HOLME, Robert II

The Holme family probably derived its name from the place near Wareham where there was a bridge over the river Frome.2 JUST1/1529, mm. 3d, 16. Little is recorded about the MP himself, save that he was a ‘yeoman’ who held land in the locality.3 He has been distinguished from a namesake who as an ‘esquire’ spent most of his career in Bordeaux, serving as clerk to the constable of Bordeaux castle from Sept. 1406, remembrancer of the castle 23 June 1412-aft. Jan. 1431 (being described as ‘administrator and governor of the office of constable’ in the years 1417-23), and controller of Bordeaux under Hen. VI: CPR, 1422-9, p. 69; E403/600, m. 12; 669, m. 14; E101/187/8, 9, 12; 192/8. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this Robert Holme was in Eng. in the early 1430s. He petitioned the Commons in the Parl. of 1431, saying that in the course of prosecuting suits on behalf of the Crown and the duchy of Aquitaine in the courts at Westminster he had been forced to pledge all his goods and jewels, and he was likely to lose them and be imprisoned. He was granted letters of protection for a year as staying in Eng., and this concession was extended for a further six months in July 1432 following a second petition addressed to the Parl. then in session. In the second petition he said he had resided in Eng. for seven years: SC8/25/1247; 26/1275; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 143, 205; RP, iv. 386, 418 (cf. PROME, x. 481; xi. 64). Although there is nothing to connect this esquire with Wareham directly, in the spring of 1436 he sailed for France in the retinue of the borough’s lord, the duke of York: DKR, xlviii. 311. He died before July 1448: E159/224, brevia Trin. rot. 14. In 1427 he and his wife made a conveyance to Simon and Joan Talbot of a messuage, an acre of arable land and half an acre of meadow in Wareham itself.4 Dorset Feet of Fines, 337-8. What role he played in the government of the town is not recorded, but his fellow burgesses thought highly enough of him to elect him to the Parliament of 1433. As ‘of Wareham, yeoman’ he was sued in Hilary term 1435 by Robert Durneford for a debt of £10,5 CP40/696, rot. 27. but nothing further is recorded about him. Nicholas Holme, a juror at an inquisition post mortem conducted at Wareham in 1443, was probably a kinsman.6 C139/109/29.