HOLMAN, Robert (1603-64), of Pendell Court, Bletchingley, Surr.

Holman came from a minor gentry family which had been established at Godstone since at least the early fifteenth century.19Lambert, Bletchingley, 307; Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 96. His father, a younger son and a prosperous grocer, acquired Pendell or Pendhill in 1617 for £2,142 and rebuilt the manor house.20Manning and Bray, Surr. ii. 306. On succeeding to the estate, Holman married the daughter of another propertied Londoner.21Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 96; Manning and Bray, Surr. ii. 306; Lambert, Bletchingley, 309. He acquired further land in the area, including in 1641 a house in Bletchingley, while in 1630 he presented a carved oak pulpit to the parish church.22Lambert, Bletchingley, 8, 309.

Holman enjoyed a cordial relationship with the rector, William Hampton, whom he later described as ‘my reverend friend and loving neighbour’.23PROB11/315/175. In April and July 1642 Holman, his younger brother Jeffrey and Hampton together subscribed a total of £300 towards the Irish Adventure; Holman also sent £3 for the relief of Irish Protestants.24SP63/294, ff. 76-7; SP28/194/6. Hampton, formerly chaplain to the joint lord lieutenant of Surrey, Charles Howard, 2nd earl of Nottingham, preached a ‘eulogistic’ sermon at the latter’s funeral on 3 October 1642.25Lambert, Bletchingley, 427. Holman, perhaps another member of Nottingham’s circle, had already been named as a subsidy commissioner, and in November was appointed by Parliament a deputy lieutenant to the 3rd earl.26SR; CJ 833a. Thereafter he was active in parliamentarian local administration and was eventually added to the commission of the peace.27A. and O.; SP28/245; SP28/254; C181/4/528; C231/6, pp. 41, 212, 429. Nominated as an elder in the Reigate classis in February 1648, Holman is likely to have been a political moderate.28Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 434. His friend Hampton was accused of assisting in the rising of Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, put down in Surrey that July, although investigating magistrates found no proof of this.29Lambert, Bletchingley, 431.

In company with other Surrey gentlemen of moderate inclination, Holman reconciled himself to the regime in the 1650s. One of six county Members returned to the first protectorate Parliament, he received four committee nominations. Although he had assigned his share in the barony of Dunluce to a third party in August 1654, Holman may have retained an interest in Ireland: he was placed on the committee devising arrangements for elections there (5 Oct.).30SP63/294, f. 74; CJ vii. 373b. Otherwise his appointments related in some way to money: to investigate the failure of the sheriff of Surrey to deliver money assigned for the county gaol (9 Nov.); to the public accounts committee (22 Nov.); and to consider the clause in the act of government concerning the raising of revenue from customs or other means (13 Jan. 1655).31CJ vii. 383b, 387b, 415b.

This was to be Holman’s sole service in Parliament. He played little part in local affairs from then until the end of the decade, but he subscribed £10 to the ‘free and voluntary present’ to Charles II.32E179/257/28/75. When he made his will in September 1660 he had three sons living, as well as a daughter, Mary Seyliard.33PROB11/315/175. The heir was his son Theophilus, but just over two decades after Holman’s death in August 1664 all three sons were dead, and the estates passed to the Seyliards.34Lambert, Bletchingley, 312. Holman was a cousin of Philip Holman*, whose son John Holman† sat for Banbury in four Restoration Parliaments.