested  by  his  raising 
his  eyes  and  hands  to  heaven.  He  died  rather  from  old 
age  and  decay  of  nature  than  from  any  real  disease.' 

Little  is  known  of  the  third  Jesuit  priest  of  this  family, 
Alexander  Holland,  nephew  of  the  martyred  Thomas. 
He  was  born  in  1623,  entered  the  Valladolid  College  in 
1642 — the  year  of  his  uncle's  death — and  obtained  a  university 
prize  on  the  occasion  of  the  funeral  of  Isabella,  Queen  of 
Spain.  His  name  appears  as  one  of  the  Jesuits  of  the  College 
of  St.  Aloysius,  in  the  Lancashire  district  of  the  English 
province,  in  the  year  1655.  He  was  then  aged  thirty-two, 
and  had  been  for  four  years  a  priest  of  the  Society  of  Jesus. 
He  served  in  this  mission  until  he  died  in  Lancashire  on 
May  29,  1677. 

The  Hollands  of  Sutton  were,  of  course — as  Catholics — • 
engaged  upon   the    Royalist    side    in   the    Civil    War.     At 


HOLLANDS  OF  SUTTON  267 

the  close  of  the  war  their  estate  was  sequestered  by 
Parliament  on  account  of  the  owner's — Richard  Holland — 
'  recusancy  and  delinquency.'  This  was  the  second  Richard, 
nephew  of  the  martyr,  who,  like  his  grandfather,  had 
married  a  lady  named  Anne.  He  died  in  1649,  and  after 
his  death  the  ruined  estate  was  seized  for  a  time  by 
a  creditor.  His  son  and  heir  was  Edward  Holland,  who 
was  twenty-four  when  he  signed  the  pedigree  for  Dugdale's 
Visitation  of  Lancashire  in  1664.  In  1679,  when  the  popish 
plot  agitation  was  boiling,  he  was  declared  a  recusant 
together  with  Esther  his  wife,  and  in  his  old  age — for  he 
was  then  seventy-six — he  was  on  April  10,  1716,  '  convicted 
as  a  popish  recusant,'  at  the  Lancaster  Quarter  Sessions, 
probably  in  connection  with  the  recent  Jacobite  rising  in 
the  north.  When  the  Earl  of  Derwentwater,  with  his 
Scots  and  Northumbrians,  marched  as  far  as  Preston,  he 
was  joined  by  many  Lancashire  Catholic  gentlemen,  though 
the  High  Church  Tories  failed  to  consummate  Jacobite 
talk  in  action.  Edward  Holland  died  soon  after,  and,  in 
1717,  Thomas  Holland  of  Sutton  his  successor,  registered 
his  estate  as  a  '  Catholic  non- juror.'  He  still  possessed 
Sutton  Hall,  but  the  Manor  had  been  sold  in  1700.  Another 
Jesuit  '  of  Lancashire,'  Richard  Holland,  who  was  born  in 
1676,  was  professed  in  1715  ;  for  many  years  in  those  milder 
times  lived  at  Wardour  ;  and  was  afterwards  Rector  of  a 
college,  and  died  at  Paris,  July  1,  1740.  He  seems  to  have 
been  a  younger  brother  of  this  last  Thomas  Holland.  The 
Hollands  had  been  owners  of  land  at  Sutton  for  about  four 
hundred  years.  What  became  of  them  afterwards,  or 
whether  they  entirely  died  out,  is  not  known.  Baines,  in  his 
'  History  of  Lancashire',  says  that  the  Sutton  Hall  standing  in 
his  time  existed  before  the  year  1567.  It  was  in  the  Parish 
of  St.  Helen,  in  the  West  Derby  Hundred,  in  the  plain 
which  is  now  no  longer  green  and  rural,  but  a  dark  industrial 
region. 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  AND  HEATON 


Thurstan  de  Holland,  =  Mary,  d.  of  John  Collyer. 
eldest  son  of  William  de 
Holland  of  Sharpies  (,a 
grandson  of  Sir  Thurstan 
Holland  of  TJphoUand) 
and  of  Margaret  de  Shores- 
worth,  heiress  of  Denton; 
of  full  age  1316;  still 
living  1368. 


Eichard  de  Holland  ;  =  Aimeria,  d.  of  Adam 
6.  about  1325,  d.  1402.  I  de  Kenyon. 

Thurstan  Holland  ;  =  Agnes,  d.  of 
6.     about     1360,     d.  I 
1'123. 


William  Holland  =  Marjory,  d.  of  Henry 
1  de  TraflEord" 

—         Hollands  of  Clifton,  &c. 


Three  other 
sons. 


Thurstan  Holland  ;  =  Jfargaret,  d.  of  Sir  Lawrence 


6.     about    1300, 
before  1167. 


Warren  of  Poynton.  She  d. 
before  1442.  He  also  married 
three  other  wives,  s.p. 


Eichard  Holland ;  =Agnes,  d.  of  • 
6.  1432.  d.  1483.    I 


Three  other  sons, 
Eichard,  Henry,  and 
Thomas  ;  all  living  in 
1430. 


Richard  Holland  ;  =  Isabella,  d.  of  Sir  WiUiam 
i.  about  1450,  d.  I  Harrington  of  Hornby ; 
about  1501.  about  1466. 


Two  other  sons,  Nicholas  and  Lawrence, 
living  1510  ;  and  a  d.,  Margaret,  who  m. 
Oliver  Anderton. 


Thurstan  Holland  ;  =  Joan,  d.  of  John  Ardeme. 
6.  about  1470,  d.  Oct.  I  She  afterwards  m.  Sir  John 
11,1508.,  ,    Warren  of  Poynton. 


Pour  other  sons,  WUliam,  Eobert,  Thomas, 
and  Peter,  and  a  d.,  EUeu,  who  m.  1501  John 
Bradshaw. 


Robert  Holland  ;  =  Elizabeth,  d.  of  Sir 
b.  about  1491,  d.s.p.        Eichard  Ashton. 
1513. 


1  Sir  Eichard  Holland  ;  =  (1)  Anne,  d.  of  John  =  (2)  Eleanor,  d.  of  Sir  Ealph  I 
6.  about  1493,  d.  1548.        Pitton  of  Gawsworth.  bottle  of  Beamish,  Durhai 


(2)  CecUy,    d.    of  = 
Edmund      Trafford 
and    widow   of    Sir 
Eobert    Langley   of 
Agecroft  in  1562. 


Edward    Holland ;  =  (1)  Jane,  d.  of 


6.    about  1520, 
Aug.  22,  1570. 


John  Carring 
ton. 


Three  sons,  Eichard, 
Ealph,  and  Bandle, 
who  all  d.s.p. ;  and  a 
d.,  Margaret. 


Eichard  Holland ; 
Uving  1548. 


Mary: 


Eichard  Holland  ;  =  Margaret, 

6.    about    l.')46,    d.      d.   of  Sir 

March  2, 1619.  with-      Robert 

out  male  issue.  Lang  ley 

of   A  g e- 

croft. 


Edward  Holland  ;  =  (1595),  Anne,  d.  of 

6.    about    1550,    d.  I    Edmund   GamuU, 

1631.  Alderman    of 

Chester,    and 

I    widow     of     John 

Brock. 


John  HoUand ; 
living  1571. 


:  Arthur, 
Sir  Qe 
Poole. 


Eight  daughter 


Edward  Holland ;  > 
d.s.p. 


An  ne 

Eigby. 


Thomas  Holland 
of  Benton  and 
Heaton ;  d.  unm. 
May  22,  1664. 


William  Holland  =  Cecily,  d.  of 

(Eev.)   of    Denton  |    Alex!  Walt- 

and     Heaton;     6.       ham       of 

1612,  d.  1682.  I    Wistaston, 

:    Cheshire. 


Edward  Holland ; 
b.  1662,  d.  1683. 


Eichard,  Prances,  and 
Jane ;  d.  children. 


Col.  Richard  HoUand 
of  Denton  and  Heaton, 
M.P.,  &c. ;  b.  1596,  d. 
1661. 


Katherine, 
d.  of  Wm. 
E  a  m  sden 
of  Lang- 
ley,  Torks. 


Elizabeth  =  Sir  John  Egerton 
of  Wrinehill, 
Bart.,  Nov.  27, 
1684. 

Earls  pf  Wilton, 
owners  of  Denton  and  Heaton. 


Edward  Holland ; 
d.  July  11,  1655, 
before  his  father. 


:  Anne,  d.  of 
Edward 
Warren  of 
Poynton. 


Frances  Holland ; 
d.  unmarried. 

Sir  Eichard  Holland  also  had  three  illegitimate  sons,  mentioned  in  his  will. 


Two  other  sona, 
John  and  Henry, 
d.  unm.,  and  five 
daughters,  Mary, 
Ehzabeth,  Anne, 
Prances,  and 
Jane,  aU  married 
into  Cheshire  and 
Shropshire 
famiUes. 


I 


CHAPTER  XI 


HOLLANDS    OF   DENTON 


La  vie  champestre  est  la  vraye  vie  d'un  gcntilliomme. 

PlERRK    MatTHIEU. 

Sir  Thurstan  de  Holland  (the  second)  born  under 
Edward  I,  and  living  far  into  the  reign  of  Edward  III, 
founded  the  line  of  Hollands  of  Denton  and  their  early 
branch  of  Clifton.  He  was  great-grandson  to  the  first  Sir 
Thurstan  de  Holland,  of  Upholland.  The  eldest  son  of  the 
last-named  Thurstan  of  Upholland  was  Sir  Robert,  ancestor 
of  the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Huntingdon.  One  of  the  same 
Thurstan's  younger  sons  was  Sir  William  de  Holland,  who 
possessed  the  Manor  of  Sharpies.  This  Sir  William  had  a  son 
also  named  William,  and  also  knighted.  This  second  Sir 
William  was  legally  married  to  Joan  de  Pleasington,  by 
whom  he  had  no  children,  but  was  less  formally  united  to 
an  heiress  of  quality  named  Margaret  de  Shoresworth,  and 
by  her  became  father  to  Thurstan  Holland  the  second. 

The  informal  nature  of  the  union  between  Sir  William 
de  Holland  and  Margaret  de  Shoresworth  is  shown  by 
various  legal  documents,  from  which  it  appears  that 
Thurstan  was  born  when  his  mother,  Margaret,  was  an 
unmarried  girl,  a  little  before  the  year  1300.  Margaret 
was,  after  this,  twice  legally  married :  once  to  Henry  de 
Worsley,  who  died  in  1304,  and  once  to  Robert  de  Radcliffe, 
and  had  children  by  both.  She  died  in  1363,  when  she  must 
have  been  about  eighty,  giving  in  that  year  to  her  son, 
Thurstan  de  Holland,  all  her  goods,  movable  and  immovable. 
In  various  documents  and  deeds  Thurstan  is  referred  to 
sometimes  as  the  '  son  of  Sir  William  de  Holland,'  sometimes 
as  '  the  son  of  Margaret  Shoresworth,'  and  sometimes  as  the 

2  CO 


270  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

son  of  them  both.  In  1315,  land  in  Pleasington  was  settled 
upon  Sir  William  de  Holland  and  Joan  his  wife,  with  remain- 
der— in  default  of  their  issue — to  Thurstan,  son  of  William.^ 
Thus  Joan  seems  to  have  acquiesced.  In  1316  Sir  William 
de  Holland,  granted  his  inherited  Manor  of  Sharpies  to 
'  Thurstan,  son  of  Margaret  de  Shoresworth,'  for  life.  A 
^rant  of  land  at  Denton  was  made  in  1325  to  '  Thurstan,  son 
of  Margaret  de  Shoresworth,'  and  Sir  William  de  Holland 
witnessed  the  deed.  In  1330,  by  a  deed  dated  at  Denton 
on  the  Feast  of  St.  Hilary,  Alexander  de  Shoresworth,  her 
uncle,  granted  to  '  ]\Iargaret,  daughter  of  Robert  de  Shores- 
worth,'  all  his  messuages,  lands,  and  tenements  in  the  Hamlet 
of  Denton,  in  tail.  A  few  days  later,  Margaret  de  Shores- 
worth  granted  the  same  estates  to  Thurstan  de  Holland,  her 
son,  in  tail,  with  remainder,  in  default  of  his  issue,  to  William, 
son  of  Robert  de  Radcliffe  and  his  heirs,  and  further 
remainders  to  other  Radcliffes  and  Worsleys.  Five  years 
later,  by  another  deed,  Thurstan  de  Holland,  calling  himself 
*  son  of  William  de  Holland,'  granted  to  '  Margaret,  my 
mother,'  a  life  interest  in  the  Denton  estate.  In  1319,  Sir 
Robert  de  Holland  granted  lands  in  Heaton  to  '  Thurstan 
de  Holland,  son  of  Margaret  de  Shoresworth.' 

It  has  been  suggested  that  Sir  William  de  Holland  had 
been  married,  without  a  dispensation,  to  Margaret,  but  that 
the  marriage  was  within  forbidden  degrees,  but  there  is  no 
evidence  of  this.  It  is  clear  as  day  that  Sir  William,  not 
having  a  son  by  his  la^vful  wife,  Joan  de  Pleasington,  in- 
tended and  took  much  trouble  to  found  a  family  through 
Thurstan,  his  son  by  IMargaret.  For  that  purpose,  he 
endowed  him  by  grant  with  the  Sharpies  estate,  while 
Margaret's  uncle,  Alexander  de  Shoresworth,  also  not 
having  heirs,  endowed  Thurstan  with  the  Denton  estate, 
a  life   interest   for   IMargaret   being   subsequently   arranged. 

'  There  is  a  series  of  documents  bearing  on  this  subject  in  the  appendices  to 
Mr.  Irvine's  book,  The  Hollands  of  Mohberley  and  Knutsford. 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  271 

Thus  Thurstan  de  Holland  was  in  a  perfectly  open  way- 
treated  by  every  one  as  the  son  of  Sir  William,  as  in  fact 
he  was.  If  one  studies  chronicles  and  local  histories,  one 
sees  that  the  position  of  '  natural '  children  was  happier 
and  better  in  medieval  England  than  it  is  now,  when  such 
■children  usually  suffer  in  darkness  and  loss  of  status  for 
sins  which  are  none  of  theirs.  Medieval  society  was  more 
sincere,  and  paid  less  devout  homage  to  respectability, 
and  such  children — at  any  rate,  if  their  mothers  were  ladies 
of  some  quality — were  acknowledged  and  provided  for,  and 
if  they  belonged  to  good  families  they  were  openly  and 
justly  proud  of  the  fact. 

Since,  however,  Thurstan  de  Holland  was  not  his  father's 
legal  heir-at-law,  the  entailed  family  land  in  the  tenure  of 
Sir  William,  passed  at  his  death  (about  1318)  not  to  Thurstan, 
but  to  his  uncle,  Sir  Robert  de  Holland,  who  apparently 
gave  it,  or  some  of  it,  back  to  Thurstan.  The  following 
table  shows  the  derivation  of  Denton  Manor.  ^ 

Robert  de  Shoresworth  =  Cecilie,  heiress  of  Denton. 


Alexander  de  Shoresworth  = d.  of •     William  = ,  d.  of 

iconveyed  Denton  to  his  niece 
Margaret's  son,  Thurstan 
Holland. 


Robert  de  Shoresworth  = ,  d.  of 


Margaret  de  Shoresworth,  =  Sir  William  de  Holland, 
by  non-legal  union.        I 


I 

Sir  Thurston  Holland   = ,  d.  of 

of  Denton  | 

I 
Hollands  of  Denton,  Clifton,  &c. 


^  See  Lancashire  Inquisitions,  vol.  i.  p.  150  ;  Chetham  Society  Papers,  vol.  xcv. 
See  also,  Vict.  Co.  History  of  Lane.,  vol.  iv.  pp.  312,  378,  395,  and  vol.  v.  p.  261. 
Also  Irvine's  Hollands  of  ilobberley  and  Knutsford.  It  is  not  quite  clear  whether 
Alexander  -was  uncle  or  a  great-uncle  of  Margaret. 


272  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Denton  Hall  stood  about  five  miles  south-east  of  the 
old  town  of  Manchester.  The  manor  remained  in  the 
possession  of  Thurstan  de  Holland  and  his  lineal  male  de- 
scendants from  1330  to  1686 — about  350  years.  Thurstan 
also  acquired  the  Manor  of  Heaton,  just  north  of  Man- 
chester, which  at  a  much  later  date  became  chief  residence 
of  this  family. 

These  Hollands  of  Denton  always  held  the  position  of 
a  county  family  on  the  higher  level,  and  married  into 
like  families  in  Lancashire  and  Cheshire  ;  but  they  played 
their  part  on  the  provincial  and  not  on  the  national  scene. 
No  doubt  they  were  sometimes  in  the  Scottish  wars,  for  it 
was  the  duty  for  the  gentlemen  in  the  nine  northern  counties 
to  quell  the  Scots,  while  those  of  the  south  were  engaged 
in  the  more  pleasant  and  profitable  trade  of  war  in  sunny 
France.  Richard  de  Holland  was,  however,  one  of  the 
Lancashire  gentlemen  summoned  on  March  28,  1373,  to 
serve  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  in  an  expedition  to  France. 

Thurstan  de  Holland,  son  of  William  and  Margaret, 
was  in  political  trouble  in  the  reign  of  Edward  III,  for,  on 
June  12,  1346,  that  King  issued  letters  patent  to  him  from 
Windsor  stating  that,  '  at  the  request  of  our  cousin,  Henry 
of  Lancaster,  Earl  of  Derby,'  he  pardons  Thurstan  de  Holland 
for  all  felonies  and  transgressions  committed  against  the 
King's  peace  prior  to  the  16th  of  June  last  passed.'  History 
does  not  record  what  were  these  felonies  and  transgressions, 
but,  ever  since  the  affair  of  Boroughbridge,  the  Holland 
clan  had  no  doubt  been  in  disfavour  with  the  potentate 
of  the  north — Henry  of  Lancaster.  Probably  Sir  Thomas 
Holland,  K.G.,  the  near  cousin  of  Thurstan  and  then  in 
high  favour  at  Windsor,  negotiated  this  pardon.  John 
Holland,  youngest  son  of  Thurstan,  by  the  way,  had 
been  outlawed  in  1338  for  an  assault,  vi  et  armis,  on 
William  de  Hulton,  and  all  his  cattle  were  confiscated. 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  278 

Thurstan  de  Holland  was  of  full  age  in  1316,  and  was 
still  living  in  1368 ;  so  that  he  attained  to  a  considerable 
age.  He  was  knighted  before  1355.  He  married  Mary, 
daughter  of  John  Collyer,  and  was  succeeded  in  the  pos- 
session of  Denton  and  Heaton,  and  other  estates,  by  his 
eldest  son,  Richard,  who  was  born  about  1325,  married 
Aimeria,  daughter  of  Adam  de  Kenyon,  and  died  in  1402. 
Sir  Thurstan's  second  son,  William  de  Holland,  married 
Marjory,  daughter  and  co-heiress  of  Henry  de  Trafford,  and 
so  acquired  the  manor  of  Clifton  in  Prestwich,  and  founded 
the  line  of  Hollands  who  held  it  till  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  have  left  descendants  to  the  present  day. 

The  pedigree  of  the  Hollands  of  Denton  was  very  well  kept, 
but  their  recorded  history,  like  that  of  most  county  families, 
mainly  consists  of  births,  marriages,  settlements,  deaths,  and 
transactions  in  land.  They  were  squires  of  considerable 
standing,  and  married  into  neighbouring  families  of  like 
degree.  Sir  Richard  Holland  of  Denton,  made  a  Knight  by 
Henry  VIII  in  1544,  died  in  1548,  leaving  a  large  family 
of  legitimate  children  by  two  wives,  and  also  three  illegiti- 
mate sons,  whom,  with  the  candour  of  that  age,  he  com- 
mended by  will — as  they  were  then  minors — to  the  care 
of  his  second  wife.  His  eldest  legal  son,  Edward,  was 
born  about  1520,  and  died  in  1570.  Edward's  eldest  son, 
Richard,  was  born  about  1546.  This  Richard  Holland  of 
Denton  was  Sheriff  of  Lancashire  in  1571,  1573,  1580,  and 
1595.  He  was  '  much  honoured  by  the  Queen  for  his  zeal 
against  recusants,'  and  he  took  an  active  part  against  the 
Catholic  gentry,  then  so  numerous  in  Lancashire,  among 
whom  were  some  distant  relatives  of  his  own  name,  and  in 
hunting  do^vn  '  popish  priests '  and  Jesuit  missionaries. 
Edmund  Campion,  the  brave  and  cultivated  young  Oxford 
Jesuit,  who  died  at  Tyburn  in  1581,  wrote  in  a  letter  from  Lan- 
cashire, in  1580,  that  '  Holland  of  Denton  is  a  rigid  Puritan.' 


274  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Richard  Holland  died  in  1619,  leaving  five  daughters,  but 
without  male  issue,  and  was  succeeded  in  the  possession  of 
Denton  and  Heaton  by  his  nephew,  also  named  Richard, 
who  was  born  about  1596.  These  Hollands  attained  at  this 
period  to  their  highest  prosperity,  and  now  began  to  live 
more  spaciously  at  Heaton  House  than  they  had  lived  in  their 
ancestral  hall  of  Denton.  The  second  Richard  Holland, 
following  the  religious  views  of  his  uncle,  took  a  leading 
part  in  the  local  civil  war  in  Lancashire,  on  the  side  of 
Parliament.  Most  of  the  Lancashire  gentlemen,  headed  by 
Lord  Strange,  who  succeeded  late  in  1642  to  the  Earldom 
of  Derby,  were  Royalists,  and  many  of  them,  including  the 
Hollands  of  Sutton  and,  probably,  Clifton,  were  Catholics. 
But  the  small  towns  of  south-east  Lancashire — as  Man- 
chester, Wigan,  Bolton,  Warrington,  already  seats  of  young 
industries — were  strongly  Puritan,  and  so  were  some  of  the 
squires  in  that  region,  such  as  the  Denton  Hollands,  the 
Rigbys,  Bradshaws,  Egertons. 

At  Manchester,  in  1642,  there  was  a  small  magazine  of 
arms  and  munitions,  which  had  probably  been  stored  there — 
as  that  at  Hull — with  a  view  to  the  unsuccessful  operations 
against  the  Scots.  Lord  Strange  arrived  from  the  royal 
headquarters  at  York  on  July  4,  1642,  with  a  small  armed 
force,  and  demanded  the  surrender  of  the  magazine.  The 
*  Committee  of  Manchester,'  headed  by  Richard  Holland, 
refused,  and  a  skirmish  took  place.  This  was  the  opening 
bloodshed  in  the  Civil  War.  One  townsman  was  killed — 
Richard  Perceval,  a  linen-webster  (first,  it  is  said,  of 
all  the  thousands  who  died  in  this  war) — and  a  few  were 
wounded.  On  September  24,  the  Earl  of  Derby,  as  Lord 
Strange  had  now  become  on  his  father's  death,  returned 
to  Manchester  at  the  head  of  three  or  four  thousand 
men  and  attacked  the  town  unsuccessfully  until  December, 
when  he  retired. 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  275 

Richard  Holland  was  now  at  the  head  of  the  Manchester 
Defence  Committee,  and  soon  afterwards  was  appointed  by 
Parliament  to  be  Governor  of  Manchester.  He  had  a  special 
regiment  of  his  own  raising,  and  was  known  as  Colonel 
Holland.  Parliament  appointed  a  Colonel  for  each  hundred 
in  Lancashire,  p.nd  Richard  Holland  was  Colonel  for  the 
Salford  Hundred. 

In  October  1642,  an  attempt  was  made  by  certain 
Lancashire  gentlemen — some  on  the  King's  side  and  some 
on  that  of  the  Parliament — to  effect  a  modus  vivendi,  and 
to  save,  at  any  rate,  local  fighting  and  bloodshed  between 
neighbours,  relatives,  and  friends,  Mr.  Richard  Shuttleworth 
of  Gawthorpe — an  ancestor  of  the  present  Lord  Shuttleworth 
— and  others,  wrote  to  Richard  Holland,  and  other  Parlia- 
mentarians in  the  Salford  Hundred,  asking  them  to  meet  some 
Royalist  gentlemen  at  Blackburn  on  Thursday,  October  13. 
Holland  and  Peter  Egerton  replied  that  they  could  not  go 
to  Blackburn,  but  would  meet  the  gentlemen  at  Bolton. 
Arrangements  went  so  far  that  it  was  agreed  that  Richard 
Holland,  Peter  Egerton,  John  Bradshaw,  Richard  Shuttle- 
worth,  and  two  others,  should  meet  an  equal  number  of 
Royalists  at  Bolton  on  Tuesday,  October  18,  at  10  a.m. 
But  in  the  interval,  Holland  received  instructions  from 
London,  which  prevented  the  holding  of  the  conference. 
He  wrote  at  Manchester  on  the  15th  the  following  letter, 
preserved  in  the  Gawthorpe  Collection,  with  the  seal  of  the 
Hollands  attached  to  it.  It  is  addressed  to  his  '  much 
respected  friends,  Richard  Shuttleworth  and  John 
Starkey,    Esquires.' 

'  Gentlemen, — I  have  had  a  sight  of  a  letter  directed 
from  Mr.  Alex.  Rigby,  Mr.  Ferington,  and  Mr.  Fleetwood, 
touchynge  a  meetynge  at  Boulton  uppon  Tuesday  next, 
'Tis  true  Mr.  Egerton  and  myself e  writt  to  you  a  letter  to 
that  purpose  ;    since  when,   wee  have  received  commands 


276  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

both  by  letter  and  Declarations  sett  forth  from  Parliament, 
how  much  it  is  against  their  likynge  to  have  any  treatie, 
and  have  therefore  declared  their  utter  dislike  of  the  accom- 
modation in  Yorkshire. 

'  I  shall,  therefore,  not  need  to  give  you  a  reason  why 
wee  cannot  well  give  a  meetynge.  As  for  the  peace  of  this 
country,  there  is  none,  I  dare  answear,  desires  more  the 
preservation  thereof  than  wee  hereabouts  doe  nor  shall 
have  a  greater  detestation  of  those  that  shall  disturbe  it. 
And  thus  leaving  the  premises  to  your  consideration. 

'  I  rest, 

'  Yo.  very  lovynge  friend, 

'  Richard  Holland.' 

Manchester,  October  15,  1642. 

In  1643  there  was  a  good  deal  of  fighting  in  Lancashire. 
A  force  under  Major-General  Sir  John  Seaton  and  Colonel 
Holland  marched  out  of  Manchester  on  February  10,  joined 
other  troops  from  Bolton  and  Blackburn,  and  stormed 
Preston  after  two  hours'  hard  fighting,  in  which  many  men 
were  slain.  The  Earl  of  Derby  captui'cd  Lancaster  in  March. 
On  April  1,  the  Manchester  force,  led  by  Colonel  Holland, 
suddenly  stormed  the  town  of  Wigan,  which  Lord  Derby  had 
left  garrisoned  under  a  Scot,  named  Major-General  Blair. 
This  was  a  great  blow  to  the  Lancashire  Royalists.  Wigan 
was  near  Lathom  House,  the  glorious  and  ancient  castle  of 
the  Stanleys,  which  Charlotte  de  la  Tremouille,  Countess 
of  Derby  was  holding  for  her  lord.  On  the  day  of  Colonel 
Holland's  capture  of  Wigan,  the  Countess  wrote  in  her 
distress  to  Prince  Rupert. 

The  letter  is  in  French,  and,  turned  into  English,  runs 

thus  : — 

'  MoNSEiGNEUR, — I  havc  just  this  moment  received  the 
bad  news  of  the  loss  of  Wigan,  six  miles  from  this  place  ;  it 
held  out  for  but  two  hours,  being  terrified ;  my  husband  was 
twelve  miles  off,  and  before  he  could  make  ready  to  succour 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  277 

it  they  surrendered.  In  the  name  of  God,  Monseigneur, 
take  pity  on  us,  and  if  you  show  yourself  you  will  be  able 
to  reconquer  it  very  easily  and  with  great  honour  to  Your 
Highness.  I  know  not  what  I  say  ;  but  have  pity  on  my 
husband,  my  children,  and  me.  We  are  ruined  for  ever, 
unless  God  and  Your  Highness  have  pity  on  us. 
'  I  am  Monseigneur, 
'  Your  very  humble  and  obedient  servant, 

'  C.    DE    LA   TrEMOUILLE.' 
La  thorn,  April  1,  1643. 

Warrington  was  next  taken  by  the  Manchester  Puritan 
forces.  The  contemporary  author  of  a  *  Briefe  Journall  of 
the-  Siege  against  Lathom,'   says  :  — 

'  Upon  the  surrender  of  Warrington,  May  27,  1643,  a 
summons  came  from  Mr.  Holland,  Governor  of  Manchester, 
to  the  Lady  Derby  to  subscribe  to  the  propositions  of  Parlia- 
ment or  yield  up  Lathom  House ;  but  her  ladyship  denied 
both  :  she  would  neither  tamely  give  up  her  house  nor 
purchase  her  peace  with  the  loss  of  her  honour.' 

The  Countess  of  Derby  was  born  of  one  of  the  noblest 
houses  of  France,  in  a  most  energetic  period  of  French 
history,  and  was  a  worthy  compatriot  and  coeval  of  Anne 
de  Bourbon,  Duchesse  de  Longueville.  Richard  Holland 
was  unfortunate  in  encountering  such  a  heroine  in  Lancashire, 
for  Romance  was  against  him. 

The  rest  of  the  war  in  Lancashire  mainly  turned  on  the 
attempts  to  reduce  obstinate  Lathom  House.  A  force, 
commanded  by  Lord  Byron,  was  defeated  by  Fairfax  at 
Nantwich  on  January  25,  1644.  Holland  took  part  in  this 
success,  and  his  regiment  was  mentioned  with  honour  by 
Fairfax  in  his  dispatch.  But  Lathom  House  was  still 
gallantly  holding  out  in  May  1644,  and  the  arrival  of  Prince 
Rupert's  army  from  the  south  was  daily  expected.  On 
May  16,  the  Manchester  Committee  wrote  to  Lord  Denbigh  a 


278  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

pressing  letter  urging  him  to  bring  his  force  to  assist  or  the 
siege  might  have  to  be  broken  up.  Lathom  was  vigorously 
assailed  at  this  time  by  a  Parliamentary  force  under  the 
command  of  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  himself,  with  Richard 
Holland  serving  under  him.  At  the  end  of  May,  Prince 
Rupert  relieved  the  place,  and  1600  of  the  besiegers  were 
killed  and  700  taken  prisoner.  The  Prince  then  stormed 
and  sacked  Puritan  Bolton — '  the  Geneva  of  Lancashire,' 
as  it  was  called — and  passed  away  over  the  moors  to  his 
final  defeat  near  York.  Lathom  House  fell  at  last,  but 
not  till  December  1645. 

In  the  year  1643  an  accusation  was  made  against  Colonel 
Holland's  military  conduct  by  one  Rosworm.  This  kind  of 
'  Dugald  Dalgetty  '  was  of  alien  origin,  and^had  served  in  the 
German  wars,  and  understood  how  to  make  fortifications. 
Some  citizens  of  Manchester — worthy  drapers  and  others — 
were  horribly  afraid  in  the  summer  of  1642  that  the  town 
and  their  shops  would  be  plundered  by  Lord  Derby  and 
his  northern  cavaliers,  and  entered  into  a  solemn  covenant 
with  Rosworm  that,  if  he  secured  them  from  this,  they  would 
pay  him  certain  sums,  which  they  collected  by  subscription. 
Rosworm,  having  this  kind  of  independent  municipal  function, 
soon  came  into  collision  with  Colonel  Holland  when  the 
latter  was  appointed  by  Parliament  to  be  Governor  of 
Manchester.  He  accused  him  of  wishing  to  surrender 
Manchester  in  1642,  and  of  weakness  in  the  attack  on  War- 
rington, and  generally  of  timidity  and  indecision,  and  because 
he  refused  to  take  good  advice  from  a  professional  soldier. 
Holland  had  to  go  up  to  London  in  the  summer  or  autumn 
of  1643  to  appear  before  a  Parliamentary  Committee  along 
with  Rosworm  and  other  witnesses.  He  was  acquitted  in 
consequence,  says  Rosworm,  of  the  fact  that '  his  great  friends 
prevailed  for  his  escape  '  in  the  House,  but  far  more  prob- 
ably because  the  allegations  wholly  broke  down.     In  1649 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  279 

Rosworm  printed  a  long,  egoistic  and  rambling  '  Historical 
Relation  of  Lieutenant  Colonel  Rosworm's  Service  and 
Rewards.'  addressed  to  General  Fairfax,  John  Bradshaw, 
President  of  the  Council,  and  Lieutenant-General  Oliver 
Cromwell,  accusing  Holland  of  all  kinds  of  misconduct. 
In  this  Rosworm  took  to  himself  the  whole  credit  of  the 
capture  of  Wigan  and  said,  with  probable  truth,  '  Colonel 
Holland  seemed  troubled  that  I  perished  not  in  the  action.' 
He  said  that  Colonel  Holland  had  afterwards  deprived  him, 
Rosworm,  of  part  of  his  pay,  '  upon  the  pretence  that  I 
had  not  taken  the  Covenant,'  and  he  accused  Holland  of 
cowardice  and  vacillation  on  various  occasions.  '  Alas  !  ' 
he  wrote,  '  Who  can  settle  a  trembling  heart  ?  ' 

It  seems  to  be  true  that  at  one  time  in  1642,  Holland 
thought  it  would  be  necessary  to  evacuate  Manchester  for 
want  of  powder,  and  because  the  rustic  soldiers  in  the  town 
wished  to  get  back  to  their  villages,  and  because  the  enemy 
were  growing  in  strength.  But  Colonel  Holland's  real 
offence  seems  to  have  been  that  he  refused  to  be  governed 
by  Rosworm's  opinions  and  prevented  that  mercenary 
engineer  from  getting  all  the  pay  that,  in  his  own  opinion, 
he  deserved.  Rosworm  was  the  man  with  a  professional 
grievance,  who  is  always  with  us,  too  well  known  to  every 
Governmental  department.  He  and  his  grievance  remain 
petrified  for  ever  at  full  length  in  the  Chetham  Society 
volumes   on  the   '  Civil   War  in  Lancashire.' 

Colonel  Holland  represented  Lancashire  in  the  House  of 
Commons  during  those  short  Parliaments  of  1654  and  1656 
which  Oliver  Cromwell  found  so  unsatisfactory.  He  was  a 
moderate  man  of  the  Presbyterian  party,  opposed  to  the 
Independents.  He  was,  probably,  like  all  those  moderate 
men,  not  exactly  sorry  to  see  the  Restoration,  although  after 
that  event  the  position  of  men  like  himself  was  unsatisfactory. 
As   his   friend,   Henry   Newcome,   remarked,   the   moderate 


280  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Presbjrterians  were  classed  by  the  Royalists  with  the  '  fana- 
tics '  on  the  alleged  ground  of  want  of  loyalty,  and  by  the 
fanatics  with  the  Royalists,  on  the  ground  of  want  of  enthusi- 
astic piety.  This  Henry  Newcome  was  Presbyterian  minister 
at  Manchester,  and  was  evicted  after  the  Restoration.  He 
was  a  weak  man,  tormented  by  innumerable  petty  religious 
scruples,  which  he  recorded  in  a  morbid  diary,  in  which  Colonel 
Holland  figures  from  time  to  time.  In  1659  Newcome  was 
with  Colonel  Holland  when  one  Nehemiah  Poole  was  brought 
in  and  charged  before  the  Colonel,  as  a  magistrate,  with  the 
offence  of  being  a  Quaker.  The  Colonel  ordered  him  to  be 
sent  to  prison.  Nehemiah  had  just  arrived  walking  from 
Bristol  to  Manchester  and  was  dripping  wet,  the  water  oozing 
above  his  shoes.  He  asked  that  he  might  first  go  home  to 
his  own  house  to  change  his  clothes.  '  The  Colonel,'  says 
Newcome,  '  seemed  to  give  no  ear  to  him  '  ;  but  at  last,  on 
Newcome's  prayer  '  condescended,'  and  Nehemiah  did  not 
on  that  occasion  go  to  prison  at  all.  With  base  ingratitude 
Nehemiah  brought  against  Mr.  Newcome  a  charge  of  persecu- 
tion of  the  saints.  Nehemiah  was,  however,  soon  afterwards 
sent  to  prison  for  three  months  for  coming  into  the  parish 
church  during  the  sermon  with  nothing  but  a  shirt  on, 
and  there  lifting  up  his  voice  to  testify. 

On  September  18,  1660,  Mr.  Newcome  notes,  after  saying 
that  he  was  clearly  to  be  '  outed  '  from  his  living  :  '  Colonel 
Holland  came  and  called  on  me,  and  sate  with  me  an  hour, 
and  gave  me  his  advice  which  I  took  very  kindly  of  him.' 
On  July  27,  1661,  Colonel  Holland  lay  dying  at  Heaton. 
The  Lord  Delamere  took  Newcome  in  his  coach  to  see  him, 
and  on  the  way  they  discoursed  much  on  the  present  state 
of  affairs.  Newcome,  as  they  drove  home  again,  '  had  the 
hap  to  speak  an  improper  word  :  it  was  this,  that  Mr. 
Angier  [another  divine]  had  great  hopes  of  Colonel  Holland 
because  he  had  by  many  offices  of  love  in  times  past,  engaged 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  281 

the  prayers  of  good  people  for  him,  and  I  had  the  hap  to  say 
that  he  was  the  object  of  many  good  prayers.  I  was  sensible 
it  was  a  wrong  word,  and  it  troubled  me  ill,  and  I  thought 
it  might  make  me  ridieulous.'  The  point  of  this  story 
is  not  very  obvious,  but  it  shows  the  esteem  in  which 
Richard  Holland  was  held  among  his  friends.  Two  days 
later,  he  died.  Newcome  notes  in  his  diary  on  July  29  : 
'  Mr.  Harrison  and  IVIr.  Angier  called  on  me  and  told  me 
they  were  present  with  Colonel  Holland  when  he  died,  this 
day  about  three  o'clock.  A  very  prudent,  able,  Common- 
wealth man  is  now  gone,  and  a  true  friend  to  good 
ministers.'     He  was  sixty  years  old  when  he  died. 

Six  years  earlier.  Colonel  Holland  had  suffered  a  dreadful 
blow  in  the  loss  of  his  only  son,  Edward,  who  died  July  3 
1655,  aged  twenty-nine.  Edward  had  married  Anne,  only 
daughter  of  Edward  Warren  of  Poynton  in  Cheshire.^  She 
was  only  sixteen  when  he  died,  and  was  left  with  one 
baby  daughter,  Frances  Holland.  Anne  survived  her 
husband  for  twenty-five  years,  and  died  on  November  25, 
1680.  A  tablet  erected  by  Frances  in  the  old  Chapel  Church 
of  Denton,  which  long  before  had  been  built  by  the  Hollands 
and  their  neighbours  the  Hydes,  tells  this  mournful  story 
of  dying  families  and  disappointed  hopes.  The  touching 
inscription  in  elegant  Latin  testifies  to  the  early  genius 
of  Edward  Holland — his  learning,  his  pleasing  manners,  dis- 
tinguished probity,  solid  and  unfeigned  piety — and  describes 
him  as  : — 

'  Familiae  suae  Decus  et  Ornamentum  ; 
■    Patriae  suae  Spes  et  Desiderium  ; 
Amicorum  Delitiae  simul  ac  Solamen.' 

^  These  Warrens  of  Poynton  descended  from  an  illegitimate  son  of  the  wicked 
Earl  of  Warenne  in  Surrey,  whose  second  Countess  was  Isabel  de  Holland,  sister 
of  the  fii-st  Earl  of  Kent.     Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  in  1430,  had  also  marrie 
Margaret,  a  girl  of  this  Warren  family. 


282  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

His  wife  is  described  as  '  Cara  Deo,  dilecta  viro.'  After 
erecting  this  monument  the  lonely  Frances  Holland  vanishes 
into  the  night  of  oblivion. 

The  late  Colonel  Richard  Holland  had  been  the  eldest 
son  of  a  family  of  six  brothers  and  five  sisters.  The  sisters 
all  married  into  good  families  of  the  squire  kind  in  Cheshire 
and  Shropshire.  The  second  and  third  brothers,  Edward 
and  John,  died,  without  children,  before  the  Colonel.  The 
fourth  brother,  Thomas,  survived  him  for  about  three 
years,  and  became  Squire  of  Denton  and  Heaton.  The 
estate  was  then  worth  about  £800  a  year,  which  would 
mean  a  good  deal  more  in  our  days.  Thomas  Holland 
was  a  bachelor  about  sixty  years  old,  but,  upon  becoming 
Squire,  resolved  to  marry.  According  to  the  diarist,  Oliver 
Heywood,  he  '  found  out  a  suitable  gentlewoman — one  Mrs. 
Britland — and  their  day  of  marriage  was  fixed.  But  before 
the  day  of  marriage  arrived,  he  fell  sick  and  died,  and  the 
funeral  happening  on  the  same  day  that  had  been  fixed 
for  his  marriage,  the  minister  at  the  funeral  preached  from 
the  same  text  that  had  been  settled  for  the  marriage,  only 
substituting,  '  There  was  a  cry  made,'  for  '  Behold  the 
bridegroom    cometh.' 

Thomas  Holland  was  buried  in  the  Church  of  Nether 
Peover  in  Cheshire.  There  is  a  flagstone  with  the  incription 
'  Here  lyeth  the  body  of  Thomas  Holland  of  Denton  in  the 
County  of  Lancashire,  Esquire,  who  paid  his  latest  debt  to 
Nature,  May  22,  1664.  Here  also  lies  the  body  of  Frances, 
Lady  Eyton,  sister  to  the  above-said  Thomas  Holland,  who 
died  June  23,  1691,  aged  83.'  In  the  next  grave  reposed 
another  old  sister,  Jane  Holland,  who  had  married  Thomas 
Cholmondeley  of  Cheshire.  She  died  at  seventy-eight,  in 
1696. 

The  houses  and  lands  then  passed  to  the  third  brother, 
the  Rev.  William  Holland,  Rector  of  Malpas  in  Cheshire, 


HOLLANDS  OF  DENTON  283 

who  was  aged  fifty-two  when  he  succeeded  in  1664,  and 
had  not  long  been  married.  WilHam  had  not  at  all  sym- 
pathised with  the  Presbyterian  views  of  his  brother,  Colonel 
Richard  Holland.  During  the  Cromwell  Protectorate,  he 
had  preached  a  sermon  on  the  death  of  a  Cheshire  cavalier 
gentleman  '  not  only  replete  with  beautiful  descriptions 
of  the  virtues  and  sufferings  of  the  deceased,  but  repro- 
bating with  the  most  incautious  zeal  the  heresies,  schisms, 
and  personated  holiness  of  the  ruling  party.' 

The  Rev.  William  Holland,  last  of  the  Hollands  of  Denton 
and  Heaton,  died  on  April  29,  1682,  at  the  age  of  seventy. 
By  his  will,  he  directed  that  his  body  should  sleep  with 
those  '  of  my  fathers  in  the  chapel  of  the  Prestwich  Church, 
which  belongs  to  Heaton  Hall  and  my  family,  and  where 
so  many  of  my  ancestors  have  been  buried.'  He  was  suc- 
ceeded in  the  estates  by  his  son  Edward,  aged  twenty,  who 
survived  him  only  a  year.  Then  they  passed  to  his  daughter 
Elizabeth  Holland,  who,  on  September  27,  1684,  married 
Sir  John  Egerton  of  Wrinehill  in  Northamptonshire,  a 
maternal  ancestor  of  the  present  Earls  of  Wilton.  Thus, 
in  the  generation  succeeding  to  that  of  Colonel  Richard 
Holland  and  his  five  brothers,  the  estates  were  lost  to  the 
Hollands  for  want  of  male  issue. 

Heaton  House  continued  to  flourish,  but  what  remained 
of  Denton  Hall  sank  at  last,  like  so  many  old  gentry  houses, 
into  the  status  of  a  farm.  Only  a  fragment  of  it  now  remains, 
or  lately  remained.  There  is  an  elaborate  description  of 
it  as  it  stood  in  1856,  with  its  carved  coats  of  arms,  old  hall, 
and  fine  central  fireplace,  by  Mr.  Booker  in  '  Chetham  Society 
Miscellanies,'  vol.  ii,  p.  257.  Mr.  Henry  Taylor,  in  his  '  Old 
Halls  in  Lancashire  and  Cheshire,'  wrote :  '  Denton  Hall 
was  clearly  at  one  time  a  fine  quadrangular  building,  of 
which  two  sides  now  remain,  the  southerly  or  central 
portion    containing    the    fine    great  hall    and    an    eastern 


284  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

wing.  Both  portions  have  been  much  injured  by  the  hand 
of  man  and  by  the  ravages  of  time.'  He  thinks  that  the 
building  was  erected  about  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
or  perhaps  earHer.  '  We  have  here,'  he  says,  '  in  the  great 
common  hall,  the  complete  arrangements  for  the  lord  and 
his  retainers  dining  in  common  ;  but  at  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century  '  (to  which  another  writer  attributed  it) 
'  a  great  hall  like  this,  with  a  massive  open  timbered  roof, 
and  with  a  high  table,  canopy,  and  musicians'  gallery,  had 
gone  out  of  fashion,  and  was  very  seldom  built.'  ^ 

The  Denton  estate  consisted  of  549  acres,  in  the  year 
1810.  In  1846  the  Earl  of  Wilton's  '  Denton  Hall  estate  ' 
contained  603  acres.  Heaton  Hall  was  a  residence  of  the 
Earls  of  Wilton,  and  in  1901  was  sold  to  the  Corporation 
of  Manchester  for  £230,000,  for  dedication  as  a  fine  public 
park  covering  693  acres,  Elizabeth  Holland  had  certainly 
brought  to  the  Egertons  and  their  successors  a  goodly 
heritage.^  These  Hollands  would  have  become  a  very  rich 
family  if  they  had  endured  long  enough  and  had  held  on 
as  firmly  as  they  always  had  done  to  those  estates  near 
Manchester,  which  had  descended  to  them  from  Sir  William 
de  Holland  and  Margaret  de  Shoresworth. 

^  There  is  a  very  full  description  of  Denton  Hall  in  the  Victorian  History  of 
Lancashire,  vol.  iv. 

^  The  present  Earls  of  Wilton  are  really  a  branch  of  the  Grosvenors,  one  of 
whom  married  an  Egerton  heiress.  They  took  the  family  name  of  Egerton  in 
lieu  of  their  own. 


CHAPTER  XII 

HOLLANDS    OF    CLIFTON   AND    CHESHIRE 

Non  mortui  laudabunt  te,  Domine,  neque  omncs  qui  descend imt  in  infemum  ; 
Sed  DOS  qui  vivimus  benedicimus  Domino,  ex  hoc  nunc  et  usque  ad  saeculum; 

Ps.  113. 

Another  line  of  the  Hollands,  those  of  Clifton,  branches 
off  from  the  earliest  Hollands  of  Denton.  Sir  Thurstan 
de  Holland,  son  of  Sir  William  de  Holland  by  Margaret 
de  Shoresworth,  the  first  owner  of  Denton  Manor,  who  lived 
in  the  reigns  of  Edward  II  and  Edward  III,  had  a  younger 
son  named  William.  This  William  married  Marjory,  daughter 
and  co-heiress  of  Henry  de  Trafford,  and  through  her 
acquired  the  Manor  of  Clifton,  a  few  miles  north  of  old 
Manchester.  The  Hollands,  their  descendants,  possessed  the 
manor,  hall,  and  land  of  Clifton  from  about  the  year  1350 
till  after  the  year  1670.  This  much  is  quite  certain ;  but 
except  for  dim  dealings  with  land,  there  is  hardly  any  record 
of  what  they  did  during  these  three  centuries.  It  is  clear 
from  documentary  evidence  that  the  second  owner  of  the 
manor  was  Otho,  son  of  William  de  Holland  and  his  wife, 
Marjory  de  Trafford  ;  and  that  he  was  living  in  1361.  The 
manor  is  shown  by  other  documentary  evidence  to  have  been 
held  about  the  year  1440  by  a  second  Otho  Holland.  There 
must  certainly  have  been  at  least  one  intervening  owner,  and 
much  more  probably  two,  between  these  two  Othos.  Between 
them,  in  all  probability,  came,  for  one,  a  certain  Robert 
de  Holland,  who  by  his  violent  actions  plays  a  distinguished 

285 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON 

Sir  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  =  Mary,  d.  of  - 
living  temp.  Edward  III.,  son  of  Sir 
William  de   Holland  and   Marjory 
Shoresworth. 


Collyer. 


Richard  HoUand.         William  Holland 


Hollands  of  Denton 
and  Heaton. 


Otho  Holland,  = 
living  1361      I 


Marjory,  d.  of  Henry  de  Trafford 
and  heiress  of  Clifton  Manor, 


d.  of 


^Robert  HoUand,  =  Margaret,  d.  of  Thomas 
living     till     about  de  Prestwich. 

1401. 


1  Peter  Holland  = 


d.  of 


Otho  Holland,  = 
living  1440.     I 


d.  of 


William  Holland  =  Eleanor,  d.  of 
I      Holt. 

Ralph  Holland, 
d.s.p.  1505. 


Thomas  Holland  = 


d.  of 


Ralph  Holland. 


William  Holland,  = 
living     1506,    then 
aged  56. 


d.  of 


William  Holland,  =  Alice,  d.  of  Orskell- 
d.  Sept.  1523.       I  Werden. 


Thomas  Holland,  =  Ellen,  d.  of 
Sir  Robert 
Langley  of 
Agecroft. 


aged    16    in    1523; 
d.  1565. 


John  Holland,  = 
2nd  son.       I 


d.  of 


William  Holland,  = 
6th  son;  d.  1603. 


Richard  Holland 


d.  of 


William  Holland, 
d.s.p.  1590 ;  and 
two  other  sons, 
Robert  and 
Thomas,  who  d.s.p. 


d. 

Pa 

of  Rhod 
in  PilJi 
ington.  I 


Thomas  Holland.  =  Anne,  d.  of 
Inherited       Clifton 
Manor  in  1613. 


Edward  Holland  =  Ellen,  d. 
Nichol 
Hulme. 
about  1604. 


of      Chorl  ton, 
j'ouuger    son,    m. 


Eleanor  =  Ralph  Slade, 
She  inherited  Clifton 

Manor  in  1590,  and  d. 

in  1613  s.p. 


William  Holland,  =  Jane,  d.  of 

d.  1660. 

Elizabeth  Holland,  =  Humphrey 
heiress      of     Clifton  de  Trafford. 

Manor,     was    living 
1670. 


William  HoUand,  ="Anne,  d. 


b.  1605,  d.  1654; 
bought  Mobberley 
estate  in  Cheshire. 


of  RalphJ 
IBold.     4 


1  These  two  are  not  quite  certain. 


Hollands  of  Mobberley,  Sandle- 
bridge,  Knutsford,  &c.     (See  n* 
table.) 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  287 

part  in  the  fourteenth  century  history  of  Prestwich.  The  seal 
of  Wilham  Holland  of  Clifton,  attached  to  a  deed  of  1361,  bore 
the  arms  of  the  Hollands  of  Upholland,  a  '  lion  rampant 
gardant  a  field  seme  de  fleurs  de  lys,  over  all  a  bend.'  But 
in  1533,  as  appears  from  the  Herald's  Visitation,  the  Hollands 
of  Clifton  had  carved  on  their  house  as  arms,  '  with  a  second 
quarter  sable,  three  maidens'  heads  couped  two  and  one,  with 
the  crest  of  a  wolf  passant,'  no  longer  a  lion  rampant  gardant. 
There  must  have  been  some  reason  for  this  singular  pheno- 
menon, and  it  is  said  that  the  wolf  crest  and  maidens'  heads 
belonged  to  a  family  called  de  Wolveley,  who  once  owned  the 
manor  of  Prestwich  next  to  that  of  Clifton.^  Now,  in  the 
year  1360,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Thomas  de  Prestwich,  the 
son  of  Alice  de  Wolveley  (which  Alice  had  been  heiress  of  this 
manor),  took  the  veil  at  the  age  of  fifteen  in  the  convent  of 
Seaton  in  Cumberland.  Margaret  had  no  brother,  and,  but 
for  being  a  nun,  would  have  been  co-heiress  with  her  sister 
of  Prestwich  manor  and  two  other  manors.  Her  sister  Agnes 
died  married,  but  without  children,  in  1362.  Before  this, 
Margaret  had  eloped  from  the  convent  at  the  age  of  less 
than  seventeen,  and  had  married  Robert  de  Holland.  Some 
years  later  her  father  died,  and  on  the  ground  that  the  escaped 
Margaret  was  a  professed  nun,  and  so  could  not  inherit,  the 
manors  were  transferred  to  her  cousin,  Roger  de  Langley, 
then  a  minor,  whose  mother  was  a  maternal  granddaughter 
of  the  original  heiress,  Alice  de  Wolveley. 

Robert  Holland   by  no  means   accepted  the  succession 
of  the  boy,  Roger  de  Langley.     He  seems  at  first  to  have 
made  some  arrangement  with  Sir  Thomas  Molyneux,   th 
agent  of  the  great  over-lord,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,   for, 

1  The  distinguished  local  historian,  I\Ir.  W.  Langton,  in  the  Lancashire 
Inquisitions  (vol.  99  of  the  Chetham  Society  Papers,  p.  135)  discussed  all  this,  and 
is  inclined  to  accept  the  conjecture.  See  also  Victorian  History  of  Lancashire, 
V.  77.  • 


288  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

by  a  letter  from  the  Savoy  Palace  dated  July  10,  1372,  the 
Duke  ordered  Molyneux,  notwithstanding  any  demise  or 
lease  of  the  manor  of  Prestwich  made  by  him  to  Robert 
de  Holland,  to  seize  the  manor  and  demise  and  let  it  to 
other  persons  than  the  said  Robert  and  his  wife.  But  in 
1375  Robert  de  Holland  assembled  a  troop  of  armed  men 
and  '  vi  et  armis  contra  pacem,  etc.,'  took  possession  of 
the  manor.  The  Duke  of  Lancaster  was  fiscally  interested 
because  he  was  entitled  to  the  profits  of  wardship  during 
a  minority,  but  apparently  Holland  kept  possession  for 
twenty  years. 

The  case  was  at  last  tried  before  Mr.  Justice  Pynchbeck 
and  his  colleagues  at  the  Lancaster  Assizes  in  1394.  It  was 
proved  that  Margaret,  daughter  of  Thomas  de  Prestwich, 
son  of  Alice  de  Wolveley,  was,  before  her  marriage,  '  a  nun 
and  professed  in  the  House  of  the  nuns  of  Seaton.'  It  was 
also  proved  that  she  had  made  her  vows  at  the  rational 
age  of  fifteen,  '  on  the  morrow  of  St.  Katherine  the  Virgin 
and  Martyr,  a.d.  1360,  in  the  presence  of  Sir  John  Cragge, 
the  Prior  of  the  Abbey  of  Furness,'  and  several  others  named 
in  the  proceedings,  and  that  '  the  said  Margaret  on  the  said 
day  confessed  before  the  said  persons  that  she  was  not 
coerced  or  compelled,  but  voluntarily  entered  the  Order 
of  St.  Benedict  in  the  said  House.'  On  this  point  the  case 
turned,  for  a  nun,  who  of  free  will  and  at  an  age  of  dis- 
cretion had  taken  vows,  was  disqualified  for  inheritance  of 
land  even  if  she  came  out  of  the  convent  and  returned  to 
lay  life,  unless  she  had  a  dispensation  from  Rome.  Judg- 
ment was  accordingly  entered  for  the  Duke  of  Lancaster 
in  respect  of  the  profits,  but  notwithstanding  this  decision, 
the  Hollands  asserted  their  claim  some  years  longer.  Very 
likely  they  obtained  support  from  their  southern  cousins, 
the  Earls  of  Kent  and  Huntingdon,  then  so  powerful,  and 
so   closely    allied    with   the    Duke  of  Lancaster  and  King 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  289 

Richard.  In  1395  the  feoffees  of  Robert  de  Holland  and 
Margaret,  his  wife,  made  a  deed  of  settlement  dealing  with 
Prestwich  Manor  as  though  it  were  indubitably  family 
property.  The  trusts  were  to  hold  for  Robert  de  Holland 
for  life,  and  after  his  death  for  his  son  Peter  and  his 
issue,  with  remainders  to  the  younger  sons  and  daughters, 
Nicholas,  John,  Edmund,  Marion,  Catharine,  and  Alice. 

At  the  end  of  1401,  the  southern  Hollands  having  tragic- 
ally fallen,  Robert  de  Holland  reluctantly  released  to  Robert 
de  Langley  (the  son  of  the  whilom  minor  Roger)  all  his 
claim  upon  Prestwich,  and  two  other  manors,  and  in  1416 
his  son  Peter  Holland  agreed  to  give  up  his  title  deeds, 
and  in  1418  released  his  claim  'to  his  manors'  to  trustees 
for  the  Langleys.  But  peace  was  not  re-estabhshed  between 
Hollands  and  Langleys  except  after  active  war,  for  in  May 
1402  the  King  granted  pardon  to  Robert  de  Langley,  who 
was  then  twenty-four,  for  having  captured  and  detained 
Robert  de  Holland.  The  latter  had  at  various  times  in- 
vaded the  Manor  of  Prestwich,  and  carried  away  some  cattle 
and  goods  of  Langley  and  his  tenants  into  Cheshire,^  not 
restoring  them  without  payment.  He  had  also  come  by 
night  and  carried  some  of  Langley's  cattle  as  far  as  Glossop 
(in  Derbyshire),  and  being  pursued,  he  entered  the  house  of 
Master  Wagstaffe,  who  must  have  been  much  annoyed,  and 
defied  Robert  de  Langley,  wounding  one  of  his  servants  with 
an  arrow.  The  brother  of  the  wounded  man  threw  fire  into 
the  house,  and  Holland  had  to  surrender,  and  was  taken  into 
Lancashire.^  He  had  then  already  been  outlawed  for  treason, 
probably  in  connection  with  the  Holland  movement  of  1400. 

The  suggestion,  to  recapitulate,  made  by  more  than  one 
student  of  local  history,  is  that  in  order  to  assert  the  more 

1  Cheshire  was  a  convenient  place  into  which  to  drive  cattle  stolen  in  Lanca- 
shire,  or  vice  versa,  because  the  two  counties  were  under  entirely  different  juris- 
dictions, one  reason  why  they  were  both  lawless. 

'  Victorian  County  History  of  Lancashire,  vol.  v.,  quoting  Agecroft  documents. 

V 


290  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

ostentatiously  his  claim  to  the  Wolveley  inheritance  during 
this  conflict  of  thirty  years,  Robert  de  Holland,  on  the  same 
principle  as  that  on  which  the  Kings  of  England  assumed 
the  French  royal  lilies,  carved  up  the  arms  and  crest  of 
Wolveley,  which  the  herald  saw  somewhere  at  Clifton  in 
1533.  There  was  indeed  no  Otho  among  the  children  of 
Robert  and  Margaret,  but  the  second  Otho  Holland,  who 
owned  Clifton  about  1440,  may  have  easily  been  their  grand- 
son, perhaps  a  son  of  the  Peter  named  in  the  settlement 
of  1395.  If  this  violent  Robert  de  Holland  were  not  the 
lord  of  Clifton,  it  does  not  appear  who  else  he  can  have  been, 
living  at  that  time  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Prestwich. 
He  may,  on  the  whole,  be  fairly  claimed,  and  not  without  pride, 
on  account  of  his  evidently  strong  and  virile  character,  as  a 
Holland  of  Clifton.  There  is  certainly  something  in  the  style 
of  these  northern  local  proceedings,  a  Holland  '  touch,'  akin 
to  the  methods  by  which  his  cousin  at  two  or  three  removes, 
John,  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  was  in  the  same  years  endeavouring 
to  promote  the  interests  of  the  southern  branch  of  the  family. 

After  these  troubles,  the  owners  of  Clifton,  holding 
firmly  to  their  manor  and  hall,  proceeded  obscurely  on 
their  way  down  history.  Amid  the  darkness,  the  Lancashire 
Court  records  illuminate  the  fact  that,  one  day  in  the  year 
1440,  Ralph,  son  of  Otho  Holland  of  Clifton  Hall,  trespassed, 
with  others,  in  the  woods  of  Sir  John  Pilkington  and  took 
therefrom  three  hawks,  valued  at  £20.  Did  Ralph  redeem 
his  woodland  crime  by  fighting  on  the  Lancastrian  side  at 
Towton  Field  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  under  the  banner 
of  his  distant  cousin,  Henry  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter  ? 
A  novelist  would  be  entitled  to  make  him  do  so,  but  there 
is  no  record. 

The  pedigree  of  these  Clifton  Hollands  can  only,  before 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIII,  be  defectively  made  out,  and  their 
marriages    till    then    are    mostly  obscure,  but   early  in  the 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  291 

sixteenth  century  more  light  is  thrown  by  two  inquisitions 
fost  mortem  :    one  made  in  1506,  which  shows  the  descent 
for  the  two   previous   generations,   and   the  second  at  the 
death,  in  1523,  of  WilHam  Holland,  then  owner  of  Clifton. 
This   William   had    married    Alice    Orskell    Werden.      The 
Werdens   were     a    good    old    Lancashire    family,    some    of 
whom,  later,   were    Catholic    Royalists    in    the    Civil    War. 
William  Holland,  in    1517,  made    a  settlement  in  order  to 
secure  a  dowry  for  his  wife,  and  make  provision  for  his 
younger  sons  and  daughters.     Richard  Holland  of  Denton, 
and   Nicholas   Holland    of   Deane   Hall,   were    two  of   the 
trustees  of  the  settlement.     William  Holland  died  in  1523, 
and  his  eldest  son,  Thomas,  then  aged  sixteen,  succeeded  to 
the  Manor  and  Hall  of  Clifton.     There  were  five  younger 
sons  and  several  daughters.     The  second  son  was  named 
John  and  the  sixth  son  William.     The  eldest  son,  Thomas 
Holland,   married   Ellen,   daughter   of  Sir   Robert  Langley 
of  Agecroft,  a  fine  old  hall  which  still  exists  near  Manchester. 
This  was  the  family  with  which  Robert  Holland  waged  so 
long  a  quarrel  in  the  fourteenth  century. 

Thomas  Holland  died  in  1565,  leaving  Ellen  a  widow 
with  four  children.  His  youngest  and  sixth  brother,  William 
Holland,  who  was  born  about  1517,  was  executor  of  his 
will,  and  was  ancestor  of  the  Hollands  of  Rhodes,  Mobberley, 
Sandlebridge,  and  of  the  Viscounts  Knutsford. 

We  might  have  possessed  rather  fuller  details  about 
this  family  had  not  Thomas  Holland  thoughtlessly  been 
away  when  the  Heralds  called  one  day  at  Clifton  in  the 
Lancashire  Visitation  of  1533.  .  The  Heralds,  in  consequence, 
made  the  barren  note, '  Holland  of  Clifton  was  not  at  howme,' 
and  merely  recorded  arms  which  no  doubt  they  saw  carved 
somewhere,  and  entered  no  pedigree. 

The  '  Lancaster  Pleadings '  (vol.  xlix)  contains  a  Bill 
addressed  to  Sir  Ambrose  Cave,  as  Chancellor  of  the  Duchy 


292  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

of  Lancaster,  by  Ellen  Holland,  widow  of  Thomas  Holland, 
and  William,  Robert,  and  Thomas,  and  Ellinor  Holland, 
children  of  the  said  Thomas  v.  William  Langley,  clerk, 
Parson  of  Prestwich.  The  complaint  was  that  '  the  said 
Thomas  Holland,  the  father,  left  goods  to  the  value  of 
three  hundred  marks.  The  defendant  was  his  trustee,  being 
his  wife's  brother.  He  undertook  to  provide  the  said 
Thomas  and  his  family  with  board  and  lodging  during  his 
own  lifetime  at  the  Parsonage  of  Prestwich ;  in  consideration 
whereof,  the  defendant  enjoyed  all  the  goods  of  the  said 
Thomas.  Ever  since  Thomas'  death,  the  defendant  has 
refused  these  obligations.  He  has  also  driven  out  of  the 
parsonage  house  his  nephew  and  niece,  Thomas  and  Ellinor, 
when  they  came  to  seek  succour  at  the  parsonage.' 

This  William  Langley,  Rector  of  Prestwich,  was  a  queer 
and  quarrelsome  priest,  always  engaged  in  a  number  of 
lawsuits,  about  church  property,  with  his  neighbours.  He 
was  instituted  in  1552,  in  the  ultra-reforming  reign  of 
Edward  VI,  but  conformed  to  the  old  religion  during  Mary's 
reign,  and  again  to  the  new  arrangements  at  the  beginning 
of  Elizabeth's.  But  presently  he  turned  recusant,  about 
the  time  he  so  maltreated  the  Holland  children,  and  refused 
to  attend  his  own  parish  church,  and  was  finally  deprived 
of  the  living  in  1569.  Prestwich  was  far  too  much  of  a 
Langley  family  living  ;  it  was  held  continuously  by  Langleys 
from  1417  to  I6IO.1 

From  this  sad  case  of  a  cruel,  though  reverend,  uncle, 
it  seems  that  the  Hollands  of  Clifton  were  in  financial  diffi- 
culties in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  but  they  did  not  lose  their 
social  position  as  lords  of  a  manor.  The  Derby  household 
books  record  a  visit    to    Lord    Derby   by  '  Mr.    Holland  of 

^  One  of  his  successors,  as  rector  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  was 
the  Rev.  John  Booker,  a  most  worthy  antiquary,  who  wrote  Memorials  of  Prestwich 
Church,  &o.,  and  contributed  much  to  the  Chetham  Society  Papers. 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  293 

Clifton,'  who  came  to  stay  at  Lathom  on  February  10,  1588. 
The  three  sons  of  Thomas  Holland  died  without  surviving 
issue,  and  the  manor  then  passed  to  their  sister  Eleanor, 
married  to  Ralph  Slade.  On  her  death  without  issue  in 
1613,  the  property  reverted  to  a  cousin,  Thomas  Holland,  a 
grandson  of  John  Holland,  the  second  son  of  the  William 
Holland  who  died  in  1523.  This  Thomas  Holland  still 
owned  the  estate  at  the  time  of  the  Civil  War.  He  was  a 
Royalist ;  and  the  estates  were  sequestrated  by  Parliament 
for  his  own  delinquencies,  and  more  especially  those  of  his 
son  William,  who  had  applied  for  a  commission  in  the 
King's  army,  had  fought  as  a  defender  of  Wigan,  when 
Colonel  Richard  Holland  of  Denton  captured  that  town, 
and  had  also  served  in  the  garrison  of  Lathom  House,  and 
in  other  places. 

The  Hollands  never  recovered  from  this  sequestration 
disaster,  and  had  at  last  to  sell  their  house,  Clifton  Hall, 
which  in  1652  came  into  possession  of  the  Gaskell  family; 
but  they  retained  for  a  brief  space  longer  the  manor  and 
some  land.  William  Holland,  the  last  in  the  male  descent, 
who  died  in  1660,  had  no  son,  but  a  daughter  Elizabeth. 
Before  1671  she  had  married  Humphrey  Trafford,  and  thus 
the  Manor  of  Clifton,  which  Marjory  de  Trafford  had  brought 
in  Edward  Ill's  reign  to  the  Hollands,  was  brought  back 
over  three  hundred  years  later  by  Elizabeth  Holland  to 
the  Traffords,  now  called  again  '  de  Trafford.'  These 
Traffords  are  one  of  the  oldest  Lancashire  families  that 
have  a  continuous  recorded  history.  The  grandfather 
of  Humphrey  Trafford  was  a  strong  Protestant  and  per- 
secutor of  recusants.  His  son,  Humphrey's  father.  Sir 
Cecil  Trafford,  was  reconciled  to  the  Church  of  Rome  in 
his  youth  about  1616,  and  ever  after  that  the  family 
adhered  to  that  Church  down  to  the  present  day.  Sir  Cecil 
died  very  old  in  1673,  and  was  succeeded  in  possession  of  the 


294  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

estates  by  Humphrey,  who  had  married  EHzabeth  Holland. 
Elizabeth  died,  and  Humphrey  Trafford  married  again ; 
his  descendants  spring  from  his  second  wife.  Humphrey 
Trafford  was  in  trouble  in  1694,  being  implicated  in  a 
Lancashire  Jacobite  plot  of  that  year,  and  he  died  at  an 
advanced  age  in  1716.  This  marriage  into  a  Catholic  family 
makes  it  certain — unless  (which  is  not  very  likely)  Elizabeth 
was  an  individual  convert — that  the  latest  Hollands  of  Clifton 
were,  like  the  Hollands  of  Sutton,  not  only  Royalists  but 
Catholics,  though  perhaps  they  may  have  thought  it  well, 
living  as  they  did  close  to  Protestant  Manchester,  to  conceal 
the  fact  as  much  as  possible. 

It  appears  that  the  manor  and  lands  of  Clifton  were 
mortgaged  in  1685,  and  eventually  were  sold,  so  that  their 
re-occupation  by  the  Trafford  family  did  not  last  long. 
Probably  they  were  in  financial  difficulties  at  the  time ;  but 
they  would  have  done  better  to  keep  Clifton  until  the  develop- 
ment of  estates  round  Manchester  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

While  the  elder  line  of  the  descendants  from  the  William 
Holland  of  Clifton,  who  married  Alice  Werden  and  died 
in  1523,  thus  became  extinct,  a  cadet  branch  continued 
to  exist  in  a  very  modest  but  healthy  and  prolific  way. 

William  Holland  was  sixth  son  of  the  William  Holland 
owner  of  Clifton  Manor,  who  died  in  1523,  and,  since  his 
eldest  brother,  Thomas,  was  born  in  1507,  and  there  were  also 
sisters,  he  was  probably  himself  not  born  earlier  than  1517. 
He  was  in  1565  executor  of  the  will  of  his  eldest  brother, 
Thomas,  and  he  appears  two  years  later  in  the  pedigree 
given  in  Flower's  Visitation.^     He  married  a  Miss  Parr  who 

^  Mr.  William  F.  Irvine,  in  his  book  called  The  Family  of  Holland  of  Mobherley 
and  Knutsford,  privately  printed  in  1902,  denied  the  fact,  previously  accepted  by 
all  good  authorities,  that  the  William  Holland  who  married  Miss  Parr  of  Rhodes  was 
son  of  William  Holland  of  Clifton,  who  married  Miss  Werden  and  died  in  1523. 
I  have  given  in  an  Appendix  reasons  showing  that  Mr.  Irvine  was  in  error  on 
this  point. 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON 


295 


was  co-heiress,  together  with  a  sister  who  had  married  John 
Foxe,  of  an  ancient  gentleman's  estate  called  Rhodes,  close 
to  Clifton  Hall.  This  William  Holland's  descendants  in  the 
elder  line  owned  Rhodes  till  late  in  the  seventeenth  century. 


HOLLANDS   OF  MOBBERLEY 

William     Holland  =  Anne,  d.  of  Ralph 


of  Chorlton  Row, 
and  then  of  Mob- 
berley ;  6.  1605,  m. 
1624,  d.  1654. 


Bold    of    Ashton- 
under-Lyne. 


John  Holland 
of  Mobberley ; 
b.  1631,  TO.  1655, 
d.  1704. 


Hannah,  d.  of 
Thomas  Nor- 
bury  of  Over 
Alderley. 


Six  other  sons  and 
four  daughters. 


John    Holland  =  Mary  Deane 


of  Mobberley ; 
6.  1656,  m.  1684, 
d.  1712. 


of  Alderley. 


Six  other  sons  and 
one  daughter. 


John  Holland 
of  Mobberley ; 
b.  1690,  TO.  1717, 
d.  1770. 


Mary,  d.  of  Peter 
Colthurst  of  Sandle- 
bridge  in  Little  War- 
ford,  Cheshire. 


Four  other  sons  and 
four  daughters. 


Peter  Holland  =  Margaret 


of       Mobberley ; 
6.[1722,  d.  1761. 


Bostock. 


Samuel  Holland,  =  Anne.  d.  of 
4th  son,  of  Sandle-  j  Peter  Swin- 
bridge;     b.     1734,       ton  of 

TO.  1763,  d.  1816.         Knutsford. 


Two  other 
sons  and  six 
daughters. 


John    Holland  = 
of       Mobberley ; 
d.  1835. 


Robert  Holland 
of  Mobberley.  He 
sold  the  property 
about  1887. 


,  d.  of- 


-,  d.  of- 


HoUands  of 
Sandlebridge, 
Knutsford, 
&;c.  (/See  next 
table.) 


The  Prestwich  parish  registers  show  that  this  William 
Holland  died  in  1603,  at  about  the  age  of  eighty-five,  and 
that   the   second   William   Holland   of   Rhodes,    his    eldest 


296  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

son,  died  in  1614,  and  was  succeeded  there  by  his  son,  John. 
A  younger  son  of  the  first-named  William — namely,  Edward 
Holland — bought  a  house  and  land  at  Chorlton,  close  to 
Manchester  and  five  or  six  miles  from  Rhodes  and  Clifton, 
and  rather  late  in  life  married,  about  1603  or  1604,  Ellen 
Hulme  of  Heyton.  This  Edward's  only  son,  William  Holland, 
was  born  in  1605,  and  in  1624  married  Anne,  daughter  of 
Ralph  Bold  of  Ashton-under-Lyne.  About  that  time,  his 
father,  Edward,  died  and  William  inherited  the  Chorlton 
property.  This  he  eventually  sold,  and  bought,  in  1650, 
four  years  before  his  death,  a  property  at  Mobberley  in 
Cheshire,  about  fifteen  miles  from  Manchester,  near  Knuts- 
ford.  This  was  a  small  estate  of  120  acres  lying  round  a 
house  called  Dam  Head.  Here  his  descendants  in  the 
elder  line  lived  on  the  land  very  quietly  for  a  period  of 
237  years  until  the  year  1887.  The  property  was  then  sold 
i:o  Lord  Egerton  of  Tatton,  and  is  now  a  farm  of  the  present 
Lord. 

The  clash  of  arms  has  often  been  heard  in  the  pages 
of  this  book.  It  never  disturbed  the  Hollands  of  Mobberley 
save  once,  when,  in  1745,  the  Highland  Army  passed  within 
five  miles  of  them  on  the  road  from  Manchester  to  Derby. 
In  a  still  extant  diary  of  Mrs.  John  Holland,  of  that  date, 
are  the  following  entries  : 

'  Nov.  24,  1745.  The  week  past  has  been  attended 
with  a  great  deal  of  bad  tideings  from  our  armies,  many 
in  great  alarm  and  consternation.' 

'  November,  ye  last  day.  Every  day  brings  fresh  alarms, 
our  Rebel  enemies  drawing  nearer  and  nearer ;  six  beside 
our  own  family  come  for  shelter.' 

'  December  ye  8.  Ye  week  past  we  had  some  intervall 
from  our  fears.  After  many  abuses  in  Maxfild  [Maccles- 
field] they  went  to  Leek,  pressed  several  to  go  with  them, 
from  there  to  Ashburn,  from  there  to  Derby.    A  little  number 


-^^.^^^./_ 


^- 


SIR    HENRY    HOLLAND,    BARONET,    jr.D. 

.  From  a  portrait  made  about  lS-10 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  297 

behind  meeting  with  ye  King's  forces,  were  frightened  back 
to  Ashburn,  Leek,  and  poor  Maxfild  again.  On  Saturday 
night  they  begun  to  come  in ;  all  the  country  alarmed 
again  with  great  fear  of  them,  one  and  twenty  came  this 
day  by  the  Hall  and  Mill  and  made  towards  Altringham  ; 
gave  no  disturbance  to  this  neighbourhood.' 

'April  26,  1746.  We  have  joyful  news  from  Scotland 
that  the  Rebels  are  defeated  by  the  Duke  on  the  16th  of 
this  instant.     We  have  had  great  outward  rejoicings.' 

John  Holland,  who  died  in  1770,  husband  of  this  lady, 
had  a  fourth  son,  named  Samuel,  who  inherited  from  a 
maternal  uncle  a  property  of  some  three  hundred  acres, 
called  Sandlebridge,  about  three  miles  from  Knutsford. 
Samuel  Holland  married  Anne,  daughter  of  Peter  Swinton 
of  Knutsford.  Their  eldest  son,  Peter  Holland,  inherited 
Sandlebridge,  and  practised  as  a  doctor  at  Knutsford.  He 
died  in  1855,  and  Sandlebridge  passed  to  his  eldest  son. 
Sir  Henry  Holland. 

The  maternal  grandmother  of  this  Henry  Holland  was 
Catherine,  a  sister  of  Josiah  Wedgwood,  the  famous  potter  of 
Etruria  in  Staffordshire  ;  so  that  he  was,  via  the  Wedgwoods, 
a  second  cousin  of  the  great  Charles  Darwin,  and  related 
to  all  the  amiable  and  lively  Wedgwood  clan.  Henry 
Holland  was  born  October  27,  1788.  He  went  to  London 
as  a  young  physician,  and  there  during  his  long  professional 
career  had  a  practice  in  the  high  social  and  political  sphere, 
and  was  also  a  well-known  man  in  society,  a  writer,  and 
traveller.  He  was  consulting  physician  to  six  prime  ministers, 
including  George  Canning  and  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  to  Queen 
Victoria,  and  knew  every  one  in  the  high  political,  pro- 
fessional, and  literary  world  of  his  time.  His  name  appears 
in  many  memoirs  as  a  guest  in  the  best  society.  He  was 
President  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  of  the  College  of 
Physicians.     Probably  none  of  his  lineal  ancestors  had  ever 


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HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  299 

left  England,  unless  some  Holland  of  Clifton  was  in  the 
Wars  in  France,  and  they  had  certainly  rarely  strayed  from 
their  flat  green  fields  in  Lancashire  and  Cheshire.  Sir 
Henry  Holland  made  up  for  this  by  travelling  every  year 
of  his  life,  from  the  time  he  was  twenty  until  he  was  eighty- 
five — in  which  year  of  his  age  he  went  first  to  Moscow  and 
then  to  Rome,  and  died  a  week  after  his  return  to  his  London 
home  in  Brook  Street  on  his  eighty-sixth  birthday,  October 
27,  1873.  He  was  in  the  Spanish  Peninsula  in  1812,  while 
Wellington  was  carrying  on  the  War,  and  in  North  America 
for  a  month  or  two  in  1863,  in  the  Civil  War,  with  a  visit  to 
General  Grant's  headquarters,  having  an  insatiable  curiosity 
about  men  and  things.  Perhaps  it  was  the  banked-up 
curiosity  of  his  provincial  ancestors  !  He  left  record  of 
himself  in  a  very  cautiously  composed  *  Book  of  Recollections,' 
and  there  is  also  an  account  of  him  in  the  *  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,'  so  that  more  need  not  be  said  here. 
He  was  made  a  baronet  in  1853.  He  married,  first,  Emma, 
a  fair  and  charming  daughter  of  James  Caldwell  of  Linley 
Wood  in  Staffordshire,  and,  secondly,  Saba,  daughter  of  the 
famous  Canon,  Sydney  Smith. 

Two  uncles  of  Sir  Henry  Holland,  sons  of  Samuel  of 
Sandlebridge  and  younger  brothers  of  Peter  Holland,  also 
attained  distinction  in  their  own  lines.  ^  One  of  them,  the 
younger,  Swinton  Holland,  became  a  partner  in  the  great 
House  of  Baring.  His  eldest  son,  Edward  Holland,  at  one 
time  Liberal  M.P.  for  East  Worcestershire,  owned  the 
estate  of  Dumbleton  in  Gloucestershire.  Among  this 
Edward's  sons  were  Frederick  Holland,  Vicar  of  Evesham, 
and  Admiral  Swinton  Holland.  Robert  Martin-Holland, 
C.B.,  of  Martin's  Bank,  Lombard  Street,  and  Gloucestershire, 
is  a  grandson  of  Edward  of  Dumbleton,  and  son  of  Frederick 
of  Evesham,  and  he  has  himself  six  sons.     The  sixth  son  of 

^  For  their  descendants  see  pedigrees  in  Appendix  I. 


300  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Swinton  Holland  was  George  Holland,  who  married  Dorothy, 
daughter  of  Lord  Gifford,  and  became  the  father  of  Canon 
Henry  Scott  Holland,  and  of  other  children. 

The  other  brother  of  Peter  Holland,  named  Samuel, 
established  a  large  financial  and  commercial  business  in 
connection  with  Liverpool  and  South  America,  and  from 
him  descends  a  numerous  race  settled  in  Lancashire,  Wales, 
and  the  South.  Sir  Arthur  Holland  is  one  of  them.  He 
has  five  living  sons. 

A  sister  of  Peter  Holland,  Elizabeth,  married  William 
Stevenson ;  and  her  daughter,  also  named  Elizabeth,  who 
married  the  Rev.  William  Gaskell,  was  the  excellent  authoress. 
Elizabeth  Stevenson  was  born  in  1810,  and  was  mainly 
brought  up  at  Knutsford,  the  model  of  the  town  in  her 
novels,  *  Cranford,'  and  '  Wives  and  Daughters,'  and  her 
uncle,  Dr.  Peter  Holland,  and  his  family  can  be  recognised 
among  the  characters  in  her  stories.^  She  married  in  1832, 
and  died  in  1865. 

Sir  Henry  Holland's  success  in  London,  and  that  in 
the  commercial  and  financial  world  of  his  uncles  Swinton 
and  Samuel,  placed  this  family  upon  a  new,  or  restored, 
social  basis.  The  Hollands  never  were  so  obscure,  before  or 
since,  as  in  the  eighteenth  century.  They  had  lived  at  Mob- 
berley  in  a  quiet  way,  much  as  substantial  yeomen,  farming 
their  own  land — their  younger  sons  becoming  nonconformist 
ministers,  or  provincial  lawyers,  or  the  like.  They  were, 
however,  in  virtue  of  their  descent  from  a  manorial  family, 
described  as  '  gentlemen  '  in  legal  documents,  and  they  steadily 
used  on  their  seals  the  old  Upholland  crest  of  the  lion  rampant 
grasping  a  fleur  de  lys,  which  was  borne  by  Sir  Robert  de 
Holland,  in  1307,  on  his  banner  at  the  Stepney  tournament. 

^  The  two  Misses  Browning  in  Wives  and  Daughters  are  the  images  of  two 
old  daughters  of  Peter  Holland,  who  lived  at  Knutsford,  and  the  two  old  sisters 
in  Cranford  have  also  a  strong  resemblance. 


ELIZABETH    STEVENSON,    MRS.    GASKliLL,    DAUGHTER    OF 
ELIZABETH    HOLLAND 

From  a  miniature  done  in  Edinburgli  bv  James  Thomson,  just  before  she  was  married, 

"in  1832 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  301 

Like  Colonel  Richard  Holland  of  Denton,  but  unlike 
the  Hollands  of  Sutton  and  the  main  line  of  Clifton,  the 
Hollands  who  settled  at  Mobberley  were  Presbyterians 
during  the  Commonwealth  and  after  the  Restoration.  But 
Presbyterianism  never  flourished  in  England  as  it  did  in 
Scotland.  Eventually,  like  most  English  Presbyterians, 
they  became  Unitarians,  and  so  continued  until  the  nine- 
teenth century,  when  most  of  their  descendants  gradually 
reverted  to  the  Church  of  England.  One  or  two  of  them 
even  became  distinguished  members  of  the  Anglican  clergy 
— such  as  the  late  Canon  Francis  Holland  of  Canterbury 
and  Canon  Henry  Scott  Holland,  formerly  of  St.  Paul's 
and  now  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  and  Regius  Professor 
of  Divinity. 

While  they  lived  in  Lancashire  and  Cheshire  these 
Hollands  married  into  families  of  the  same  kind  of  middle- 
class  social  standing  and  religion,  never  going  for  wives 
beyond  the  borders  of  those  counties,  until  Peter  Holland 
went  as  far  as  Staffordshire  for  that  purpose.  They  led 
unemotional  and  unadventurous,  virtuous  and  temperate 
lives,  which  both  earlier  and  later  Hollands  would  have 
thought  intolerably  dull,  and  they  almost  invariably  in 
consequence  had  large  families  and  attained  to  advanced 
ages.  The  late  Lord  Knutsford,  who  died  at  eighty-eight, 
in  1914,  was  the  fifth  in  lineal  succession  of  men  who  passed 
the  eightieth  year,  such  was  the  stored-up  and  yet  un- 
expended vitality  of  the  race. 

On  Sir  Henry  Holland's  death  in  1873,  the  estate  of 
Sandlebridge,  which  he  had  doubled  in  extent  by  purchasing 
adjoining  land,  descended,  together  with  the  baronetcy, 
to  his  eldest  son,  Henry  Thurstan  Holland.^  This  son  was 
born  in  1825,  and  educated  at  Harrow  and  Trinity  College, 

1  The  house  and  land  at  Sandlebridge  were  a  few  years  ago  sold  to  the  City  of 
Manchester  for  the  purpose  of  some  melancholy  Institution. 


302  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Cambridge.  He  was  first  at  the  Bar,  and  then  held  a  high 
post  in  the  Colonial  Office.  He  married,  first,  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  Nathaniel  Hibbert  of  Munden  House  in  Hert- 
fordshire, and,  by  her  mother,  a  granddaughter  of  the  above- 
mentioned  Sydney  Smith,  by  whom  he  had  three  children  ; 
and,  secondly,  Margaret,  daughter  of  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan, 
Baronet,  and  niece  of  Lord  Macaulay,  by  whom  he  had  four 
children.  After  his  father's  death,  he  left  the  Colonial  Office 
and  entered  the  House  of  Commons  as  a  supporter  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  administration.  He  became  Financial 
Secretary  to  the  Treasury  in  Lord  Salisbury's  short  govern- 
ment in  1885  and,  in  the  latter  part  of  1886,  in  his  next 
administration,  was  Vice-President  of  the  Council  for  Educa- 
tion. In  the  ministerial  changes  at  the  beginning  of  1887, 
caused  by  the  revolt  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  against  Lord 
Salisbury,  Sir  Henry  Thurstan  Holland  became  Secretary  of 
State  for  the  Colonies,  and  held  that  great  office  until  the 
Unionist  Government  went  out  of  power  in  1892.  He  had 
the  honour  of  presiding  over  the  first  Colonial  Conference, 
held  in  1887  in  connection  with  Queen  Victoria's  Jubilee. 
He  was  raised  to  the  House  of  Lords  as  Baron  Knutsford 
in  1888,  and  advanced  to  be  Viscount  in  1895.  Lord 
Knutsford  owed  his  success  to  restless  industry  combined 
with  charm  of  manner  and  goodness  of  heart.  He  died  in 
1914,  and  his  eldest  son,  Sydney  George  Holland,  who 
married  Lady  Mary  Ashburnham,  daughter  of  the  fourth 
Earl  of  Ashburnham,  succeeded  to  the  peerage,  which  he 
now  holds  with  distinction. 

The  younger  son  of  Sir  Henry  Holland  was  Francis  James 
Holland.  He  was  at  Eton  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
and  then  took  Orders.  He  first  held  the  living  of  St. 
Dunstan's,  Canterbury ;  was  then  for  twenty  years  incumbent 
of  Quebec  Chapel  in  London,  and  for  the  last  twenty-five 
years  of  his  life  was  a  Canon  of  Canterbury  Cathedral.     He 


HOLLANDS  OF  CLIFTON  303 

also  was  chaplain  to  Queen  Victoria  and  to  King  Edward  VII. 
He  was  certainly  one  of  the  best  ol  all  his  race.  Like  his 
father  he  was  a  great  traveller,  and  died  at  Sorrento  in  Italy, 
when  he  was  just  seventy -nine,  on  his  way  back  from  a 
journey  in  North  Africa,  in  the  year  1907.  After  a  solemn 
service  in  Canterbury  Cathedral  he  was  buried  at  Godmers- 
ham  in  Kent.  His  wife  was  Mary  Sibylla,  daughter  of 
Alfred  Lyall,  rector  of  Harbledown  in  Kent,  and  sister  of 
the  distinguished  Anglo-Indians,  Sir  Alfred  and  Sir  James 
Lyall.     He  left  sons  and  grandsons  now  living. 

One  of  the  sisters  of  the  first  Viscount  Knutsford  and 
Francis  Holland  was  Emily,  renowned  for  her  beauty  and 
•intelligence  in  early  Victorian  days,  and  she  was  living  till 
the  year  1908.  She  married  Charles  Buxton,  M.P.,  of  Fox 
Warren  in  Surrey,  and  one  of  her  sons  is  Sydney  Charles, 
from  1905  to  1914  a  member  of  the  Liberal  Cabinet,  and 
now  first  Viscount  Buxton,  and  Governor-General  of  South 
Africa. 

One  of  Sir  Henry  Holland's  daughters  by  his  second 
marriage  was  Caroline,  who  inherited  much  of  the  cheerful 
and  indomitable  vigour  of  her  maternal  grandfather,  Sydney 
Smith,  and  was  well  known  in  London  for  her  social  and 
philanthropic  energies,  until  her  death  in  1909. 


PEDIGREE   OF   THE   HOLLANDS    OF   CONWAY^  {abbreviated). 


Piers  (or  Peter)  HoUand  of  Oouway.' 

I 

William  Holland 

of  Conway. 

Thomas  B.o]la.nA= Isabella,  d.  of  WiUiani 
of  Oonvvay.       I  Talbot. 


William  Holland =<7rac<  Conway     Oatherine=(1477)  Jamet  Atherton. 
of  Conway.      I  of  Bodrijddan. 

Humphrey  HoUand  =  Elizabeth,  d  of 

of  Conway ;  d.  1528.  I 

Hugh  Holland  =  £■//««,  d.  and  heiress  of 
of  Conway.     I  Sir  Richard  Bulkcley. 

Hugh  Holland =/a«f,  d.  of  Hugh  Conway  of 

of  Conway  ;  d.  1  Bryneurin,  and  Ellen,  d.  of 

1584.  I  Sir   W.  Griffith  of  Pmrhyn. 


Edward  Ko\l&nA=Judith  Joh?iso7i 


of  Conway  ;    d. 
1601. 


of  Beaumaris. 


Robert  Holland  =  ya«e,  d.  of  Robert 


M.A..,  Rector  of 

Walwyns  Castle, 

&c. ;  d.  1622. 


William     'Ro\\a,ni=CatheTine,  d.  of  William 
of  Conway,  d.  1638.  I  Glyn  of  Lliar. 


Meylir  of  Haver- 
fordwest. 


Five  other 
sons. 


Fire 
daughters. 


Nicholas    Holland  = 
Vicar  of  Marloes.    I 


d.of- 


Margaret   Holland  =Tfi7Ziam  Williams. 
(heiress). 


Holland  Williams  =Jane,  d.  of  Edward 
of  Conway.        I         Edwards. 


Edward   '  Holland '  =  Elizabeth,  d.  of 
of  Conway  ;  assumed  I      Owen  Anuyl, 
name  of  '  Holland ' ;  | 
d.  1734.  I 


I 
Nicholas     Holland  =Dorothy    Laugharne 
of  Walwyns  Castle    and    three   other 
and  Haverfordwest;  wives. 

<i.l718 


Rice  Holland  =  ■ 
d.  early.       I 


-,  d.  of of  ■ 

Uxbridge, 


Nicholas     Holland  =  Sarah,  d.  of ...  Suallow 
of  Walwyns  Castle,  I         of  Eastham. 
and  Haverfordwest ;  | 
d.  1720.  I 


Jane  '  Holland '  =  Robert  Williams. 
(heiress);  rf.  1780. 


Hugh  Williams, = Mary,  d.of  H.  Playfurd. 
M.A.,  of  Conway ; 
d.  1809. 


Jane  Silence  Williams=Sir  David  Ersline,  Bart., 
(heiress) ;  d.  1886.    I         of  Cambo,  Fife. 


Nicholas     Holland,  =  /an«,  d.  of  Edward 


M.A.,Vicar  of  Muck- 
ing and   Rector    of 
Stifford  ;  d.  1771. 


Clarke,  barrister. 


Samuel      Holland,  =  Frances,  d.  of  Lord 


M.A.,  M.D.,  Rector 

of  Poynings,  &c.  ; 

d.  1857. 


Chancellor  Erskine. 


Thomas  Agar  Holland =4^adafena,  d.  of 


M.A.,  Rector  of  Poyn- 
ings ;  d. 


Sir  Thomas  Erskine,  Bart.=Zaida 

I  Ffolliott. 

(See  Baronetage.) 


David  Holland  Erskine= Augusta 
I  Stoddart. 

Three  sons. 


Major  P.  Stewart. 


r  Thomas = 

(1)  Louise 

Stewart  = 

-.  (1)  Mary 

Philip     = 

Constance 

David 

=  Catherine, 

Four 

Erskine 

Delessert ; 

HoUand, 

Mossop ; 

Esme 

Fielder. 

Erskine 

d.  of  Lumh 

daughters 

Holland, 

(2)  Ellen 

M.A., 

(2)  Emily 

Stewart 

Holland, 

Stocks,  R.A. 

K.C., 

Edwardes. 

Vicar 

Reay. 

HoUand, 

M.A., 

D.C.L. 

St.James', 
Dudley. 

M.A., 

Vicar, 

Hoddesdeu. 

Rector, 
Culmingtou 

Six 

sons. 

Sixs 

ous. 

Two 

sous. 

'  This  pedigree  is  compUed  by  Sir  Thomas  Erskine  Holland,  K.C.    A  fuller  pedigree  by  the  same  is  printed  in 

the '  ArchEEologia  Cambrensis,'  series  3,  vol.  12,  with  authorities. 
=  In  the  service  of  Henry  IV,  believed  to  be  fifth  in  descent  from  Alan,  a  brother  of  Robert,  first  Lord  HoUand. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

HOLLANDS   OF   WALES 

i. — The  Conway  Family 

'  The  highest  tides  have  their  falls  and  ebbs,  and,  after  great  tempests  and 
darkest  days,  the  sun  shineth.' — Rev.  Robert  Holland,  Dedication  to  the 
'  Holie  Historie.' 

A  branch  of  the  Hollands,  long  settled  at  Conway  in  Wales, 
and  still  continued,  in  the  male  line,  in  England,  is  said  by- 
some  good  authorities  to  descend  from  Alan  Holland,  a  son 
of  Robert  Holland  of  Upholland  and  a  brother  of  Robert, 
the  first  Lord  Holland,  who  was  beheaded  at  Henley,  in 
1328.  This  Alan  is  stated  to  have  had  a  son  named  John, 
who  was  the  great-grandfather  of  Peter,  or  Piers,  Holland 
of  Conway.  From  this  Peter  the  descent  of  the  family 
to  the  present  day,  shown  in  the  pedigree  herewith,  is  clear 
and  certain.  Peter  himself  served  in  the  household  of 
King  Henry  IV. 

The  ancestor  of  these  Hollands  came,  it  appears,  to 
Conway,  to  which  English  colonists  had  been  brought,  in  the 
first  instance,  by  Edward  I,  after  his  conquest  of  the  wild 
Celtic  country.  These  settlers  were  described  in  Latin  as 
'  Advenae.'  R.  Williams,  in  his  '  History  of  Conway ' 
(1835,  p.  43),  says  :  '  The  town  had  obtained  the  great 
privileges  mentioned  above  from  Edward  I.  In  order 
that  he  might  have  a  body  of  Englishmen,  besides  the 
garrisons  of  his  castles,  to  maintain  his  power  in  Wales,  all 

305  X 


306  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

that  held  office  in  his  towns  of  Aberconway,  Caernarvon, 
and  Beaumaris  were  exclusively  English.'  And  further 
on,  he  says  :  '  The  exclusive  advantages  enjoyed  by  English- 
men, from  the  time  of  the  first  Edward  for  several  centuries, 
brought  here  a  great  number  of  adventurers,  and  the  names 
of  almost  all  the  inhabitants  were  extraneous  :  such  were  the 
Hookes,  Stodarts,  Actons,  .  .  .  Hollands,  &c.  The  last  who 
bore  any  of  these  names  was  Owen  Holland  of  Plas-isav,  Esq., 
who  died  in  1795  .  .  .  and  even  within  the  last  two  centuries 
Sir  John  Wynne  of  Gwydir  mentions  that  they  were  called 
*'  the  lawyers  of  Carnarvon,  the  merchands  of  Beaumaris, 
and  the  gentlemen  of  Conway."  ' 

Besides  their  town  house,  called  Plas-isav,  these  Hollands 
owned  most  of  Conway  and  much  property  in  the  neighbour- 
hood, in  particular  Bodlondeb  and  Marie,  holding  also  the 
Castle,  by  tenure  of  a  dish  of  fish  to  Lord  Hertford  when  he 
passed  through.  The  ferry  belonged  to  them,  and  they  are 
said  to  have  received  a  large  sum  in  compensation  when  Con- 
way Bridge  was  built. 

The  arms  of  this  family  are  '  azure  seme  de  fleurs  de  lys, 
a  lion  ramp,  gard,  arg,^  Crest :  '  out  of  a  flame  ppr.  an 
arm  issuant  habited  in  a  close  sleeve  sa  the  fist  ppr, 
holding  a  lion's  gamb.  barwise  erased  or  the  talons  to  the 
sinister  side.'  ^  Their  motto,  at  least  as  early  as  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  was  Fiat  Pax,  Floreat  Justitia,  and  is  so  still. 

An  interesting  deed  exists,  dated  17  Edward  IV  (1477), 
whereby  '  Thomas  de  Holond '  settled  his  property  at  Conway 
on  his  son  William  and  his  daughter  Catherine,  wife  of 
James  Atherton,  successively  in  tail,  with  ultimate  remainder 
to  the  burgesses  of  the  town  '  for  the  maintenance  of  a  fit 
and  proper  priest  to  say  masses  in  Conway  Church  for  the 
salvation  of  the  soul  of  the  said  Thomas  de  Holond  and  of 

1  This  crest  is  said  by  some  to  have  been  borne  by  the  Hollands  before  the 
family  was  ennobled.     (Harl.  MS.  2076,  f.  26.) 


J 


HOLLANDS  OF  WALES  307 

Isabella,  his  beloved  wife,  and  of  his  ancestors,  relatives, 
and  heirs,  as  the  burgesses  shall  answer  for  it  before  the  most 
high  Judge  in  the  Day  of  Judgement.' 

In  the  church  at  Conway  there  are  a  great  many  monu- 
ments of  the  family.  The  inscription  on  one  of  these  runs 
as  follows  :  '  Edward  Holland,  Armiger,  posuit  hoc  memoriale 
Hollandorum  ad  requisitionem  Hugonis  Holland,  Arm., 
patris  sui,  paulo  ante  obitum,  qui  obiit  13  die  Mali,  A° 
D'ni,  1584.'  The  Edward  who  thus  commemorated  his 
father  was  himself  commemorated,  on  his  death  in  1601, 
in  another  Latin  inscription  in  the  same  church,  by  his  own 
son,  William. 

This  son,  William  Holland,  of  Conway,  married  Catherine, 
daughter  of  William  Glynn,  of  Lliar,  and  with  him  ended 
the  male  succession  of  this  elder  line.  He  had,  however, 
a  daughter  and  heiress,  Margaret,  who  married  William 
Williams.  Their  son  was  christened  Holland,  and  his 
children  assumed  the  surname  of  '  Holland,'  but  the  male 
descent  of  this  family  again  came  to  an  end  in  the  following 
generation,  on  the  death  of  Owen  Holland,  of  Plas-isav, 
Conway,  in  1795.  He  died  without  issue,  and  the  property 
passed  eventually  to  the  younger  son  of  his  sister  Jane, 
who  had  also  married  a  Williams,  Robert  Williams,  owner 
of  the  charming  estate  of  Pwllycrochon.  This  son,  the  Rev. 
Hugh  Williams,  of  Conway  and  Pwllycrochon,  left  a  daughter 
and  heiress,  Jane  Silence  Williams,  who,  in  1819,  married 
Sir  David  Erskine,  of  Cambo,  Fife,  the  great-grandfather 
of  the  present  baronet  of  that  name.  The  Welsh  property 
passed  by  this  marriage  to  the  Cambo  family,  and  was  sold 
by  them  in  1865  for  about  £212,000.  The  Conway  family 
has,  however,  been  continued  in  the  male  descent,  to  the 
present  time. 

Edward  Holland,  of  Conway,  who  erected  the  monument 
in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  had  a  younger  brother,  Robert,  who 


308  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

married  Joan,  daughter  of  Robert  Meylir  and  of  Catherine, 
heiress  of  Howell  ap  Rees  Vawr,  of  Haverfordwest,  in 
the  County  of  Pembroke.  Robert  Holland  was  a  very 
strongly  Protestant  clergyman,  M.A.,  of  Jesus  College,  Cam- 
bridge, and  Rector  of  Prendergast,  holding  afterwards  two 
other  Crown  livings  in  Pembrokeshire.  Some  account  of 
him,  as  also  of  his  brother  Henry,  M.A.,  ultimately 
Vicar  of  St.  Bride's,  Fleet  Street,  is  given  in  the  '  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,'  Robert  published  in  1594 
a  little  book  entitled  '  The  Holie  Historic  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ's  Nativitie,  etc.,  gathered  into  English 
Meeter,  and  published  to  withdraw  vaine  wits  from  all 
unsauerie  and  wicked  rimes  and  fables,  to  some  love  and 
liking  of  spirituall  songs  and  holy  Scriptures.'  He  remarks 
in  the  same  preface  that  the  '  Booke  of  God  delivereth  the 
receiver  from  the  poisoned  cup  of  that  great .  Circe,  the 
Bishop  of  Rome,  which  hath  infected  so  many  thousand,  and 
turned  them  into  swine  ' ;  but,  none  the  less,  he  says,  in 
those  days  many  bestowed  '  months  and  years  '  on  reading 
romances,  '  but  scarce  bestow  one  minute  on  the  Bible, 
albeit  the  booke  of  God.'  The  Dedication  and  Address 
to  the  Reader  are  followed  by  twenty-eight  lines  of  com- 
mendatory verses  by  H.  Smartus,  Oxoniensis,  ending  : 

*  Ergo  manent  Hollande  tibi  coelestia  serta 

Carpere,  namque  Theon  nullus  obesse  queat.* 

Two  other  poets,  John  Canon  and  John  Pine,  contribute 
laudatory  verses  in  English. 

Robert  wrote  also  three  books  in  Welsh,  one  of  them 
designed  to  discourage  recourse  to  so-called  witches.  His 
*  Epistle  Dedicatory  '  to  King  James  I,  prefixed  to  a  genealogy 
of  that  monarch,  '  gathered  by  George  Owen  Harry,  Parson 
of  Whitchurch,  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Robert  Holland,' 
printed  in  1604,  is  so  apposite  to  family  history  of  the  present 


HOLLANDS  OF  WALES  309 

kind  that  it  must  be  quoted  here,  especially  since  it  lacks 
neither  style  nor  dignity. 

'  It  is  the  desire  of  immortality  in  every  man's  brest, 
which  inforceth  all  men  by  all  meanes  to  propagate  their 
names  to  posterity,  so  as  it  may  never  die  (if  it  were  possible). 
Hence  it  is  that  some  erect  magnificent  monuments  for  their 
Tombs  .  .  .  that  other  some  desire  to  leave  an  heire  of  their 
name,  whom  they  endow  with  great  livelihood,  in  whose 
descent  they  think  still  to  live.  Hence  is  it  that  other 
derive  the  memorie  of  their  names  backward  from  antiquitie 
as  far  as  they  can  :  who,  as  they  wish  they  might  draw  their 
first  stemm  from  all  beginnings,  so  do  they  desire  to  pro- 
pagate their  memorie  without  ende. 

'  Thus  the  restless  soul,  knowing  her  own  worth  and 
Immortality,  seekes  these  by-pathes  to  finde  out  her  own 
Pedigree,  which  though  it  errs  in  the  object,  by  not  aspiring 
to  heaven,  whence  she  had  her  first  origin,  yet  is  this  desire 
being  naturall  no  way  discommendable,  for  that  it  shews  the 
generosity  of  the  minde.' 

One  of  Robert  Holland's  sons,  Nicholas,  also  took  Holy 
Orders,  and  in  1618  was  presented  by  the  Crown  to  the 
Vicarage  of  Marloes  in  Pembrokeshire.  His  descendants, 
from  father  to  son,  for  more  than  a  century  practised  law  at 
Haverfordwest,  holding  estates  at  Walwyns  Castle,  Walton 
West,  and  other  places  in  that  county.  It  will  be  seen,  from 
the  pedigree  annexed,  that  the  family  has  never  ceased  to 
be  carried  on  in  the  male  line,  though  it  is  no  longer 
represented  in  Wales,  having  for  nearly  two  hundred  years 
been  settled  in  England,  where  they  have  evinced  a  marked 
predilection  for  Oxford  and  for  taking  Holy  Orders,  first  in 
the  person  of  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Holland,  M.A.,  born  in  1713, 
Vicar  of  Mucking  and  Rector  of  Stifford,  in  Essex.  He 
married  Jane  Clarke  of  the  Ikenham  family.  His  elder  sons, 
Thomas,  a  Colonel  in  the  Indian  Army,  and  William,  an 


310  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Indian  merchant,  left  no  male  issue.  Not  so  his  third  son, 
Dr.  Samuel  Holland,  a  distinguished  divine,  who,  besides 
holding  two  or  three  other  livings,  was  Rector  of  Poynings 
in  Sussex,  and  after  1817  Precentor  and  Prebendary  of 
Chichester  Cathedral.  His  grandson,  Sir  Thomas  Erskine 
Holland,  says  of  him  :  '  Landscape  gardening  was  indeed  a 
favourite  amusement  with  him,  and  he  was  a  considerable 
botanist.  He  kept  up  his  classics,  and  was  a  man  of  wide 
general  reading.  He  was,  after  the  fashion  of  those  days, 
thoroughly  religious,  always  taking  a  selection  of  devotional 
works  in  the  old-fashioned  chariot  in  which  his  frequent 
journeys  were  made  between  Poynings  and  Chichester.  He 
firmly  believed  in  the  advantages  of  the  system  which 
accumulated  preferment  upon  the  superior  clergy,  and  was 
strongly  opposed  to  Methodism,  maintaining  these  views  in 
sermons  which  attracted  a  good  deal  of  attention.  He  was 
a  Rural  Dean,  and  zealous  in  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of 
the  office.' 

Dr.  Holland  married  Frances,  daughter  of  Lord  Chancellor 
Erskine,  and  had  two  sons,  who  both  became  clergymen, 
and  four  daughters.  In  1846  he  resigned  the  living  of 
Poynings,  in  which  he  was  succeeded  by  his  eldest  son,  Thomas 
Agar  Holland,  M.A.,  previously  Rector  of  Greatham,  Hants, 
who  held  it  till  his  death  in  1888.  A  short  account  of  him 
is  given  in  the  '  Dictionary  of  National  Biography.'  He  wrote 
much  verse  throughout  his  life,  and  one  of  his  earlier  poems, 
'  Dryburgh  Abbey,'  was  warmly  praised  by  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
He  also  published  prose  writings.  He  married  Madalena, 
daughter  of  Major  Philip  Stewart,  and  had  five  sons,  three 
of  whom  became  clergymen,  as  have  also  two  of  his  grandsons. 
His  eldest  son,  the  distinguished  international  jurist,  Sir 
Thomas  Erskine  Holland,  K.C.,  D.C.L.,  F.B.A.,  Fellow  of 
All  Souls  College,  sometime  Chichele  Professor  of  Inter- 
national Law  at  Oxford,  has  several  sons,  one  of  them 
holding  a  high  position  in  the  Indian  Civil  Service. 


's^: 


Q^v^THQc^gHoklK^:E•.. 


m 


weeeqw 


wmmmiMmm 


From  the  Monument  in  Conway  Church,  which  also  commemorates  by 
inscriptions  successively  added  three  more  generations  of  the  family 


HOLLANDS  OF  WALES  811 

Sir  Thomas  Erskine  Holland  is  intimately  acquainted 
with  the  history  of  his  family.  As  long  ago  as  1866  he  con- 
tributed an  article,  with  pedigree,  on  the  '  Hollands  ot 
Conway,'  to  the  'Archaeologia  Cambrensis,'  series  3,  vol.  xii, 
and  has  subsequently  printed  for  '  private  circulation  only  * 
a  full  history  of  their  fortunes  during  five  hundred  years. 

The  present  writer  is  indebted  and  grateful  to  him  for 
information  on  the  subject  contained  in  the  preceding  pages. 


812  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

II. — The  Hollands  of  Denbighshire  and  Anglesey 

In  addition  to  the  Hollands  of  Conway  there  was  in  Wales 
a  group  of  families  of  the  same  name,  bearing  the  same 
arms  with  a  different  crest,  but  of  more  doubtful  descent. 
Its  various  branches  were  established  at  Pennant,  Kinmel, 
Teyrdan,  Hendrefawr,  Denbigh,  and  Berw. 

In  the  reign  of  King  Charles  I,  the  right  of  Sir  Thomas 
Holland  of  Berw  to  his  arms  was  actively  challenged.  The 
result  was  a  special  heraldic  inquiry,  resulting  in  the  following 
*  Confirmation '  : 

'  To  all  and  singulare  to  whom  these  presents  shall  come, 
John  Borough  Knight  Garter  Principall  King  of  Armes 
sendeth  greeting :  Upon  complaint  made  unto  me  that 
Sir  Thomas  Holland  of  Berrow  in  the  county  of  Anglesey, 
Kt.  did  unduley  beare  for  his  armes  azure  a  lyon  rampant 
gardant  between  five  flowers  de  lice  argent,  w**  armes  (as 
was  conceived)  properlie  belonged  to  the  family  of  Holland 
some  time  Duke  of  Exeter,  the  said  Sir  Thomas  Holland 
having  notice  given  him  of  y®  said  complaynt  repayred  unto 
me,  and  produced  divers  and  sundry  auncient  evidences, 
pedigrees,  bookes  of  armes,  letters  patents  and  other  authen- 
tique  testimonies  of  credible  persons  :  whereby  it  manifestly 
appeared  that  the  said  Sir  Thomas  Holland  is  lineally 
descended  from  Hoshkin  alias  Roger  Holland,  who  by 
computation  of  time  lived  in  or  neer  the  raigne  of  Edward 
the  third.  He  the  said  Sir  Thomas  being  the  sonne  of  Owen, 
Sonne  of  Edward,  sonne  of  Owen,  sonne  of  John,  sonne  of 
Howell,  sonne  of  the  above  named  Hoshkin  Holland,  and 
that  John  Holland,  sonne  of  Howell  Holland  aforesaid  was 
household  servant  to  King  Henry  the  sixt,  and  Owen  Holland 
great-grandfather  to  the  said  Sir  Thomas  was  sheriffe  of  the 
county  of  Anglesey  for  tearme  of  his  life  as  by  letters  patents 
under  the  scales  of  King  Henry  the  seventh  and  King  Henry 


HOLLANDS  OF  WALES  313 

the  eighth  and  certain  deeds  of  Charles  Brandon,  Duke  of 
Suffolke,  and  other  muniments,  appeareth.  And  further 
that  by  sundry  matches  and  marriages  the  said  Sir  Thomas 
is  alHed  to  many  famiHes  of  undoubted  gentry  in  and  near 
the  said  county,  who  acknowledge  the  said  Sir  Thomas  for 
their  allie  and  kinsman :  beside  ye  testimony  of  divers 
gentlemen  of  the  name  of  Holland  issued  from  the  aforesaid 
Hoshkin  alias  Roger  their  common  ancestor  :  and  as  touching 
the  arms  above  mentioned,  it  is  manifest  by  sundry  pedigrees 
and  bookes  of  armes  remayning  in  the  custody  of  George 
Owen,  Esquire,  Yorke  Herauld,  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
said  Sir  Thomas  did  beare  the  same  as  they  doe  above  em- 
blsLZoned.  In  consideration  of  which  premises  and  for  that 
the  said  Sir  Thomas  Holland  is  not  only  dignified  with 
knighthood,  but  likewise  a  justice  of  the  peace  and  one  of 
the  deputie  lieutenants  in  the  county  where  he  liveth  :  I  have 
thought  fit  at  his  request  to  signifie  and  declare  by  these 
presentes  that  the  said  Sir  Thomas  Holland  and  his  heires  of 
that  family  resp'ly  may  use  and  bear  the  foresaid  armes  each 
with  his  proper  difference  according  to  the  law  and  usage  of 
armes.  In  witness  whereof  I  have  hereunto  affixed  the  seals 
of  mine  office  and  subscribed  my  name.  Dated  the  five  and 
twentieth  day  of  November  in  the  eleventh  year  of  the  reign 
of  our  Sovereign  Lord  Charles  by  the  grace  of  God  King  of 
Great  Brittaine,  France,  and  Ireland,  Defender  of  the  Faith, 
etc.,  and  in  the  yeare  of  Our  Lord  God,  1635.' 

The  argument  of  the  Herald  appears  to  rest  upon  the 
social  position  of  Sir  Thomas,  and  no  attempt  is  made  to 
trace  the  pedigree  above  Hoshkin  or  Roger  Holland.  It  is, 
however,  alleged  by  reputable  authorities  that  this  Roger 
was  the  great-grandson  of  a  Sir  Thomas  Holland  who  married 
Joyce  daughter  of  Sir  Jasper  Croft,  and  lived  in  the  reign 
of  Edward  I.  This  Sir  Thomas  was  alleged  to  be  a  son  of 
the  first  Sir  Thurstan  Holland  of  Upholland,  and  therefore 


314  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

brother  of  Sir  Robert  Holland,  father  of  Robert,  first  Lord 
Holland.  The  name  of  such  a  Thomas  does  not  occur  in 
the  Lancashire  records,  but  this  is  perhaps  not  enough  to 
prove  his  non-existence.  Thurstan  had,  however,  a  son 
named  Roger,  but  nothing  is  known  of  him,  or  any  descend- 
ants of  his.     Roger  may  possibly  have  gone  to  Wales. 

Other  origins  have  been  attributed  to  these  Hollands, 
but  no  doubt  are  mythical.  Pennant,  in  his  '  Tour  of  Wales,' 
1784,  says  (vol.  ii,  p.  354) :  '  The  pedigrees  derive  them 
from  a  Sir  Thomas  Holland,  who,  tradition  says,  came,  with 
another  brother,  into  Wales  in  troublesome  times.  I  have 
reason  to  suppose  them  to  have  been  William  and  Thomas, 
the  two  younger  sons  of  John  Holland,  Duke  of  Exeter, 
who  died  in  1446,  and  left  to  each  of  them  an  annuity  of 
£40.  They  were  of  a  most  unpopular  family,  therefore 
probably  retired  to  shun  the  miseries  they  might  experience 
in  that  age  of  civil  discord.'  William  and  Thomas  were,  in 
fact,  illegitimate  sons,  and  were  so  described  in  the  Duke's  will ; 
but  nothing  in  the  least  authentic  is  known  as  to  their 
lives.  John  Williams,  in  his  '  Denbigh,'  says  that  '  the 
Hollands  of  these  parts  have  a  family  tradition  that  they  are 
descended  from  a  Lord  Holland  who,  having  committed 
high  treason,  fled  to  Wales,  and,  when  in  exile,  living  in  the 
Snowdonian  Wilds,  married  a  Welsh  peasant,  the  daughter 
of  a  pedlar.'  These  wild  legends  are  by  no  means  chrono- 
logically compatible  with  the  Herald's  Report  which  traces  the 
origin  to  Roger  or  Hoshkin  Holland,  who  lived  in  the  reign  of 
Edward  III,  and  no  credit  whatever  is  to  be  attached  to  them. 

A  full  pedigree  accompanies  the  article,  contributed  in 
1867  by  Sir  Thomas  Erskine  Holland  to  the  '  Archaeologia 
Cambrensis '  (series  3,  vol.  xiii.),  upon  this  widespreading 
family  of  Hollands  of  Denbighshire  and  Anglesey.  It  is  to 
this  article  that  the  present  writer  is  indebted  for  the  above 
account  of  them,  but  it  did  not  seem  necessary  to  reproduce 


HOLLANDS  OF  WALES  315 

here  the  copious  pedigree  of  these  probably  extinct  folk  of 
dubious  origin.  They  seem  all  to  have  died  out  in  the  male 
Hne,  in  the  course  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  cen- 
turies. They  were  an  extremely  provincial  race,  and,  almost 
without  exception,  married  into  Welsh  Celtic  families. 

Only  one  of  their  offspring  is  distinguished  enough  to 
appear  in  the  '  Dictionary  of  National  Biography.'  This  is 
Hugh  Holland,!  who  was  born  at  Denbigh,  educated  at  West- 
minster School,  a  Scholar  in  1589,  and  afterwards  a  Fellow,  of 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  He  travelled  to  Rome,  Jeru- 
salem, and  Constantinople,  and  on  his  return  studied  in  the 
Oxford  libraries.  He  died  in  1633,  at  the  age  of  seventy, 
and  was  buried,  without  any  monument,  near  the  door 
of  St.  Benet's  Chapel  in  Westminster  Abbey.  He  wrote : 
(1)  The  not  very  brilliant  sonnet  prefixed  in  1629  to 
the  first  folio  of  Shakespeare,  and  therefore  the  best 
known  of  his  compositions  ;  (2)  Verses  prefixed  to  a 
musical  work  entitled  '  Parthenia,'  1611 ;  (3)  Verses  pre- 
fixed to  the  *  Roxana  of  Alabaster  ' ;  (4)  '  On  the  Death  of 
Prince  Henry  ' ;  (5)  '  On  Matthew,  Bishop  of  Durham  ' ; 
(6)  *  Verses  Descriptive  of  the  Cities  of  Europe ' ;  (7)  '  Life 
of  Camden  ' ;  (8)  '  A  Cypress  Garland  for  the  Sacred  Forehead 
of  our  late  Sovereign,  King  James.'  He  dedicated  the 
*  Cypress  Garland  '  to  George  Villiers,  Duke  of  Buckingham, 
who,  he  says  in  the  magniloquent  and  obsequious  style  of  the 
age  '  led  me  by  the  hand,  not  once,  nor  twice,  to  kiss  that 
awful  hand  [of  James  I]  to  which  I  durst  not  else  have 
aspired.  With  what  sweetness  and  bravery  the  Great 
Majesty  of  Britain  embraced  then  his  meanest  vassel  our 
young  Sovereign,  then  Prince  of  my  country  [Wales]  Your 
Grace,  and  the  honourable  lords  then  present,  perhaps- 
remember  ;  sure  I  am  I  can  never  forget,  and,  if  I  do,  let 
my  right  hand  forget  her  cunning  '  etc. 

^  His  descent  is  quite  clear.     See  Arch.  Camb.  mentioned  above. 


316  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

This  is  pretty  strong,  and  so  it  is  when  Holland  in  the 
poem  calls  James  '  a  mortal  God.'  It  must  have  made 
Buckingham  smile.  Hugh  Holland  is  also  guilty  in  this 
poem  of  this  account  of  the  ravages  recently  made  by 
death  in  the  ranks  of  the  English  nobility. 

How  many  great  ones  here  not  meanly  graced 
In  thirteen  months  the  dance  of  Death  have  traced  ! 
Three  Earls,  two  Dukes,  a  Marquis,  and  a  Baron, 
Who  then  may  'scape  thy  boat,  uncourteous  Caron  ? 

The  same  '  Cypress  Garland '  contains  a  sad  little  fragment 
of  autobiography  : 

Cursed  be  the  day  that  I  was  born,  and  cursed 
The  nights  that  have  so  long  my  sorrows  nursed. 
Yet  grief  is  by  the  surer  side  my  brother 
The  child  of  Pain,  and  Payne  was  eke  my  mother,^ 
Who  children  had,  the  Ark  had  men  as  many. 
Of  which,  except  myself,  now  breathes  not  any. 
Nor  Ursula,  my  dear,  nor  Phil,  my  daughter. 
Amongst  us  Death  hath  made  so  dire  a  slaughter ; 
Them,  and  my  Martin,  have  I,  wretch,  survived.  .  .   . 

Fuller,  in  his  '  English  Worthies,'  expresses  the  opinion 
that  Hugh  Holland  was  '  no  bad  English,  but  a  most  excellent 
Latin  poet.'  He  also  says  that  he  was  '  addicted  to  the 
new-old  religion,'  and  when  in  Italy  '  let  fly  freely  against 
the  credit  of  Queen  Elizabeth,'  for  which  scandalum  Regince, 
when  he  arrived  at  Constantinople,  on  his  way  back  from 
Palestine,  Sir  Thomas  Glover,  ambassador  there  for  King 
James  I,  had  him  put  into  prison  for  a  while.  He  was  dis- 
appointed, says  Fuller,  on  his  return  to  England,  at  not 
getting  an  official  post,  expecting  to  be  made  Clerk  of  the 
Council  at  least,  and  '  grumbled  out  the  rest  of  his  life  in 
visible  discontentment.'  The  poet  certainly  ought  not  to 
have  expected  any  official  promotion  after  letting  fly  so 

^  Hugh  Holland's  mother  was  a  Miss  Payne  by  birth. 


HOLLANDS  OF  WALES  317 

freely  at  Queen  Elizabeth.  Fuller,  however,  had  a  prejudice 
against  Hugh  Holland,  on  the  ground  that  the  poet  was 
more  or  less  a  Catholic,  and  his  remarks  may  therefore  lack 
verity.  Anthony  a  Wood,  who  was  no  Puritan,  says  (*  Ath. 
Oxon.,'  vol.  ii,  p.  560)  that  Hugh  Holland  '  died  within  the 
City  of  Westminster  (having  always  been  ex  animo  Catholicus), 
in  1633,  whereupon  his  body  was  buried  in  the  Abbey  Church 
of  St.  Peter  there,  near  to  the  door  entering  into  the  monu- 
ments, on  the  three  and  twentieth  day  of  July  in  the  same 
year.  I  have  seen  (Wood  adds)  a  copy  of  his  epitaph  made 
by  himself,  wherein  he  is  styled,  "  Miserrimus  peccator, 
musarum  et  amicitiarum  cultor  sanctissimus."  '  Rather  a 
touching  self-inscription. 

Hugh  Holland  had  an  interesting,  if  not  very  fortunate, 
life,  and  he  evidently  belonged  to  the  best  literary  society 
of  the  time — that  which  included  Ben  Jonson  and  Shake- 
speare. He  could  tell  them  tales  of  Wales,  Cambridge, 
Rome,  Jerusalem,  and  Constantinople. 


HOLLANDS  OF  NORFOLK 

Brian  Holland,  said  to  be  grandson  of  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton  who  died  1508. 


Edward  Holland 
of  Glossop  in  Derby- 
ehire. 


John  Holland, 
a  Puritan  Divine. 


John      Holland  =  Anne  Warner.         Two  other 
of  Wortwell  Hall,  sona  and 

Redenhall,      Nor-  a  daughter, 

folk;  d.  Feb.  10, 
1542.  Servant  of 
Duke  of  Norfolk. 


Dr. 


Philemon  Holland 
(1552-1636). 


Anne  Peyton. 


Henry 
Holland. 
1583-1650 


Abraham 
HoUand. 
d. 1626 


Seven  other 
children. 


Sir  Thomas  Holland 
of  Kenninghall. 


Brian  Holland  =  Katherine  Payne, 
o  f    Wo  r  t  w  e  1 1 ; 
Escheator   of 
Norfolk. 


John  Holland ;  =  Mary,  d.  of  Sir  Edmund 


bought 
ham;  d 


Quiden 
1586. 


Windham  of  Felbrigg  Hall, 
Norfolk. 


Sir  Thomas  Holland  =  Mary,  d.  of  Sir  Edward 
of  Quidenham  and  Wigmore  of  IMiddlesex. 
Wortwell ;  knighted 
1608;   d.  1625. 


Sir  John  HoUand;  = 
made  Baronet  1629 ; 
6.  1603,  d.  1700. 


Alathea,  widow  of  Lord 
Sandys  of  the  Vine, 
Herts. 


Katherine  =  Sir  Robert  Cromptot 


Thomas  Holland; 
d.  1698. 


Elizabeth  Read. 


Katharine,  a  nun 
at  Bruges. 


Three  other  sons; 
d.s.p. 


Sir  John  Holland,  Bart.,  =  Lady  Rebecca,  d.  of  Three  other  sons ; 

of  Quidenham.  I    Earl  of  Yarmouth.  d.s.p. 

d.  1724 \ 

Sir  WiUiam  Holland,  = d.  of  M.  Upton,       Isabella.       Diana.  Charlotte. 

Bart.,  of  Quidenham.        a  Spanish  merchant. 
d.s.p.  1729 


CHAPTER  XIV 

HOLLANDS   OF   NORFOLK,    ETC. 

I. — Hollands  of  Norfolk 

•     Homo,  vanitati  similia  f  actus  est,  dies  eius  si  cut  umbra  prsetereunt. 

Ps.  143 

A  FAMILY  of  Hollands,  settled  in  Norfolk,  claimed  descent 
from  the  Lancashire  Hollands  of  Denton,  and  bore  as  arms 
the  lion  and  lilies,  with  the  motto  Secreta  mea  mihi.  Their 
claim  was  vouched  for  and  pedigree  given  in  the  sixteenth- 
century  '  Visitations  of  Norfolk  '  (Harleian  Society,  vol.  xxxii, 
p.  158).  Here  they  are  made  to  descend  from  Brian  Holland 
of  Denton,  who,  in  Blomefield's  '  History  of  Norfolk  '  (1739, 
vol.  i,  p.  231),  is  said  to  have  been  a  grandson  of  Thurstan 
Holland  of  Denton,  who  died  in  1508,  by  his  third  son,  John. 
No  such  son  John  is,  however,  mentioned  in  the  Denton 
pedigree.  The  son  of  Brian,  named  John  Holland,  owned 
Wortwell  House  in  Redenhall,  Norfolk.  He  was  a  '  trustee 
and  servant  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.'  He  died  February  10, 
1542.^    His  son,  Brian  Holland,  was  Escheator  of  Norfolk — 

^  Another  Holland,  George,  was  secretary  to  the  same  Duke,  when  he  waa 
arrested  for  treason  in  1547,  and  the  officials  found  in  the  house  Elizabeth 
Holland,  a  mistress  of  the  Duke.  But  George  Holland  was  certainly  one  of  the 
Hollands  of  Estovening,  Lincolnshire,  and  so,  probably,  was  Miss  Elizabeth, 
descendants  from  Sir  Thomas  Holland,  who  mostly  lived  in  the  Holy  Land,  and 
his  wife,  Elizabeth,  the  "  devilish  dame."  In  the  seventeenth  century  the  Hollands 
of  Quidenham  were  for  two  generations  trustees  of  the  Howard  estates  in  Norfolk. 

319 


320  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

the  local  official  who  looked  after  the  financial  interests  of 
the  Crown  in  each  county.  This  respectable  Escheator 
can  hardly  be  the  Brian  Holland  of  Norfolk,  who  in  1572 
received  a  pardon  from  Queen  Elizabeth  for  treasonable 
action  committed  in  1569  when  he  and  others  assembled 
in  arms  at  Cringleford  ?  Their  motives,  if  mistaken,  were 
truly  patriotic,  for  they  gave  out  their  intention  in  these 
words  :  '  We  will  procure  the  Commons  to  rise  and  exprese 
the  strangers  out  of  the  Cyty  of  Norwich  and  other  places 
in  England,  and  when  we  have  levied  a  Powre,  we  will 
loke  about  us,  and  so  many  as  will  not  take  our  partes,  we 
will  hange  them  up.' 

The  son  of  Brian  Holland  the  Escheator  was  named 
John,  and  acquired  Quidenham,  in  Norfolk,  and  married 
Mary,  daughter  of  Sir  Edmund  Windham  of  Felbrig,  near 
Cromer.  His  son  Thomas  was  knighted  by  King  James  I, 
at  Greenwich,  on  May  24,  1608,  together  with  two  other 
Norfolk  gentlemen — Sir  Rotherem  Willoughby  and  Sir 
Anthony  Pell.  He  died  in  1625.  John  Holland,  of  Qui- 
denham, the  son  of  this  Sir  Thomas,  was  born  in  1603, 
and  on  June  15,  1629,  was  created  a  baronet  by  King 
Charles  I.^  Afterwards,  he  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons 
as  a  member  for  Norfolk,  and  ungratefully  joined  the 
Opposition.  He  became  a  Presbyterian  during  the  Civil 
War,  and  served  as  a  Colonel  in  the  Parliament's  Army, 
and  on  many  committees.  He  was  once  sent  by  the 
Parliament  as  a  Commissioner  to  treat  with  King  Charles  I, 
and  from  February  to  May  1660,  he  was  a  member  of 
the  new  Council  of  State,  which  arranged  the  Restora- 
tion.^    He    married  Alathea,    widow    of    Lord    Sandys    of 

1  Sir  John  Holland  had  a  sister  Katharine,  called  on  her  monument  at 
Quidenham  *  Filia  pulcherrima  Thomae  Holland.'  She  married  Sir  Robert 
Crompton,  and  died  in  1653,  aged  34. 

2  Complete  Baronetage,  by  G.  E.  C,  1902,  vol.  ii,  p.  74. 


HOLLANDS  OF  NORFOLK  321 

the  Vine,  and  lived  till  January  19,  1700,  when  he  died  at 
the  age  of  ninety- seven. 

His  wife,  Alathea,  had  died  in  1679.  Her  monument 
in  Quidenham  Church  says  that  she  had  by  Sir  John  Holland 
six  sons  and  five  daughters,  and  with  him  '  lived  happily 
50  years  within  three  months  and  then,  the  69th  year  of 
her  age,  upon  the  22nd  day  of  May,  1679,  she  cheerfully 
rendered  up  her  pious  soul  to  God  that  gave  it.'  Sir  John, 
according  to  the  inscription  upon  a  monument  which  he 
erected  for  himself,  seventeen  years  before  his  death,  was 
a  *  benefactor  to  his  family,'  and  '  eminent  for  his  particular 
abilities  and  integrity.' 

Sir  John  Holland  and  his  wife  Alathea  had  a  daughter 
named  Catharine,  who  was  born  in  1635.  Sir  John  was  a 
strong  Protestant,  and  severe  in  temper.  His  wife  was  a 
zealous  Catholic,  and  good  and  amiable.  Her  husband 
had  married  her,  after  the  death  in  1629  of  her  first  husband, 
Lord  Sandys  of  the  Vine,  for  worldly  and  interested  motives, 
but  was  sensible  of  her  worth,  and  used  to  call  her  '  the 
mirror  of  wives.'  He  would  often  say  to  his  daughter, 
'  Imitate  your  mother  in  all  but  her  religion.'  Sir  John 
removed  his  children  from  their  mother's  tuition,  and  looked 
after  their  education  himself.  He  taught  Catharine  to 
read  and  write,  and  made  her  when  she  heard  a  sermon 
write  it  down  afterwards,  as  nearly  as  possible  word  for 
word,  and  punished  her  severely  if  she  made  mistakes. 
Catharine  Holland  spent  her  time  with  girls  of  her  own 
quality  who  were  absorbed  in  pleasures,  but  she  would 
often  say  to  herself,  '  The  religion  I  follow  seems  to  be  but 
an  empty  shadow  ;  there  must  be  one  true  and  only  faith  ; 
where  can  I  find  it  ?  '  Sir  John,  after  the  execution  of  the 
King  and  the  seizure  of  power  by  the  advanced  Republicans, 
quarrelled  with  his  party,  and  in  1651  removed  his  family 
abroad,    living    first    at    Bruges.     Here    Catharine    for   the 


322  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

first  time  saw  Catholic  worship,  and  said  to  herself,  '  Here 
is  God  truly  served,'  and  prayed  that  He  would  enlighten 
her  mind.  She  was  now  sixteen  years  old.  Sir  John  then 
removed  his  children  into  Protestant  Holland,  leaving  his 
wife  in  Brabant.  After  two  years,  however,  he  allowed 
Catharine  to  return  there  to  see  her  mother.  Within  two 
years  from  then  she  had  resolved  to  become  a  Catholic, 
and  wrote  so  to  her  father,  who  was  now  back  in  England. 
He  was  very  angry,  and  did  his  best  to  prevent  it.  After 
the  Restoration  he  brought  his  family  back  to  England, 
where  he  made  Catharine  talk  to  the  Bishop  of  Winchester, 
whom,  in  her  own  opinion,  she  completely  defeated  in 
argument.  Sir  John  lived  in  Holborn,  and  a  door  opened 
from  his  garden  into  Fetter  Lane.  Here,  as  Catharine 
discovered,  lodged  two  Catholic  priests  belonging  to  a 
religious  Order.  She  consulted  them,  and  they  advised  her 
to  follow  her  conscience,  but  would  do  no  more,  because 
their  superiors  thought  that  if  they  received  her  into  the 
Church,  the  whole  Catholic  body  would  suffer,  as  Sir  John 
Holland  was  a  man  of  much  influence.  Catharine,  therefore, 
fled  from  her  father's  house  and  got  to  Bruges,  where  she 
made  her  profession  as  an  Augustinian  Nun  on  September  7, 
1664,  at  the  age  of  twenty-nine.  Sir  John  at  last  relented, 
upon  the  intercession  of  Henry,  Duke  of  Norfolk,  and  even 
gave  £400  to  his  daughter,  as  a  religious  dowry.  The  Duke 
himself  led  Catharine  to  the  Altar. 

Catharine  Holland  wrote  three  books :  (1)  Spiritual 
dramas,  and  fugitive  pieces  of  poetry ;  (2)  Translations  from 
French  and  Dutch  books  of  piety ;  (3)  Reasons  why  she 
became  a  Catholic,  from  which  the  facts  of  her  life  are  derived. 

She  died  at  Bruges  in  the  year  1720,  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
five,  having  been  a  Nun  for  fifty-six  years,  in  that  somnolent 
city  of  the  plain.  They  must  have  passed  even  more  like  a 
dream  than  the  years  of  most  lives. 


PHILEMON    HOLLAND 

Ealarged  from  the  Portrait  on  the  Title-page  of  '  Cyrupaedia.' 
The  original  engra\-ing  is  by  'William  Marshall 


I 


HOLLANDS  OF  NORFOLK  328 

The  first  Sir  John  Holland  of  Quidenham  was  succeeded 
in  the  estates  and  baronetcy  by  his  grandson,  also  named 
John,  having  outlived  his  son.  Colonel  Thomas  Holland. 
This  second  Sir  John  married  the  Lady  Rebecca  Paston, 
daughter  of  the  second  Earl  of  Yarmouth,  by  his  wife 
Charlotte  Boyle,  or  Fitzroy,  an  illegitimate  daughter  of 
King  Charles  II.  This  Sir  John  died  a  young  man  in  1724. 
His  son.  Sir  William,  succeeded,  and  then  the  baronetcy 
became  extinct  for  lack  of  male  issue. 

John  Holland,  of  Wortwell,  the  '  servant  of  the  Duke 
of  Norfolk,'  had  a  brother  named  Edward,  who  lived  at 
Glossop  in  Derbyshire.  A  son  of  this  Edward  was  John 
Holland,  a  Puritan  divine,  who,  on  account  of  his  religion, 
had  to  fly  to  the  Continent  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary, 
but  returning  home,  under  Elizabeth,  became  Rector  of 
Dunmow  Magna,  in  Essex,  and  died  there  in  1578.  His 
son  was  Dr.  Philemon  Holland,  a  mighty  scholar  and  inde- 
fatigable translator.  Of  him,  that  insatiable  devourer  of 
books,  the  poet  Robert  Southey,  wrote  that  '  Philemon, 
for  the  service  which  he  rendered  to  his  contemporaries 
and  his  countrymen,  deserves  to  be  called  the  best  of 
the  Hollands.' 

Doctor  Philemon  may  not  have  been  this,  but  he 
really  was  a  great  man  in  his  own  line.  He  was  born  at 
Chelmsford  in  Essex,  in  1552,  and  educated  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge.  In  1595  he  settled  at  Coventry,  and 
lived  there  for  forty  years.  At  first  he  practised  medi- 
cine, without  much  success,  and,  next,  in  1608,  became 
an  usher  in  the  Coventry  Free  School,  and  in  1627  he 
rose  to  the  position  of  head  master.  The  great  day  of  his 
life  was  in  1617,  when  King  James  I  visited  Coventry,  and 
Philemon,  as  the  best  Latinist  in  the  place,  was  selected 
to  address  the  learned  monarch  in  a  Latin  oration.  The 
municipal  annals  of  Coventry  record  that  the  King  was  met 


324  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

outside  the  Bishop's  gate  by  the  mayor  and  aldermen  in 
scarlet  gowns,  and  that  '  Dr.  Philemon  Holland,  drest  in 
a  suit  of  black  satin,  made  an  oration,  for  which  he  had  much 
praise.'  Dr.  Holland's  shirt  cost  the  town  £l  3s.  Id.^  and 
the  suit  of  black  satin,  with  trimmings,  cost  £14  7s. ^ 

Philemon  Holland,  it  is  recorded,  suffered  from  poverty, 
but  '  always  kept  good  hospitality.  Sic  iota  Coventria 
testis.''  He  was  evidently  a  fine  old  fellow.  Although  he 
lived  till  he  was  eighty-five,  and  read  and  wrote  incessantly, 
he  never  used  spectacles  in  his  life.  He  turned  from  Latin 
into  English,  Pliny,  Plutarch's  '  Morals,'  Suetonius,  Livy, 
Camden's  '  Britannia,'  and  other  books.  The  appearance  of 
Suetonius  produced  this  epigram  : 

'  Philemon  with  translations  does  so  fill  us 
He  will  not  let  Suetonius  be  Tranquillus.' 

He  translated  all  '  the  Romane  Historic '  of  Livy,  and 
some  shorter  works,  with  a  single  quill  pen  :  '  a  monumental 
pen,'  says  Fuller,  '  which  he  solemnly  kept.'  A  lady,  who 
was  his  friend,  had  it  set  in  silver  for  him.  Philemon  com- 
posed about  it  the  following  poem  : 

*  With  one  sole  pen  I  wrote  this  book, 

Made  of  a  grey  goose  quill, 
A  Pen  it  was  when  I  it  took, 
A  Pen  I  leave  it  still.' 

Until  his  last  illness,  he  was  '  indefatigable  in  study.' 
Fuller  says  of  him  :  '  He  was  the  translator-general  in  his 
age,  so  that  the  books  alone  of  his  turning  into  English 
are  sufficient  to  make  a  country  gentleman  a  competent 
library.' 

Philemon  appears  in  Pope's  picture  of  a  heavy  and  solemn 
library  in  the  '  Dunciad  '  : 

^  J.  Nichols,  Progresses  of  King  James,  vol,  iii,  p.  423. 


m\ 


HOLLANDS  OF  NORFOLK  325 

'  But,  high  above,  more  soHd  learning  shone, 
The  Classics  of  an  Age  that  heard  of  none. 
There  Caxton  slept  with  Wynkin  at  his  side, 
One  clasped  in  wood,  the  other  in  strong  cow-hide. 
There,  saved  by  spice  like  mummies  many  a  year, 
Dry  bodies  of  divinity  appear  ; 
De  Lyra  there  a  dreadful  front  extends. 
And  here  the  groaning  shelves  Philemon  bends.' 

Philemon  Holland  died  February  9,  1636,  aged  eighty- 
five.  He  composed  for  himself  a  long  Latin  verse  epitaph, 
inscribed  over  his  tomb  in  Coventry  Church.  The  first  four 
lines  contain  a  very  bad  pun  upon  his  family  name  : 

'  Philemon 
Holland  hie  recubat  rite  repostus  humo. 
Si  quaeras  ratio  quaenam  sit  nominis,  haec  est, 
Totus  terra  fui,  terraque  totus  ero.' 

That  is,  '  I  have  been  whole  land,'  &c.  This  seems  to  show 
that  Holland  was  still  then  pronounced  as  if  spelt  Holand. 
Philemon  married  Anne,  daughter  of  William  Peyton  of 
Perry  Hall,  Staffordshire,  and  she  died  in  1627,  at  the  age  of 
seventy- two,  after  forty- eight  years  of  marriage.  Three 
daughters  and  seven  sons  had  she  given  to  Philemon.  She 
also  had  a  Latin  inscription  in  Coventry  Church,  composed 
by  her  son  Henry,  the  London  bookseller  and  antiquary. 
Here  are  some  lines  of  it.     The  first  is  mellifluous : 

'  Hie  recubat  dilecta  Philemonis  uxor  Holandi, 
Anna  pudicitiae  non  ulli  laude  secunda, 
Quadraginta  octoque  annos  quae  nupta  marito, 
Septem  illi  pueros  enixa  est,  tresque  puellas, 
Lactavitque  omnes,  genetrix  eadem  est  pia  nutrix 
Septuaginta  duos  vitae  numerararat  annos 

Quodque  unum  potui,  supremi  pignus  amoris, 
Filius  hoc  dedit  Henricus  ad  carmina  marmor.' 


826  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

Henry  Holland  alone  of  Philemon's  seven  sons  survived 
his  octogenarian  father.  He  was  a  man  of  some  mark  also. 
He  wrote  books  of  an  antiquarian-historical-genealogical 
kind,  and  was  a  publisher  and  bookseller  in  London.^  One 
of  his  books  was  a  treatise  on  Holland  pedigrees,  published  in 
1615.  A  more  pretentious  work  of  his  was  called  '  Hero-logia 
Anglica,'  published  in  1620.  It  is  a  set  of  short  accounts 
written  in  inflated  Latin  of  some  English  worthies,  and 
unworthies,  beginning  with  King  Henry  VIII  down  to  his 
own  time.  It  contains  much  coarse  and  virulent  abuse  of 
the  See  of  Rome  and  of  the  old  religion  of  England.  He 
says  that  he  has  travelled  in  several  papist  countries,  and 
found  absolutely  no  good  in  any.  He  says  that  the  '  Baby- 
lonica  Circe  converted  Sir  Thomas  More  into  a  pig,'  and  so 
forth.  He  described  himself  as  a  '  zealous  hater  and  abhorrer 
of  all  superstition  and  popery,  and  prelaticall  innovations  in 
Church  government,  '  and  was  imprisoned  by  order  both  of 
the  High  Commission  Court  and  Star  Chamber,  in  Laud's 
time.  Afterwards,  however,  he  declared  himself  adverse 
'  to  all  late  sprung  up  sectaries,'  only  approving  of  the  earlier 
kinds.  In  1643  he  served  in  the  Midlands  in  the  life-guards 
of  the  Earl  of  Denbigh,  the  General  of  the  Parliament  then 
commanding  in  those  parts,  and  was  '  eldest  man  of  the  troop, 
being  sixty  years  old' — well  over  military  age.  Subsequently 
he  was  ruined  by  lawsuits  and  seems  to  have  become  a  wreck, 
mentally  and  bodily.  In  one  writing  of  his  he  says  that  he 
is  now  aged  sixty-two.  He  claims  descent  from  the  Hollands 
of  Upholland  in  order  to  show  his  affinity  to  the  extinct 
ducal  branch.  He  is  proud  of  being  acknowledged  cousin 
by  Sir  John  Holland,  Baronet,  of  Quidenham,  from  whom 
he  gives  a  letter  addressed  to  him  at  '  the  Falcon  '  in  Cheap- 
side.  He  calls  God  to  witness  that  he  is  descended  from 
Brian  Holland  and  is  cousin  of  Sir  John,  but,  he  says,  he 

^  See  account  of  his  works  in  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 


HOLLANDS  OF  DEVONSHIRE  327 

does  not  know  from  whom  Brian  descended,  '  so  careless 
have  the  heralds  been  of  late,'  though  he  has  gone  over 
300  years,  and  searched  not  a  few  books.  After  these 
mundane  vanities  he  becomes  pious  and  talks  of  his  '  heavenly 
heritage,'  and  seems  altogether  sadly  doting,  although  he 
had  been  an  industrious  man  in  his  time. 

Another  son  of  Philemon,  who  died  before  him,  named 
Abraham  Holland,  wrote  pompous  poems  :  a  list  of  which 
is  given  under  his  name  in  the  '  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography.' 

II. — Hollands  of  Devonshire 

The  pedigree  of  this  family,  for  nine  generations  down  to 
1576,  is  fully  set  out  in  the  '  Visitations  of  County  Devon,' 
printed  in  the  Harleian  Society  publications,  vol.  vi,  p.  345. 
The  information  was  given  to  the  Heralds  by  Joseph  Holland, 
who  was  the  representative  of  this  family  at  that  time.  He 
is  described  by  John  Prince,  in  his  '  Worthies  of  Devon,' 
published  in  1697,  as  '  a  gentleman,  sometime  of  the  Inner 
Temple,  a  laborious  antiquary,  and  excellently  skilled  in 
armory,'  especially  in  the  arms  of  Devonshire  families.  The 
arms  of  these  Hollands  were  the  '  azure  semee  of  fleurs  de  lys, 
a  lion  rampant  of  same.'  They  are  stated  to  have  descended 
from  John,  a  fourth  son  of  Sir  Robert  de  Holland,  of  Uj)- 
holland,  first  Lord  Holland.  This  John  does  not  appear  in 
the  Lancashire  histories  or  elsewhere,  but  may  have  lived 
none  the  less — possibly  an  illegitimate  son  of  the  illustrious 
Robert.  He  married  a  South  Devon  heiress.  John  Prince 
says  that  Margaret,  the  daughter  of  Augustine,  son  and 
heir  of  Sir  Walter  de  Bath,  brought  Bath  House  at  Weare, 
near  Topsham,  and  other  estates  in  South  Devon,  to  her 
husband,  Sir  Andrew  Metstead,  whose  daughter  and  heiress, 
Eleanor,  brought  them  '  to  her  husband,  John  Holland,  of 


828  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

the  same  noble  family  with  the  Duke  of  Exeter,'  and  that 
their  '  posterity  is  yet  (1695)  in  being  in  this  county,  though 
much  shorn  of  the  splendour  of  their  ancestors.' 

Sir  Walter  de  Bath  was  High  Sheriff  of  Devon  in  1238, 
and  lived  till  at  least  1252.  So  that  his  granddaughter,  in 
point  of  time,  may  well  have  married  a  man  who  was  son  of 
Robert,  Lord  Holland,  and  younger  brother  of  the  first  Earl 
of  Kent.  Except  for  Joseph,  the  Elizabethan  antiquary, 
this  family  produced  no  one  of  the  slightest  distinction,  and 
it  gradually  declined  in  social  standing,  and  seems  to  be  now 
extinct  in  the  male  line. 

III. — Hollands  of  Sussex 

This  branch  is  stated  in  the  '  Visitations  of  Sussex  '  (Har- 
leian  Society  pubhcations,  vol.  liii,  p.  17)  to  descend  from  Sir 
Richard  Holland,  owner  of  Denton  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII, 
through  Richard  Holland,  one  of  his  sons  by  his  marriage 
with  Anne  Fitton.  According  to  the  Denton  pedigree,  this 
son  Richard  died  without  issue,  but,  if  this  be  correct,  the 
Sussex  Hollands  may,  perhaps,  have  descended  from 
another  son  of  Sir  Richard,  by  another  marriage,  also  called 
Richard  (see  pedigree).  These  Hollands  had  an  estate  at 
Westburton  in  Sussex.  This  is  their  descent  given  in  the 
'  Visitations  of  Sussex  ' : 

Sir  Richard  Holland  of  Denton,  =  Anne  Fitton. 
temp.  Hen.  VIII. 

Richard    Holland,  3rd  son       .     =  

Thomas  Holland,   2nd  son       .     =  

John  Holland     .         .         .       .    =  Elizabeth  Parsons. 
William  Holland         .         .       .    =  Frances,     dau.     oj 

Henry  Shelley  oj 
Wormingrove. 
Frances,  dau.  and  sole  heiress  =  John  Ashburnham. 


HOLLANDS  OF  SHROPSHIRE  329 

This  John  Ashburnham  (1603-1671),  of  Ashburnham 
near  Battle,  was  a  Sussex  Squire  of  ancient  Hneage,  and  was 
the  faithful  and  intimate  servant  of  King  Charles  I  during 
the  last  sad  years  of  his  life.  He  was  with  him  in  his  flight 
from  Hampton  Court,  and  it  was  through  his  error  of  judg- 
ment that  the  King  was  recaptured.  From  him  and  his  wife, 
Frances  Holland,  descend  the  Earls  of  Ashburnham. 

Henry  Shelley,  above  mentioned,  is  ancestor  of  all  the 
Sussex  Shelleys  of  Michelgrove,  Field  Place,  &c.  — a  very 
antique  Sussex  family.  These  Hollands  did  not  bear  for 
their  crest  the  Holland  lion,  but  an  ash-tree  rising  out  of 
a  ducal  coronet,  and  their  arms  were  gules,  a  fesse  between 
six  mullets  argent.  These  were  also  the  arms  and  crest  of 
the  Ashburnhams.     The  reason  for  this  does  not  appear. 

There  was  in  Sussex  another  family  of  Holland  living  at 
Angmering,  whose  pedigree  for  five  generations,  in  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries,  is  given  by  Berry.  This 
family  had  the  same  crest  and  arms  as  the  Hollands  of 
Conway ;  but  Berry,  in  his  '  Sussex  Genealogies,'  does 
not  say  that  they  were  derived  from  these,  or  from  the 
Hollands  of  Upholland.  The  first  of  them  mentioned  is  a 
William  Holland  of  Calais. 

IV. — ^Hollands  of  Shropshire 

There  was  also  a  Shropshire  family  of  Hollands,  of  Bur- 
warton  and  other  estates  in  that  county.  They  used  the 
lion  and  lilies  in  their  arms ;  but  their  descent  from  the 
Lancashire  Hollands  cannot  be  ascertained.  They  were 
still  extant  at  the  Shropshire  Visitation  of  1623,  and  are 
there  traced  upwards  through  six  generations  living  in  the 
same  district. 

Dr.  Thomas  Holland,  one  of  Fuller's  '  Worthies,'  was 
probably   of  this   family,    since   he    was    born    at    Ludlow 


330  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

in  Shropshire.  He  died  in  1611.  He  was  Fellow  of 
Balliol,  Professor  of  Divinity,  and  for  twenty  years 
Rector  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford.  He  was  a  heavily  erudite 
divine.  Anthony  a  Wood  says  of  him  (in  '  Ath.  Oxon.')  : 
'  This  learned  Doctor  Holland  did  not,  as  some,  only 
sip  of  learning,  or,  at  the  best,  drink  thereof,  but  was 
mersus  in  libris,  so  that  the  scholar  in  him  drowned 
almost  any  other  relations.  He  was  esteemed  by  the 
precise  men  of  his  time  as  another  Apostle,  so  familiar  with 
the  Fathers,  as  if  he  himself  had  been  a  Father ;  with  the 
Schoolmen,  as  if  he  had  himself  been  another  Seraphical 
Doctor.' 

The  originator  of  the  terms  in  the  last  sentence  was 
Henry  Holland  in  his  '  Hero-logia  Anglica.'  He  vaguely 
claims  relationship  to  Dr.  Thomas  Holland. 

Such  was  the  learned  doctor's  reputation  among  the 
Puritan  party.  He  was  very  Protestant.  Anthony  a 
Wood  says  that  when  going  on  any  long  journey  he  used 
to  take  this  solemn  valediction  of  the  Fellows  of  the 
College  :  '  I  commend  you  to  the  love  of  God,  and  to  the 
hatred  of  Popery  and  Superstition  ' — Commendo  vos  dilec- 
tioni  Dei  et  odio  papains  et  super stitionis.  Amiable  senti- 
ment !  In  1592  Queen  Elizabeth  visited  Oxford  in  state, 
and  as  part  of  the  programme  of  entertainments,  Dr. 
Holland,  at  9  a.m.  on  Monday,  September  25,  read 
a  divinity  lecture  '  at  which  were  present  ' — this  is  not 
surprising — '  hut  a  few  of  the  nobility,  and  many  scholars.' 
On  September  27,  he  argued  before  Her  Majesty  on 
the  question  :  '  An  licet  in  Christiana  republica  dis- 
simulare  in  causa  veritatis.'  He  preached  at  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral,  on  November  17,  1599,  a  panegyric  on  the 
Virgin  Queen,  which  was  printed  in  1610  together  with 
a  later  discourse  on  the  same  topic  delivered  at  Oxford. 
In  the  latter  he  says  of  the  late  Queen  :   '  By  whose  honorable 


HOLLANDS  OF  SHROPSHIRE  331 

stipend  I  have  been  relieved  these  many  years  in  this  famous 
University,  and  by  whose  magnificence,  when  I  served  the 
Church  of  God  in  the  Netherlands,  being  chaplain  to  the  Earl 
of  Leicester,  his  Honour,  I  was  graciously  rewarded.'  ^ 

On  August  28,  1605,  King  James  I  was  at  Oxford,  and, 
to  amuse  him,  various  doctors  held  a  debating  tournament 
in  Latin,  the  learned  monarch  attentively  listening  and 
frequently  intervening.  One  of  the  questions  was  this  : 
'  Whether,  if  the  plague  should  increase,  the  pastors  of 
churches  are  bound  to  visit  the  sick  ?  '  Dr.  Holland  main- 
tained the  negative,  discharging  two  syllogisms,  which  was 
nothing  to  another  disputant,  much  praised  by  the  King, 
who  had  a  battery  of  twenty.  ^  On  another  day  Dr.  Holland, 
before  the  King,  went  through  the  ritual  of  some  degree- 
creation  so  tediously  that  His  Majesty  was  bored  and  the 
proctor  had  to  cut  the  Doctor  short  half-way. 

Dr.  Holland  was  no  doubt  a  famous  scholar,  and  Wood 
mentions  two  or  three  foreigners  who  came  over  to  study  at 
Oxford  attracted  by  the  repute  of  Holland  and  Prideaux. 
But  he  must  have  been  one  of  the  men  whose  power  of  writing 
is  killed  by  too  much  reading  and  accumulation  of  detail, 
for  he  left  no  great  work  behind  him  to  load  with  dull 
weight  the  book-shelves  of  posterity.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  being  too  learned  to  write. 

Except  for  this  Dr.  Holland,  if,  as  probable,  he  belonged 
to  them,  the  Shropshire  Hollands  produced  no  man  of  fame. 
One  may  say  of  an  obscure  and  vanished  family  of  this  kind 

*  Of  this  Earl  of  Leicester,  the  betrayer  of  Amy  Robsart,  a  Protestant  historian, 
Dr.  Heylin,  said  that  '  he  was  a  man  so  unappeasable  in  his  malice,  and  insatiable 
in  his  lusts  ;  so  sacrilegious  in  his  rapines,  so  false  in  his  promises,  and  treacherous 
in  point  of  trust ;  and,  finally,  so  destructive  of  the  rights  and  properties  of 
particular  persons,  that  his  little  finger  lay  far  heavier  on  the  subjects  than  the 
loins  of  aU  the  favourites  of  the  last  two  kings  '  (viz.  James  I  and  Charles  I). 
Dr.  Holland  must  have  neglected  his  opportunities  as  chaplain,  in  a  spiritual 
sense. 

'  Nichols,  Progresses  of  King  James,  vol.  i,  p.  548. 


332  THE  LANCASHIRE  HOLLANDS 

that  which  Fuller,  in  his  '  Profane  State,'  says  of  the  average 
squire  : 

'  Within  two  generations  his  name  is  quite  forgotten 
that  ever  any  such  was  in  the  place,  except  some  Herald  in 
his  Visitation  pass  by,  and  chance  to  spell  his  broken  arms 
in  a  Church  window.  And  then  how  weak  a  thing  is  gentry 
than  which,  if  it  wants  virtue,  brittle  glass  is  the  more  lasting 
monument ! ' 

Some  such  reflections  must  occur  to  anyone  who  per- 
uses county  histories,  or  investigates  the  history  of  modest 
families ;  yet  there  is  something  tranquillising  in  observing 
the  uneventful  flow  of  rural  life,  and  soothing  in  comparing 
things  transitory  with  things  eternal.  It  seems  to  me  that, 
wherever  it  is  possible,  the  histories  of  families  should  be 
written,  so  that  descendants  at  least  may  have  some  dim 
idea  of  those  who  bore  the  name  before  them,  and  who  now 
have  fallen  into  almost  complete  oblivion.  That  is  why 
I  have  erected  this  '  Memoriale  Hollandorum.^ 


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APPENDIX  II 


CONNECTION   BETWEEN   THE   HOLLANDS   OF   CLIFTON  AND  THE 
HOLLANDS   OF  MOBBERLEY   AND   KNUTSFORD 


This  note  is  intended  for  members  of  the  Clif ton-Rhodes-Mobberley- 
Knutsford  line,  and  will  not  be  of  interest  to  others. 

The  Rev.  John  Booker,  Vicar  of  Prestwich,  a  learned  Lancashire 
antiquary  who  specialised  on  the  Manchester  district,  and  wrote 
about  1850,  says,  in  his  '  Memorials  of  Prestwich,'  p.  214,  as  to  the 
estate  called  'Rhodes,'  or  sometimes  'The  Rodes':  'From  the 
old  local  family  it  passed  in  marriage  with  an  heiress  into  the  family 
of  Parr,  from  whom  it  was  conveyed  by  two  sisters  and  co-heiresses — 
one  portion  to  WilUam,  son  of  Wilhani  Holland  of  Clifton,  in  right 
of  his  wife,  Jane  Parr,  and  the  remainder  to  Foxe  of  Lathom,  v/ho 
had  espoused  the  other  sister.' 

It  appears,  however,  from  later  information,  that  Jane  Parr 
married  John  Foxe,  and  that  it  was  the  other  sister  (name  lost)  who 
married  this  William  Holland.  John  Foxe  was  in  occupation  of 
Rhodes  in  1541 ,  so  that  he  must  have  married  Jane  Parr  before  then. 
His  widow,  Jane,  died  in  1580.  Her  will  is  abstracted  in  the  Chetham 
Society  Papers,  new  series  1,  p.  210,  '  Lancashire  and  Cheshire  Wills.' 
It  is  a  Avill  of  '  Jane  Foxe,  widow  of  John  Foxe  of  The  Rhodes  in 
Pilkington.'  She  left  to  '  Henry,  my  son,  a  ring.  Item  to 
Hollande,'  &c.  '  My  son  Wilham  and  his  son  John  to  be  my 
executors.'  L'nluckily  the  Christian  name  of  the  '  Hollande,'  is  not 
decipherable  in  the  MSS. 

The  Rhodes  estate  must  have  been  divided,  and  there  may 
have  been  two  houses,  for  both  Hollands  and  Foxes  of  Rhodes 
occur  in  the  parocliial  register  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

Now  Mr.  W.  F.  Irvine  in  his  otherwise  excellent  book,  called 
'  The  Family  of  Hollands  of  Mobberley  and  Knutsford  ' — which -nas 
printed  for  private  circulation  in  1902,  but  is  now  to  some  extent 

336 


APPENDICES  887 

in  the  book  market— says,  on  p.  30,  that  the  Wilham  Holland  who 
married  Miss  Parr  of  Rhodes  could  not  have  been,  as  Mr.  Booker 
and  others  have  said,  son  of  the  Wilham  Holland  of  Chfton,  who 
married  Ahce  Werden,  and  died  in  1523.  This  statement,  he  says, 
is  '  demonstrably  false.'  Why  ?  Because,  he  says,  '  the  Wilham 
Holland,  son  of  Wilham  Holland  of  Chfton  and  Ahce  Werden, 
went  into  Shropshire  and  there  founded  a  family,  as  will  be  seen  by 
reference  to  the  '  Visitation  of  Shropshire,  1623,'  and  so  obviously 
cannot  have  also  settled  at  Rhodes  and  died  there  in  1603. 

Mr.  Irvine's  memory  unluckily  played  him  false  on  this  occasion. 
A  reference  to  the  '  Visitation  of  Shropshire,  1623,'  published  in  the 
Harleian  Society  Papers,  will  show  that  there  was  in  Shropshire  at 
that  time  only  one  Holland  family — that  of  Burwarton — and  that 
they  had  been  settled  there  for  generations  :  before  either  the 
Wilham  Holland  of  Chfton,  who  died  in  1523,  or  his  sixth  son, 
Wilham,  were  born. 

Their  then  living  representative,  who  signed  the  pedigree  in 
1623,  was  indeed  named  William,  but  had  obviously  nothing  to  do 
with  the  Hollands  of  Clifton,  and  could  not  possibly  have  been  the 
son  of  the  Wilham  Holland  of  Clifton  who  died  in  1523.  He  would, 
for  one  thing,  in  that  case,  have  been  over  one  hundred  years  old. 
Mr.  Irvine  has  entirely  admitted  this  mistake  to  me  in  a  letter. 

Again,  Mr.  Irvine  had  not,  unfortunately,  before  him,  when  he 
composed  his  book,  an  old  vellum  pedigree  which  was  made  about 
1652  for  the  William  Holland  who  bought  Mobberley,  and  is  now 
in  my  possession.  It  is  good  evidence,  at  any  rate,  of  what  he  and 
others  then  beheved  to  be  the  fact.  This  pedigree  states  that 
Wilham  Holland  of  Mobberley  Avas  the  son  of  Edward  Holland  of 
Chorlton,  who  was  the  son  of  Wilham  Holland  of  Rhodes,  who  was  the 
sixth  son  of  Wilham  Holland  of  Chfton  who  married  Ahce  Werden. 
This  represents  the  belief  of  William  Holland  of  Mobberley,  in  1652, 
and  the  information  which  he  could  then  obtain.  The  Prestwich 
parish  register  shows  that  Hollands  of  Heaton,  Chfton,  and  Rhodes 
were  baptised,  married,  and  buried  at  that  church  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  so  must  have  known  each  other  extremely  well.  Chfton 
and  Rhodes  lie  close  together,  not  half  a  mile  apart,  on  either  side 
of  the  river  Irwell.  Chorlton,  where  Wilham  Holland  hved  until  he 
bought  Mobberley,  is  only  about  five  or  six  miles  distant  from 
Rhodes  and  Clifton.  The  elder  hne  of  Hollands  of  Chfton  were 
hving  at  Chfton  Hall  until  about  1650,  and  held  land  there  still 


338  APPENDICES 

longer.  If  William  Holland  of  Mobberley  was  right  in  the  view 
expressed  in  his  pedigree  in  1652,  he  was  a  second  cousin  of  Thomas 
Holland — his  living  contemporary,  the  Squire  of  Clifton.  But  if,  as 
on  Mr.  Irvine's  theory,  he  was  entirely  mistaken,  then  the  only 
blood  connection  between  them  would  have  been  through  (as 
their  common  ancestor)  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  who  lived 
three  hundred  years  earlier. 

Now  a  man  like  William  Holland  of  Mobberley,  a  conscientious 
Puritan,  but  sufficiently  interested  in  family  history  as  to  have 
an  expensively  illuminated  pedigree  made  out,  and  living  most  of 
his  life  at  Chorlton  within  an  hour's  ride  of  Clifton  Hall,  which, 
again,  was  within  a  rifle-shot  of  Rhodes  where  first  his  uncle  and 
then  his  first  cousin  resided,  could  not  possibly  have  made  such 
an  error  as  to  mistake  and  solemnly  enter  in  a  pedigree  as  his 
near  cousins  the  family  at  Clifton,  if  their  connection  with  him,  on 
Mr.  Irvine's  theory,  was  so  remote.  It  is,  to  say  the  least,  liighly 
probable  that  WilUam  Holland,  in  1652,  knew  better  who  were 
his  own  second  cousins,  in  his  immediate  neighbourhood,  than  did 
a  gentleman  writing  about  the  year  1901.  There  is  no  reason  at 
all  to  suppose  that  Edward  Holland  of  Chorlton  erred  in  supposing 
William  Holland  of  Clifton  to  be  his  grandfather,  and  he  must  have 
handed  down  this  fact  to  his  son,  Wilham  of  Mobberley. 

The  descent,  then,  was  certainly  as  follows  : 

William  Holland  =  Alice  Werden. 
of  CUfton;  d.  1523.    I 


William  Holland,  = d.  of Parr  of  Rhodes. 

sixth  son;  6.  about   1 
1517,  d.  1603.  I 


William  Holland  Edward  Holland  =  Ellen  Hulme. 

of  Rhodes  ;  d.  1614.  of  Chorlton ;   prob- 

I  ably  b.  about  1555 

Hollands  of  Rhodes.  and  d.  1624. 


William  Holland,  =  Anne  Bold, 
first     of     Chorlton, 
then  of  Mobberley  ; 
b.    about    1605,    d. 
1654. 

Hollands  of  Mobberley, 
Sandlebridge,  Knutsford,  &c. 


APPENDICES  839 

The  vellum  pedigree  of  1652,  when  it  gets  behind  William 
Holland  of  Clifton,  certainly  falls  into  error,  which  our  present 
information  makes  obvious.  It  states  that  this  William  was  the 
son  of  a  Laurence  Holland,  who  again  was  a  younger  son  of 
Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  who  Uved  in  the  reign  of  Edward  IV, 
and  married  Miss  Joan  Arderne  (see  the  Denton  pedigree). 

But  we  now  know  that  the  Manor  of  Clifton,  held  by  Wilham 
Holland  at  his  death  in  1523,  descended  to  him ;  not  from  such 
late  Hollands  of  Denton,  but  from  a  Holland — a  younger  son  of 
the  first  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton — who  lived  a  century  earlier, 
in  the  reign  of  Edward  III,  The  root  of  this  tiresome  mistake 
is  no  doubt  in  Flower's  '  Visitation  of  Lancashire,  in  1567,'  a 
public  record  which  evidently  misled  the  expert  who  drew  up  the 
pedigree  for  William  Holland  of  Mobberley  in  1652.  Flower  says 
that  William  Holland  of  Clifton  (died  1523)  was  '  the  second  Sonne 
of  Holland  of  Denton.' 

It  is  pretty  clear  what  happened.  The  Hollands  of  CHfton 
were  sadly  careless  as  to  matters  of  pedigree — not  even  taking  the 
trouble  to  be  at  home  when  the  Herald  called  on  his  Visitation — 
but  they  held  firmly  the  tradition  that  they  were  descended  from 
Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  This  was  true,  because  they  did 
in  fact  descend  from  the  Sir  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton  (son 
of  Sir  Wilham  de  Holland  and  Margaret  Shoresworth) ,  who  lived 
in  the  reigns  of  Edward  II  and  Edward  III,  whose  younger  son 
Wilham  acquired  Chfton  by  marrying  Marjory  de  Trafford,  Flower, 
the  Heraldic  Visitor,  on  the  second  Visitation  in  1567,  hearing 
of  this  tradition  and  not  knowing  exact  facts,  ascribed  their  descent 
to  '  the  second  son  of  Holland  of  Denton,'  cautiously  not  saying 
which  Holland,  The  expert  (probably  Randle  Holmes)  who  drew 
up  the  vellum  pedigree  of  1652,  knowing  his  Flower  and  also 
hearing  of  the  Thurstan  tradition,  imputed  the  descent  to  the 
nearest  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  who  by  his  date  would  do  for 
the  grandfather  of  William  Holland  of  Clifton,  who  died  in  1523, 
He  found  this  in  the  Thurstan  Holland  of  Denton,  who  lived 
about  1470-1508,  and  married  Joan  Arderne,  From  this  Thurstan, 
accordingly,  he  started  his  pedigree,  evidently  impossibly,  since  the 
Manor  of  Clifton  could  not  have  come  from  him. 

The  Rev,  Joseph  Hunter  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  in 
his  book  called  '  Familise  Minorum  Gentium,'  also  gives  this  erro- 
neous derivation  ;  but  he  states  that  he  got  the  information  from 


340  APPENDICES 

the  family,  and  does  not  vouch  for  it.     He  ev^idently  regarded 
it  with  suspicion. 

On  the  whole  matter,  then,  it  is  quite  clear  that — 

1.  William  Holland,  sixth  son  of  William  Holland  lord  of  the 
Manor  of  Clifton,  was  born  about  1517. 

2.  He  married  one  of  the  neighbouring  Parr  co-heiresses  of 
Rhodes — probably  before  1545,  since  the  other  was  married  to 
John  Foxe  before  1541. 

3.  He  was  the  executor  of  the  will  of  his  eldest  brother,  Thomas 
Holland  of  Clifton,  in  1565,  and  died  at  age  of  about  eighty-five 
years  in  1603,  leaving  an  elder  son  William,  who  inherited  Rhodes, 
and  died  in  1614. 

4.  One  of  his  younger  sons  was  Edward  Holland  of  Chorlton, 
the  father  of  the  William  Holland  who  bought  Mobberley  in  1650. 

I  have  been  forced  to  make  this  tedious  disquisition  on 
these  very  uninteresting  Hollands  by  the  error  made  and 
printed  by  Mr.  Irvine,  and  still  more  by  the  fact  that  his  state- 
ment was  accepted  on  this  point  without  further  investigation 
by  the  editors  of  the  admirable  '  Victorian  County  History  of 
Lancashire.'  Mr.  Irvine,  after  erroneously  rejecting  the  descent 
of  the  Hollands  of  Mobberley  and  Knutsford  from  those  of  CHfton 
— a  descent  which  had  been  fully  accepted  by  such  considerable 
previous  authorities  as  the  Rev.  John  Booker,  Mr.  James  Croston, 
(in  his  '  History  of  Samlesbury  Hall'),  and  Mr.  Holland  Watson — 
then  proceeds  to  suggest  a  different  line  of  descent  from  Sir  Richard 
Holland  of  Denton,  temp.  Henry  VIII,  which  rests  on  no  evidence 
whatever,  and  is,  as  he  himself  admits,  pure  conjecture. 


II 

The  following  Inquisition  made  after  the  death,  in  1523,  of 
William  Holland  of  Clifton  (of  whom  Wilham  Holland  of  Rhodes 
was  sixth  son)  is  not,  as  is  the  Clifton  Inquisition  of  1506,  printed 
in  the  collection  of  Lancashire  Inquisitions,  but  I  have  had  it 
copied  from  the  original  parchment  in  the  PubUc  Records  Office. 
I  print  it  here  at  some  length,  though  with  considerable 
abbreviations,  as  it  is  a  good  example  of  how  a  squire  in  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII  made  provision  for  a  widow  and  a  large  family  of 
boys  and  girls,  and  it  illustrates  also  the  ideas  of  spelling  enter- 


APPENDICES  341 

tained  in  Lancashire  at  that  time.  The  Report  of  the  Jurors 
is  in  Latin,  but  the  ^dll  of  William  Holland,  annexed  to  it,  is  in 
Enghsh. 


DiJCHY  OF  Lancaster  Inquistions.  Post  Mortem. 
Vol.  V.  No.  49 

The  document  recites  that  the  Inquisition  was  taken  at  Chorley 
in  the  County  of  Lancashire,  on  the  Saturday  after  Easter,  in  the 
fourteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  King  Henry  VIII,  before  James 
Borseley,  the  King's  '  Escaetor '  for  Lancashire,  and  that  the  Jurors 
were  Lever  de  (?),  Charles  Somner  of  Ley  land,  John  Bardes  worth, 
Philip  Strange,  Hugo  (?),  Richard  Edmondson,  (?)  Eccleston, 
Robert  Aghton,  John  Werden,  Richard  Charnock,  Richard  Croston, 
Charles  Farrington,  and  William  Allenson. 

They  say  on  oath  that  WilHam  Holland,  of  Clyfton,  did  not 
die  seised  of  any  lands  or  tenements  held  from  the  King,  or  from 
the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  but  that  he  was  seised  of  the  Manor  of 
Clyfton,  with  some  other  property  mentioned.  They  then  state 
that  by  an  indenture,  dated  April  17,  in  the  eighth  year  of  King 
Henry  VIII,  the  said  WilUam  Holland  had  conveyed  the  Manor 
of  Clyfton,  while  he  was  so  seised  of  it,  and  the  other  houses  and 
lands  at  Manchester,  Swynton,  Leyland,  and  Farryngton,  to 
certain  trustees — namely,  to  Richard  Holland  of  Denton,  gentle- 
man, Thomas  Longley,  Charles  Whitill,  Edward  Sudhill  of  Walton - 
in-le-Dale,  Clerks,  Nicholas  Holland  of  DeaneHall,  and  Robert  Parr 
of  Worseley  to  hold  for  the  purpose  of  performing  the  will  of 
the  said  William  Holland  declared  and  contained  in  a  schedule 
thereto  annexed.  The  Jurors  state  that  this  will  was  in  the 
following  words  : 

'  Whereas  I  William  Holland  of  Clyfton  in  Salfordshire  in  the 
Countie  of  Lancaster,  Gentleman,  of  grete  confidence  and  speciall 
truste  that  I  have  in  Richard  Holland  of  Denton  Esquire,  Thomas 
Longley,  Charles  Whitill,  Edmund  Sudhill  of  Walton  in  le  Dale, 
Clerks,  Nicholas  Holland  of  the  Deane  Hall,  and  Robert  Parr  of 
Worseley,  Gentlemen,  have  given,  graunted,  and  confermed  by 
this  my  present  dede  indented.  Whereunto  this  present  cedule 
indented  is  annexed  the  aforesaid  persones  their  heirs  and  assignes 
for  ever.  All  my  manor  and  lordship  of  Clyfton  aforesaid  and 
all   and    every   my   messuages,'   &c.    &c.,  'in   Clyfton    aforesaid. 


842  APPENDICES 

Manchester,  Swynton,  Leyland  and  Faryngton  in  the  County  of 
Lancaster   or   ellswher,    within   the   said   Countie   to    the  entent 
that   they  should    execute   the    Will    of  me    the    said    William 
Holland  to  them  in  that  behalfe  specified  published  and  declared 
as  by  the  said  Dede  indented  more  playnely  it  doth  appere.     Be  it 
knowen  to  all   Cristen  people  this   present  writting  indented  of 
a  Will  declared  ...  in  manner  and  forme  insuying ;  Fyrst  I  will  and 
declare  that  the  aforenamed  persones  and  their  heirs  shall  stand  and 
be  feoffees  peasabully  seised  of  and  in  all  and  any  of  the  premises 
to  the  use  and  behofe  of  me  the  said  William  Holland  for  terme  of 
my  life,  and  shall  suffer  me  or  my  attorneys  peasabully  to  perceyve 
take  and  have  yerly  All  and  every  the  issues,  rents,'  &c.,  &c., '  there  of 
to  mine  owne  use  during  all  the  terme  of  my  life  without  eny  inter- 
ruption,' &c . ,  &c . ' Allso  I  will  that  my  said  feoffees  shall  make  by  their 
dede  indented  at  my  request  a  sure  and  laful  estate  and  feofment  of 
parcells  of  the  premises  in  Clyfton,  Leyland  and  Faryngton  aforesaid 
to  the  yerly  value  of  fyve  pounds  xvi^  iii*^  to  Alice  nowe  my  wif  or 
to  feoffees  for  her  use  for  terme  of  her  lif  in  the  name  of  hir  joynture 
and  dower,  the  remeynder  thereof  after  hir  decess  to  me  the  said 
William  Holland  duryng  all  the  terme  of  my  lif.     Allso  I  Mill  that 
my  said  feoffees  within  xx  days  after   my  decess  shall  make  a 
sufficient  graunte  by  their  writting  indented  to  the  said  Alice  or 
to  feoffees,'  etc.  'of  a  parcell  of  my  demeyne  of  Clyfton  aforsaid 
such  as  I  shall  name  and  appoint  to  byld  an  house  and  a  bame  upon 
with  the  best  of  foure  kyen  both  somer  and  wynter,  within  my  said 
demeyne  if  she  kepe  hir  sole  and  unmarried  after  my  decesse  toward 
the  norrishing  fynding  and  exibition  of  all  my  children  muher  [i.e. 
girls]  except  myn  heir.     And  if  the  said  Alice  after  my  decesse 
[here  follow  provisions  for  making  void  this  gift  if  the  said  Ahce 
should  sue  for  anything  more  in  a  court  of  law,  and  then  comes 
a  gift  of  certain  titles  at  Clifton  to  Alice  for  life  while  unmarried] 
to  the  use  and  behofe  of  hir  and  my  yonge  children  mulier.'    If 
Alice  married  again  she  was  to  lose  all  benefits,  which  would  then 
go  to  '  only  my  yonge  children  muHer  begottyn.'    The  document 
then  declares  that  '  my  said  feoffees  shall  make  at  my  request  by 
dede  indented  such  convenient  estate  and  feoffment  of  parcell  of 
the  premises  at  myn  appoynting  ...  as  it  shall  happyn  me  to 
graunte  hereafter  to  be  made  by  indenture  at  the  raariage  of  my 
said  son  and  heir.     And  if  it  happen  me  to  decesse  afor  my  said  son 
and  heir  shall  be  committed  bj'-  me  to  be  maried  in  my  lif  then  I 


APPENDICES  343 

will  that  my  said  feoffees  with  the  consent  and  advj'^se  of  the  afor- 
said  Alice  my  wyf  if  she  kepe  her  unmaried  shall  marie  my  said  son 
and  heir  in  convenient  place  and  to  such  a  gentlewoman  as  they 
shall  best  think  by  their  discretion.'    And  they  were  to  make  such 
grants  from  the  estate  on  such  an  occasion  as  they  thought  advis- 
able.    The  feoffees  were  also  directed  within  twenty  days  after 
William  Holland's  decease  to  convey  certain  specified  houses  in 
Clifton,  Manchester,  and  Swinton  '  to  my  yonge  sons  of  my  body 
by  the  aforsaid  Alice  my  wyf  nowe  begottyn  or  to  be  gottyn  evenly 
and  equally  to  be  departed  and  divided  among  them  for  the  terme 
of  their  liffes  all.     Provided  that  if  it  happjnn  any  of  my  said  yonge 
sons  to  dye  or  to  be  promoted  by  benefice,  prebend,  chauntry  or 
mariage  to  the  yerly  value  of  17  marks  over  all  charges  and  reprises 
for  the  terme  of  life.'  [In  that  case  the  life-gift  of  the  share  in  house- 
rents  is  to  become  '  extinct  and  of  none  effect.']     '  And  if  the  said 
Alice  kepe  hir  sole  and  unmaried  after  my  dec  esse  then  I  will  that 
she  shall  have  the  custodie,  rule,  governance  and  possession,  if  it 
shall  please  hir,  of  all  my  said  yonge  sons  and  any  of  them  and  their 
said  anunytes  with  all  their  goods  so  long  as  thei  or  any  of  them  will 
be  so  contented  and  pleased  to  be  and  abide  with  hir.     And  if  it 
happyn  me  the  said  William  to  dye  af or  my  said  son  and  heir  shall  be 
of  the  age  of  xviii  yers  completed.'     [The  feoffees  are  then  to  allot  the 
executors  of  his  last  will  to  raise  40  marks  and  use  them  in  accord- 
ance with  instructions  to  be  given  by  his  last  will  and  subject  to  the 
dower  and  annuities  to  younger  sons,  the  feoffees  should  then  hold  the 
residue  of  the  estate  to  the  use  of  his  son  and  heir.     His  wife  Ahce, 
if  she  keeps  unmarried,  is  to  have  the  custody,  rule,  and  governance 
of  the  son  and  heir  until  he  is  twenty-one.     William  Holland  then 
reserves  to  himself  the  right  of  altering  the  provisions  of  this  his 
present  will  at  any  time  thereafter.] 

The  Jurors  at  the  Inquisition,  after  stating  the  above  will, 
and  describing  the  various  properties  with  their  existing  annual 
value,  repeat  that  the  said  William  Holland  died  on  the  Wednesday 
before  the  Feast  of  St.  Michael  the  Archangel  last,  that  Thomas 
Holland  is  his  son  and  heir,  and  that  at  the  date  of  the  Inquisition  he 
was  sixteen  years  old  and  over. 

The  minuteness  of  the  portions  given  to  the  younger  sons  is- 
worth  noting.     They  only  get  very  small  rents  for  life,  and  even 
these  are  to  cease  if  they  get  slender  ecclesiastical  preferments  or 
marry  a  girl  with  a  little  money.     No  wonder  that  so  many  younger 


344  APPENDICES 

sons  of  squires  could  not  marry,  or  disappeared  into  utter  obscurity. 
There  was  then  no  army  or  navy,  or  home  or  Indian  civil  service, 
or  colonies,  to  give  them  a  career.  Such  would  have  been  the  fate  of 
my  ancestor  William  Holland,  sixth  son  of  Squire  William  Holland 
of  Chfton,  had  he  not  chanced,  in  middle  life,  to  pick  up  a  small 
co-heiress,  the  daughter  of  Parr  of  Rhodes. 


APPENDIX  III 


CHIEF  SOURCES  OF  INFORMATION 


Chronicles. 

Walsingham. 

Grafton. 

Higden. 

Froissart. 

Malverne. 

Jean  de  Wavrin. 

Hardynge. 

Enguerrand  de  Monstrelet. 

Hall. 

Jean  le  Fere. 

Holinshed. 

Philippe  de  Commines. 

Fabian. 

Chronique  de  Normandie. 

II 

General  Histories 

Babnes,  Joshua  :    History  of  Edward  III  and  the  Black  Prince. 

(Cambridge:   1688.) 
Baker's  Chronicle.     (London  :    1660.) 
Carte's  General  History  of  England.     (1747.) 
Kennet  :  Complete  History  of  England.     (London  :  1706.) 
Guthrie  :   History  of  England.     (London  :    1747.) 
Sandford  :     Genealogical   History   of    the   Kings     of   England. 

(London:    1707.) 
TuRNOR  :   History  of  England  during  the  Middle  Ages.     (1830.) 
LiNGAUD  :  History  of  England.     (1849.) 

Stubbs,  Bishop  :   Constitutional  History  of  England.     (1880.) 
Wylie,  J.  H.  :    History  of  England  under  Henry  IV.     (1896.) 

„        Henry  V.     (1911.) 
345 


346  APPENDICES 

Ramsay,  Sir  J.  H.  :   Lancaster  and  York.     (1892.) 
,,  ,,  Genesis  of  Lancaster.     (1913.) 

Oman,  C.  :   Political  History  of  England  from  1377  to  1485. 
MowETT,  R,.  B.  :   The  Wars  of  the  Roses.     (1914.) 
Stevenson  :   Wars  of  the  Enghsh  in  France. 
Bakante  :   Histoire  des  Dues  de  Bourgogne.     (1825.) 
QuiCHERAT :   Rodrigue.     (1879.) 


Ill 

County  and  Local  Histories 

Baines  :   History  of  Lancashire.     (1836.) 

Victorian  County  History  of  Lancashire. 

Chetham  Society  Publications. 

Surtees  Society  Publications. 

Camden  Society  Publications. 

Harleian  Society  Publications  :  Visitations,  &c. 

Stow's  London.     (1707.) 

Croston  :   History  of  Samlesbury  Hall.    (1871.) 

Hunter  :   History  of  South  Yorkshire. 

,,         Familiffi  Minoruna  Gentium  (Harleian  Society,  1894-6). 
Booker,  Rev.  J.  :   Memorials  of  Prestwich,  and  other  works. 
Ormerod  :   History  of  Cheshire. 
Hasted  :   History  of  Kent. 
Blomefield  :   History  of  Norfolk. 

Dallaway  and  Cartwright  :    History  of  Western  Sussex. 
Bray  :    History  of  Surrey. 
PoLWHELE  :   Devonshire.     (1793.) 
Jones  :  Historj^  of  Denbighshire. 
Williams  :   History  of  Conway. 
Archseologia  Cambrensis. 
Archseologia  Cantiana. 
Pennant  :    Tour  in  Wales.     (1778.) 
Prince,  John  :   Worthies  of  Devon.     (1698.) 
Fuller  :   English  Worthies.     (Ed.  1811.) 

,,  Warwickshire. 

Wm.  F.  Irvine  :    The  Family  of    Hollands  of  Mobberley  and 
Knutsford.     (1902.) 


APPENDICES  347 

IV 

Other  Works 

Btjrke  :   Peerage. 

Extinct  Peerages.     (1883.) 
,,         Vicissitudes  of  Families.     (1869.) 
Rise  of  Great  Families.     (1873.) 
,,  Royal  Families  of  England,  &c.     (1848.) 

Doyle  :   Baronage  of  England.     (1886.) 
Metcalfe's  Book  of  Knights.     (1885.) 
Dfgdale,  Sir  William  :  Baronage. 
,,  „  Monasticon. 

,,  ,,  Warwickshire. 

Rymer  :   Foedera. 

Weever,  John  :   Funeral  Monuments.     (London  :   1631.) 
Beltz  :    Memorials  of  the  Most  Noble  Order  of  the  Garter,  1821. 
Fenn  :   Paston  Letters. 
Calendar  of  Inquisitions  'post  mortem. 
Register  of  Papal  Letters :  Cal.  State  Papers. 
Berry  :   Genealogies. 

Rowland,  David  :  Family  of  Nevill.     (1830.) 
G.  E.  C.  :   Complete   Peerage.      (London  :    1887-1898.) 
Complete  Baronetage.     (Exeter  :  1900-1904.) 
Nichols  :   Progresses  of    Queen  Elizabeth  and  of  King  James  I. 

(Ed.  1828.) 
FoxE  :   Acts  and  Monuments.     (Book  of  Martyrs.) 
Challoner,  Bishop  :  Memoirs  of  Missionary  Priests.     (1742.) 
Foley  :   Records  of  the  English  Province  of  the  Society  of  Jesus, 
Gillow  :   Biographical  Dictionary  of  English  CathoUcs. 
The  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 
Dictionnaire  de  Biographic  Universelle. 
Anthony  a  Wood  :  Athen.  Oxon.     (1692.) 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


(The   Names    which    are    only  given    in   Pedigree  tables  and   are   not   also 
mentioned  in  the  text,  are  not  included  in  the  Index.) 


Albemarle,  Duke  of.     See  York. 

Alencon,  Duke  of,  186 

Ambeticourt,  Sir  Sanchio,  26 

Anderton,  James,  265 

Anderton,  Lawrence,  265 

Anne,  first  Queen  of  Richard  II,  53,  66 

Arundel,  Agnes,  Lady,  125 

Arundel,  Alice  Fitzalan  of.  Countess  of 
Kent,  67,  124-5 

Arundel,  Archbishop.     See  Canterbury 

Arundel,  Countess  of,  95 

Arundel,  Sir  John,  91 

Arundel,  Richard  Fitzalan,  Earl  of, 
55,  83,  109-15 

Arundel,  Thomas,  Earl  of,  118,  134, 
143-7,  186,  189 

Arundel,  Sir  William,  125 

Ashburnham,  Henrietta  Maria,  Coun- 
tess of,  14 

Ashburnham,  John,  328 

Ashburnham,  Lady  Mary,  Viscountess 
Knutsford,  302 

Asheton,  Richard,  244 

Ashurst,  Thomas,  14 

Audley,  Lord  and  Lady,  158,  207 

Aymer,  Cardinal,  32 


Bacon,  Lord,  38,  184,  196,  211 
Banastre,  Sir  Adam  de,  7,  88 
Banastre,  Sir  Thomas  de,  8,  12 
Banastre,  Prior  Thomas  de,  12 
Barre,  Jeanne  de.  Countess  de  War- 
renne,  17,  19 


Bath,  Margaret  de,  327 

Bath,  Sir  Walter  de,  327 

Barlow,  Edward,  O.S.B.,  264 

Bamaby,  Prior  John,  12 

Bavaria,  Duke  of,  125 

Bazvalen,  Seigneur  de,  44 

Beauchamp,  John,  Lord,  26 

Beaufort,  Cardinal,  168,  174,  190-3,  196 

Beaufort,    Joan,    Countess    of    West- 
morland, 168 

Beaufort,    Joan,    Queen    of    Scotland, 
169,  172-5 

Beaufort,      Margaret,      Countess      of 
Devon,  169 

Beaufort,  Margaret,  Countess  of  Rich- 
mond, 169-71 

Beaufort,    Thomas,   Duke    of   Exeter, 
168,  174,  183. 
And  see  Somerset 
Beaumont,  Lord,  206,  228 
Beche,  Margery  de  la,  12 
Bedford,  John,  Duke  of,  187-9,  194-5 
Beltz,  Mr.,  55,  233 
Berden,  Nicholas',  244 
Berkeley,  Sir  Thomas,  138 
Berry,  Duke  of,  54 
Blair,  Major-General,  276 
Blount,  Sir  Thomas,  132,  136 
Bold,  Anne,  296 
Bold,  Ralph,  296 
Boniface  IX,  Pope,  93-5 
Bonner,  Bishop,  241 
Booker,  Rev.  John,  292,  337,  340 
Boothe,  Sir  Thomas,  14 
Boteler,  Lady  de,  13 


349 


350 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


Boucicault,  Seigneur  de,  88 
Bourbon,  Duchess  of,  217 
Bourbon,  Isabelle  de,  218 
Bourchier,  Lord,  30 
Bourchier,  Sir  John,  125 
Boyle,  Charlotte,  322 
Brabant,  Antoine,  Duke  of,  42 
Brabant,  Philip,  Duke  of,  42 
Braddeston,  Lady  Blanche,  125 
Bradshaw,  John,  275 
Bradshaw,  Sir  William,  8 
Braganza,  Archbishop  of,  71,  72 
Brember,  Sir  Nicholas,  85 
Brereton,  Richard,  244 
Brdze,  Pierre,  Seigneur  de,  217 
Britland,  Mrs.,  282 
Brittany,  John  de  Montfort,  Duke  of, 

43,  102,  125 
Bromflete,  Henry,  168 
Buckingham,  Earl  of,  53,  55 
Buckingham,  George  Villiers,  Duke  of, 

315 
Bungay,  Friar,  227 
Burghurst,  Lord,  26,  30 
Burgundy,  Duke  of  (14th  century),  54 
Burgundy,  Charles,  Duke  of,  218-24 
Burgundy,  Philip,  Duke  of,  42,  190-3, 

217 
Burke,  Bernard,  36 
Burley,  Sir  Simon,  85,  111 
Burnet,  Bishop,  246 
Bussell,  William,  16 
Buxton,  Charles,  M.P.,  303 
Buxton,  Viscount,  303 
Byron,  Lord,  277 
Byron,  Sir  John,  244 


Cellini,  Benvenuto,  51 

Champernownes,  Family  of,  182 

Chandos,  Sir  John,  26,  30,  42,  46 

Charles  I,  King  of  England,  253,  328 

Charles  VI,  King  of  France,  43,  99 

Chastelain,  George,  217 

Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  86,  89,  91 

Chedsey,  Bishop,  241 

Cholmondeley,  Thomas,  282 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  302 

Cliyrche,  Uchtred  de,  2 

Clarence,  George,  Duke  of,  221,  225,  227 

Clarence,  Lionel,  Duke  of,  159,  210 

Clarence,  Philippa  of,  211 

Clarence,  Thomas,  Duke  of,  171,  189 

Clarke,  Jane,  309 

Clifford,  Lord,  211,  213 

Clifford,  Rosamond  de,  5 

Clifford,  Sir  Thomas,  30 

Clifton,  Sir  John,  88 

Clynton,  Sir  William,  88 

Cobham,  Sir  John,  54 

Cobham,  Reginald,  Lord,  30 

Codling,  Thomas,  180 

CoUyer,  John,  273 

Commines,    Philip  de,   219,   220,   223, 

225,  226,  233 
Cooke,  Father,  S.J.,  263 
Corbie,  Father  Ambrose,  252,  263 
Cosen,  John,  137 
Courtenay,  Hugh,  Lord,  26,  40 
Coiu'tenay,  Sir  Peter,  125 
Coventry,  Walter,  Bishop  of,  11 
Cragge,  Prior  Sir  John,  288 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  279 
Croston,  James,  viii,  11,  233,  340 


Cade,  Hugh,  141 

Caldwell,  Emma,  299 

Caldwell,  James,  299 

Cambridge,  Earl  of,  47,  55,  165,  185 

Campion,  Edmund,  S.J.,  244,  273 

Canning,  George,  297 

Canterbiu-y,  Archbishops  of  :  Bouchier, 

210  ;  Courtenay,  83  ;  Cranmer,  246  ; 

Fitzalan     (Arundel),    38,    84,      112, 

130,      134,      152;     Stratford,      21  ; 

Walden,  132 
Gary,  Thomas,  S.J.,  253 
Cave,  Sir  Ambrose,  290 


Dacke,  Earl  of,  213 

Dalton,  Sir  Robert,  12 

Daniel,  Pere,  41 

De  Courcy,  Lady,  125 

Delamere,  Lord,  280 

Delaware,  Lord,  30 

Denbigh,  Earl  of,  277,  326 

Derby,  Charlotte,  Countess  of,  95 

Derby,  Earl  of.     See  Henry  IV 

Derby,   Stanleys,   Earls  of,   241,   274, 

276,  292 
Despenser,  Lord,   111,   113,   117,   125, 

140,  146 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


351 


Despenser,  Lady  Constance,  125,  133, 

158,  160,  165 
De  Trivet,  Lady,  125 
Devon,  Earl  of,  213-14 
Digby,  Kenelm  Henry,  38 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  174 
Dudley,  Lord,  207 
Dugdale,  Sir  William,  19,  150,  239 
Dutton,  Sir  Hugh  de,  4 
Dynham,  Sir  John,  181 


Eam,  Sir  Henry,  26 

Edward  I,  King  of  England,  5,  42 

Edward  II,  6,  7,  31 

Edward  III,  20,  25,  30,  34,  37 

Edward  IV,  210,  212,  217-31 

Edward,     Prince      of     Wales     (Black 

Prince),  26,  34-40,  46 
Edward,  Prince  of  Wales,  son  of  Henry 

VI,  204 
Egerton,  Sir  John,'  283 
Egerton,  Peter,  275 
Egerton,  Lord,  of  Tatton,  296 
Eleanor,  Queen  of  Edward  I,  42 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  200,  246-^51,  330 
Elmham,  Thomas  of,  198 
Erskine,  Sir  David,  306 
Erskine,  Frances,  309 
Erskine,  Lord  Chancellor,  309 
Eu,  Count  of,  26 
Exeter,  Anne,  Duchess  of   2nd  Duke. 

See  Montacute. 
Exeter,  Anne,  Duchess  of  3rd  Duke. 

^ee  York. 
Exeter,  Bishop  of,  112 
Exeter,  Dukes  of.     See  Beaufort  and 

Holland 


Fabian,  chronicler,  215,  229 
Fairfax,  General  Sir  Thomas,  277 
Fere,  Jean  la,  191 
Fernando,  Sir  John,  77 
Fitz-Alan  family.    See  Arundel 
Fitz  Lewis,  Sir  John,  198 
Fitz  Simon,  Sir  Richard,  26 
Fitz  Walter,  Lord,  129 
Flanders,  Count  of,  54 
Foxe,  Jane,  336 


Foxe,  John,  295,  336 

Froissart,  John,  26,  30,  34,  35,  52,    85, 

89,  100,  103,  106,    119,    122-3,    149 

152 
Froude,  James  A.,  51,  249 
Fuller,  Tliomas,  316,  324 
Fytton,  Thomas,  244 


Gage,  Sir  Henry,  256 

Gage,  Thomas,  256 

Gaskell,  Elizabeth,  300 

Gaskell,  Rev.  William,  300 

Gaveston,  Piers,  7 

Gellibrand,  John,  3 

Gellibrand,  Juliana,  3 

Gifford,  Dorothy,  300 

GifEord,  Lord,  300 

Gloucester,   Eleanor,  Duchess  of,    95, 

105-7,  116 
Gloucester,    Richard,    Duke    of.     See 

Richard  III 
Gloucester,  Thomas  Plantagenet,  Duke 

of,  83-5,  93,  95-112,  115-17 
Glover,  Sir  Thomas,  316 
Glynn,  WiUiam,  306 
Golofer,  Sir  John,  88      ; 
Gower,  John,  151 
Grafton,  Richard,  229 
Graham,  Sir  Robert,  175 
Gray,  Lord,  of  Codmore,  26 
Grey,  Sir  Thomas,  185 
Grey  de  Ruthin,  Lord,  153,  210 
Guelders,  Duke  of,  125 
Guthrie,  Mr.,  97 


Hale,  Henry  de,  3 
Hale,  Thomas  de,  9 
Hall,  chronicler,  210,  215 
HanMord,  Sir  Richard,  198 
Harcourt,  Sir  Godfrey,  30 
Hastings,  Lord,  224,  227 
Henry  III,  King  of  England,  5 
Henry  IV,  54,  85,  86,  88,  94,  110,  117, 

120^,  127-56,  160,  172,  215 
Henry  V,  183-8 
Henry  VI,  204,  210-15 
Henry  VII,  169,  170,  175,  232 
Henry  VIII,  170,  245-7 


352 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


Henry,  King  of  Castile,  68,  80 
Hereford,  Duke  of.     See  Henry  IV 
Hereford,  Joan  de  Bohun,  Countess  of, 

141-5 
Heywood,  Oliver,  282 
Hibbert,  Elizabeth,  302 
Hibbert,  Nathaniel,  302 
Hindelaye,  Adam  de,  8 
Hinkley,  John,  64 
Hobell,  Thomas,  88 
Holinshed,  chronicler,  48,  85,  87,  105-6, 

113,  120,  158 
Holland,   Barons,   of   UphoUand.     See. 

♦  Holland '  below 
Holland,  Abraham,  326 
Holland,  Adam,  of  Upholland,  3,  238 
Holland,  Alan,  of  Upholland,   16,   23, 

305 
Holland,  Alexander,  of  Sutton,  252 
Holland,  Alexander,  of  Sutton,  S.  J.,  266 
Holland,  Alianora,  of  Kent,  Countess 

of  March,  164 
Holland,  Alice,  of  Clifton,  289 
Holland,  Ameria,  of  Upholland,  4 
Holland,    Anne,   d.    of   2nd   Duke    of 

Exeter,  Lady  Nevill,  197,  199 
Holland,    Anne,    d.    of    3rd    Duke    of 

Exeter,  230 
Holland,  Arthur,  Sir,  300 
Holland,  Brian,  of  Denton,  319 
Holland,  Brian,  of  Norfolk,  319,  326 
Holland,  Bridget,  Lady,  of  Kent,  164, 

178 
Holland,    Caroline,    d.    of    Sir    Henry 

Holland,  303 
Holland,  Catharine,  of  Clifton,  289 
HoUand,     Catharine,    of    Quidenham, 

321-2 
Holland,  Constance,  d.  of  1st  Duke  of 

Exeter,  Duchess  of  Norfolk,  and  the 

Lady  Grey  de  Ruthin,  163,  182,  199, 

201,  202 
Holland,  Edgar  Swinton,  ix 
HoUand,  Edmund,  4th   Earl  of  Kent, 

157-162,  234 
Holland,  Edmund,  of  Clifton,  289 
Holland,  Edward,  son  of  1st  Duke  of 

Exeter,  180 
Holland,  Edward,  of  Chorlton,  296,  337 
Holland,  Edward,  of  Conway,  306,  307 
Holland,  Edward,  of  Denton,  281 


Holland,  Edward,  of  Denton  (II),  283 
Holland,  Edward,  of  Dumbleton,  M.P., 

299 
Holland,  Edward,  of  Glossop,  323 
Holland,  Edward,  of  Sutton,  267 
Holland,   Eleanor,   of  Kent,   Countess 

of  Salisbury,  176-7 
Holland,  Elias,  of  Upholland,  3 
Holland,     Elizabeth,     of     Estovening, 

the  '  Devilish  Dame,'  2,  319w. 
Holland,  Elizabeth,  of  Denton,  Lady 

Egerton,  283 
Holland,  Elizabeth,  of  Clifton,  Lady  de 

Trafford,  293 
HoUand,    Elizabeth,  of    Kent,    Lady 

NeviU,  177 
HoUand,  Elizabeth,  of  NorfoUi,  319 
Holland,  Elizabeth,  of  Sandlebridge,  300 
Holland,  Emily,  Mrs.  Charles  Buxton, 

303 
Holland,  Frances,  of  Denton,  281 
Holland,    Frances,    of    Denton,    Lady 

Eyton,  282 
HoUand,  Francis  James,  Rev.  Canon, 

301-3 
Holland,  Frederick,  Rev. ,  of  Evesham, 

299 
HoUand,  George,  of  Norfolk,  319 
Holland,  George,  of  Dumbleton,  300 
Holland,  Henry,  3rd  Duke  of  Exeter, 

202-34 
Holland,  Henry,   Sir,   Baronet,  M.D., 

297-8 
Holland,  Henry,  son  of  Dr.  Philemon, 

325-6,  330 
Holland,  Henry,  of  Sutton,  S.J.,  264-6 
Holland,    Henry    Scott,    Rev.    Canon, 

D.D.,  300-1 
HoUand,  Henry  Thurstan,  1st  Viscount 

Knutsford,  301-2 
HoUand,  Hugh,  of  Conway,  306 
Holland,  Hugh,  of  Denbigh,  315-17 
Holland,  Isabel,  of  Upholland,  16-21 
HoUand,  Jane,  of  Denton,  Mrs.  Chol- 

mondeley,  282 
HoUand,  Joan,  of  Euxton,  16 
Holland,   Joan,   of  Kent,   Duchess   of 

Brittany,  43-4 
HoUand,   Joan,    of   Kent,  Duchess  of 

York,  125,  164-8 
Holland,  Joan,  of  UphoUand,  4 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


353 


Holland,  John,   1st  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don  and  Duke   of   Exeter,   40,   47, 
52-66,    68-82,     87-95,     103-6,   110, 
114,  117-19, 124-30,  131-5,141-9,234 
Holland,  John,  2nd  Earl  of  Huntingdon 
and  2nd  Duke  of  Eyeter,  180-200,  234 
Holland,  John,  of  Clifton,  289 
Holland,  John,  Rev.,  of  Dunmow,  323 
Holland,  John,  of  Mobberley,  297 
HoUand,  John,  of  Norfolk,  319,  323 
Holland,    John,    Sir,    of    Quidenham, 

320-2,  326 
Holland,   John,  Sir,  of  Quidenham  (II), 

322 
Holland,  John,  of  Upholland,  16,  23, 

327 
Holland,  Joseph,  of  Devonshire,  327 
Holland,    Katharine,    of    Quidenham, 

320  n. 
Holland,  Laurence,  of  Denton,  339 
Holland,  Margaret,  of  Kent,  Countess 
of  Somerset  and  Duchess  of  Clarence, 
125,  168-75,  233 
HoUand,  Margaret,  of  Upholland,  3, '7 
Holland,  Marion,  of  Clifton,  289 
Holland,  Marjory,  of  Upholland,  4 
Holland,  Matthew,  of  Upholland,  3 
Holland,  Maud,  of  Kent,  Countess  of 

St.  Pol,  40-3,  99,  154 
Holland,  Maud,  of  Upholland,  14 
Holland,  Nicholas,  Rev.,  309 
HoUand,  .Nicholas,  of  Clifton,"  289 
Holland,  Nicholas,  of  Deane  Hall,  341 
HoUand,  Otho,  of  Clifton  (I),  285 
HoUand,  Otho,  of  Clifton  (II),  289-90 
HoUand,  Otho,  Sir,  of  UphoUand,  16, 

21,  23,  234 
HoUand,  Owen,  of  Conway,  305 
HoUand,  Peter,  of  Clifton,  289 
Holland,  Peter,  of  Conway,  305 
HoUand,  Peter,   of  Sandlebridge,  297, 

300 
Holland,  Philemon,  Dr.,  323-5 
HoUand,  Ralph,  of  Clifton,  290 
HoUand,  Richard,  son  of  Ist  Duke  of 

Exeter,  180 
Holland,  Richard,  Sir,  of  Denton,  273 
HoUand,  Richard  (II),  of  Denton,  273 
Holland,    Richard    (III),    of    Denton, 

Colonel,  274-82 
HoUand,  Richard,  of  Sutton,  3,  15,  267 


HoUand,  Richard,  of  Sutton,  S.J.,  267 
Holland,  Richard,   Sir,  of  UphoUand, 

9,  238 
Holland,  Robert,    1st    Lord    HoUand, 

5-12 
HoUand,   Robert,   2nd   Lord   Holland, 

12,  14 
Holland,  Robert,  of  Clifton,  285-90 
HoUand,  Robert,  of  Euxton,  16 
Holland,  Robert,  of  Sutton,  238 
HoUand,  Robert,  of  Sutton  (II),  242, 

244 
Holland,  Robert,  of  Upholland,  2,  3, 

238 
Holland,  Robert,  Sir,  of  Upholland,  4 
HoUand,  Robert,  Rev.,  307 
Holland,  Robert  Martin,  C.B.,  299 
Holland,  Roger,  of  Sutton,  239-42 
HoUand,  Roger,  of  UphoUand,  3 
Holland,  Roger,  of  Wales,  312 
HoUand,  Samuel,  Rev.,  D.D.,  309 
Holland,  Samuel,  of  Liverpool,  300 
Holland,  Samuel,  of  Sandlebridge,  297 
Holland,  Simon,  3 
Holland,  Swinton,  299 
HoUand,  Swinton,  Admiral,  299 
Holland,  Sydney  George,  2nd  Viscount 

Knutsford,  302 
Holland,  Thomas,   1st  Earl  of  Kent, 

15,  16,  20,  25-35,  234 
HoUand,  Thomas,  2nd  Earl  of  Kent, 

40,  45-7,  57,  66,  101,  234 
Holland,  Thomas,   3rd  Earl  of  Kent, 

and  Duke  of  Surrey,    110-15,    117, 

118,    120,    125,     127,     129,     131-8, 

149-50,  234 
Holland,  Thomas,  of  Clifton,  291,  343 
Holland,  Thomas,  of  Clifton  (II),  293 
Holland,  Thomas,  of  Conway,  305 
Holland,  Thomas,  of  Denton,  282 
Holland,  Sir  Thomas,  of  Estovening,  2, 

319w. 
HoUand,    Thomas,    Dr.,    of    Oxford, 

329-31 
Holland,  Thomas,  Sir,  of  Quidenham, 

322 
Holland,  Thomas,  Colonel,  of  Quiden- 
ham, 322 
HoUand,    Thomas,    of    Sutton,    S.J., 

252-64 
HoUand,  Thomas,  Sir,  of  Wales,  312 

2  A 


354 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


Holland,  Thomas  Agar,  Rev.,  309 
Holland,  Sir  Thomas  Erskine,  K.C.,  310 
Holland,    Thurstar,    Sir,    of    Danton, 

269-73,  2S5,  338-9 
Holland,  Thurstan,  Sir,  of  Upholland, 

2,  233,  237 
Holland,  William,  of  Clifton  (I),  273, 

285,  287 
Holland,  William,  of  Clifton  (II),  291, 

340 
Holland,  William,  of  Conway,  306 
Holland,  William,  Rev.,  of  Denton,  283 
Holland,   William,  of  Mobberley,  296, 

337 
Holland,  William,  Sir,  of  Quidenham, 

322 
Holland,  William,  of  Rhodes  (I),  291-5, 

336-40,  344 
Holland,  William,  of  Rhodes  (II),  295 
Holland,    William,    Sir,    of    Sharpies, 

269-71 
Holland,   William,   Sir,   of  Upholland, 

7,  15,  269 
Holland,  William,  of  Upholland,  4 
Hulme,  Ellen,  296 
Hunter,  Rev.  Joseph,  339 
Huntingdon,  Anne,  Countess  of.     See 

Stafford 
Huntingdon,    Beatrice,    Countess    of. 

See  Portugal 
Huntingdon,  Earls  of.     See  Holland 


Ingham,  Sir  Oliver  de,  8 
Ireland,  Sir  Adam  de,  4 
Ireland,  Robert  de  Vere,  Duke  of,  83, 

86 
Irvine,  William  F.,  ix,  294,  336 
Isabella,  Queen  of  Edward  II,  31 
Isabella,  second  Queen  of  Richard  II, 

99,  100,  136 


Jacques,  Seigneur,  the  '  Bastard,'  187 
James  I,  King  of  England,  315,  323,  330 
James  I,  King  of  Scotland,  169,  172-5 
James  II,  King  of  England,  97 
James  II,  King  of  Scotland,  175 
Jarret,  Sir  Thomas,  241 
Joan  of  Arc,  189 
Julian,  Mother,  49 


Kellet,  Adam  de,  3 

Kempton,  Master,  239 

Kent,  Alice,  Countess  of.     See  Arundel 

Kent,  Edmund  Plantagenet,  Earl  of,  31 

Kent,  Joan  Plantagenet  (Fair  Maid), 

32-40 
Kent,  Joan,  Countess  of.     See  Stafford 
Kent,  Margaret,  Countess  of,  32 
Kent,   Earls    of.      See    Holland    and 

Grey  de  Ruthin 
Kenyon,  Adam  de,  273 
Kenyon,  Aimeria,  273 
Knutsford,  Viscounts.     See  *  Holland  ' 

Lancaster     (Plantagenet),     Blanche, 

Duchess  of,  64,  181 
Lancaster  (Plantagenet),  Catharine  of, 

Queen  of  Castile,  69,  72,  82 
Lancaster     (Plantagenet),     Constance, 

Duchess  of,  65,  68 
Lancaster  (Plantagenet),  Elizabeth  of, 

Duchess  of  Exeter,  54,  64-6,  69 
Lancaster   (Plantagenet),    Henry,   2nd 

Duke  of.     See  Henry  IV 
Lancaster   (Plantagenet),   Henry,   2nd 

Earl  of,  10,  26,  31,  372 
Lancaster  (Plantagenet),  John  of  Gaunt, 

Duke  of,  46-7,  53-6,  68-82,  93,  95, 

99,  103,  110,  113 
Lancaster  (Plantagenet),  Katharine  do 

Swynford,  Duchess  of,  65,  95,   125, 

168 
Lancaster     (Plantagenet),     Maud     of. 

Countess  of  Stafford,  66 
Lancaster   (Plantagenet),    Philippa   of. 

Queen   of    Portugal,    65,    69,    71-3, 

82,  217 
Lancaster  (Plantagenet),  Thomas,   lat 

Earl  of,  6-8,  18 
Langley,  Ellen,  291 
Langley,  Robert  de,  289 
Langley,  Sir  Robert,  291 
Langley,  Roger  de,  287 
Langley,  Thomas,  341 
Langley,  Rev.  William,  292 
Langton,  Mr.,  1 
Latimer,  Friar,  54 
Latimer,  Lord,  30 

Leicester,  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of,  330 
L'isle,  Gerard  de,  12 
Lisle,  John,  Lord,  26 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


8S& 


London,  Bishop  of,  93 

Loring,  Sir  Nele,  26 

Louis  XI,  King  of  France,  218,  221 

Lovell,  Sir  John,  14 

Lovell,  Viscount,  14 

Lyall,  Rev.  Alfred,  303 

LyaU,  Sir  Alfred,  303 

Lyall,  Sir  James,  303 

LyaU,  Mary  Sibylla,  303 

Lyndwood,  William,  191 

Maoaulay,  Lord,  302 

Majorca,  King  of,  46 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  209 

Mansell,  John,  2 

March,  Edmund,  Earl  of,  164,  197 

March,  Edward,  Earl  of.     See  Edward 

IV 
March,  Roger  de  Mortimer,   Earl  of, 

26,  119,  164 
Margaret,  Queen  of  Henry  VI,  54,  204- 

17 
Marmion,  Sir  John,  54 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  153,  171,  176 
Maudelyn,  Richard,  116,  132 
Mauley,  Lord,  30 
Medstead,  Sir  Andrew,  327 
Medstead,  Eleanor,  23,  327 
Mohun,  Lady,  125 
Mohun,  John,  Lord,  26  *' 
Molyneux,  Agnes  de,  2p8 
Molyneux,  Sir  Thomas  de,  287 
Molyneux,  Sir  William  de,  16 
Molyneux,  William  de,  46 
Monstrelet,  Enguerrand  de,  194 
Montacute,  Lady  Alice  de,  Countess  of 

Westmorland,  177 
Montacute,  Lady  Anne  of,  Duchess  of 

Exeter,  199,  201 
Montacute,  William  de,  32-5.    And  see 

Salisbury 
Montagu,  Earl  of,  217,  227 
Moreaux,  Sir  Thomas,  69-71,  77 
Mortimer,  Anne,  Countess  of  Cambridge, 

165 
Mortimer,  Eleanor,  164 
Mortimer,  Lord,  31 
Mortimer,  Roger,  164 

Neeford,  Maud  de,  18,  20 

NeviU,  Anne,  Princess  of  Wales,  221 


Nevill,  Cecily,  Duchess  of  York,  178, 

215,  225 
Nevill,  Lord  John,  177,  197 
Nevill,  Sir  John,  178,  197 
Nevill.      See  Westmorland,    Warwick, 

and  Salisbury 
Newcome,  Rev.  Henry,  280 
Nicies,  Sir,  57 

Norfolk,  Howards,  Dukes  of,  214,  322 
Norfolk,  Thomas  de  Mowbray,  Duke  of, 

83,  84,  89,  109,  113-17,  120-3  (first, 

Nottingham) 
Northumberland,  Percy,  Earls  of,  56, 

125,  134,  194 
Nottingham,  Earl  of.    See  Norfolk 


Oman,  Professor  C,  210,  215 
Ostrevant,  Count  of,  93,  125 
Oxford,  Earls  of,  224.  227-8,  228 


Paeeley,  Sir  Walter,  26 

Parr,  Miss,  294,  336 

Parr,  Robert,  341 

Paston,  John,  215,  218 

Paston,  Lady  Rebecca,  322 

Paston,  William,  215 

Paul,  John,  132 

Pedro,  King  of  Castille,  38,  46,  68,  93 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  297 

Pell,  Sir  Anthony,  320 

Pembroke,  Earl  of,  55,  66 

Penthievre,  Olivier  de  Blois,  Count  of, 

161 
Percy,  Sir  Henry  (Hotspur),  125-6 
Percy,  Sir  Thomas,  73,  77,   103.     And 

see  Northumberland 
Perez,  Donna  Agnese,  197 
Peyton,  William,  325 
Philippa,   Queen   of   Edward   III,   37, 

64,  200 
Picard,  Peter,  17 
Pilkington,  Sir  John,  290 
Plantagenet      family,      ^ee     Edward, 

Henry,   Richard,   Lancaster,    York, 

Clarence 
Pleasington,  Joan  de,  270 
Plympton,  Prior  of,  181 
Pomeraie  {or  Pomcray),  Sir  John  and 

Lady,  181 


356 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


Pomeraie,  Sir  William,  182 
Poole,  Geoffrey,  243 
Poole,  Nehemiah,  280 
Pope,  Alexander,  324 
Portugal,  Beatrice  of,  197 
Portugal,  Infanta  of,  217 
Portugal,  John  I,  King  of,  71,  74-8 
Pountchardon,  Sir  Richard  de,  152 
Poyning,  Lady,  125 
Poyning,  Michael  le,  12 
Prestwich,  Margaret  de,  287-9 
Prestwich,  Thomas  de,  287 
Prince,  John,  327 
Prittlewell,  John,  141 
Pynchebeke,  Dr.  John,  199 
Pynchebeke,  Mr.  Justice,  288 

QuiCHERAT,  M.,  195  n. 

Ramsay,  Sir  James,  229 

Redcliffe,  Sir  John  de,  4 

Redcliffe,  Robert  de,  270 

Richard  II,  King,  37,  47,  53,  62,  83-7 

98-133,  152 
Richard   III,   King   (Gloucester),   224, 

227,  231,  232 
Rickhill,  William,  111 
Rigby,  Alexander,  275 
Rivers,  Lord,  224,  227 
Robert,  The  Hermit,  97 
Roos,  Lord,  215 
Rosworm,  Lt. -Colonel,  278 
Roye,  Sir  Reginald  de,  73-8,  88-91 
Rupert,  Prince,  276-8 
Rutson,  Mrs.,  43 

St.Legee,  Anne,  230 

St.  Leger,  Sir  Thomas,  229 

St.  Pol,  Constable  of,  218 

St.  Pol,  Waleran,  Count  of,  40-1,  93, 

99,  154^6 
St.  Pye,  Seigneur  de,  88 
Salisbury,    John   Montacute,   Earl   of, 

110,  119,  125,  132-40 
Salisbury,  Richard  Ncvill,  Earl  of,  177 
Salisbury,    Robert   Cecil,   Marquis    of, 

302 
Salisbury,  Tliomas,  176-7 
Salisbury,    William    Montacute,    Earl 

of,  26,  32 


Samlesbury,  Sir  William  de,  4 
Sandys  of  the  Vine,  Alathea,  Lady,  320 
Sandys  of  the  Vine,  Lord,  320 
Sayer,  William,  229 
Scott,  WiUiam,  118 
Scrope,  Lord,  111,  117,  168,  185 
Seaton,  General  Sir  John,  276 
Shelley,  Frances,  328 
Shelley,'Henry,  328 
SheUey,  Sir  Thomas,  141 
Shoresworth,  Alexander  de,  271 
Shoresworth,  Margaret  de,  269 
Shrewsbury,  Earl  of,  203 
Shuttleworth,  Richard,  275 
Sigismund,  Emperor,  186 

Somerset,     Edmund     Beaufort,     2nd 
Duke  of,  169,  i04-5 

Somerset,  Edmund  Beaufort,  4th  Duke 
of,  169,  219-23,  228 

Somerset,  Henry  Beaufort,  2nd  Earl  of, 
169,  189 

Somerset,  Henry  Beaufort,  3rd  Duke 
of,  109,  211-16 

Somerset,  John  Beaufort,  1st  Earl  of, 
168-71  I 

Somerset,  John  Beaufort,  1st  Duke  of, 
169. 

And  see  *  Beaufort ' 

Southey,  Robert,  214,  323 

Smith,  Saba,  Lady  Holland,  303 

Smith,  Rev.  Sydney,  303 

Spencer,  Lord  de,  55 

Spencer,  Sir  Hugh,  93  i 

Stafford,  Anne,  Countess  of  Hunting- 
don, 197^  ^' 

Stafford,  Edmund,  Earl  of,  197 

Stafford,  Hugh,  Earl  of,  30,  55-60 

Stafford,  Joan,  Countess  of  Kent,  101, 
124-5,  157 

Stafford,  Sir  Ralph  de,  56-60,  197 

Stapleton,  Sir  Miles,  26 

Starkey,  John,  275 

Steinulf  of  Upholland,  2 

Stevenson,  Rev.  WiUiam,  305 

Stewart,  Sir  James,  175 

Stewart,  John,  189 

Stewart,  Madalena,  309 

Stewart,  Major  Phillip,  309 

Stubbs,  Bishop  of  Oxford,  48 

Studeley,  John,' 205 

Suffolk,  Earl  of.  204 


INDEX  OF  PERSONS 


357 


Suffolk,  Richard  de  la  Pole,  Earl   of, 

83-4 
Sutton,  John  de,  237 
Swinton,  Anne,  297 
Swinton,  John,  189 
Swinton,  Peter,  297 

Talbot,  Sir  Edward,  4 
Tancarville,  Count  of,  27 
Tavistock,  Abbot  of,  181 
Taylor,  Henry,  283 
Trafford,  Sir  Cecil,  293 
Trafford,  Henry,  273,  286 
Trafford,  Sir  Humphrey,  293  ! 
Trafford,  Marjory  de,  273,  286,  339 
Tressilian,  Chief  Justice,  85 
Trevelyan,  Sir  Charles,  302 
Trevelyan,     Margaret,     Viscountess 

Knutsford,  302 
Tunstal,  Bishop  of  Durham,  203 
Tyler,  Wat,  47 


Vawr,  Howell  ap  Rees,  307 
Vendome,  Duke  of,  258 
Vere.     See  Ireland 
Victoria,  Queen,  297 
Villandrando,  Rodrigue  de,"194 
Visconti,  Bemabo  di,  159 
Visconti,  Lucia  di.  Countess  of  Kent, 
169-63 


Waqstafpe,  Master,  289 

Wale,  Sir  Thomas,  26 

Walsingham,  Thomas  of,  17,  53,  54,  138 

Walthew,  John,  9 

Warignies,  Robert  de,  27 

Warre,  John  de,  4 

Warren,  Anne,  281 

Warren,  Edward,  281 

Warreime,  Alice  de,  21  •! 

Warrenne,  Earl  de,  16-21 

Warreime,  William  de,  20         ' 

Warwick,    Richard    Nevill,    Earl    of 

('  King-maker  '),  177,  204-10,  221-8 
Warwick,  Thomas  de  Beauchamp,  Earl 

of,  26,  30,  83,  104,  116 
Wavrin,  John  de,  52,  127,  137,  143,  198 
Wedgewood,  Catherine,  297 
Wedgewood,  Josiah,  297 


Weever,  John,  147 

Werden,  Alice  Orskcll,  291,  337,  342-3 
Westminster,  Abbot  of,  132 
Westmorland,  Ralph    Nevill,  Earl   of, 

177,  184 
Westmorland,  Ralph  Nevill,  3rd  Earl, 

206,  228 
Williams,  Rev.  Hugh,  306 
Williams,  Jane,  306 
Williams,  R.,  305 
Williams,  William,  306 
Willoughby,  Sir  Rotherem,  320 
Willoughby,  Sir  William,  167 
Wilton,  Earls  of,  283 
Wiltshire,  Earl  of,  125-7 
Windham,  Sir  Edmund,  320 
Windham,  Mary,  320 
Windsor,  Sir  William,  77 
Wolveley,  Alice  de,  287 
Woodville,  Sir  Thomas,  230 
Worcester,  Earl  of,  125 
Wrottesley,  Sir  Thomas,  26 
Wykeham,     William    de,     Bishop    of 

Winchester,  83 
Wylie,  Mr.,  132-40 
Wyther,  Sir  Thomas,  10 


YARM0T7TH,  Earl  of,  322 

York,  John  Kemp,  Archbishop  of,  191 

York  (Plantagenet),  Anne  of.  Duchess 

of  Exeter,  203,  225,  229 
York      (Plantagenet),      Edward      (of 

Langley),  Duke  of,  83,  93,  95,  103, 

110,  125,  127,  134,  166-7 
York  (Plantagenet),  Edward,  2nd  Duke 

of,  99,  117,  120,  125-7,  132-4,  146, 

185-6 
York  (Plantagenet),  Edward,  4th  Duke 

of.     See  Edward  IV 
York      (Plantagenet),      Margaret      of, 

Duchess  of  Burgundy,  218,  225 
York  (Plantagenet),  Richard,  3rd  Duke 

of,  205,  210-11 

And     see     Cambridge,    Clarence, 
Gloucester 


ZouoHE,  Alan,  Lord  de  la,  5 
Zouche,  Maud  de  la.  Lady  Holland,  5, 
13 


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K.C.B.,  F.R.S.  By  Admiral  SIR  ALBERT  H.  MARKHAM, 
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LIFE  AND  LETTERS   OF  MAGGIE  BENSON. 

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GEORGE  WYNDHAM— Recognita. 

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LORD  GRANVILLE  LEVESON  GOWER   (First  Earl 
Granville) . 

Private  Correspondence  between  the  years  1781-1821.  Edited 
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JOH^  MURRAY,  ALBEMARLE  STREET,  LONDON,  W.l. 


Recent  Notable  Biographies. 

THE  LIFE  AND  LETTERS   OF  SIR  J.D.HOOKER, 

CM.,  G.C.S.I.    By  LEONARD  HUXLEY.     Two  Volumes. 

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JOHN  WILKES  AND   THE   CITY. 

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MEMORIES   OF   ETON   SIXTY  YEARS   AGO. 

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LIFE  AND   LETTERS   OF  SIR   COLIN  C.  SCOTT- 
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REMINISCENCES  OF  SEVENTY-TWO  YEARS. 

By  the  Hon.  WILLIAM  WARREN  VERNON,  M.A. 
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THE  LIFE  AND  WORK  OF  J.  R.  ILLINGWORTH, 

M.A.,  D.D.  As  portrayed  by  his  Letters  and  Illustrated  by 
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WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 

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DAVID  GILL  ;  Man  and  Astronomer. 

Memories  of  Sir  David  Gill,  K.C.B.,  H.M.  Astronomer  (1879- 
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JOHN     MURRAY,     ALBEMARLE    STREET,    LONDON,    W  1. 


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