HOLLES, Gilbert (1633-89)

Holles was born in Hackney, the sixth child of 16. He spent much of his youth abroad, travelling with Francis Holles, son of Denzil Holles, the future Baron Holles. Collins, 169. He was brought up in a strict Presbyterianism which helped him develop, judging by his long and introspective will, into a stern and dour Calvinist in his later years. His mother, daughter of the great military leader of the Protestant cause, obviously had an important influence on him, and he devoted much of his will to praising her for her ‘eminent virtue and piety’ and the ‘assurance’ she had at her death of ‘the joy set before her in a spiritual view’. When the dowager countess of Clare died in 1683 she was also lauded by Roger Morrice as ‘a very eminent example of self-denial, charity and practical godliness’. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 431-2. The Holles clan were patrons of nonconformist ministers and meeting-houses. In 1676 a list of conventicles in the capital noted that the dowager countess of Clare and the 3rd earl’s sister Lady Clinton (widow of Edward Clinton^‡, styled Lord Clinton and mother of Edward Clinton, 5th earl of Lincoln) were frequenters of conventicles in Westminster and in Covent Garden. Richard Baxter also noted among his chief benefactors at this time, Lady Clare, Lady Clinton, and another of Clare’s sisters, Lady Eleanor Holles. Eg. 3330, ff. 14, 16; HMC 11th Rep. VII, 15; Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 172. In his political formation, Clare’s uncle Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, may have been important as after the Restoration he was an acknowledged leader of the Presbyterian party urging a relaxation of the restrictions on membership of the Church of England. His father-in-law, William Pierrpont, had also been a leading member among the Parliamentarians during the Civil War and maintained his Presbyterian sympathies well after 1660.

By the end of his life Clare did not think highly of his father-in-law and he was most scathing about his own father. He saw fit to comment in his will that ‘my father’s severity to me none can be ignorant of who know anything of my family’, an upbringing which may have made him, as he himself described, ‘much addicted to a natural melancholy’. In his later years he wrote bitterly of the ‘low condition my father left me’ and ‘the great necessity I was reduced to’, complaining that he was kept on an allowance of £300 a year until his marriage in July 1655. Clare suspected that his father-in-law had taken advantage of him when arranging a £7,000 p.a. jointure for Grace in the marriage settlement, and resented him for foisting on him a lively wife with whom he was thoroughly incompatible. He spent much of his long will of 1686-7 accusing his wife, whom he never even mentions by name, of stealing from his measly inheritance to fund her own ‘gadding usually from morning to night’. UNL, Pw1 143-5.

In 1660 Lord Haughton and his father-in-law were elected as knights of the shire for Nottinghamshire in the Convention. He did not stand in 1661 and Pierrepont was defeated, probably owing to their Presbyterian sympathies. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 349. On 2 July 1662 Haughton fought a duel with Sir George Savile, the future marquess of Halifax. Haughton ‘sent the challenge by Frescheville Holles^‡, provoked by some words, wherein he saith Sir George had unhandsomely reflected upon him: it was accepted, next morning they met with their seconds, Francis Holles and Charles Bates: all four fought together’, Haughton wounding his opponent, before the quarrel was composed. UNL, PwV 4, pp. 285-6.

Clare succeeded his father at the beginning of 1666 but did not take his seat in the Lords at the first opportunity. He was excused attendance at a call of the House on 1 Oct. 1666 and first took his seat in the Lords on 3 Dec., almost halfway through the session of 1666-7. He continued to attend that session regularly thereafter, being present on 49 days of the session, just over 55 per cent of the total, and being named to six committees. Barely two weeks into his attendance, Clare’s uncle by his Pierrepont wife, Henry Pierrepont, marquess of Dorchester, was involved in a violent and embarrassing altercation with George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, at a conference with the Commons. Dorchester quickly submitted to the House and Clare was assigned on 22 Dec. the task of retrieving him from his incarceration in the Tower and bringing him before the House to receive its commands to keep the peace.

Clare was present on the opening day of the 1667-8 session on 10 Oct. 1667. His primary interest in the first part of the session, before its adjournment on 19 Dec., was the passage through Parliament of a bill for settling part of his father’s estate and allowing him to dispose another part in order to pay his father’s debts and the portions of his siblings. His later strictures on his father had some foundation, as the 2nd earl left his heir about £26,000 in debt and four unmarried daughters, each entitled to a portion of £4,000. Clare’s freedom of manoeuvre had been curtailed by his father placing his valuable Middlesex properties in a debt trust. The bill returned to him control of the whole estate and allowed him to sell off parts of it, including the entailed Nottinghamshire properties, to pay the debts and provide the marriage portions for his sisters and for his own young daughters. The bill received a first reading on 15 Oct. 1667, spent most of November in committee with Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey in the chair, and with Richard Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset chairing a final meeting on 6 Dec., where amendments were tabled. It was managed through the Commons by Sir Thomas Gower^‡, and eventually received the royal assent on the day of adjournment, 19 December. TNA, PROB 11/394; HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, p. 112; PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, pp. 197, 205, 208, 210, 213, 219; UNL, Pw2 641; Ne D 55. Clare had attended on all but two days of the session before the adjournment, 49 in all, 96 per cent of the total and was named to nine committees. Clare was absent when the session resumed on 6 Feb. 1668, being excused attendance at the call of the House on 17 Feb. and first attending on 13 April. He was present on 22 days, a third of the total, and was named to two committees.

Clare attended on each day of the 1669 session, 36 in all, and was named to seven committees. On 21 Oct. 1669 he registered Dorchester’s proxy. On 20 Oct. Clare had complained to the House of the breach of privilege by James Vosper and Samuel Francklyn, a proctor of the prerogative court of Canterbury. Together they had tried to have the will of Clare’s sister, Lady Frances Holles, proved in the archdeaconry court of Middlesex, in order, Clare claimed, to avoid the caveat he had entered against the will in the prerogative court of Canterbury. Franklyn appeared on 25 Oct., acknowledging that he had known about Clare’s caveat and the proceedings of the Lady Eleanor and Lady Diana Holles in proving the will in the archdeacon’s court, but claiming that he had not acted in it himself. The matter was then turned over to the committee for privileges. On 29 Oct. a judge, Sir Thomas Twysden, and Dr Timothy Baldwyn, a civilian, were ordered to assist the committee. The matter was not determined during this session, principally because Vosper failed to attend the committee for privileges when summoned. HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, p. 128.

Clare was present when the 1670-1 session opened on 14 Feb. 1670. On the following day he registered Dorchester’s proxy, which he retained until 24 October. On 21 Mar. 1670 he registered the proxy of John Poulett, 3rd Baron Poulett. He may have used this extra vote when voting against the second conventicle act, to whose passage he dissented on 26 March. On 8 Apr. he dissented to the acceptance of the brandy duty in the supply bill. In the first part of the session until the adjournment on 11 Apr., he was present on 30 days, 71.4 per cent of the total and was named to ten committees.

Clare was absent when the session resumed on 24 Oct. 1670, being excused at a call of House on 14 Nov., and first attending on 23 November. Thereafter he attended on every day of the remainder of this part of the session, 108 days in all, 86 per cent of the total and was named to 27 committees. Two days before his first recorded attendance, the unresolved privilege case against Vosper and Franklyn was raised in the House, whereupon Vosper was ordered to attend the committee for privileges on 28 November. On 10 Dec. Francklyn and Vosper were again summoned to appear before the committee. On 19 Dec. the two men and other witnesses were heard, and the committee determined that Clare could not sufficiently prove a breach of privilege and he agreed to withdraw his complaint. His sister’s will was later proved in the prerogative court of Canterbury on 8 Apr. 1671. HL/PO/DC/CP/1/2, pp. 56, 83-85; HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, p. 128; TNA, PROB 11/335. Clare made a major intervention in the House on 28 Feb. 1671 on the day when John Lucas, Baron Lucas, made his infamous speech against the subsidy bill. Clare seconded the motion and then inveighed against the king’s presence in the chamber, urging him to depart so that the House could debate matters freely, but he was not supported by any other lords, and the king, ignoring his comments, continued to attend that day and the following days. Add. 36916, f. 212; Bodl. Tanner 44, ff. 245-6; Marvell ed. Margoulioth, ii. 308, 310. On 9 Mar. Clare dissented from the resolutions not to commit and then not to engross the bill concerning privilege of Parliament. He attended for the prorogation on 30 Oct. 1672.

Clare attended on all 38 days of the 1673 session, which began on 4 Feb., and was named to 12 committees. On 19 May 1673 Clare wrote to Sir Edward Harley^† from Haughton of his disappointment at not meeting Harley again in town after they had met at the home of Horatio Townshend, Baron Townshend, noting that, as a courtier, Townshend would be able to serve him much better: ‘alas what can a poor country gentleman do but wish you well, and that your merit must needs gain from all’. Add. 70012, f. 62. He did not attend the four-day session in October-November 1673.

Clare was present on the opening day of the 1674 session on 7 January. He attended on 36 of the 38 days of the session, nearly 95 per cent of the total, and was named to six committees. His political colours were now clear even to Dorchester. Always a supporter of the king and court interest, Dorchester switched his proxy to James Stuart, duke of York, who was to become the target of Clare and his associates during the session. According to Sir Gilbert Talbot^‡, Clare was part of the ‘combination betwixt the discontented and turbulent commons in the south-east corner of our house and some hotspurs in the upper’ noted during that session and, with Halifax, Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, and James Cecil, 3rd earl of Salisbury, was considered one of the ‘most forward’ in the House. Williamson Letters (Cam. Soc. n.s. ix), 156-7; Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 109. Clare overreached himself on 24 Jan. 1674, when his associates including Salisbury, Halifax and Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle, proposed a series of measures against York. He also attacked the king for talking to some peers privately by the fireside and again complained of the king’s presence in the House, ‘for it was an overawing of them’. This time he was called upon to make good his allegation, ‘but he did it so ill he was called to the bar to beg pardon and confess his fault’. Add. 29571, f. 268; Swatland, 97.

In late April 1674 Clare seems to have been taking advice on a possible tutor for his sons, which seems to have been the prelude to a journey abroad, as in early August Clare was expecting to leave England in about two weeks. Add. 70012, ff. 152, 163. On 2 Sept. Anglesey reported that he had seen the king ‘and moved the earl of Clare’s business’, which was followed on the 6th by Anglesey attending ‘the king with the earl of Clare and his sons’. Add. 40860, f. 76. According to the licence granted on 4 Sept. the ostensible reason for his trip was for his own health and the education of his two sons, but he may also have been anxious to avoid the increasingly controversial politics in the country. CSP Dom. 1673-5, p. 345. On 24 Nov. 1674 he was reported to have ‘gone for Rome’. Add. 70124, [R. Strettell], to Sir E. Harley, 24 Nov. 1674. In January 1675 it was noted that ‘Clare’s stiffness at Rome make many smile here, and enquire what made him there’, and by February 1675 he was in Venice but expected to back in England by Michaelmas. Bodl. Carte 72, ff. 257-8; Add. 70124, [R. Strettell], to Sir E. Harley, 25 Feb. 1674/5. He was listed as outside the country at the calls of the House on 29 Apr. and 10 Nov. 1675 and 9 Mar. 1677 and was therefore unable to lend his voice against the non-resisting Test Bill in 1675. The educational value of the journey may not have been apparent, for at the end of 1679 Clare was sounding out the advisability of sending his two younger sons to Samuel Birch’s dissenting academy at Shilton. HMC Portland, iii. 364; Add. 70013, f. 29.

While incarcerated in the Tower in 1677-8 Shaftesbury classed Clare as ‘thrice worthy’ in his assessment of peers. On 6 Feb. 1678 Clare wrote to Harley suggesting that his ‘stay in the country’ would not be long, ‘if you continue sitting, for I judge it my duty to be there, though I signify one of the least in our House, nor to say truth, does the whole much, especially not till yours affords us work, so that our absence at the first may be excusable, however you’ll give me leave to use it as an argument to justify myself’. Add. 70012, f. 261. Although he was excused attendance at the call of the House on 16 Feb. 1678, Clare was true to his word, first attending on 26 February. On 15 Mar. 1678 he signed the address asking for an immediate declaration of war against France. HEHL, Hastings mss HA Parliament box 4 (8). He attended on 30 days of the session, 49 per cent of the total and was named to six committees. On 4 Apr. he voted Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, guilty of manslaughter. Clare was present when the next session opened, a few days later, on 23 May 1678. He attended on 39 days of the session, 90 per cent of the total and was named to 21 committees. On 7 June he protested against the resolution to proceed with the consideration of the claims of Robert Danvers, alias Villiers, to the viscountcy of Purbeck and on 8 July against the decision in favour of the appeal of Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham, in his dispute in equity with Lewis Watson, later earl of Rockingham.

Clare was absent from the Lords when the session began on 21 Oct. 1678. On 31 Oct. the House ordered the lord chancellor to write to absent peers; Clare was one of the recipients. UNL, Pw2 553. He first attended on 25 Nov., being present on 28 days of the session, almost 48 per cent of the total and was named to four committees. On 29 Nov. he was one of 11 peers who agreed with the Commons for an address to the king to remove the queen and all Catholics from Whitehall, and then he was one of only three to protest against the rejection of this motion. He dissented to the resolution of 20 Dec. to agree with the amendments to the disbanding bill. Then on 26 Dec. he voted against adhering to the Lords amendment placing the receipt of the money in the exchequer and entered his protest against it. Yet he was named to a committee to draw up reasons for a conference to discuss the House’s resolve to adhere to its amendments. Clare also joined in the attack on Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), entering his protest on the 23 Dec. at the failure of the motion that Danby should withdraw, and voting on the 27th to commit him and protesting against the House’s failure to so order.

In about March 1679 Danby listed Clare as a likely opponent in any parliamentary proceedings against him. In March-April 1679 two of Danby’s assessments still had him as an opponent, although one had a query about his reliability. On 12 Mar. he was listed as an absent opponent, and indeed Clare did miss the short session of 6-13 Mar. 1679. He was also absent when the new Parliament met on 15 Mar. 1679, first attending on 29 March. He then attended most days of the session, being present on 47 days of the session, just over 77 per cent of the total, and was named to eight committees. In April 1679 Danby listed him as supporting the early stages of the attainder bill against him, and on 4 Apr. he was content to pass the bill, as he was again on the 14th, after it had been agreed that the attainder would come into force if Danby had not surrendered by 21 April.

On 7 Apr. 1679 he also registered his dissent against the commitment of John Sidway for his spurious allegations against Peter Gunning, bishop of Ely and other bishops. He took issue with the proposed reformulation of the Privy Council, complaining against Charles’s extraordinary appointment of his cousin Prince Rupert, duke of Cumberland, as a ‘prince of the blood … which his lordship observed was a language not so well understood in England’. HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 67. He entered his dissent on 8 and 10 May to the refusal of the House to sanction the appointment of a committee of both Houses to discuss the method of proceeding against the impeached lords, having been listed as voting for it on the 10th. He entered other dissents on 13 May against the resolution that the bishops had a right to stay in court in capital cases until the judgment of death was pronounced; twice on 23 May on procedural matters on Danby’s impeachment, which meant that the trial of the five Catholic Lords would precede Danby’s; and on 27 May against the motion re-affirming the rights of the bishops in capital cases.

Clare attended the prorogations on 26 Jan., 15 Apr., 17 May and 1 July 1680. On 28 Nov. 1679 Clare may have been one of the ‘addressing Lords’, endeavouring to persuade the lord mayor to call a common council to support their petition for the sitting of Parliament. He was certainly present on 1 Dec. when at least seven peers dined with the lord mayor with the same end in view. One account has Clare proposing a toast to Monmouth. Hatton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxii), 207; Bodl. Carte 39, f. 88. He was one of the peers who signed on 6 Dec. and presented the petition to the king on the following day requesting that Parliament be convened the following month. HMC Hastings, iv. 302; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 210; Verney ms mic. 636/33, Dr Denton to Sir R. Verney 8 Dec. 1679. This advice was ignored, and with the new Parliament still prorogued, he joined with Shaftesbury and others at the end of June 1680 to submit a presentment against York as a recusant, although this action was quickly thrown out of court. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 232.

Clare was absent from the opening of the 1680-1 Parliament on 21 Oct., first attending on the 30th. From 8 Nov. he was very regular in his attendance, being present in all on 43 days of the session, just over 74 per cent of the total, and being named to four committees. On 6 Nov. 1680 Clare ‘took several informations’ against the duchess of Portsmouth before the committee of the Lords investigating the Popish Plot and then reported them to the House, but this line of inquiry was diverted by the king, Shaftesbury and others, ‘who had then the Irish Plot before them’. Ibid. 247. Not surprisingly, he supported exclusion and dissented against the resolution rejecting the exclusion bill on its first reading on 15 Nov. 1680. He voted on 23 Nov. in favour of the establishment of a joint committee to consider the state of the kingdom, and protested its rejection; he found William Howard, Viscount Stafford guilty on 7 Dec.; and dissented on 18 Dec. from the House’s rejection of a proviso in the treason trials bill; and twice on 7 Jan. 1681 against the rejection on the previous question of whether the lord chief justice, Sir William Scroggs, should be committed, and then against the refusal of the House to address the king in favour of his suspension.

Danby was informed in January 1681 that, in anticipation of the planned forthcoming meeting of Parliament, Clare had hosted a group of ‘the protesting lords’ for a dinner at his Westminster residence of Clare House, where Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Clare himself and six other peers signed a petition calling for the king to convene Parliament in Westminster rather than in Oxford. Add. 28053, f. 230; Macpherson, Orig. Pprs. i. 116. The petition was not successful and Clare went to the Oxford Parliament in the company of a number of other Whig lords and accompanied by the ‘Protestant joiner’, Stephen College, as a bodyguard. CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 32. Although Danby was not above attempting to influence Clare through correspondence, he had little hope of gaining his support. Add 28042, f. 83; 28043, f. 27. On 17 Mar. Danby forecast Clare as an opponent of any moves he might make to secure bail in the forthcoming session. Clare was present for only four of the seven meetings of the Parliament, being named to a single committee. He entered his dissent on 26 Mar. against the House’s resolution to reject the Common’s impeachment of Edward Fitzharris.

Clare continued to align himself with the opposition. He was present to support Fitzharris when he was brought before the King’s Bench to plead on 7 May. Add. 75356, Sir B. Gascon [Gascoigne], to Lady Burlington, 7 May 1681. On 8 July Clare was again in court, this time to support College at his trial and to offer himself as a surety for Shaftesbury’s bail. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 95-96; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 283; HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 95-96. On 28 Nov. 1681 he stood bail for William Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Escrick, and in September 1682 he put up £2,000 as a surety for James Scott, duke of Monmouth, when he was arrested for breaking the peace. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 147, 222; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 294; CSP Dom. 1682, pp. 430, 432. On 18 Oct. 1682 Clare and Howard of Escrick dined at Anglesey’s. Add. 18730, f. 100. In March 1683 one of Clare’s tenants, a blacksmith named Rejoice Fox, went to Newmarket to depose before Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland that in spring 1682 Clare’s steward, George Cauthorne, had tried to enlist him in a plot to kill the king. Lacking further evidence, the government did not immediately take any action on this deposition, but Morrice suspected that they were keeping it in reserve to use it to strike later. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 253; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 359; CSP Dom. Jan.-June 1683, pp. 139, 220. These allegations took on a new significance after the discovery of the Rye House Plot, and in the general crackdown against Whigs in the summer of 1683 Fox testified to the Privy Council that Cauthorne had said that ‘any man was an honest man that would murder the king’ and that he had exerted himself to prevent Fox from travelling to Newmarket to make his deposition to Sunderland. CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 79, 145. In a separate action Clare was fined £320 for permitting 16 nonconformist conventicles to be held in one of his houses in St Clement Danes, although this was the subject of further legal proceedings. CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 401; CSP Dom.1684-5, p. 263; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 385, 388, 390. In September 1683 Clare was informed by a prisoner in the Gatehouse that another detainee had attempted to get him to swear treason against Clare. By early October Morrice was able to report ‘that business of his Lordship’s [Clare], is quite at an end and Fox removed his habitation out of Clare Market … and many of the inhabitants made a bonfire and drank his lordship’s health’, and by June 1684 Clare was in turn pursuing Fox through the courts, charging him with scandalum magnatum. CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 420; CSP Dom.1684-5, p. 43; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 385-6. In late 1683 and early 1684 he even acted as a defence witness for Algernon Sydney^‡ and John Hampden^‡ at their trials, as he could testify to the inconsistencies in the main evidence given by the chief prosecution witness, the Whig turncoat Howard of Escrick. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 290, 298. Clare had long been a friend of Sidney, who had also been implicated in Fox’s testimony. It may even have been Clare who was the ‘person of eminent quality’ who had presciently told Sidney in April 1683 that he would ‘infallibly be made a prisoner’ and that the government would exert itself to discover some machination to find him guilty. Scott, Restoration Crisis, 292. Cauthorne was not as fortunate as his master and was targeted by Roger L’Estrange, who felt that ‘he is a mortal enemy to the government’. CSP Dom. 1683-4, p. 41. In February 1684 Cauthorne was hauled before King’s Bench for speaking seditious words and in May was found guilty. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 296, 306, 308.

Clare was still part of a nexus of old Presbyterian families. Indeed, on 4 and 15 July 1684 Sir Edward Harley reminded his son Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, that Clare was one of the people he should wait upon in London (as he did again in June 1688). HMC Portland, iii. 381; Add. 70013, f. 206; Add. 70233, Sir E. to R. Harley, 19 June 1688. In 1684 Clare suffered a serious blow when his second son, his favourite child William, died of smallpox in Rotterdam while returning from the continent, where he had tried to continue the tradition of his Vere forebears by fighting for the Prince of Orange. Clare was devastated by this and two years later, when he redrafted his will in 1687, he spent most of the preamble praising the excellency of his deceased son for, among other attributes, ‘detesting those false errors of Pelagians or semi-Pelagians which I doubt this age too much abounds in’.

Clare was present on the opening day of James II’s Parliament, on 19 May 1685, being present on 29 days of the session, 93.5 per cent of the total and being named to 12 committees. He continued an opponent of James II and his policies. In the early days of the new king’s Parliament he was one of only six who voted against the motion that impeachments, such as those against the Catholic peers still in the Tower, were annulled at Parliament’s dissolution and was then one of only three to further protest on 22 May against the passage of this resolution. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iii. 8. He also dissented from the passage of the bill on 4 June 1685 to reverse Stafford’s attainder. He attended the adjournment of 4 Aug. 1685. He was not present when the session resumed on 9 Nov. 1685, sitting first on 16 Nov. and attending five days of the remainder of the session, almost 46 per cent of that part of the session.

In an event of some significance for the future, in May 1686 his youngest daughter, Grace, married Thomas Pelham, the future Baron Pelham. Clare attended the prorogation on 28 Apr. 1687. Throughout 1687-8 Clare was grouped among the opponents of James II’s religious policies and the repeal of the Test Act. Henry Compton, bishop of London, later suggested Clare as a surety for Thomas Ken, of Bath and Wells, one of the ‘seven bishops’. On 16 Nov. 1688 Clare was one of those who subscribed to the petition to James II calling on him to summon a free parliament. Although summoned to attend meetings of the peers assembled at the Guildhall on 20 and 27 Dec. 1688, he did not do so, probably for health reasons. Kingdom without a King, 122, 168.

Clare died in Warwick House on 16 Jan. 1689, having apparently been ‘reconciled to his lady’, with whom he would ‘not be persuaded to any accommodation’ as late as July 1688. Add. 70233, Sir E. to R. Harley, 22 Jan. 1689; 70014, ff. 95-97. He was succeeded in his title and estate by his eldest son John Holles, the future duke of Newcastle. He entailed on his only other surviving son, Denzil, a moiety of his Nottinghamshire manors and gave him a rent charge of £100 p.a. until he came of age. He gave all his personal estate to John, but specified that because the young man aped the French fashion by having liveried footmen behind his coach, and furthermore changed his livery for no reason, he was to pay his younger brother, Denzil, £2,000. He was even harsher towards his wife, consigning all her personal estate to the heir John until she repaid what he deemed she had stolen from his estate.