HOLDEN, Thomas (d.1441), of Whalley, Lancs. and Ludworth, co. Durham.

Thomas was the son of a minor Lancashire landowner. His early years are obscure, but he may have trained as a lawyer and probably entered the service of Sir James Radcliffe, a Lancashire man and servant of John of Gaunt. DL42/18, f. 11. He also made an early connexion to another local man, Thomas Langley, the future bishop of Durham, when the latter was employed by Gaunt in the administration of the duchy of Lancaster estates in the north-west during the 1390s. He himself entered Gaunt’s service towards the end of the duke’s life, a fact remembered in a grant by Henry V in July 1414. Yet it was through his long-time association with Langley that Holden prospered. Indeed, the story of his career is largely the story of that service. By the time Langley succeeded Walter Skirlaw as bishop of Durham in May 1406 Holden was already established as one of the new bishop’s most trusted servants. He served as Langley’s chamberlain throughout his episcopate, and the value placed on his service is apparent in the rewards that came his way not only from the patronage directly available to Langley as bishop but also that indirectly available to him as a senior royal official. No doubt it was to Langley that Holden owed his appointment in July 1414 as mason and surveyor of several royal castles in Cheshire and north Wales, but it was the chief butler, Thomas Chaucer, who nominated him in December 1422 as deputy butler in the port of Newcastle. CPR, 1413-16, p. 232; 1422-9, p. 8. He also gained from grants of royal wardships: in June 1416 he and two other clerks were granted the wardship of Thomas, son and heir of the Yorkshire landowner, Sir Alexander Metham; four years later he purchased the wardship of James Pickering*; and in July 1422 he was among a group of four associates of Langley who paid 400 marks for the wardship of Thomas, son and heir of Sir John Lumley, a substantial Durham landowner killed at the battle of Baugé the previous year. CFR, xiv. 161; CPR, 1416-22, pp. 298, 443; Storey, 109. More contentiously, in the same month, by letters patent under the seal of the duchy of Lancaster, he shared a grant of a much less substantial wardship, that of the sisters and coheiresses of John Waleys of Shalden (Hampshire), but the grant was disputed by Queen Joan’s receiver-general, Simon Camp†, who claimed that the wardship pertained to his mistress. CP40/650, rot. 130; 651, rot. 328. The last such grant came to him in February 1426 when, with Sir William Bowes, one of the leading gentry of the palatinate of Durham, he purchased the wardship and marriage of his own stepson, William Fulthorpe. CFR, xv. 124-5.

These grants supplemented Holden’s attempt to build an estate of his own more commensurate with his enhanced status. This had begun even before Langley had become bishop of Durham. By the spring of 1403 he had married a minor heiress from the palatinate, namely Joan, daughter and heiress of Gilbert Elvet, a lawyer in the service of the earl of Westmorland. CP25(1)/279/149/40; Liddy, 99, 115. Her inheritance was not extensive but he was able to employ it as the basis for further acquisitions. In November 1408 he exchanged land in Elvet, presumably part of her inheritance, for a messuage and 60 acres of land in Ludworth, and three years later Alice, widow of Thomas Menville, demised the manor of Ludworth, held of the bishop of Durham, to him at an annual rent of £10 13s. 4d. Holden made this his principal residence within the palatinate and spent the remainder of the decade rebuilding the manor-house: in 1422 he received a licence to crenellate it, and he built a peel tower there, fragments of which can be seen today. DURH3/34, m. 6, 38, m. 18; cathedral muns., pontificalia, 1.10 Pont. 1; W. Hutchinson, Hist. County Palatine of Durham, 12.

Holden’s position as Bishop Langley’s most important lay servant was confirmed in March 1423 when he was appointed as steward and justice within the palatinate. Previously the position of steward had been held by one of the leading local landowners, but on the death of Sir Ralph Euer† in March the previous year Langley had taken the opportunity to reform the government of the palatinate, concentrating its administration in the hands of his own household servants. Storey, 102-3. His status enhanced by the stewardship, Holden was able to contract a lucrative second marriage. By 14 Oct. 1423, when the couple had a papal indult of plenary remission, he had married a widow with a dower interest in the lands of three husbands. She held portions of the Northumberland manors of Seaton Delaval, Benwell and Jesmond, together with an interest in more distant manors at Sutton-upon-Trent in Nottinghamshire and Hammerden in Sussex. CPL, vii. 318 ; CIPM, xxii. 586-7, 589-90, 592, 756-8; CP25(1)/181/15, Hen. VI, no. 4. Holden’s new interests in Northumberland provide one explanation for his election to represent that county in the Parliament which assembled at Westminster six days after he and his wife obtained their plenary remission. He put his time in Parliament to good use. On 9 Nov. he sued out an inspeximus and confirmation of his 1414 grant of the surveyor-ship of Chester and the north Welsh castles, and on 3 Dec. he secured, for the modest payment of 11 marks, the wardship and marriage of the heir of Thomas Hebburn† of Newcastle, recently surrendered by John Cerf*. C219/13/2; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 157, 158. After representing the county in Parliament, he continued to be involved in its affairs. In the late 1420s he was named as its escheator for two successive terms, although it is possible that neither appointment took effect. CFR, xv. 158, 244. His predecessor in the office, William Strother*, is recorded as holding inquisitions post mortem in the county between Apr. 1426 and July 1430: CIPM, xxii. 645; xxiii. 365.

Holden’s standing in northern society during the 1420s and his service to Bishop Langley also bought him into contact with the powerful Neville family. The first clear evidence of this association dates from April 1424, when he stood surety for Sir Richard Neville, eldest son of the earl of Westmorland by his second marriage and the future earl of Salisbury, but he must already have been well established in Neville service by that date for in the following October he was intimate enough with the family to be appointed as one of the executors of the earl of Westmorland’s will. As a result, Holden had again to familiarize himself with parliamentary affairs for he joined with his fellow executors to present petitions in the Parliaments of 1426 and 1433 to secure the reversal of a false Exchequer judgement against the late earl. CFR, xv. 74; SC8/26/1295; E159/203, brevia Trin. rot. 8; PPC, iv. 189. Thereafter he continued to serve the new earl of Salisbury, acting for him in an important settlement made in 1431. DURH3/36, m. 3.

Most of what else that is known of Holden concerns his service to Bishop Langley. As chamberlain of the episcopal household, he was the chief financial officer of the palatinate. In 1428-9, for example, he received £1,252 at the Durham exchequer and a further £474 from the sale of lead. He also acted for the bishop in the difficulties that beset him in the early 1430s when Sir William Euer* and other leading gentry of the palatinate sought to challenge the bishop’s near-regal rights in the palatinate: in December 1432 he entered into a bond in as much as £1,000 that his master would abide arbitration in the matter. Later, on 10 Jan. 1437, as the bishop lay ‘stricken with age and bodily infirmity’, he appointed Holden to be one of his proctors at the Parliament summoned to assemble at Westminster eleven days later. Storey, 97, 118-19; Reg. Langley, v. 1253.

Langley’s death in the following November meant a considerable, if not immediate, change in Holden’s status in the palatinate. With the appointment as bishop of Robert Neville, a younger son of the junior branch of the Neville family and brother of the earl of Salisbury, the personnel of the administration of the palatinate underwent change. On 8 Jan. 1438, during the vacancy, the King named Holden to a palatinate commission of the peace led by Salisbury’s brothers, Lords Latimer and Fauconberg, but 16 days later a royal writ commanded him to deliver the rolls and other muniments relating to Langley’s administration to the new steward, Robert, younger brother of Sir William Euer. DURH3/42, mm. 1, 3. Although he remained among the justices of the peace in the palatinate until his death, it seems that Holden, along with other former members of Bishop Langley’s household, was sidelined by the new administration. Yet this new situation may have suited him. His relationship with the Nevilles was good, and the last three years of his life were concerned principally with the fulfilment of Bishop Langley’s testamentary intentions and the settlement of his own affairs. His loyalty and service to the bishop had been rewarded by the gift of Old Ford, Langley’s townhouse three miles north-east of the Tower of London, and Holden proved to be a faithful servant in the execution of his former master’s will. Reg. Chichele, ii. 581. In March 1438 he and two of his fellow executors (Nicholas Hulme, Langley’s former receiver-general, and Richard Corston) delivered the episcopal ornaments and vestments to John Wessington, prior of Durham, while in the following Michaelmas term they travelled to Westminster to settle Langley’s affairs at the Exchequer. In October 1440 Holden was again in Durham making the final arrangements for Langley’s chantry, the Galilee chapel, in the cathedral. Durham cathedral muns., priory reg. iii, f. 215; iv, f. 72v; E159/215, recorda Mich. rot. 5. His close relationship with Prior Wessington doubtless made this an easier task. In March that year he and Robert Rodes*, the prominent Newcastle lawyer, had helped the prior to obtain a papal bull relating to a sentence passed in the papal curia against a local merchant for eating meat in Lent, and in December he was in correspondence with the prior concerning the clerical twentieth levied four years earlier. Durham cathedral muns., reg. parva ii, ff. 121, 131v-2.

Holden’s final years were also concerned with the building of St. Mary’s College, Oxford, an establishment for the education of Augustinian canons in the university. It has been suggested that the project was proposed to him by William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln, a close friend and executor of Bishop Langley. In 1424 the Berkshire knight Sir Peter Bessels* had agreed to grant Frewin Hall, a large private house in west Oxford, for this purpose, and on his death in 1425 Holden acquired the site. On 29 June 1436 an inquisition ad quod dampnum valued the property at 42s. ½d. p.a. and concluded that there would be no damage to the King’s rights if Holden and his wife were to grant it to the canons. By the time Holden came to make his will on 1 Aug. 1441 building on the site was well underway and he made a bequest of £103 6s. 8d. for the construction of the chapel and library. Oxf. DNB; C143/448/4; Oxoniensia, xliii. 64-65.

Holden asked to be buried in the chapel of the new college. The canons were to remember him in their prayers, and he provided vestments embroidered with his arms for their use. He also remembered his birthplace of Whalley, providing £10 for a bell and a window in the parish church there. His association with Langley was underlined by the episcopal paraphernalia, relics and jewels still in his possesion which he instructed his widow to deliver to Prior Wessington with instructions to celebrate masses for his soul and that of the former bishop. The high standing of his connexions is evidenced by his gifts of jewels and church ornaments to Cardinal Kemp, archbishop of York, Bishop Alnwick and the earl of Salisbury, and other similar gifts were made to the royal clerk, Robert Rolleston, and Nicholas Hulme. He also disposed of a considerable landed estate. His widow was to have the manors of Clayhall (Essex) and Cressbrook (in Chesthunt, Hertfordshire) as well as property in Holden and Simonstone (Lancashire), and Byram (Yorkshire). Elizabeth was also bequeathed ‘a certain notable sum’ that Rolleston owed to her late husband, as well as the remainder of his household goods and livestock. Further property in county Durham and the manor of Old Ford was to be sold by Holden’s executors and the profits employed for the benefit of his soul. Additional provision for his soul was made in the form of considerable donations of alms to the poor in Oxfordshire and Lancashire, gifts to various parish churches throughout the northern counties and to religious houses in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire and London. His heir was his nephew, John Boswell, who was to have the bulk of his lands on the death of Holden’s widow. He appointed his widow and Master Nicholas Rushton of London as his executors and asked Cardinal Kemp, Bishop Alnwick and the earl of Salisbury to assist the executors in fulfilling their duties. He died shortly after making his will and probate was granted on 13 Aug. Reg. Chichele, ii. 579-84, 658-9. Holden’s widow married Sir Robert Hilton (d.1448) of Hilton, county Durham. She died in 1450, leaving as her heir a daughter by her marriage to William Whitchester. DURH3/164/100; C139/143/26; CP, vii. 28-29n.