HOLMES, Robert (d. c.1670), of Netherton, Dymock, Glos.

Robert Holmes’s origins are not recorded in the heraldic visitations of either Herefordshire or Gloucestershire. The name was common enough in the Gloucestershire/Herefordshire border area in the early seventeenth century. There was a Thomas Homes who was a sawyer in Dymock in 1608, another of that name a husbandman at nearby Pauntley.7Men and Armour for Gloucestershire in 1608 (1902), 59, 66. Fownhope in Herefordshire is another parish with families of Holmes living in it during this period, but in none can the baptism of Robert Holmes be traced. The first solid information about him comes with his marriage with Elizabeth Kyrle of Homme House, Much Marcle in 1633. Her father, Francis Kyrle, was the younger son of Sir John Kyrle, who twice served as sheriff of Herefordshire, and who outlived his son. Elizabeth Kyrle’s mother was Hester Tracy, daughter of Sir Paul Tracy, 1st baronet, of Stanway.8Burke’s Commoners iii. 617; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 61: Much Marcle par. reg. There is no evidence that Holmes played any part in public life, not even at parish office level, before 1644, as the full parish records of Dymock contain no mention of him.9Glos. RO, P125/VE/3/1. Holmes’s family continued to grow during the civil war, with baptisms recorded at Dymock and Much Marcle in 1643 and 1647, suggesting that he never moved away or actively involved himself in the conflict. His wife’s grandfather was a parliamentarian, however, and her uncle was killed in fighting at Ledbury in 1645.10Duncomb, Collections, iii. 27. Sir John Kyrle became a sequestration commissioner, even though the royalists evidently had hopes of him in 1643, and he and his eldest son, Holmes’s wife’s uncle, served on assessment commissions.11Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 5; A. and O. A commission of the peace for Herefordshire of August 1644, issued by the Westminster Parliament, included Holmes, suggesting that it was his Kyrle family that drew him into politics. As Herefordshire was under royalist control at the time, it is highly unlikely that he acted.

Holmes had been drawn actively into public affairs by late 1649. In December of that year, the Rump’s Indemnity Committee called upon him to examine witnesses in a dispute at Tewkesbury.12Glos. RO, TBR/A1/1, p. 153. A feud had developed there between factions over the annual elections of the borough’s officers. According to the town’s chronicler, it was provoked by a newcomer, Colonel Thomas Bulstrode, who felt aggrieved at having to pay town rates.13Glos. RO, D2688, f. 94v. Holmes and two justices of the peace duly visited the town, but took no depositions, as the matter was quickly referred over their heads to two committees of MPs.14Glos. RO, TBR/A1/1, p. 154. Even so, Holmes’s intervention earned him a place as a justice (and therefore by definition a capital burgess) of Tewkesbury, and as a justice of the peace in the county. This was a borough which had supported the godly minister John Geree during the 1640s, and Holmes must have been in sympathy with the puritan outlook of the town’s leading citizens to secure an appointment at this time. During the emergency of the Scottish invasion in 1651, one Holmes of ‘Cashalton’ was ordered to attend a committee of the council of state to amplify an unfounded report that Gloucester had fallen to the enemy, but neither the place-name or the general tenor of the order suggest that it was Robert Holmes who was summoned.15CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 388-9. In November 1652, the council called upon him as a commissioner to investigate a local problem, on this occasion the despoliation of timber in the Forest of Dean.16CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 501.

By the early 1650s Dymock had become the home of a gathered congregation involving Holmes.17Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 123-4. In December 1650, the Dymock gathered church met at Netherton, possibly in the house of the Holmes family. Elizabeth Holmes was a prominent member of it, and signed a letter from the congregation to a sister church at Llanwenarth, Monmouthshire. That this was a Baptist congregation is evident from the report sent from Netherton that five members had been brought by God ‘to his ordinance of baptism’, in fact a second baptism, by total immersion.18The Ilston Book ed. B.G Owens (Aberystwyth, 1996), 103. Direct evidence of Robert Holmes’s membership is lacking, but it seems likely that he was at least an active sympathiser. In the climate of millenarian optimism surrounding the calling of the Nominated Assembly, it was bound to have contributed to Holmes’s standing that he hailed from a community whose gathered church had written to Oliver Cromwell* and Thomas Harrison I* to recommend innovations in the ministry. The petitioners called for up to ten ‘gospel preachers’, approved by congregations, to minister itinerantly in ‘dark places’ and to be supported other than by tithes.19Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 123-4. This was in effect a call for the Act for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales (1650) to be extended to England, and emerged just after the Rump had failed to renew that legislation and thus helped precipitate its own demise at the hands of the radicals. Holmes was not among the named petitioners, but must have been in sympathy with them.

There were other factors in Holmes’s background that probably helped his selection for the Parliament of 1653. One was his membership of the Kyrle family of Much Marcle, which linked him to various men of parliamentary experience and standing. One brother-in-law was Bennet Hoskins, recruiter Member for Hereford, but who had been secluded at Pride’s Purge. Another brother-in-law was Roger Lechmere of Fownhope, kinsman of the Worcestershire Rumper, Nicholas Lechmere. At further remove in kinship was Thomas Pury II*, whose wife was a cousin of Elizabeth Holmes. But neither Hoskins, Lechmere nor Pury sat in Barebones, and are therefore unlikely to have been of particular influence. It is likely, rather, that it was Holmes’s standing in Tewkesbury and his religious views that were decisive in securing his selection. His fellow-Member was William Neast of Twyning, important in the borough since 1646, and one whose name headed the list of recommendations drawn up by the Congregationalist churches in Gloucestershire.20Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 125-6. Holmes himself was not included in the list of seventeen names, but a fellow resident of Dymock, Thomas Wall, was. Wall and Holmes conducted civil marriages in Dymock in 1655. It is possible, therefore, that Holmes was in effect chosen by Neast as a colleague because of his brief involvement in Tewkesbury borough affairs, on a testimonial from Dymock.

The Presbyterian Edward Harley* commented to his father, Sir Robert*, that with the appearance of Holmes and John James* in the assembly, Herefordshire ‘may hope to thrive’.21HMC Portland, iii. 202-3. This remark may have been laden with sarcasm. Regardless of religious rivalry, on the evidence of committee appointments, Herefordshire – and Gloucestershire, which Holmes represented – must have been disappointed. Holmes sat on only one committee, that for trade, which he joined on 20 July 1653.22CJ vii. 287a. No further record of his involvement in this Parliament is recorded, beyond the probability that he sympathized with the religious radicals on the future of the church, against those who sought to maintain the traditional tithe-supported ministry.23A Catalogue of the Names of the Members (1653). He was added to the list of Gloucestershire assessment commissioners as late as 1656, and retained his membership of the commission of the peace, acting locally to officiate at marriages, as has been noted.24CJ vii. 355b; Dymock par. reg. His brother-in-law, John Kyrle†, had succeeded to the baronetcy in 1650, and despite his modest service on parliamentary assessment commissions was recommended for the Convention by John Scudamore†, Viscount Scudamore [I], as ‘one who had never been of either side’.25HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘John Kyrle’. Holmes was probably content to be included in this judgment, however inaccurate it may have been, and disappeared from the commission of the peace and tax commissions.

Doubt surrounds the date of his death, as it does that of Holmes’s birth. In his will of 1664, to which he added a codicil in April 1667, he expressed a wish to be buried in Much Marcle church with his wife, who had evidently predeceased him. When his son, John, made his will in 1677, he expressed a desire to be buried in the vault of the Kyrles at Much Marcle church, where both his parents had been buried.26Herefs. RO, B56/2, p. iv. Curiously, however, there is no record of the burials of either Robert or Elizabeth Holmes in the Much Marcle parish register. Even so, Robert Holmes must have been buried there some time before 9 February 1670, when his will was proved.27PROB11/332/205. None of his descendants is known to have sat in Parliament.