HOLT, Richard

The earliest references to Holt place him in the hundred of Alton, in the north-east of Hampshire. Of obscure parentage, by 1398 he was possessed of land at Wheatley in the parish of Binsted, and of ‘Le Mershe’ in Kingsley nearby, and he apparently later held the local manors of St. Clare and Westcourt.5 Add. Ch. 27820; VCH Hants, ii. 486. Under the generous terms of the will made in 1408 by John Chamflour, a putative kinsman who lived at Alton, he received bequests of a messuage in Guildford, Surrey, and, of greater significance for his future career, property in Winchester – an inn called Le Tabard, along with the reversion of another in the High Street called Le Chekyr, to fall in after the death of Chamflour’s widow. He took possession of Le Chekyr before 1417, and later rented it out for as much as £9 p.a. As he imported wine through Southampton, it may be that he ran the inns as a going concern, although a major source of income always came from his professional fees as a lawyer. For a few years from 1411 Holt also paid rent to Winchester College for a toft and a garden called Lymhouse in Cheshull.6 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Arundel 2, ff. 103v-104; D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies 2), ii. 500-1, 1073; E122/140/62.

Holt was to acquire yet more property through his marriage, notably the manor of Colreth in Froyle and probably ‘Husseys’ nearby too, after the death of his wife Christine’s father.7 VCH Hants, ii. 503-4. It is uncertain when this occurred, although by the summer of 1422 Christine had inherited lands and rents in Bentley and Froyle, and in 1427 the couple formally relinquished her title to other holdings in Spersholt.8 CP25(1)/207/31/29; 32/19. In 1442 Philip Pagham, a distant kinsman of Holt’s wife, died, and although the initial inquiries showed his heir to be Geoffrey Borrard of the Isle of Wight, a jury of 24 men called first to Alton and then to Winchester in March 1444 found that the descent of a moiety of the manor of Badley in Crondall was governed by entails made in Edward III’s reign, so that Christine, as grand-daughter of Roger de Colreth, was the right heir. In fact, she and her husband managed to secure possession of the other moiety as well, together with the manor of Pury in Bentley.9 C139/109/35; VCH Hants, iv. 9, 28. Besides these, Holt also held Wishanger in Headley and Belanney in Southwick. According to the tax assessments of 1436 his income from land in Hampshire amounted to £67 p.a.10 VCH Hants, iii. 54; Feudal Aids, ii. 348, 356, 361; E179/173/92.

Holt may have owed his success in accumulating property in part to his training in the law, which enabled him to earn substantial amounts of money. Where this training took place has not been discovered, but he was practising in the central courts by 1402, and early on in his career made the acquaintance of William Westbury, the serjeant-at-law and future judge, for whom he stood surety at the Exchequer in 1419.11 CCR, 1399-1402, p. 590; CFR, xiv. 294. By then he had begun to be appointed to commissions to deliver the gaol at Winchester castle, and had come to the attention of the bishop, Henry Beaufort, who began to regularly employ him as justiciar of his court of pavilion at the annual St. Giles fair. His services earned him a fee of £2 for each of the four occasions he officiated, and may have led to a personal association with the bishop, whose tenant he was at Binsted. Yet there were many other calls on his time, both from clients in the locality and from the Crown. In November 1420 he was a mainpernor at the Exchequer for Thomas Swyndon of Hampshire, given keeping of land during the minority of the Sussex heir Robert Tauk, and before the end of Henry V’s reign he was placed on the local bench as a member of the quorum. He was to continue as a j.p. until his death 24 years later. Throughout this period he must have been often resident in Winchester, where sessions of the peace were held In about 1429 the convocation of the city agreed that he should be retained as its counsel, with a fee of £1 p.a. and a robe, and he evidently fulfilled his duties for on 10 Jan. 1431 the mayor and ‘compares suos’ after taking the advice of Holt and his colleague Michael Skilling, decreed that John Parker IV* should be fined £10 for offences against the city’s liberties.12 CFR, xiv. 361; Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 67, 72. Holt’s only Parliament assembled at Westminster just two days later. He had earlier attested the shire elections held at Winchester on five occasions and was to do so on all five for which indentures survive before his death. Following his appearance in the Commons he was appointed to several more ad hoc royal commissions in Hampshire, sometimes being named as one of the quorum, and he was naturally included among the gentry of the county required to take the oath against maintenance widely administered in 1434.13 C219/12/3, 5; 13/1, 5; 14/1, 3-5; 15/1, 2; CPR, 1429-36, p. 397.

Holt was a popular choice as a feoffee of real estate in the region. For example, in association with Thomas Haydock*, the steward of Winchester College, he was for many years a trustee of property in Andover which eventually came by royal licence to the college; he was enfeoffed of the manor of Shalden on behalf of members of the Lee family; he assisted William Soper* of Southampton to acquire land at South Langley, and he had a fiduciary interest in more in Whitchurch and Chalgrave, on behalf of William Ringbourne*.14 Winchester Coll. muns. 2475; CP25(1)/207/32/46; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 130-1; 1441-6, p. 444; CCR, 1435-41, p. 440. By the appointment of John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells for several years he was a feoffee of holdings in Kings Somborne, which eventually passed to Stafford’s retainer John Audley*, son and heir of Lord Audley.15 CCR, 1454-61, p. 102; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Somborne Regis deeds, A3. One of Holt’s last assignments associated him with Cardinal Beaufort in November 1444, when the Dorset esquire John Mone* transferred to them a moiety of a manor in Piddletrenthide, which just over a year later they conveyed to Hyde abbey.16 Winchester Coll. muns. 14770-1. Holt may then have still been serving as steward of the abbey’s estates, a post he had been occupying in the year of his return to Parliament.

Occasionally, Holt acted on behalf of his relations, such as John Norton, for whom he took on the trusteeship of the manors of Nutley and East Tisted (having himself an interest in the remainder of the latter, should Norton and his son, John, leave no issue). It may well be that Joan, the wife of John Norton junior, was a kinswoman of his, for in his will he was to leave the couple a silver cup and cover, a silver saltcellar, and a robe of ‘monsterdevelys’ with a fur hood. These were identical bequests to the ones Holt left to his daughter, also called Joan, who was married to John Wallop* of Farleigh Wallop, so perhaps Joan Norton was her sister.17 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 198-9; Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 25; Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 143v. Holt had arranged an advantageous marriage for his only son and namesake, Richard, within the legal fraternity. Young Richard was married to the daughter and heiress of William Chamberlain*, the recorder of Southampton who had accompanied him to the Parliament of 1431. The couple probably wed in about 1443, two years before the girl came into her substantial inheritance.18 C67/39, m. 17; Queen’s Coll. Oxf., God’s House deeds, 376; C139/120/43. She was not the da. and h. of Robert Collingbourne*, as stated in E. Kite, Wilts. Brasses, 38.

As all this indicates, Holt had become a person of some wealth and standing in Hampshire. In July 1427 he and his wife had obtained a papal indult for a portable altar, and in 1439 he was distrained for refusing to take up knighthood. Both he and his son purchased royal pardons on 19 July 1446.19 CPL, vii. 562; C67/39, m. 17. Holt died three months afterwards. His will, made on 14 Oct. that year and proved just 11 days later, contained an unusual number of bequests to ecclesiastical establishments in his home county. Winchester cathedral, 12 parish churches and chapels, friaries in Winchester and Guildford, the abbeys of Hyde and Waverley and the priory at Selborne, were all to receive sums of money, amounting to more than £87, as well as gifts of livestock and crops. The lawyer’s personal chaplain was paid nine marks to pray for his soul for two years. By contrast, bequests to members of the laity, family and friends, totalled no more than £25, but besides cash, these included at least nine robes trimmed with fur. The chief beneficiary was Holt’s son and namesake, who with his widow and John Goldsmith took on the executorship. Holt was buried in the monastic church at Wintney, of which he and his wife were benefactors.20 Reg. Stafford, f. 143v. A writ de diem clausit extremum was issued (CFR, xviii. 44) but no inq. post mortem has survived.

In the following February Richard, the son, received seisin of the manor of Pury and other of his parents’ properties from feoffees (Thomas Pound* and William Uvedale II*) appointed by his father, and by his mother’s grant he held jointly with Thomas Uvedale*, Thomas Welles* and others, the manors of Colreth, Bentley, Headley and Froyle. Following his father’s profession, he rose to be an apprentice-at-law before May 1455, and served as a j.p. in Hampshire from 1453 until his death on 18 Apr. 1458.21 CCR, 1454-61, p. 147; Add. Ch. 17434; C139/169/32. Richard’s daughters and coheirs, Christine (b.1444) and Elizabeth (b.1448) married Edward Berkeley† of Beverstone, and John Pound† (the s. of his late father’s feoffee), respectively, and his widow, Joan (d.1495), took as her second husband Constantine Darell*: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1255; Add. Ch. 17600; Black Bk. Southampton, ii (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1912), 162-3.