HOLLES, Denzil or Denzell (1598-1680), of Dorchester Friary, Dorset and Damerham, Wilts.

The younger son of the 1st earl of Clare, a childhood companion of Charles I, and a dapper courtier who married the richest heiress in Dorset, Denzil Holles made an unlikely opponent of the crown. Yet in March 1629 he became famous as an ally of Sir John Eliot†, William Coryton* and other MPs who defied the king by forcing the reading of a declaration against tonnage and poundage and a protest against Arminianism in the church. Holles played a prominent role in the chaotic scenes in the House, and was one of those who held down the Speaker, John Finch II†, to prevent him from leaving his chair and thus adjourning business. Retribution was swift. Holles was summoned before the privy council and imprisoned in the Tower of London until November, when he was released on bonds for good behaviour, and in February 1630 he was fined 1,000 marks.43HP Commons 1604-1629. For the remainder of the 1630s Holles retired to Dorset to nurse his wrath. The death of his father-in-law in 1635 gave him control of a considerable estate in the county, but his own father’s death in 1637 left him only a very modest cash bequest, and prompted a legal dispute that led to bad blood between Holles and his elder brother, John Holles†, now 2nd earl of Clare.44Crawford, Holles, 28-9. His opposition to Ship Money was trenchant. He refused to pay in the levy in 1635, and later the sheriff of Dorset complained that Holles was protecting the servants of his mother-in-law, Lady Ashley, who had used violence to prevent the distraint of horses to pay the tax.45CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 58, 175, 177. Holles also opposed the digging of his dovecote for saltpetre in 1637, and declined to contribute to the royal expedition against the Scots in 1639.46Crawford, Holles, 30.

Holles’s reputation as a troublemaker had ensured his popularity in his adoptive home of Dorchester, which had long been under the sway of the godly minister, John White. Even before the Short Parliament elections had been called, on 24 January 1640 the corporation declared that Holles, and another opponent of the regime, Denis Bond*, were ‘the fittest men’ to represent the borough at Westminster.47Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 435; Dorset RO, B2/16/4, p. 17. A request by the lord lieutenant of Dorset, the 2nd earl of Suffolk (Theophilus Howard†), for his own man to be returned, was turned down flat, and Holles and Bond were duly elected on 20 March.48Dorset RO, B2/16/4, pp. 19, 21; C219/42/95. In the brief session that followed, Holles was celebrated as one of the crown’s most prominent victims, and on 18 April the Commons ordered that the records of the proceedings against him and the other MPs prosecuted in 1629 should be scrutinised.49CJ ii. 6a. Holles spoke on 27 April during the debate on privileges, telling the chamber that ‘we are all fellow members of one body: that which keeps us entire, gives us life, is our privileges. We represent the whole commonwealth’.50Aston Diary, 73. The failure of the Parliament to vote the king money without concessions prompted the closure of the session a few days later. The failure of the king’s second expedition against the Scots led to the calling of the Long Parliament, and on 22 October Holles and Bond were again elected for Dorchester.51Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/3, f. 72 (2nd foliation).

The early months of the Long Parliament, 1640-1

At the beginning of the new Parliament, Holles was closely involved in investigating other victims of the Caroline regime, being named to committees to consider the cases of Dr Alexander Leighton (9 Nov.), William Prynne* (3 Dec.) and Dr John Bastwick (17 Dec.), and working alongside other veteran opponents of the crown, like John Pym*, Sir Walter Erle*, Oliver St John* and John Hampden*.52CJ ii. 24a, 44b, 52b. As part of this attempt to redress grievances, Holles’s own treatment – and that endured by the other MPs indicted in 1629 – was re-examined by a committee appointed on 18 December.53CJ ii. 53b. In the same month, Holles was appointed to two committees to investigate Ship Money.54CJ ii. 45b, 46b. He was also active in measures against the religious innovations associated with Archbishop William Laud. On 15 December he weighed into the debate on the new church Canons, arguing that the oaths included in the measures were ‘against the Parliament’s power’, as only the Houses could ‘bind the clergy or the laity of this land’.55Procs LP i. 614-5. The next day he was included in the committee to prepare the votes on the Canons, with other leading west country MPs like Pym, Erle, Sir Francis Seymour*, Sir John Strangways* and John Maynard*.56CJ ii. 52a. Later that month Holles took the Commons’ accusations against Laud to the Lords, and was named to the committee to prepare charges against Matthew Wren, bishop of Ely.57CJ ii. 54a, 56a; LJ iv. 112a. All this activity suggests that Holles was among the most committed of the king’s opponents in the Commons, but there were already signs that he was not always marching in step. In particular, his kinship with another bête noire, Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford (who had married Holles’s sister), caused him to waver. On 11 November he was one of six leading MPs named to a committee to prepare a conference with the Lords on charges against the earl, but the next day he was allowed to resign from the same, ‘at his own request’, to be replaced by Harbottle Grimston*.58CJ ii. 26b, 27a.

Although Holles had distanced himself from the Strafford trial at an early stage, he occasionally interposed in debate during the spring of 1641. He challenged Sir John Clotworthy’s* intemperate remarks against the earl, asking that ‘all such speeches touching any man’s person might be forborne’.59D’Ewes (N), 410. On 18 February he reported from a conference on the sequestration of Strafford’s offices and was named to a committee to consider Pym’s report on the legality of the proceedings.60CJ ii. 88b. On 29 March, when witnesses were called by the earl, Holles told the Commons that the Lords had authorised the examination of various men, including Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh and Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.61Procs. LP iii. 212. On 14 April Holles spoke up for ‘those innocents (as he called them)’ – Strafford’s wife and children - arguing that the attainder should not extend to the earl’s progeny, ‘that his ancient inheritance may descend’.62Procs. LP iii. 550, 553. Holles appears to have been absent from the vote on the attainder of Strafford, despite one contemporary note that included his name among the ‘Straffordians’ who opposed the move.63HEHL, uncatalogued MSS, Phillips Sale 1971, Parker family newsletters (4 May 1641); Crawford, Holles, 37. There were rumours that Holles had used his influence to have the earl’s death sentence commuted, but these cannot be substantiated.64Crawford, Holles, 37-8. Holles’s sensitivities were evidently respected by his colleagues, and there is a basis of truth to Edward Hyde’s* later assertion that his refusal to ‘intermeddle in the counsel and prosecution of the earl of Strafford … did not otherwise interrupt the friendship he had with the most violent of those prosecutors’.65Clarendon, Hist. i. 249.

While the fate of Strafford preoccupied the Commons, Holles devoted his attention to other issues. In January 1641 he was messenger to the Lords with information against the archdeacon of Bath, and was named to a committee to investigate leniency to Catholics by the government.66CJ ii. 63a, 73a. In February he was messenger to the Lords with a request that clergy should be omitted from the new lists of justices of the peace; he was named to the committee on the same in March; and later in the same month he was appointed to the committee stage of a bill to disable the clergy from all secular employment.67CJ ii. 79a, 94b, 99a. He was also involved in moves to reform the customs administration, having been named to the committee on customs and customers on 24 February.68CJ ii. 92a. On 27 April he denounced the old customs farmers, saying that they had ‘cozened the king’ and ‘blinded the eyes of all great officers and privy councillors’.69Procs. LP iv. 114. On 22 May he reported the ‘customers’ delinquencies’ in some detail, and during the week that followed he reported twice from conferences with the Lords concerning the customs and was named to a committee to consult with the farmers about the level of fines they would be prepared to pay.70Procs. LP iv. 526-9, 534-7; CJ ii. 154a, 155a, 161a. Tonnage and poundage was another concern, not least because its grant would give the king a measure of financial independence. The Commons proceeded as slowly as they dared, and the matter had not been resolved by 24 May, when Holles was teller in favour (not against, as the clerk of the House mistakenly recorded) of taking a vote on whether the customers and others involved in the collection of tonnage and poundage should be declared delinquents.71CJ ii. 155b; Procs. LP iv. 549, 553. On 28 May he joined William Strode I* in arguing that tonnage and poundage should not be granted to the king, but rather to commissioners on the king’s behalf, which would accord better with ‘the liberty of the subject’.72Procs. LP iv. 627.

Of more immediate importance, during this period Holles was engaged in the settlement of peace with the Scots (whose army still occupied the north of England), and the concurrent disbandment of the king’s army. As early as November 1640 he had reported from a conference on a treaty between the two nations; he was named to the committee to consider the state of their armies; and in early December he was reporter of a conference on a cessation of arms.73CJ ii. 32b, 34a, 45a. In January 1641 he was reporter with John Maynard and others of a further conference on the Scottish treaty and was named to a committee to consider the supply of money for the royal army.74CJ ii. 62a, 66a. By this stage the two main interlinked issues were peaceful disbandment and the raising of money to pay for it. Holles was deeply involved in both. In February he was named to the committee on the second reading of the subsidy bill, and to a committee to persuade the king to give his assent to bills for the relief of the royal army and the northern counties.75CJ ii. 80a, 85b. On 1 March Holles, Erle, Pym, Hampden and the London MPs formed a committee to attend the City to arrange a loan of £100,000 from the subsidies.76CJ ii. 94b. The treaty with the Scots proceeded in parallel. On 11 February Holles joined John Glynne*, Hyde and others as reporter of a conference with the Lords on the Scottish talks, and on 3 March he accompanied Strangways, Hyde and others as reporter on articles to be included in the treaty.77CJ ii. 83a, 96a. He was a majority teller on 5 March against a proposal that would have hastened the departure of the Scottish army from England; and on 9 March he reported from the conference on a cessation with the Scots.78CJ ii. 97a, 100a; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 200. Holles was involved in preparing the heads of a conference on the king’s army later in the month, and on 22 and 23 March he joined Strangways and George Digby*, Lord Digby as reporter from two relevant conferences, on the affairs of both kingdoms and the state of the king’s army, respectively.79CJ ii. 110b, 111b. There were further conferences over the next few weeks, with Holles reporting or managing on 24 March, 6 April and 8 April.80CJ ii. 112a, 116b, 117a. On 9 April he was a majority teller in favour of extending the cessation yet again (once again, the clerk of the House mistakenly recorded him as a teller against the motion), and later that month he was reporter or manager from conferences on the Scottish treaty and the cessation on four more occasions.81CJ ii. 118a, 118b, 120b, 123b, 125b, 126a; Procs. LP iii. 481.

The army plot, May-Sept. 1641

The sense of urgency that surrounded the disbandment of the armies reflected the growing concern that the discontented among the king’s forces might attempt a military coup. In early April it was reported that Holles had begged the Commons not to be distracted by minor issues ‘when the safety of the whole kingdom was in question’, warning that if either army should march south, ‘it might embroil both nations’.82CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 539. The threat of a plot among the officers prompted the signing of the Protestation by MPs in early May – a move supported by Holles, who argued that it would ‘manifest to the world our unity one with another’.83CJ ii. 133a. Procs. LP iv. 181. He was named to the committee to prepare the Protestation on 23 April, and to the committee to prepare the declaration that would accompany it on 3 May.84CJ ii. 127a, 132b. He signed the Protestation on the same day, and on 4 May he took the document to the Lords, and delivered a rousing speech there, telling of ‘designs hatched within our own bowels, and viper-like working our destruction’. He went on to claim that religion and the law had been subverted, illegal taxes and monopolies sapped the resources of the nation, and the two armies in the north would, ‘as the vulture upon Prometheus, eat through our sides and gnaw our very hearts’.85Densell Hollis Esq his Speech at the delivery of the Protestation (1641), 3-5 (E.198.10).

The reports of plotting that had prompted the Protestation continued to come in. Holles was involved in sifting intelligence and examining suspects. On 4 May he was named to the committee to interview Sir John Suckling*, and the next day he was appointed to a committee to prepare a message to the Lords on the business and was selected as reporter of a conference on the creation of a committee to examine suspects.86CJ ii. 134a, 135a, 135b. Thereafter Holles was named to a number of related committees, including that for a bill for the security of the king, the kingdom and religion (6 May), and he reported conferences on the affairs of the kingdom (8 and 15 May).87CJ ii. 136b, 139b, 139b, 140b, 147b, 148a. In the same period, he joined the ‘secret committee’ that investigated the army plot, which moved the Commons on 17 May ‘that the danger of the papists’ design upon this House and kingdom was very great’.88Procs. LP iv. 414. He again reported on the plot on 8 and 9 June, commending those who had given information, including the earl of Northumberland’s brother, Henry Percy*.89Procs. LP v. 37, 69. On 12 June Holles reported that he and Hampden had attended Northumberland to receive further information from his brother, and he reassured the Commons that the earl was ‘most ready to satisfy this House in anything we desired’.90Procs. LP v. 107, 133; CJ ii. 174b. Two days later he joined Hampden as reporter of a conference on the plot, and was named to a committee to draft a letter to the army and to attend the lord general to ask for an internal investigation and the punishment of those implicated.91CJ ii. 175b. The investigations continued into July, with Holles still playing a major part, both in the secret committee and in the Commons.92Procs. LP v. 72, 384; CJ ii. 182a, 201a. In conjunction with this, Holles continued his work to remove the source of the infection by disbanding the king’s army in the north – a cure that was not effected until August.93CJ ii. 187a, 188b, 201b, 240a, 243a, 252b, 264a, 267a.

Amid the crisis surrounding the army plot, Holles continued to strive for a resolution to the Scottish treaty. On 10 May he reported a conference on the proposed terms, and on 22 May he joined Strode in telling in favour of an amended clause, narrowly winning the division (yet again the clerk of the Commons muddled the tellers).94CJ ii. 142a, 154b; Procs. LP iv. 532, 538. During June he was again busy with managing the treaty – which now included a bill of indemnity to cover the Scots’ destructive sojourn in northern England – and the disbandment of the king’s army, which was at last being put into effect.95Procs. LP v. 238, 299, 369, 530. His tellership with Henry Marten on 19 June against making Parliament the judge of whether to send Scottish ‘incendiaries’ home for trial is further evidence of his willingness to forward Scottish interests at Westminster.96CJ ii. 181a; Procs. LP v. 238-41; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 335 and fn. 16. On 30 June he joined Hampden and Edmund Prideaux I* as reporter of a conference on peace between the two nations.97CJ ii. 193b. Little progress was made over the next few weeks, but on 13 August Holles was reporter of a conference on concluding the treaty, and the next day he was named to a committee to prepare instructions for commissioners to travel to Scotland to ensure that its terms were observed.98CJ ii. 254a, 256b. Holles’s consistent support for the Scots since the opening of the Long Parliament had led to the development of friendships with some of the leading Covenanters, notably John Maitland, Lord Maitland, who wrote on 3 September that he counted on Holles and Lord Mandeville to ensure that ‘both all cause of jealousies and expenses may be removed’, signing himself ‘your most affectionate friend and servant’.99Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 176; CJ ii. 278b.

As tensions briefly eased in July 1641, there were new moves to reconcile the king and his leading opponents, through the revival of the ‘bridge appointments’ scheme piloted in the spring. On 15 July it was said that either Holles or Hampden would be secretary of state.100CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 53. A fortnight later, Sir John Temple* reported that ‘it is held for certain that Mr Pym shall presently be chancellor of the exchequer, and Mr Holles secretary’, and these rumours were repeated by others.101HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 406; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 62-3. Perhaps as a sign of royal goodwill, on 6 August Holles was made a justice of the peace for Dorset, and four days later he was elevated to the position of custos rotulorum for the county.102C231/5, pp. 475, 478. Three days later Holles took to the Lords the Commons’ request that the 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*) should be lord treasurer and the 4th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*) lord steward.103CJ ii. 248b; LJ iv. 355a.

This initiative was fatally undermined by the king’s decision to visit Scotland, which created a new mood of uncertainty and suspicion. On 28 July, when the news reached the Commons, Holles was named to a committee to consider the implications of such a journey; he was then instructed by the Commons to attend the Lords with further information; and on the following day joined Pym, Hampden and others as manager of the conference on the same matter.104CJ ii. 227a-b, 230a; LJ iv. 332b; Procs. LP v. 118. On 5 August he was again reporter of a conference, this time about whether Parliament could establish a custos regni to govern during the king’s absence.105CJ ii. 238a. Two days later, Holles was named to a committee to prepare heads for a conference on the king’s journey, and reported that the king would be asked to delay his departure for a fortnight.106CJ ii. 243a-b, 244b, 245a. On 8 August he reported to the Commons that propositions had been sent to the Scots, asking for ‘a fair correspondency with both nations, by which means they may conclude a happy union’, and asking for their support in delaying the king’s visit; and the next day he and Glynne moved that the House debate ‘the dangers of the kingdom by the king’s absence’.107Procs. LP v. 299, 313; CJ ii. 246b; LJ iv. 352b.

The king’s imminent departure from England worsened the mood at Westminster. In the last two weeks of August, Holles’s activities in the Commons show that he shared the general feeling of unease. On 16 and 17 August he was named to committees to safeguard the important port of Hull and to consider the disarming of recusants.108CJ ii. 259b, 261a. On 17 and 18 August he attended and reported from a conference with the Lords of ‘the defence of the kingdom’.109CJ ii. 261a, 262a. On 20 August he was named to a committee to consider intelligence concerning the troops of the new, largely Catholic army in Ireland, who were to be transported overseas.110CJ ii. 266a. On 21 August he was reporter, with Pym and Strode, of a conference on the disarming of papists, and he was named to the committee on the same the following day.111CJ ii. 267b, 268a. On 21 August Holles was reporter that the Lords agreed to reinforce the guard at the Tower of London, on 25 August he moved that the Tower might be put under ‘safe custody’, and on 28 August he took the resultant vote to the Lords.112CJ ii. 268a, 275b; Procs. LP v. 555. The threat from disbanded Irish troops appears to have been a particular concern for Holles, who reported on the matter on 24 August, and managed a conference against the sending of disbanded troops to Spain on 28 August.113CJ ii. 269b, 270a; Procs. LP v. 595. All this activity suddenly ceased on 31 August, when, shortly after taking the ordinance for disarming recusants to the Lords, Holles was granted leave of absence to go into the country, on health grounds.114CJ ii. 278a-b; LJ iv. 387b. His immediate departure explains why he was not included in the Recess Committee formed during the adjournment of Parliament (from 9 Sept.) and the king’s absence in Scotland.115Oxford DNB.

The Five Members, Oct. 1641-Jan. 1642

When Parliament reconvened in October, Holles became a still more outspoken critic of the crown, especially on religious affairs. His involvement in religious reform earlier in 1641 had already provided sufficient evidence to disprove Hyde’s statement that he was ‘pleased with the government itself of the church’ rather than seeking root and branch reform.116Clarendon, Hist. i. 309. Holles had served on various committees on papists and Jesuit plots, and this, with his eagerness to send the queen mother back to France in July, suggests that he shared the sectarian fears of Pym and the radicals. His views on church government appear to have been influenced by the Presbyterian Scots.117CJ ii. 183a, 189a, 199a, 210a, 211b, 214b, 215a, 219a-b, 258a; Crawford, Holles, 43-4. In particular, Holles was a bitter opponent of episcopacy. He had spoken against bishops in February, and was added to a committee to consider petitions against episcopacy.118Crawford, Holles, 46-7; CJ ii. 81b. He also argued ‘directly against the government of the church by bishops’ when the bill for the abolition of episcopacy was first debated in May, siding with Pym and others who argued that the bishops ‘had well near ruined all religion amongst us’. Holles told the House that ‘some of the said bishops have since boasted that they would now sit in the upper House in despite of the House of Commons’.119Procs. LP iv. 608; CJ ii. 159a In early June he was named to a committee to prepare reasons for the exclusion of bishops from secular employment, and managed a conference concerning the removal of the bishops from the Lords.120CJ ii. 165b, 167b. On 11 June Holles called for the abolition of bishops, arguing that ‘the bishops were anti-monarchical’ as they had ‘laboured to introduce a power above the king’.121Procs. LP v. 97. On 30 July he was named to a committee to draft the impeachment against the bishops.122CJ ii. 230b. When the Commons reassembled after the recess, Holles renewed his attack on bishops. On 23 October Holles was sent to the Lords to ask for a speedy resolution of their deliberations about the impeachment of the 13 bishops, which was necessary ‘for the honour of their House and satisfaction of the people’; and on the same day he seconded a motion for a bill to prevent the clergy from meddling in secular affairs.123Harl. 6424, f. 97; D’Ewes (C), 30; CJ ii. 292a; LJ iv. 400a. On 26 October, when moves against the Canons were debated, Holles ‘made a long speech to move us to give a name to our impeachment of the 13 bishops, and to call it treason’, arguing that ‘they had been enemies to parliaments and to liberty’.124D’Ewes (C), 39.

Holles’s religious views influenced his reaction to news of the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland, which reached Westminster on 1 November. The uprising confirmed Holles’s fears, already voiced in the spring and later summer of 1641, that there was a general popish conspiracy against English Protestantism. He was soon heavily involved in moves to suppress the rebellion, acting as joint manager with Pym, Clotworthy and Bulstrode Whitelocke* of a conference with the Lords to consider the news on 1 November; on 2 November he was named to the committee of Irish affairs; and the same day the Commons ordered that Holles, Pym, Clotworthy and St John should interrogate Owen O’Connolly, who had exposed the plot to capture Dublin Castle.125CJ ii. 301a, 302a, 302a. On 4 November Holles moved in the Commons that the lord lieutenant, the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sidney†) go to Ireland, and that the Scots be asked for help; on the same day he was named to the committee to raise troops to send to Ireland, and on 8 November the Commons ordered, on Holles’s motion, that a council of war on Ireland would be established.126D’Ewes (C), 84, 106; CJ ii. 305b. Holles’s Scottish contacts proved especially useful at this time, and on 11 November he and Pym managed a conference on an offer by the Scots to provide troops for Ireland.127CJ ii. 312b. He continued in this role in December, managing a conference on instructions for those treating with the Scots for sending troops to Ireland (8 Dec.), and acting as messenger to the Lords to urge them to conclude a deal for 10,000 Scots to cross the North Channel, and then managing the resulting conference (21 Dec.).128CJ ii. 336a, 352a, 355a; LJ iv. 484a.

The Irish crisis had its political uses, as it allowed Pym and his allies, including Holles, to increase pressure on the king to implement far-reaching reforms in England. Even before news of the rising broke, Holles was working closely with Pym on the committee to consider ‘the safety of the kingdom’ (21 Oct.), as reporter of a conference on letters received from the king (26 Oct.) and on a committee to draft a petition against ‘evil counsellors’ (28 Oct.).129CJ ii. 291b, 295a, 297b. Above all, he assisted Pym in drafting the Grand Remonstrance, which outlined the grievances of Parliament and demanded reform in church and state.130Add. 64922, f. 65. The Grand Remonstrance had been delayed by news of the Irish rebellion, and was only passed on 23 November. In the meantime, Holles was involved in a number of measures designed to increase English security. On 5 November he was manager of a conference to nominate Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as general south of the Trent; on 15 November he was named to a committee to draft an ordinance to put the trained bands into a ‘posture of defence’; and on 17 November he was named to a committee to prepare reasons for arresting papists and was made manager of the conference that followed.131CJ ii. 306b, 316b, 318b, 319a. On 22 November, Holles used the debates on the Remonstrance to voice what he called a ‘necessary truth’: that ‘if kings are misled by their counsellors we may, we must, tell him of it’.132Verney, Notes, 124-5; Add. 64922, f. 65.

With the passing of the Grand Remonstrance, tensions between the king and his Parliament heightened further, and Holles’s role during December was increasingly inflammatory. On 3 December he was named to a committee to prepare heads for a conference on the bills for ‘the safety of the kingdom’ not yet passed by the Lords.133CJ ii. 330b. On 7 December he was teller against rejecting another bill, appointing a single general throughout the kingdom.134CJ ii. 334b. The next day, when the safety of Ireland was debated, Holles moved that harsh measures against Catholics should be imposed on ‘all the rest of his majesty’s dominions also’.135D’Ewes (C), 255. On 14 December he was sent to the Lords with a message concerning an alleged breach of privilege in the king’s speech, he was appointed manager with Pym, Hampden and Glynne of the subsequent conference, and he joined the committee of both Houses that complained to the king.136CJ ii. 342b, 343b; LJ iv. 474a. On 15 December Holles was teller with Clotworthy in favour of bringing in candles to allow a vote on the printing of the Grand Remonstrance, and he and Erle supported the vote that followed.137CJ ii. 344b. The king’s appointment of Thomas Lunsford as captain of the Tower raised fears of a new plot. Holles was manager of a conference on the situation on 23 December; on 24th he was named to a committee to prepare heads for a further conference on the security of the Tower and moved for the House to petition the king for his removal on 27 December.138CJ ii. 355a, 356b; D’Ewes (C), 348. Riots at Westminster increased tensions still further, and on 28 and 29 December Holles went to the Lords three times with messages concerning the ‘tumults’ and proposals for a guard on Parliament.139CJ ii. 359b, 362a, 362a. Far from defusing tensions, Holles’s next intervention was designed to inflame the situation. In debate on 29 December, it was again claimed that evil counsellors were to blame for the nation’s woes, but this time names were named, as Strode accused the 1st earl of Bristol (John Digby†) and his son, George Digby of plotting to bring French troops into England. Holles ‘did vehemently press the same, and added further that the Lord Digby his son, as he understood by common fame, had said openly at one time in the Lords’ House … that this was no free Parliament’.140D’Ewes (C), 361. The next day, when the petition of twelve bishops imprisoned in the Tower was read, Holles launched another broadside. Bishops were, he argued, ‘the instruments of the Devil’ who had seduced the nobility, the great officers of state and even the king himself with their idolatry. The petition in question was ‘malicious and traitorous’, intending to divide the two Houses, the king and his people, to the comfort of papists and Irish rebels, and all who favoured ‘an arbitrary way of government’.141Densell Hollis Esquire his Worthy and Learned Speech in Parliament (1642), 2-6 (E.199.48).

The king’s patience was fast running out. On 31 December, when Holles was sent to the king to ask for a guard for Parliament, drawn from the London militia and commanded by the earl of Essex, Charles refused to accept it, demanding a written message instead.142CJ ii. 365a-b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 471-2. On 3 January 1642 the king’s officers sealed the doors of Holles’s lodgings, and a royal order for the arrest of Holles, Pym, Hampden, Strode and Sir Arthur Hesilrige* for treason was delivered to the Speaker.143CJ ii. 366b, 367a. The next day, in a show of defiance, Holles and his colleagues attended the Commons, but swiftly withdrew before the king arrived with his armed escort.144CJ ii. 368a. His request for Pym having been met with ‘a general silence’, Charles then ‘asked for Mr Holles, whether he were present, and when nobody answered him he pressed the Speaker’, to no avail.145D’Ewes (C), 381.

Fearing for the safety of the royal family, the king left London on 10 January, and the next day Holles and his friends came out of hiding to make a triumphant return to the Commons, where they were ‘welcomed by many’.146D’Ewes (C), 399; Crawford, Holles, 66-7. A response to the charges against him, apparently by Holles himself, soon appeared in print. In it, he asserted that he and the other MPs had sought only to ‘redress and relieve the manifold oppressions and tyrannies exercised in this kingdom’, and that charges of treason against them were ‘only through the informations of ill-minded persons, buzzing in his majesty’s ears our secret aims and evil intentions against his majesty and his kingdom’.147Master Hollis his Speech in Parliament concerning the Articles of High Treason (1642), 2, 4 (E.199.55). Holles was also involved in the general defence of the Five Members in the Commons. On 12 January he reported the case as a breach of privilege, and on 17 January he was named to a committee of both Houses to consider this breach and to petition the king.148CJ ii. 377a, 384a. In the next few weeks Holles rejected any move to ask the king to return to London, at least until the Five Members were exonerated. On 20 January he reported from the conference to consider the king’s latest message to Parliament, and on 29 January he and Strode ‘spoke vehemently against’ any attempt by the king to build bridges.149CJ ii. 388a; Harl. 162, f. 322v; Crawford, Holles, 68. A bill to vindicate the Five Members was passed by the Lords on 16 March.150LJ iv. 649a. There was some movement on 21 March, when the king told Lord Keeper Littleton (Edward Littleton II†) that he would be prepared to pardon Holles and the others, if the wording of the bill did not reflect on his own actions.151CCSP i. 226. The very same day, however, Holles launched a bitter attack on Sir Edward Herbert*, the attorney-general, for his part in the proceedings against the Five Members, accusing him of breach of privilege and of ‘a great offence (if by him advised) against his sacred majesty himself, in seeking to work an evil opinion in him concerning his Parliament’.152Master Hollis his Speech in Parliament the 21 of March (1642), 7 (E.200.42).

A ‘Fiery Spirit’, January to July 1642

During this stand-off, Holles used his enhanced reputation at Westminster to renew his attack on those he considered malignants and evil counsellors. On 12 January he reported from a conference on a gathering of 200 horsemen at Kingston-upon-Thames, and two days later he informed the Commons of attempts by Lord Digby and others to gather war horses elsewhere.153CJ ii. 372a, 373a; PJ i. 72. On 19 January, in the debate on new lords created by the king in recent months (including Digby), Holles said that he saw this as ‘a double trust broken, first to the country, secondly to this House, for they could not be removed without consent’.154PJ i. 108. Holles was increasingly concerned at the security of Parliament and the nation. On 25 January, in response to further fears about the security of Parliament, Holles moved ‘that before we do anything, to put ourselves in a posture of defence’, and on the same day he was named to a committee, alongside Pym, Sir Philip Stapilton* and others, to treat with merchants for increasing the size of the fleet to defend the coasts.155PJ i. 173; CJ ii. 393a. There were threats from within Parliament as well as without. On 27 January Holles angrily denounced James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, for suggesting a six-month adjournment

you know how many months we have groaned under ill counsels and those that would have cut at the very root of this kingdom for the ruin of it, and this malignant party hath gored our sides and been mischievous unto this kingdom, and we must look upon this as the head of that party.156PJ i. 196.

He went on to act as teller with Stapilton, in favour of prosecuting Richmond, and managed the conference on the same matter.157CJ ii. 400a, 402a. On 1 February Holles took the petition of the artificers of London to the Lords, and in his speech put his own gloss on their demands, saying that the settlement of trade depended on the taking away of ‘fears and distraction’, which in turn meant that ‘those evil counsellors be removed who have discomposed our frame of this commonwealth; that we may secure ourselves and be in a posture of defence’.158LJ iv. 559a. Such was the scale of the threat that other important matters would have to wait. On 7 February Holles even argued that the trial of the bishops, due to start the next day, should be deferred, as ‘the great occasions of the kingdom hath been such that we had not leisure to proceed against them’.159PJ i. 303.

Parliament’s solution to this perceived threat was the Militia Ordinance, which would replace the commanders of the trained bands with more acceptable men, and thus place the militia and its magazines under parliamentarian control. Holles was deeply involved in this move. On 14 January he was named to the committee to consider how to put the kingdom on a defence footing, and it was this committee’s report four days later, that initiated the new Militia Ordinance160CJ ii. 379b. On 1 February he went to the Lords to encourage them to join the petition to the king for the defence of the kingdom and the settlement of the militia; and the same day he was named to a committee of both Houses to draw up the joint petition.161CJ ii. 408a-b, 409a; LJ iv. 557a. When lists of new militia commanders were drawn up on 11 February, Holles was nominated by the Commons as the new lord lieutenant of the city of Bristol, and this was confirmed by the Lords the next day.162CJ ii. 426a; LJ iv. 578b. On 21 February Holles joined Pym, Glynne, Stapilton and other friends on the committee to consider the king’s answer to the Militia Ordinance , and he reported from a subsequent conference on this on 24 February. Four days later he was manager, with Pym, Stapilton and Glynne, of another conference on the king’s reply to the ordinance, and was named to a committee of both Houses on the matter.163CJ ii. 460b, 461a. The Militia Ordinance was passed on 5 March, and on 14 March Holles was named to a committee to prepare a declaration justifying this decision.164CJ ii. 478a. His enthusiasm for the new provisions continued later in the month. He was named to a committee to investigate the sheriff of Northamptonshire’s opposition to the ordinance on 16 March, and on 22nd he took up to the Lords lists of new deputy lieutenants, and instructions to be sent to all the local commanders.165CJ ii. 480a, 492a-b; LJ iv. 663b.

The increasing tension between king and Parliament during the spring of 1642 appeared to fit Holles’s aggressive agenda perfectly. On 16 March he was reporter of a letter from the king, announcing his decision to stay at York, and he went to the Lords with Commons’ votes that those who advised the king to do so were enemies of the peace of England, and suspected of favouring the rebellion in Ireland.166CJ ii. 481a, 482a, 484a. With the king gathering his supporters at York, attention became focused on the vulnerability of nearby Hull, with its well-stocked arsenal, which was governed by Sir John Hotham*. On 18 March Holles was named to a committee to prepare heads for a conference on news that the king’s friends were mustering ships in Denmark to attempt Hull, and the next day he was involved in interviewing an agent who had come from that country.167CJ ii. 484b, 487b. On 25 March he reported to the Commons letters from Hotham concerning the security of Hull, and on 7 April he reported the heads of a conference on the practicality of removing the magazine from the town to prevent it from falling into the king’s hands.168CJ ii. 497a, 515b. This was followed, on 16 April, by a committee of both Houses to draw up reasons why the magazine should be taken to London.169CJ ii. 531a. On 23 April matters came to a head when the king was refused entry to the town by Hotham. On 26 April Holles reported from the Lords the king’s declaration concerning Hotham’s refusal; he was appointed manager (with Pym) of a conference on the same; and he supported Strode’s motion in the Commons that Hotham should continue to resist the king.170CJ ii. 542a-b, 543b; PJ ii. 225-6. In the next few days Holles joined Pym in reporting the conference on Hull; he was named to a committee to draft new instructions for those defending the town; and was appointed to another committee to prepare an address to the king to ask him not to make another attempt to enter it.171CJ ii. 544b, 545b, 546a, 548b On 30 April Holles reported from the conference on Hotham’s refusal to give up Hull, and he moved that if Sir John should be captured or die his son, John Hotham* should automatically succeed him as governor of the town.172CJ ii. 550a-b; PJ ii. 252. On 2 May Holles was manager with Pym and Henry Marten* of a conference on the latest intelligence to come from York and Hull.173CJ ii. 553a.

As well as the crisis over Hull, Holles was concerned with a range of other important business during the late spring of 1642. On 14 March he had been nominated as one of the commissioners for Irish affairs, and he attended meetings regularly in the next few months.174PJ ii. 403, 469. On 4 May Holles was given charge of writing to James Butler, 12th earl of Ormond, to thank him for his recent successes against the Irish rebels, enclosing a jewel worth £500.175CJ ii. 557a. In March and April he had also played a part in transferring the command of the fleet from the earl of Northumberland to the more reliable 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†).176CJ ii. 495b, 510b. There are early signs of a connection between Holles and Warwick’s cousin, the earl of Essex, in May. Twice Holles reported from conferences concerning Essex: to pass on assurances that the princes would not be separated from the king; and to tell the Commons of the earl’s frustration with the king’s messages, which were becoming ‘higher and higher’, and that he thought ‘incendiaries’ around the king were responsible for heightened tensions.177CJ ii. 561b, 562a, 563a. In the same month, Holles continued to push for the implementation of the Militia Ordinance. On 12 May he was named to the committee to peruse a vote granting indemnity to those executing the ordinance in the shires and punishing those who opposed them, and he took the votes on this to the Lords the same day.178CJ ii. 568b, 569a; LJ v. 62a. On 13 May he was appointed to the committee of both Houses to consider commissions for foot companies under the ordinance, and carried the form of commissions for horse and foot to the Lords.179CJ ii. 570b, 571a Four days later he joined Pym, Hampden and Glynne as manager of a conference on the king’s orders to prevent the mustering of armed men.180CJ ii. 576b. On 20 May he was reporter with Pym, Hampden and others of a conference on the ‘great affairs’ of the kingdom, including how to respond to the king making war on his own Parliament, and on 24 May he was named to a committee to consider the raising of money for the defence of the kingdom against those evil counsellors who sought to provoke war.181CJ ii. 581b, 586a. On 27 May he was also included in the committee of both Houses to consider the defence of the kingdom.182CJ ii. 589a. This led to his inclusion, on 6 June, in the committee of both Houses for the safety of the kingdom, alongside Pym, Strode, Erle, Glynne, Hampden and Sir Henry Vane II*.183CJ ii. 609b.

In June, Holles was increasingly alarmed at the activities of the king’s supporters. On 1 June he joined Pym as manager of a conference on attempts by the queen to sell or pawn the crown jewels; on the same day he was messenger to the Lords with the votes on this, as well as orders that justices of the peace in the north of England should prevent arms being shipped to the king at York; and he also took orders to the lord admiral to station two ships off Newcastle.184CJ ii. 597b, 598a; LJ v. 96b. On 9 June he warned the Commons of a consignment of weapons and ammunition rumoured to be en route from Amsterdam to northern England.185PJ iii. 72. In mid-June Holles was preoccupied with moves to impeach nine peers who had recently deserted Parliament. He was teller with Oliver Cromwell* in favour of voting on a declaration on the defection (11 June); added to the committee on the impeachment (13 June); reported from the committee and carried the impeachment to the Lords (14 June); returned with their approval (15 June); and took the written impeachment to the upper chamber on 16 June.186CJ ii. 620a, 622a, 623a, 625b, 626a, 627a; LJ v. 140a. In his speech to the Lords he claimed the departure of the peers was part of a wider design ‘whereby they hope by little and little the Parliament shall even bleed to death, and moulder to nothing, the Members dropping away, one after another’.187The Speech of Denzell Holles Esquire, delivered at the Lords’ Bar (1642), 3 (E.200.48). The rest of the month was spent countering the king’s attempts to strengthen his military position. On 17 June Holles was named to a committee to receive information of any men or weapons being sent to York; on 21 June he was appointed to a committee to consider the king’s declaration to his people, asking for support; and on 24 June he joined Hampden, Glynne and Prideaux on a committee to consider a royal proclamation that forces must not be levied without the king’s express permission.188CJ ii. 630a, 635b, 638b.

During July Holles became increasingly bellicose. He was manager with Pym of a conference concerning an ordinance to confirm Warwick’s replacement of Northumberland as lord admiral on 1 July, he carried an answer concerning the ships at Newcastle to the Lords on 6 July, and reported from a conference on Warwick and the navy on 13 July.189CJ ii. 646b, 647a, 655a-b, 670a-b. In the same period he was named to the new Committee of Safety (4 July), and was once again involved in moves to execute the militia ordinance: going to the Lords with messages on this subject on 6 and 7 July, sitting on relevant committees on 9 July, telling in favour of the recruitment of 10,000 troops in London on the same day, and taking to the Lords the Commons’ resolve to ‘live and die with the earl of Essex’ on the 12th.190CJ ii. 651b, 655a-b, 659a663a, 663b, 668b; LJ v. 186b, 205a. On 15 July Holles reported to the Commons a letter he had received from the mayor of Exeter concerning the implementation of the militia ordinance, and on 21 July he moved that the Dorset port of Poole might raise volunteer troops.191PJ iii. 218, 244; CJ ii. 674a.

A few days later, Holles was involved in a series of bitter exchanges in the Commons. The first, on 23 July, concerning the sending of the earl of Leicester to Ireland, provoked Sir Simonds D’Ewes* to denounce Holles as ‘a proud, ambitious man’, who was united with Strode, Henry Marten and others of ‘these fiery spirits’.192PJ iii. 257-8. On 25 July, when some MPs argued for a last-minute ‘accommodation’ with the king, ‘Mr Denzil Holles, Mr Strode and other fiery spirits would not hear of it’, saying that to yield to the king now would be to betray the kingdom.193PJ iii. 264. Finally, on 28 July Holles spoke on the ‘satisfaction to be given to the whole kingdom’ over the raising of troops, and, according to D’Ewes, he was ‘full of virulent expressions against the king’.194PJ iii. 270; CJ ii. 694b. Two days later Holles was manager of a conference on the declaration justifying the militia ordinance, and he took the opportunity to argue forcefully that the ordinance had been proved essential, because of ‘the great danger wherein the kingdom now standeth’.195A Perfect Diurnal (25 July-1 Aug. 1642), 7 (E.202.26); CJ ii. 697b.

From war to peace, Aug.-Dec. 1642

The outbreak of hostilities had already begun by the end of July, and Holles was soon involved in moves to prevent the west country from falling into royalist hands. On 11 August he was bound with Sir Thomas Trenchard*, John Browne I* and Sir Walter Erle for the repayment of £500 borrowed to pay the forces of William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford, while they were in Dorset.196Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 82. On 15 August the Commons resolved that the money raised in Dorset should be paid to Holles and Erle for the defence of the same county, and two days later Holles was ordered to travel to Bristol to implement the militia ordinance there.197CJ ii. 720b, 723b. On 27 August Holles and Erle were allowed £800 for the safety of Dorset, and in the next few days they went west to meet the earl of Bedford.198CJ ii. 740b. Their main opponent, the 1st marquess of Hertford (William Seymour†), had chosen to defend Sherborne Castle on the Somerset/Dorset border, and in early September a desultory siege proceeded, which was brought to an end by mass desertion and the ignominious withdrawal of the parliamentarians to Dorchester.199Crawford, Holles, 79-80. A request from Bedford and Holles for reinforcements from London went unheeded.200LJ v. 343b. There is little doubt that the campaign was not well managed, and Holles later had to defend Bedford’s honour in the Commons, attesting to the earl’s personal bravery and his willingness to take advice, and arguing that the failure of the siege was down to a lack of supplies.201Harl. 163, f. 390v. Short-lived and bloodless though it had proved, Holles’s experience in the west country had been sobering. D’Ewes noticed the change on 21 September, when Holles argued in the House that only ‘some particular deliquents’ should be punished if the king were defeated, ‘and pass by the rest, or at least pass them over with an easy punishment’. D’Ewes was stunned

I wondered a little to see him in the House, because at his late going thence into Dorsetshire he said openly that he would bring up the marquess of Hertford alive or dead with him … I wondered to hear such a violent and fiery spirit to make such a motion.202Harl. 163, f. 372v.

For MPs, the change in Holles’s attitude appeared sudden, but there are signs that he was moderating his views as early as the spring of 1642. In February and March he was surprisingly lenient in his attitude to the Capuchin monks attached to the queen’s chapel at Somerset House, supporting the French ambassador’s request that they should be returned to France rather than imprisoned, as ‘they would prove a burden to us here to detain them still in custody, and that this was a very fair means to be rid of them’.203CJ ii. 458a, 464a; PJ, i. 493. In March he had intervened on behalf of his nephew, William Wentworth, 2nd earl of Strafford, asking that he should retain his troop of horse in Ireland, even though he was an absentee and aged only 15.204PJ, i. 517; CJ ii. 468a. Holles’s closeness to the French ambassador is also suggested by his argument on 4 April that 20 armed Frenchmen, detained in Hertfordshire, should be excused as they were to meet the duke d’Epernon, newly arrived in England.205PJ, ii. 128. On 17 May he requested that the duke be allowed to export horses to France, and that a popish book be returned to a gentlewoman; on 27 May he interviewed the duke, and accepted his promises not to send money to the king at York.206PJ ii. 332, 380. In August he was teller in favour of extending protection to another French nobleman, the duke de Vendôme.207CJ ii. 721a.

Such interventions sit awkwardly with his earlier fierce speeches, and his identification with the ‘fiery spirits’ in the Commons. Some contemporaries linked his new ambivalence to his recent marriage to a rich Sussex widow (solemnised on 12 March), with one commentator claiming in late April that this was the reason Holles was ‘was not so violent in the House as he was’.208HMC Coke, ii. 314; Crawford, Holles, 71-2. There may be some truth in this claim, and the strong character of the new Mrs Holles is suggested by a letter she wrote to Giles Grene* later in the year, asking for a favour for her kinsman, a matter that she had already discussed with her husband.209CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 402. Another factor weakening Holles’s resolve may have been the decision of most of his close relatives to side with the king. His brother, the earl of Clare, went to York in the spring, although he would later return to London; his cousin Gervase Holles* also became a royalist.210Crawford, Holles, 69, 85. In 1642 his sister Eleanor married an Irish Catholic landowner, Oliver Fitzwilliam of Merrion, and Holles’s role in sending the jewel to Ormond had established very cordial relations with the earl, who acknowledged an ‘interest in your blood’ (through a common Sheffield ancestor) and signed himself as Holles’s ‘kinsman’.211Bodl. Carte 4, f. 178; P. Little, ‘“The Irish Independents” and Viscount Lisle’s Lieutenancy of Ireland’, HJ xliv. 948n. These were not exactly comfortable relations for a Parliament man to maintain. Holles’s equivocation can also be detected in his correspondence with the chief justice, Sir John Bankes†, a reluctant royalist, who had warned that his outspoken opposition to accommodation had been noted at York. In his reply, dated 18 May, Holles insisted that though he supported Parliament’s claims he was not opposed to some kind of accommodation, and ‘if it was a good understanding between the king and Parliament, it was that which myself and every good man did desire more than his own life’.212G. Bankes, The Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 124-6; Crawford, Holles, 72-3. While it is true that this was no more than the official line taken by Parliament, the very fact that Holles was in contact with one of the king’s main advisers at this time is telling.

Holles’s softening of attitude seems to have been a very gradual process, which was not completed until the end of 1642. In the meantime he continued to take a leading role in the war. He had been made colonel of a regiment of foot in August, and troops were raised over the next few weeks.213SP28/1a/215; SP28/2a/73, 111, 163, 230. On his return from Dorset in September, Holles was involved in preparations for Essex’s army to march against the king, and his regiment had joined the main army in time for the indecisive battle of Edgehill on 23 October, where it was one of the few units to make good account of itself.214CJ ii. 771a, 777b. Holles had commanded his regiment in person, and immediately after the battle, he joined Stapilton and others in providing the Commons with ‘a relation of what had passed in that fight’.215Add. 31116, p. 8. On his return to Westminster, Holles found the situation desperate. The king’s army now threatened London, and all hopes of peace had been rebutted. On 7 November Holles was named to a committee to prepare a declaration on the king’s refusal of peace envoys, and on the same day he moved the House ‘to send presently into the City and show them that it appears by this answer that the king’s ears are shut up against all access for us’.216CJ ii. 838b; Add. 18777, f. 52. On 9 November, as the king’s forces advanced, Holles was named to a committee to raise more troops and make other arrangements for the safety of the kingdom, and he was manager with Pym, Stapilton, Glynne and Hampden of a conference on the king’s refusal to treat, and what emergency measures were needed to defend London.217CJ ii. 841a, 841b. Holles’s military career came to an abrupt end on 12 November, when his regiment was destroyed by Prince Rupert’s men in the bloody action at Brentford, west of London. Holles was absent, but his lieutenant-colonel was killed, along with three captains and many ordinary soldiers.218HMC Coke, ii. 326; SP28/5/110. The remainder were disbanded, and paid off during December.219SP28/4/375.

The disaster at Brentford seems to have finally convinced Holles that accommodation was the only course of action. This was apparent in the Commons over the next few days. He was reporter of a conference on the most recent message from the king on 19 November, and on 21 November he was teller (with William Pierrepont*) in favour of the Commons sitting as a committee to consider how the approach might be received.220CJ ii. 856b, 857a, 858a. In the subsequent debate, Holles supported the sending of peace propositions by Parliament, to gain the moral high ground, saying ‘if we send no propositions and say we will fight with him, will not that sound in the world that we will have no peace?’ His preferred terms were not lenient, however.

If the king will assure we shall not be overrun with papists or prelates, pass a bill against scandalous ministers, that bishops’ livings shall go to the maintenance of the ministry and satisfaction of the commonwealth and assurance of justice in Westminster Hall, and some about the king that have given just cause of offence of the Commons, he would seal [it] with his blood.221Add. 18777, ff. 64v-65.

As D’Ewes noted, Holles was one of a group of MPs, including Whitelocke, Glynne and Pierrepont, ‘who had formerly been very opposite against an accommodation did now speak earnestly for it. Mr Holles was much cooled in his fierceness by the great slaughter made in his regiment at Brentford’.222Harl. 164, f. 99. On 23 November Holles, Pym and others were appointed reporters of a conference with the Lords on the king’s message.223CJ ii. 861a.

Holles’s latest pronouncement seems to have had an immediate, deleterious affect on his standing at Westminster, and for the next month he was mostly involved in only minor committees and routine work.224CJ ii. 863b, 865b, 873a, 882a, 883a, 883b, There appears to have been some attempt by Pym and others to re-engage Holles during late November and early December. On 29 November and 2 December Holles was ordered to write to Bristol and Southampton about the fortification of the cities against possible attack, and on 3 December the Commons discussed appointing him as commander-in-chief (under Essex) of the forces in the west.225CJ ii. 869b, 872b, 874b; LJ v. 465b. This was moved again by Pym on 13 December, and on 19 December the Commons ordered that Essex was to be asked to issue a commission to Holles.226Add. 18777, ff. 91v, 98; HMC 5th Rep. 60; CJ ii. 886a; LJ v. 488b. Others were not prepared to take the chance, however, and soon afterwards the command was granted first to John, Lord Robartes, and then to Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford.227Crawford, Holles, 83. By this time it was already apparent that Holles was more interested in negotiating peace than finding new ways to resist the king by force. On 20 December he reported from a conference on the peace propositions; and on 26 December he was named to a committee to consider the wording of the preamble for propositions, resisting moves by Oliver St John and others to include a justification of Parliament’s actions as ‘a ripping up of old sores’.228CJ ii. 897b, 903a; Add. 18777, f. 104; Harl. 164, f. 275. On 27 December he was named to a committee on the 6th proposition; and on 29 December he was teller against the inclusion of leading royalists, such as William Cavendish, 1st marquess of Newcastle, among the ‘delinquents’ to be excepted from pardon under any treaty.229CJ ii. 897b, 903a, 904b, 906a.

The Oxford treaty, Jan.-Apr. 1643

In the new year of 1643 Holles was committed to working for peace with the king. On 2 January he was named to the committee that considered the 9th and 10th propositions and was teller with the 2nd Viscount Wenman (Sir Thomas Wenman†) against laying aside the 11th proposition.230CJ ii. 911a. On 3 January Holles told the Commons that ‘the best means of peace is to suppress those which hinder it’.231Add. 18777, f. 113v. On 10 January he joined Whitelocke as teller against omitting clauses in the proposition concerning oblivion for past misdeeds, and on 14 January he and Sir John Holland* were tellers against insisting on the approval of the militia ordinance in the 7th proposition.232CJ ii. 920b-921a, 928a. His efforts to make the propositions acceptable to the king did not go unnoticed, and on 15 January John Hotham told the earl of Newcastle that Holles and Pierrepont were now ‘two converts in the Parliament’, from war to peace.233Pprs. of the Hothams ed. A. Hopper (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xxxix), 77. In the next few days, Holles was reporter and manager of three conferences on the propositions, and he was named to a committee to meet the Lords concerning the 8th proposition, concerning judges.234CJ ii. 933a, 934a-b, 935a, 936a, 936b, 941a, 942a. The king’s reply to the initial propositions arrived on 6 February, and Holles (with Pym and others) reported from the conference which considered Parliament’s response on 8 February.235CJ ii. 958a, 959a. Despite his earlier support for concessions, it is clear that Holles sought realistic terms, not abject surrender, and he seconded Pym by rejecting the sending of commissioners to Oxford to treat with the king on a whole package, rather arguing that Parliament should ‘satisfy the king only in things which are doubtful’.236Add. 18777, f. 147.

During February, Holles resisted the disbandment of the armies before a treaty was agreed, and instead argued for a temporary truce – a move which had gained support in the Lords. On 10 February he was teller with Holland in favour of concluding a treaty before disbandment took place, and joined Edmund Waller* as teller in favour of a cessation.237CJ ii. 961a, 961b. On 17 February Holles reported on the proposed cessation of arms, and ‘the House fell presently into a long debate, whether we should concur with their lordships in those votes or no’.238CJ ii. 969a; Add. 31116, p. 52. The next day, while the ‘fiery spirits’ opposed the cessation, Holles spoke in favour, and as teller secured a vote that allowed a truce as long as it had Essex’s approval; and he again challenged the ‘high spirits’ when they attempted to reopen the issue on 21 February.239Harl. 164, ff. 302, 304; CJ ii. 970b, 974a-b. On that occasion he argued that

to send to the lord general, it will take up much time: the king desires a cessation [so] that no blood be spilt, and if any mischief happen it will fall upon us, and therefore would have a committee to consider what is fit to be done, and then send to the lord general and so save time, which otherwise will put off the business.240Add. 18777, f. 160v.

When the first article of the peace propositions was read on 24 February, Holles, D’Ewes and others ‘spoke against it, showing that if we did intend to have the cessation and treaty to proceed, we must frame these articles more equally and indifferently’.241Harl. 164, f. 306. The next day Holles reported from the conference on transacting with the king, suggesting that a committee of both Houses, rather than commissioners, should be sent to Oxford.242CJ ii. 980a. At the end of the month, work on the articles of cessation continued, with Holles twice acting as reporter and manager of conferences, and he was named to a committee to prepare reasons for the votes on the same matter on 28 February.243CJ ii 981b, 982a, 983b.

As negotiations at Oxford proceeded during March, Holles again proved a powerful advocate of peace. He intervened to prevent the disclosure of intelligence that would embarrass the king: on 4 March acting as teller against the recording of an intercepted letter from the queen of Bohemia to Prince Rupert; and on 10 March telling against referring another private letter between from the king to the queen.244CJ ii. 989a, 998a. In the middle of the month he was again involved in finalising the cessation articles.245CJ ii. 992a-b, 997b; CJ iii. 2a, 14b. On 23 March Holles argued in favour of the continuing with the propositions, even though the king was now objecting to the details of the articles of cessation, and the following day he was teller in favour of pressing the king to agree to the cessation.246Harl. 164, f. 341v; CJ iii. 17a. His concern not to antagonise the king can also be seen on 25 March, when he was teller in favour of revoking a former order cancelling the traditional cannon salute to celebrate the accession of the monarch.247CJ iii. 18a. Observing such protocols could not prevent the talks from breaking down, however. On 1 April Holles failed to prevent the Commons from laying aside their debate on the committee treating with the king, and on 3 April, although Holles joined D’Ewes, Grimston and others in arguing against abandoning talks, the House voted to recall the committee if a ‘positive answer’ from the king had not been received by the end of the week.248Harl. 164, f. 352; CJ iii. 27b, 28b. Some extra time was bought on 6 April, and the next day Holles was reporter and manager of a conference on further instructions to be sent to the committee at Oxford.249CJ iii. 33a, 34a. His efforts to resuscitate the peace treaty continued for another week, but there was little that could be done, and on 14 April the committee was recalled.250CJ iii. 35a, 36b, 39b, 40b, 44b, 46a-b,

In the aftermath of the Oxford talks, Holles was involved in attempts to put Parliament’s part in the debacle into a more favourable light. On 18 April he was named to a committee to state the business of the treaty, including what terms the king had rejected, and on the same day he joined Pym as reporter of conferences on the king’s most recent replies and the papers brought from Oxford by the earl of Northumberland.251CJ iii. 50b, 51a. On 24 April he was named to the committee to prepare a declaration and manifesto concerning the late treaty, with the aim of exonerating Parliament from any blame.252CJ iii. 58a. With some reluctance, Holles was also drawn into the administration of the new military campaign. On 12 April he was named to a committee to consult with the City of London for raising a tax on commodities – the excise – to support the armed forces, alongside such west country acquaintances as Giles Grene and John Rolle*.253CJ iii. 41a. On 27 April he was named to a committee of both Houses to attend the City to discuss the raising of money and troops.254CJ iii. 62a. On 12 May he was reporter from a conference on raising money for Essex’s army.255CJ iii. 82a. As the war continued, Holles seems to have favoured a strategy of passive resistance, playing only a minor role in developments designed to support the military while continuing to oppose moves that might anger the king further, and make peace an even more distant prospect.256Crawford, Holles, 88-9. Thus, on 15 May he was teller against the creation of a new great seal for Parliament’s use; and on 3 June he opposed the opening of the chests containing the king’s regalia at Westminster Abbey, and was among those who feared the consequences, ‘as if this were done in contempt of majesty itself’.257CJ iii. 86b, 114b; Harl. 165, f. 97.

Political crisis, June-Dec. 1643

Holles’s opposition to Parliament’s provocations made his political position even more vulnerable. His support for peace in the early months of 1643 had already raised suspicions about his loyalty to Parliament. Rumours were rife during February that the king had promised to reward him for his role in negotiating peace, and ‘some say that Mr Holles shall be a secretary of state’.258Add. 18777, f. 156. Holles’s public support for leniency to key royalists during the Oxford negotiations may also have raised eyebrows. In particular, Holles retained his unhealthy partiality towards France, working in conjunction with another pro-peace MP, Edmund Waller. On 25 February he joined Waller as teller in favour of releasing the Catholic courtier Sir Kenelm Digby, and allowing him to go to France; and on 18 March both men again acted as teller in favour of allowing the French agent to deliver a protest about the treatment of the Capuchins at Somerset House.259CJ ii. 979a; iii. 8a. By the early summer Waller was working with the royalists to seize control of London for the king, and while it is not clear that Holles was implicated in this plot, it is suspicious that the king’s revised blacklist of those parliamentarians who would be denied pardon did not contain his name.260Oxford DNB; Crawford, Holles, 91. It was revealed to the Commons on 6 June that Waller’s plot had included the targeting of ‘moderate men, who were Mr Holles, Mr Pierrepont, Sir John Holland and Mr [John] Maynard’.261Add. 31116, p. 110. The Commons decided to name those MPs accused of involvement before declaring them to be innocent – but the damage was done.262Harl. 165, f. 98. In response, Holles seems to have avoided Westminster in June and July, appearing in the Journals only three times between 6 June and 2 August.263CJ iii. 124b, 139a, 161b. He did not abandon Waller, however, and on 29 June joined the debate on the fate of his friend, questioning whether his trial should be by court martial, and reminding MPs that ‘we might be very wary how we proceed in taking away the lives of men, and to go upon sure ground’.264Harl. 165, f. 103.

At the beginning of August, Holles was forced to return to the Commons to confront a series of interlocking crises. The king’s forces had advanced through the south west, taking Bristol on 26 July, and on 2 August Holles was teller in favour of creating a committee to consider how the west was lost – a motion that was rejected by 51 votes to 30.265CJ iii. 191b. Rather than seeking to make peace, Pym and his allies were pushing for a treaty with the Scots that would lengthen the war and antagonise the king still further. The latest propositions from the Scots were reported to the Commons by Holles and Pym on 5 August, but this should not suggest the two men were in sympathy on the issue.266CJ iii. 196a. On the same day Holles was teller in favour of considering a report from the Lords on new propositions to the king, but when his opponents came into the House in force, Holles tried to out-manoeuvre them by moving that the Commons resolve into a committee, ‘seeing it grow late, and desirous to let the violent party know … that we meant to sit it out with them’.267CJ iii. 196a; Harl. 165, f. 142v. As Holles had calculated, the House voted to adjourn rather than prolonging the debate into the small hours, and the peace propositions were not formally voted down. It was a victory of sorts; but having been stymied in the Commons, Pym and his allies relied on the London preachers to inflame opinion against peace, and the next few days saw riots and disturbances and demonstrations outside Parliament, and ‘the rabble of their party’ went on to make threats against ‘some members of the House, whom they said they looked upon as enemies, and would pull out of the House’.268Crawford, Holles, 95-6; D. Holles, Memoirs of Denzil Lord Holles (1699), 10. Further bad news for Holles arrived on 7 August, when Sir Walter Erle’s letter, announcing the fall of Dorset to the advancing royalists, was read in the Commons. Holles was named to the committee to consider the new crisis, and he reported a conference on the matter the same day.269CJ iii. 196b, 197a. On 8 August there was a last attempt to persuade the Commons to consider the peace propositions from the Lords, but Holles and Holland, paired as tellers in favour, were defeated on a recount.270CJ iii. 197b. With uproar at Westminster and the loss of the west country, there seemed no future in staying with Parliament, and on 9 August Holles was given leave ‘to pass beyond seas with his lady, children, necessary servants, goods and household stuff’.271CJ iii. 199a. On 11 August the pass was revoked, ‘upon Mr Pym’s motion’.272Harl. 165, f. 151. The call of the House on 19 August was perhaps designed as an attack on Holles, but it also revealed which MPs had accompanied Holles’s brother, the earl of Clare, and his old commander, the earl of Bedford, in fleeing to Oxford in recent days.273Crawford, Holles, 97. In a concession, on the same day the Commons ordered that Holles could be absent for a short period, as he escorted his wife to the safety of the Isle of Wight.274CJ iii. 212a.

Holles had returned to the Commons by mid-September, taking the Solemn League and Covenant on 3 October, but his activity in the Commons over the next few months was subdued, and he was involved in only a handful of committees of any significance.275CJ iii. 236b, 262a. He was named to the committee to consider the case of his fellow west-country man, Anthony Nicoll*, on 30 October, and he was added to the committee for the parliamentarian outposts of Plymouth, Lyme and Poole, on 12 December.276CJ iii. 294b, 339a. On 4 November he was named to the committee on an ordinance to create a new committee for accounts.277CJ iii. 302a. Later in November and during December he went three times to the Lords as messenger concerning the appointment of the Speaker, William Lenthall*, as master of the rolls.278CJ iii. 305a-b, 325b, 343a-b; LJ vi. 299a, 341a. There were lingering suspicions that Holles was still associating with royalists. His connection with the marquess of Ormond in Ireland, who, as the new lord lieutenant, was busy finalising the cessation of arms that would release Irish troops for the king’s army, was well known. On 29 August it had been noted in the Commons that the pass for Lord Mountnorris (Sir Francis Annesley†, 1st Viscount Valentia) , who was ‘the marquess’s creature’, and an enemy of the lords deputies at Dublin, had initially been moved by Holles.279Add. 18778, f. 25. It was also common knowledge that the royalists still hoped to ‘turn’ Holles. On 25 September Sir Henry Anderson, writing from Oxford, asked Holles to renew his efforts to bring about peace, assuring him that neither he nor Stapilton had an ‘ill impression’ with those around the king – rather being ‘well thought of’.280HMC 5th Rep. 108; Harl. 165, f. 225. Holles’s French connection also remained strong during the autumn, although this time it had Parliament’s blessing. On 14 September the Commons ordered Holles and Erle to attend the French ambassador to voice concern at ships from St Malo bringing supplies to Bristol; in October he was three committees to attend the ambassador, and arranged for his safe conduct to and from Oxford; and in November and December he was also a key figure in communicating with the French delegation.281CJ iii. 240a, 266b, 273a, 275b, 276a-b, 284a, 296a, 306b, 316b, 325a-b, 328b; LJ vi. 257a. On 23 December, when letters from Scotland concerning the French envoy were read, Holles defended the Prince d’Harcourt for his efforts to make peace, saying that ‘they desired such a peace as might restore prince and people to their ancient, true and undoubted rights, and secure them for the time to come in the enjoyment of them’.282Harl. 165, f. 255b.

Holles and Essex, 1643-4

Yet Holles’s time in the political wilderness was already coming to an end. During the final months of 1643, he gradually moved closer to the earl of Essex, whom he later eulogised as being ‘desirous of peace and of the maintaining of monarchy’.283Holles, Memoirs, 9. His relations with Essex had been amicable since the start of the war. On 31 March 1643, for example, Holles had defended the earl, saying that he was ‘a servant to the Parliament’, and a man who upheld ‘the liberty and propriety of the subject’.284Harl. 164, f. 350. As a member of the Committee of Safety he signed warrants to pay Essex the personal allowance that Parliament granted him in May 1643.285Add. 5497, ff. 60-1. In November he defended Essex’s cousin the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†) from being sent to the Tower for joining the king at Oxford in August, and in December he was added to a committee on the ordinance for the earl’s punishment, reporting the a petition for clemency.286CJ iii. 308b, 349a-b. Shortly afterwards, Whitelocke commented on his own ‘intimacy’ with Essex’s allies – a group that included Holles, Stapilton and Sir John Meyrick* – and he also ranked Holles alongside Essex and Stapilton as ‘his most intimate friends’ who ‘came often to Whitelocke to advise with him’.287Whitelocke, Diary, 141, 151. January 1644 saw Holles’s relationship with Essex intensify. On 15 January he was a reporter with Stapilton of a conference on the state of Essex’s army, which resulted in an ordinance for raising a further £10,000; and on the same day he signed a warrant of the Committee of Safety for the payment of the general’s personal allowance for the past four months.288CJ iii. 367b; Add. 5497, f. 101. On 17 January he reported from the committee on the earl of Holland their recommendation that his sequestration be lifted, and then joined Stapilton as teller in favour of the earl’s reprieve: a vote passed in the teeth of opposition from Vane II and Hesilrige.289CJ iii. 369b, 370a. On 30 January Holles reported potentially embarrassing messages from prominent royalists to the earl of Essex seeking to reopen peace negotiations, including a letter from the Oxford Parliament which he dismissed as ‘a parchment of names which were put out of Parliament without taking notice of it as a Parliament, and therefore thought fit not to communicate it to the House’.290Add. 18779, f. 57v; CJ iii. 382b, 383a. In the same period Holles also joined Stapilton and ‘others of the general’s party’ in levelling accusations of treachery against Vane II for his own ill-advised correspondence with John Lovelace, 2nd Baron Lovelace, at Oxford.291Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 136; CJ iii. 376a.

During this period Holles also worked closely with Sir John Clotworthy in opposing the creation of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, as both men were suspicious of Scottish involvement in the English wars.292Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 141. On 30 January Holles was named to the committee on the ordinance for the new committee, probably drafted by Vane II and St John, even though it deliberately excluded him.293CJ iii. 382a; V. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), 37. On 3 February Holles argued against the creation of a new executive, as ‘to give such a power, sitting the Parliament, was never heard’. He argued that the new committee constituted a massive breach of privilege, and he particularly resented the scope given to it to negotiate peace.294Add. 18779, f. 61v. On 7 February Holles joined Sir William Lewis* as teller against reading the names of those nominated to serve on the committee, in opposition to one of the Vanes and Hesilrige.295CJ iii. 391b. Holles could not prevent the formation of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, but he continued to resist its exclusive role in peace negotiations. In March, when the Dutch offered to mediate between Parliament and the king, Holles reported from a conference with the Lords on the matter (20 Mar.) and then joined Stapilton in supporting a motion to hold a vote on creating a joint committee to pursue it further – a measure opposed by Vane II and Strode, and defeated by the casting vote of the Speaker (30 Mar.).296CJ iii. 433a, 443a. In early April, when MPs debated whether these negotiations should be conducted by the Committee of Both Kingdoms or by a new parliamentary committee (that would not include the Scots), ‘Holles, [Robert] Reynolds* and Clotworthy did much to urge a second committee’.297Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 155. On 13 April Holles again opposed Vane II and Hesilrige in the division lobbies, in a failed attempt to gain a second reading for the ordinance to create the new committee.298CJ iii. 458b. The defeat, by 57 votes to 55, led Holles and his friends to make every effort to muster their supporters. On 16 April Holles wrote to the Norfolk MP, Sir John Potts*, to warn him that the Committee of Both Kingdoms was to bring in ‘propositions for peace’ in a week’s time, and asking him to attend the House: ‘the sooner you come before that time, the more you shall merit’.299Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 14. On 3 May, having failed, by ten votes, to win a vote on considering the propositions the next day, Holles denounced the peace process as it stood, saying that it would have too much Scottish influence, and ‘spake plainly that they were sent into Scotland and might be concluded there’ without Parliament having ultimate control.300CJ iii. 478b; Harl. 166, f. 54v. Later in the month, when the initial term of the Committee of Both Kingdoms was to elapse, Holles was among those who tried to kill it off altogether. On 15 May he was reporter of a conference with the Lords on the continuance of the committee, and on 22 May he joined Maynard, Reynolds and Whitelocke in arguing against its renewal, but went on to lose the vote by 95 votes to 52.301Harl. 166, f. 64v; CJ iii. 493b, 503b.

Holles’s struggle with the Committee of Both Kingdoms and the future shape of a settlement with the king overlapped with the start of the new campaigning season. The grand plan, announced on 8 April, involved a march westwards by the main field army under Essex, to recapture the areas lost to the royalists in the previous summer.302CJ iii. 452a, 454a. The problem was lack of money, which caused considerable delays. On 27 April Holles, Grene, Prideaux and Sir Thomas Barrington* were sent to Essex to assure him that money would be raised, and that the army should march immediately, and Holles brought the reply that the general would set out once he had received funds.303CJ iii. 470b, 471a. Two days later Holles brought another letter from Essex, endorsed by a resolution of the general council of war concerning marching out.304CJ iii. 472a. On 4 May Essex was under attack in the Commons ‘and some heat of words grew upon some unfit speeches spoken by the young Vane reflecting upon the lord general, against which Stapilton and Holles took exception’.305Harl. 166, f. 56. As Essex’s army marched slowly westwards – taking Weymouth and relieving Lyme in mid-June – Holles’s turned his fire on the earl’s rival, Sir William Waller*.306CJ iii. 539b, 540a. On 24 June he demanded to know ‘where Sir William Waller was, and whether he intended to follow the king’ as instructed, and this led to a row with his former ally, William Strode.307Harl. 166, f. 77. On 25 June Holles was named to a committee to prepare a letter to Essex instructing him to continuing with ‘reducing the west’ and promising supplies.308CJ iii. 542b. On 28 June he was appointed to a committee to hasten the recruiting of Waller’s army and to raise money for it.309CJ iii. 544b. With Essex’s forces penetrating ever further westwards, Holles became concerned for the security of newly-recaptured Dorset. On 17 July, when Vane II argued that Waller should wait to recruit his army before following Essex, Holles and Erle ‘spoke very freely that this was to lose the west, and to expose the earl of Essex’s army to unnecessary danger’.310Harl. 166, f. 98v. On 24 July they made the point again, ‘speaking vehemently against Sir William Waller and showing that this delay would ruin the west’.311Harl. 166, f. 100v.

Holles’s activity in the Commons ceased at the end of July, and he seems to have left Westminster altogether, although he had not been granted formal leave of absence.312CJ iii. 574a. He was certainly away from town on 9 August, when Stapilton, Reynolds and Clotworthy wrote to him to return to Parliament, as ‘my lord general’s condition requires his friends being here’.313Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. IX, f. 27; Crawford, Holles, 104. Yet Holles does not seem to have returned to the Commons until the beginning of September – the very time that Essex’s army was cut off and destroyed by the king’s forces at Lostwithiel in Cornwall. This blow to Essex’s reputation was felt keenly by Holles, who blamed the disaster on his enemies at Westminster, who plotted that the earl ‘must not be relieved, but sacrificed to their ambition’ to rule Parliament.314Holles, Memoirs, 26. In the next few weeks he became busy with emergency measures to shore up the parliamentarian war effort, being named to committees to arrange for the transfer of troops from the Isle of Wight, to bring west the army of the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†), and to raise fresh soldiers in London.315CJ iii. 616a, 621a, 626a. From September he was also involved in attempts to settle the dispute between Sir John Maynard*, Colonel Samuel Jones* and the Surrey county committee.316CJ iii. 617a, 637a, 666b, 669b. Other factional divisions remained entrenched. On 21 September, as the Commons debated amalgamating the armies of Manchester and Waller in a new campaign against Oxford, Holles and Stapilton argued that Essex’s remaining forces should also join the plan, only to be rebuffed: ‘nobody embraced that … they would not hear it’, according to D’Ewes.317Harl. 166, f. 123v.

The Uxbridge Treaty, Nov. 1644-May 1645

The defeat at Lostwithiel encouraged Holles and his allies to again push for negotiations with the king. There are hints of this as early as 16 September, when Holles was named to a committee of both Houses to consider a new approach to the king, and on 18 September he reported to the Commons the committee’s advice, that propositions must be despatched without delay.318CJ iii. 629a, 630b. There the peace process stalled. Only on 25 October was a conference with the Lords arranged for the discussion of new propositions, with Holles, Stapilton and Vane II as managers.319CJ iii. 676b. The indecisive second battle of Newbury concentrated MPs’ minds. On 1 November Holles went to the Lords to ask that the propositions might be expedited; on 7 November he was named to a committee to consider the Dutch offer to mediate; and on 8 November he was appointed to the committee of both Houses that would travel to Oxford to present the peace propositions to the king.320CJ iii. 684b, 689b, 691a. The draft order for a pass allowing the committee to travel to Oxford was issued the next day.321HMC 6th Rep. 35. The committee set out on 20 November, and four days later reported that they had met the king at Oxford for the first time, with Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, Holles and Pierrepont taking the lead in discussions.322CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 142; HEHL, EL 7777. Alongside the official discussions with the king, private meetings were arranged. Robert Bertie, 1st earl of Lindsey – a distant cousin of Holles – had sent a gentleman to invite Holles and Whitelocke to visit him, and the two men ‘held themselves engaged in civility to return a visit to the earl’.323Whitelocke, Diary, 157; Crawford, Holles, 108. They found Lindsey in his chamber with Lord Savile (Sir Thomas Savile†) and others, who ‘began to discuss with them touching the propositions for peace, and asked their advice’. According to Whitelocke, he and Holles declined to speak in an official capacity, but were willing ‘in their private capacity’ to suggest that the ‘most probable way to put an end to the present distractions would be for his majesty to come to his Parliament’.324Whitelocke, Diary, 158. This discussion was followed by a private meeting with the king – a conversation that Whitelocke conveniently chose to forget in later months – and they drafted a paper for the king outlining their plan.325Whitelocke, Diary, 158-9, 159n; Add. 37343, ff. 338-40. That this was not a chance meeting is suggested by evidence that before the Oxford visit Holles and Stapilton had been in talks with the French agent, Melchior de Sabran, who agreed to urge the king not to dismiss the embassy out of hand, and to rely on the goodwill of Essex’s friends.326Crawford, Holles, 109. As yet, the private approaches to the king remained secret; and by the end of November it seemed that little had been achieved, as the king had dismissed the committee with only a sealed reply. On 30 November Holles reported from the committee, both to the Commons and to a conference with the Lords.327CJ iii. 710a-b. D’Ewes’s assessment of Holles’s report was suitably downbeat: ‘Nothing in the whole business led me to conclude that there was any hope of peace remaining, but the king’s answer was in general terms’, although Holles had ‘without authority given his own analysis of the intention of the parties, which caused many members to be critical’.328Harl. 483, f. 247. The door was open for further talks, but progress had been painfully slow.

An important new development during the autumn of 1644 was the growing antagonism between the Vane/St John or ‘war’ party and the Scots after Marston Moor in July, and the gravitation of the Scots towards those associated with the earl of Essex. Holles later blamed the factional shifts on the jealousy caused by Cromwell’s insistence that he had been the architect of victory at Marston Moor, and described the situation in the following autumn when ‘a strong party in the House’, Essex’s soldiers and the Scots formed ‘a threefold cord not to be broken’.329Holles, Memoirs, 21. An early sign of this realignment could be seen on 11 October, when Holles and Stapilton acted as tellers in the unsuccessful motion to lay the charge of the Scottish army on the whole kingdom.330CJ iii. 659b. The new association was also witnessed by Whitelocke, when he visited Essex House in November 1644, to find gathered there ‘the Scots commissioners, Holles, Stapilton, Meyrick and others of his [Essex’s] special and intimate friends’.331Whitelocke, Diary, 161. Holles’s earlier intimacy with the Covenanters in 1641 may have facilitated this new alliance, even though he had publicly opposed their involvement in the English war during 1643 and the early months of 1644.332Crawford, Holles, 105. The first fruits of this new grouping appeared in early December, when the Scots and their friends in the Commons met at Essex House to discuss possible charges against Cromwell as an ‘incendiary’ between the two nations. According to Whitelocke, ‘Mr Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton and some others spoke smartly to the business, and mentioned some particular passages and words of Cromwell tending to prove him to be an incendiary’, and despite wiser counsels, ‘they would willingly have been upon the accusation of him’.333Add. 37343, ff. 343v-6; Crawford, Holles, 107. This coincided with the earl of Manchester’s attack on Cromwell. It was alleged that Holles was involved in drafting Manchester’s allegations, and he was certainly involved in the parliamentary discussion that followed, reporting from two conferences on the matter on 2 and 3 December.334Manchester Quarrel, p. lxxiii; CJ iii. 711b, 713b. His report was referred to a committee on 4 December, and the matter was taken up by the privileges committee, but it is significant that Holles was not included in either body.335CJ iii. 714a, 717b. Holles’s involvement in the dispute continued into the new year, and he reported from a conference on the matter on 20 January.336CJ iv. 25b.

During the winter of 1644-5, Holles was also busy with attempts to keep the peace negotiations alive. On 14 December he, and other members of the Oxford committee, were ordered to visit the newly arrived envoys from the king, the duke of Richmond and Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton.337CJ iii. 724a. Two days later he was named to a committee to consider how the two noblemen might be received, reporting that a select committee of both Houses should meet them, and then being appointed to that committee.338CJ iii. 724b, 725a-b. On 17 December Holles reported the message sent from the king, and on 19 December he reported the committee’s advice on the same.339CJ iii. 726a-b, 729b. On 21 December he reported from a conference with the king’s envoys, and went to the Lords with the Commons’ opinions on the talks.340CJ iii. 732a-b. On 14 January 1645 the Commons resolved to nominate Holles as one of the commissioners to treat with the king’s representatives at Uxbridge.341CJ iv. 19b. On 17 January he was messenger to the Lords with ancillary votes on the new talks, including passes for the servants of delegates.342CJ iv. 23a-b; LJ vii. 142b. He and the other commissioners had arrived at Uxbridge by 30 January and made regular reports back to Speaker Lenthall until 18 February.343HMC Portland, i. 204; TSP i. 205, 208-10. On 25 February Holles reported to the Commons papers pertaining to the failed treaty, and he was given the thanks of the House for his endeavours.344CJ iv. 62b. As at Oxford, Holles was prepared to conduct informal talks alongside the official business. According to Whitelocke, he and Holles once again ‘endeavoured by their private applications to their friends of the king’s commissioners to get a better answer’ to the article on control of the militia, ‘but they could not obtain it’.345Whitelocke, Diary, 164.

Holles had played little part in the Self-Denying Ordinance, and his opposition to the measure is clear from a division on 17 December 1644, when he joined Stapilton as teller in favour of exempting the earl of Essex from its terms, and thus allowing him to continue as lord general – a vote opposed by Vane II and his allies, and defeated 100 to 93.346CJ iii. 726a. He also opposed the creation of the New Model army, on 21 January joining Stapilton as teller against Sir Thomas Fairfax* being the new general (a vote carried by the Independents, with Vane II and Cromwell telling).347CJ iv. 26a. Holles later dismissed the move as an Independent ploy to put ‘the whole force of the kingdom… in the hands of their creatures’, while the new general was ‘fit for their turns to do whatever they will have him’.348Gentles, New Model Army, 20; Holles, Memoirs, 30, 34. Unable to prevent the formation of the New Model, Holles instead tried to ensure that those associated with the old armies – and especially that of Essex – were well treated. On 14 March he and Clotworthy were tellers in a successful motion to allow those soldiers who had mutinied against the new arrangements, but had since returned to their charges, to be re-employed under Fairfax.349CJ iv. 78b. On 2 April he was named to a committee to consider how Essex, Manchester and Denbigh might be rewarded on laying down their commissions; six days later he was named to a committee to consider how to replace those MPs forced to resign their commands; and on 10 April he and Erle reported from a conference to consider how to manage the admiralty if Warwick were also to step down.350CJ iv. 96b, 104a, 106a. Control of the navy was controversial, and although Holles could not prevent the replacement of Warwick, he was named to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports on 15 April, and acted as manager and reporter on naval affairs in the next few weeks.351CJ iv. 112a, 114b, 119b, 135b, 143a. In May Holles was instructed to consider the case of Commissary Lionel Copley*; he was also teller on whether to refer the case of deserters to a committee and reported on the replacement of garrison commanders who were also MPs.352CJ iv. 133a-b, 135a, 136a-b. Those local commanders whose troops had not been incorporated into the New Model were of great importance, especially if the untried field army should be defeated, and Holles was particularly anxious that Dorset and its environs should be protected. On 17 May 1645 he joined Thomas Erle*, Nicoll and Bond of the Committee of the West in signing orders for the local commander, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, to tighten the siege of Corfe Castle.353Bayley, Dorset, 295-6. On 29 May the Commons ordered Holles to prepare a letter of thanks to another independent commander, Edward Massie*, for taking Evesham, and on 2 June he was told to draft another letter to Massie, instructing him to return to his brigade; four days later he again wrote with promises of financial assistance for his forces, which would allow him to march west to engage the royalists under George Goring*.354CJ iv. 156b, 159b, 165b. Holles continued to be loyal to Essex. On 20 May he joined supporters of the earl (including Erle, Stapilton, Nicoll, Lewis and Sir Gilbert Gerard*) in being named to the committee stage of an ordinance to pay Essex a reward of £10,000.355CJ iv. 148b. And on 9 June Holles he attended the now largely defunct Committee of Safety, when it issued a warrant to pay Essex the last instalment of his allowance as lord general.356Add. 5497, ff. 130, 135-6.

The Savile affair, June-July 1645

On 7 June the Commons read an intercepted letter from George Lord Digby to the governor of Oxford, Colonel Legge, which alleged that secret talks were taking place for the surrender of Oxford.357HMC 6th Rep. 67. On 11 June Holles complained to the House that the turncoat Lord Savile had ‘scandalised him’ by alleging that he had held correspondence with Lord Digby, in order to assist the king in any future negotiations.358Add. 31116, p. 429; HMC 6th Rep. 67; CJ iv. 172a. Savile was examined by a committee of both Houses on 12, 14 and 16 June, and on the last occasion he was ordered to reveal who had told him that Holles was in contact with Digby, but refused.359HMC 6th Rep. 67-8; CJ iv. 176a. Holles was interviewed by a committee of both Houses on 26 June. He denied the charge of corresponding with Digby, making the point that ‘the Lord Digby hateth him as much as any man living’, and that the feeling was mutual.360Add. 32093, f. 227. He admitted receiving a note from an unknown man in Covent Garden, which turned out to be from the earl of Lindsey, but owing to illness ‘it was clear out of his mind till just before he was to speak of it in the House’.361Add. 32093, ff. 227v-8v. Other aspects of Holles’s answers raised concern. Choosing his words carefully, ‘he saith that … he knoweth not of any that came to him from Oxford but had passes’, and ‘being asked if he doth know of any that doth send to Oxford or that do hold intelligence with Oxford’ he initially refused to answer, ‘thinking it a question not fit to be asked’, only grudgingly stating that ‘he doth not know of any’.362Add. 32093, ff. 228v, 229. It was not a performance that would win over the doubters.

On 2 July John Gurdon* told the Commons that Savile, now in the Tower, had sent him a letter with further allegations.363CJ iv. 194a. The new revelations were close to the bone. According to Savile, Holles and Whitelocke had been in secret talks with the king’s party, and especially the earls of Lindsey and Southampton, during their visit to Oxford in November 1644, ‘contrary to their trust, and to the prejudice of the Parliament’, and that they had been in contact with royalists ‘both before and after that time’.364HMC 6th Rep. 67; Whitelocke, Diary, 168; Add. 31116, p. 436. Most damagingly, Savile revealed the substance of the private meetings, saying that ‘Holles and Whitelocke had ‘made an offer to the king to procure the House of Commons to yield to such propositions as the king should make’.365Add. 31116, p. 436. There followed a rancorous debate, in which ‘divers of the House spoke sharply against Holles and Whitelocke’, and Holles was forced ‘to make a sudden answer … and therein confessed more than was helpful’ – according to Whitelocke.366Whitelocke, Diary, 168. The unhelpful disclosure was noted by Walter Yonge I*: ‘Mr Holles confesses they visited one the other, but did nothing disadvantageous to the Parliament, and they asked their advice what to do, and they told them what they think’.367Add. 18780, f. 60. Holles had in effect admitted that private talks had been conducted at Oxford; and in the days that followed, his position was perilous. Condemned by William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, in the Lords and Hesilrige in the Commons - both ‘designing to ruin Holles’ – he relied on counter-attacks by Presbyterian friends, particularly Stapilton and Lewis, who alleged that Saye, St John and Vane II had in fact been using Savile as their own go-between with the king.368Whitelocke, Diary, 169-171. Much depended on whom MPs chose to believe. Savile had refused to name the author of the letter, and that weakened his case.369Add. 18780, f. 61v. On 10 July Holles and Whitelocke made statements to the House.370Whitelocke, Diary, 172. Crucially, on 14 July, the Scots commissioners came to their rescue, with an intercepted paper that showed that the Savile revelations had been managed ‘from the advice if not contrivance of Lord Saye’.371Whitelocke, Diary, 173-4.

The argument was not yet won, however. On 17 July it was revealed that Holles had conducted private negotiations at Uxbridge as well as Oxford: ‘that though our propositions were unreasonable, yet [he] would have the king to treat upon them and come to London’. He again protested that this was not true.372Add. 18780, ff. 77v-78. On 18 July Holles was examined by the Commons, and new evidence was brought in by Godfrey Bossevile*, alleging that he had been in correspondence with another Oxford royalist, Sir John Monson†; but this was dismissed as ‘a scandal’, and John Lilburne, who had been the prime mover, was committed by the serjeant-at-arms.373Add. 31116, pp. 442-3. Faced with claim and counter-claim, MPs gave Holles the benefit of the doubt. On 19 July the Commons voted that there was ‘not sufficient proof’ that Holles was in contact with Digby, and his relations with Lindsey did not constitute ‘holding intelligence with the enemy’; and in the crucial division, Holles was supported by Stapilton and Lewis.374HMC 6th Rep. 67; CJ iv. 213a. The case against Holles and Whitelocke was ‘totally and finally laid aside’ on 21 July, and they were given leave to bring civil proceedings against Lord Savile.375CJ iv. 214b; Whitelocke, Diary, 176. The Scottish commissioner Robert Baillie might have seen this as a triumph, reporting that ‘Savile and Saye brought Holles on the stage; but he did acquit himself with a great deal of credit both to himself and his friends, and of miscontent to his opposites’.376Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 311. Others were unconvinced. As Yonge put it: ‘if the letter [from Lindsey] contained nothing, why hath he burnt it?’377Add. 18780, f. 80v. Holles clearly felt his reputation had been severely damaged. On 28 July he was given six weeks leave of absence to go into the country, and he was away from the Commons for August and most of September.378CJ iv. 222a, 280a.

Whatever the truth behind the allegations, there is no doubt that the attack on Holles was politically motivated. Sir Christopher Wray*, speaking on 13 June, had voiced his concern that the charges against Holles had been fabricated, and ‘framed here in town’.379Harl. 166, f. 219. Whitelocke agreed: ‘the enemies of the earl of Essex put their interest upon it to ruin Holles, whom they found a pillar of his party.380Whitelocke, Diary, 170. Baillie also sought to explain the Savile affair as part of factional politics, writing that ‘it was the Independents’ study to cast all the odium of trinketing with Oxford on Holles’, but added that ‘Holles’s friends have been in great fear for his undoing by it’.381Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 303. It was appropriate that the lasting outcome of the Savile affair was the strengthening of factional divisions at Westminster, although Whitelocke was perhaps exaggerating the importance of his friend when he characterised the Presbyterians as ‘Holles and his party’ in November.382Whitelocke, Diary, 182.

Scotland and Ireland, 1644-6

Holles’ political position was complicated further by his increasing involvement in the affairs of both Scotland and Ireland. Since the spring of 1645, Holles’s main role in Scottish affairs had been as a point of contact with the Scottish commissioners, who were understandably irritated by the slowness of the Long Parliament to fulfil its promises of 1643-4. On 15 April Holles was named to a committee of both Houses to attend the Scottish commissioners and congratulate them on recent military successes.383CJ iv. 111b. On 23 April he joined Erle, Stapilton and others in being appointed a committee to view as-yet unanswered papers presented by the commissioners.384CJ iv. 121b. On 24 May the Commons ordered that Holles and John Crewe I* attend the commissioners once again, this time to encourage them to cooperate with the New Model in a new campaign against the king, and two days later he reported from the commissioners the pressing need for a treasurer and muster-master in the north, to ensure the Scots were paid what had been promised.385CJ iv. 154a, 155a. On 7 June Holles was involved in drafting letters to Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, to ask that the Scottish army march south, to assist the New Model in its campaign against the king in the midlands.386CJ iv. 167a-b, 168a. The victory of the new army at Naseby on 14 June made the Scots militarily redundant when it came to defeating the royalists in England; but they remained the only force that could face down the New Model, should the parliamentarians split along factional lines. On 23 June Holles and Lewis were sent to the commissioners to explain the delay in considering their papers, and on 28 June he was at last ordered to prepare an answer.387CJ iv. 183b, 188b. Before he left London in the summer, Holles was added to two committees on 31 July: to consider a letter to the earl of Leven, and to consider Scottish complaints against Richard Barwis*, and he was quick to resume his contacts with the Scots in the autumn.388CJ iv. 225b, 226a. On 27 September he was added to the committee to answer three papers from the Scottish commissioners.389CJ iv. 291b. On 5 December he was teller in favour of Sir Anthony Irby* being one of the commissioners to reside with the Scottish army before Newark, and he was named to the committee to prepare instructions for the commissioners on the same day.390CJ iv. 366b.

Irish affairs, like those of Scotland, had long been pushed to the sidelines. In 1644 Holles had been able to play only a minor role in the management of the Irish war, usually in support of his new political ally, Sir John Clotworthy. He attended the Irish adventurers’ committee in May 1644, when the case against Clotworthy’s business associate, the Ulster merchant John Davies*, was being considered.391Add. 4771, ff. 43v, 46. His inclusion in a committee to consider propositions from the British regiments in Ulster on 29 July was probably in support of Clotworthy.392CJ iii. 574a. The two men also collaborated in the investigation of the escape and recapture of the Irish rebels, Hugh MacMahon and Lord McGuire in September and October 1644, and were jointly responsible for the ‘narrative’ of the incident presented to Parliament.393CJ iii. 633b, 634b, 649a, 654a-b; LJ vii. 15b. On 23 October 1644 – the third anniversary of the rebellion – Holles and Clotworthy were among those MPs ordered to prepare an order denying quarter to any Irish rebels captured in England.394CJ iii. 673a. During 1645 Holles became much more involved in Irish matters. On 14 March he was named to a committee to consider how to supply money held at Goldsmiths’ Hall for the Scottish forces in Ulster, and on 12 April he was one of the MPs sent to the Lords with arguments for setting up Ulster commissioners to manage affairs in the province in conjunction with the Scots.395CJ iv. 78a, 109a. His prominence later in the year was connected with his appointment to the new Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs, created on 1 July.396CJ iv. 191a. On 7 July he was present at this committee with Clotworthy, Reynolds and William Jephson* when Jephson delivered his report on the distress of Munster, urging immediate action to save the southern province. The committee responded by moving that money should be raised as a priority.397CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 405. After his period of absence from the Commons, Holles was heavily involved in the affairs of Ireland, which had become fused with those of Scotland. On 12 November he was named to a committee to prepare a letter to the Scots concerning the alliance between the two nations and the giving up of garrisons in Ulster.398CJ iv. 340a. The next day he joined Clotworthy in being named to a committee to prepare a letter to the Scots army in Ulster, requiring that they give up Belfast to Parliament.399CJ iv. 341b. This was an awkward demand, as the Scots could easily take offence, and on the same day Holles and Stapilton were tellers against setting a definite date for compliance – a motion lost by thirteen votes, with Vane II and Pierrepont telling for the other side.400CJ iv. 341b. Munster was less controversial, but just as important. On 17 November Holles and Clotworthy forced a vote on whether to impose an assessment in England to pay for the support of Munster, but they lost the main question by only three votes.401CJ iv. 345b. Holles’s involvement in Irish affairs continued in the early months of 1646, despite the nomination of an Independent, Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney*) as lord lieutenant in January. Indeed, the influence of Lisle and his friends made Holles’s role in the Star Chamber committee all the more important. He attended the committee on 20 January, when Jephson was granted £10,000 to recruit his regiment of horse for Munster, and on 27 January, when business relating to the lord president of Munster, Murrough O’Brien, 6th Baron Inchiquin, was discussed, and on the same day he was instructed to report to the Commons on the state of the forces in Ireland.402CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 431, 432. On 6 February Holles was ordered to visit Inchiquin, then in London, to reassure him that the business of Ireland would soon be discussed, and three days later Holles reported the state of that kingdom, beginning with the plight of Munster, and reading to the House Inchiquin’s statement.403CJ iv. 430a, 432b. On 10 March Holles was again present at the Star Chamber committee to discuss matters relating to Inchiquin.404CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 440.

In the meantime, Holles had continued his involvement in Scottish affairs. The autumn of 1645 had also seen the conjunction of the Scots and the rigid Presbyterians of the City of London, who both sought to pressure Parliament to accept the high Presbyterian settlement advocated by the Westminster Assembly. Holles was unenthusiastic. He resisted attempts to define the religious settlement too closely, as on 7 November 1645, when he was teller with Stapilton in favour of laying aside a declaration on church government ‘for the present’.405CJ iv. 336a. Instead of a rigid Presbyterian hierarchy, he seems to have preferred the Erastian compromise backed by the majority of MPs. On 7 March 1646 he welcomed the appointment of lay commissioners in each shire as ‘the dawning of a glorious day, which our ancestors hoped to have seen, but could not’.406CJ iv. 463b, 466a, 467a; LJ viii. 202a. Later in the same month, Holles was instructed to invite the moderate Presbyterian Samuel Bolton to preach, and he thanked him thereafter, and this may suggest the two men’s views were in sympathy.407CJ iv. 473b, 489a; Crawford, Holles, 125. Yet for political reasons Holles could not afford to alienate the religious Presbyterians, or their allies in Scotland and the City. He continued to support such conservative measures to sanctify the Lord’s Day (20 Jan.), and he was named to the committee on the blasphemy of Paul Best (4 Apr.).408CJ iv. 411b, 500a. When the petition from the Assembly against this move was presented on 11 April it was attacked by the Independents, who forced through a vote censuring it as a breach of privilege. Holles and Stapilton were tellers against such a move, although they were out-voted by the Independents and their supporters.409CJ iv. 506a.

Peace Postponed, 1645-6

One reason for Holles’s lack of enthusiasm for the demands of the religious Presbyterians was his concern that too extreme a position would hamper attempts to negotiate a lasting settlement with the king. In the final weeks of 1645, as negotiations with the king again became a possibility, Holles supported lenient terms for repentant royalists, acting as teller with Clotworthy against limiting generous composition terms to the next two months (4 Oct.), and being named to a committee to facilitate the passage of Prince Rupert out of the kingdom (7 Oct.).410CJ iv. 297b, 335b. There seems to have been some support for leniency. On 1 December the Commons resolved that new peace propositions should include the promotion of various key parliamentarians, including Holles, who would become a viscount; and on 4 December he was named to a committee to consider how the proposition on the continuance of the London militia might be framed.411CJ iv. 361a, 365a. During the early months of 1646, Holles backed the peace initiative. On 31 January he was added to the committee on the first proposition; on 3 February he was teller with Stapilton in favour of specifying that Parliament sought the peace of church as well as state in its reply to the king; and on 7 February he reported from a conference on the propositions to be sent to Oxford.412CJ iv. 424b, 428a, 430a, 431b. On 20 February he again reported on a conference on the peace propositions; on 4 and 5 March he was involved in the granting of passes to French agents to Oxford and Edinburgh; on 16 March he was manager with Thomas Erle of a further conference; and on 18 March he was named to a committee to consider papers from the Scottish commissioners concerning peace.413CJ iv. 448a-b, 462b, 463b, 475b, 478b. Later in March, Holles was at the forefront of efforts to persuade the prince of Wales, holed up in Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, to submit to Parliament, and on 23 March he and Lewis were tellers in favour of the Commons accepting a letter drafted by the Lords, inviting the prince to come in – a motion that was voted down by the House.414CJ iv. 478b, 479b, 485b, 494a. These new initiatives came to nothing, as the prince fled to the Channel Islands, and for the time being the king remained intransigent.

The late spring and summer of 1646 saw tensions between the Westminster factions rise still further. In a large part this was caused by the king’s decision to leave Oxford and flee to the Scottish army besieging Newark. On 4 May Holles was named to a committee to prepare a declaration against any who harboured or concealed the fugitive king, but once it became apparent that the Scots were the culprits, the situation became more complicated.415CJ iv. 531b. Holles did his best to protect his allies against the assaults of the outraged Independents. On 8 May he was teller with Erle against the deciphering of coded messages found in a box of Scottish letters, and he was named to the committee that then investigated how the box had been seized.416CJ iv. 540a. On 11 May he and Stapilton were tellers in favour of debating the ‘disposal of the king’ with the doors locked to ensure secrecy; and although that vote was lost, they were more successful in voting down a motion that Parliament alone should insist on deciding the fate of the king, and winning another motion that the king should surrender to Parliament before a treaty and the disbandment of the armies were concluded.417CJ iv. 542a, 542b. On 14 May Holles and Stapilton were tellers against putting the question that the Scots would have no involvement in any peace negotiations, and won the division by 121 votes to 89.418CJ iv. 545a-b. This last division not only allowed the involvement of the Scots in the peace process, but also gave the Presbyterians the chance to alter the terms of the ‘Newcastle Propositions’, which had originally been framed by the Independents. On 25 May Holles was one of the reporters of the conference on letters received from both the king and the Scots; on 13 June he and Stapilton were successful in ensuring that new proposals concerning the militia were considered by a committee; and on 15 June he reported from a conference on other alterations to the propositions.419CJ iv. 554b, 576a, 576b, 577a. On 22 June he was messenger to the Lords to ask them to hasten their consideration of the propositions, and on the same day he was named to a committee to determine how the terms might be presented to the king.420CJ iv. 583b, 584a-b. On 25 June Holles was named to a committee to consider letters from the Scots commissioners concerning peace, and on 27 June he was appointed one of the commissioners for ‘the conservation of the peace of the kingdoms’ under the terms of the treaty.421CJ iv. 586b, 587a, 589b.

The Presbyterians pushed for the Scots to be involved at every stage of the formal talks. On 30 June, for example, Holles and Waller were narrowly defeated in a motion that the Committee of Both Kingdoms should send the preamble and alterations to the propositions to the Scottish commissioners for their approval.422CJ iv. 593b. They were also keen to extract concessions from the king over Ireland. On 3 July Holles was named to a committee to prepare a letter to the king to request that he order Ormond to surrender Dublin to Parliament and to inform him that the peace propositions were nearly ready.423CJ iv. 599b. The last was presumably a Presbyterian move, as the amendments to the letter were taken to the Lords by Holles and Clotworthy three days later.424CJ iv. 603a-b. The propositions were taken to the king in mid-July, with French agents lined up to persuade him to come to some sort of agreement. Holles, with his existing ties to France, was heavily involved in the French aspect of the treaty negotiations. On 9 July he was one of those MPs who received the French ambassador, and on 11 July he was appointed to the committee to peruse his credentials.425CJ iv. 612b, 615a. On 22 July he was named to a committee to prepare an answer to the ambassador, and managed a conference with the Lords on the French involvement.426CJ iv. 622b, 624a. The king’s refusal of the propositions led to recriminations, with Holles’s allies coming under renewed attack. The duplicity of the French agent, Jean de Montereul [Montreuil], was discovered when his letters were seized on a ship, and Holles was appointed to the committee to consider their content, and then reported a conference on the same, in early August.427CJ iv. 641a, 643b, 644a. The Scots were also discredited, and although Holles was named to a committee to return thanks to them for their part in the peace negotiations on 12 August, two days later he and Erle were tellers in favour of the second reading of an ordinance to punish those who had printed attacks on the Scots – a motion opposed by the Independents.428CJ iv. 643a, 644b.

Presbyterians and Independents, 1646-7

The Independents had been launching personal attacks on Holles ever since the late spring of 1646. On 6 May Henry Marten revealed to the Commons yet another letter from Lord Savile, confessing that his source for the allegations against Holles the previous year had been Katherine, duchess of Buckingham. This was plausible enough, but as ‘she was beyond the sea, and [now] the wife of an Irish rebel [Randall MacDonnell, 2nd earl of Antrim], and because the Lord Savile was known to have been heretofore convicted of a falsehood, the House gave little credit to it’.429Add. 31116, p. 536; LJ viii. 302b. In June there were further allegations that Holles had been involved in a plot ‘to bring the king to the Parliament’, perhaps secretly, but the sources were not deemed credible.430HMC Portland, i. 368, 370, 372. Soon afterwards, Holles also found himself the subject of a financial investigation, and in August he issued a statement detailing what he had received, including a payment of 1,000 marks in compensation for the sum he had been fined in 1629, and the weekly allowance of £4 per week he had received while his estates were occupied by the enemy, and which he had since relinquished.431Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 507. His refutation accords with the surviving evidence.432CJ iii. 568b; SC6/ChasI/1661, m. 7; SC6/ChasI/1662, mm. 8d, 10; SC6/ChasI/1663, m. 8; SC6/ChasI/1664, m. 15d. The struggle between the factions continued into the autumn, but from Holles’s point of view, apart from occasional incidents, it was mostly conducted through the medium of Irish and Scottish affairs. The death of the earl of Essex in September was a hammer blow to the Presbyterian interest. Holles, who was related to Essex by marriage through the Shirleys, was a pall bearer at the funeral.433Crawford, Holles, 134. On 16 September the appointment of the earl of Northumberland as lord lieutenant of Yorkshire, despite the prior agreement that Fairfax would receive the honour, predictably led to a major row, with Holles and Cromwell ‘in some heat upon it’.434Harington’s Diary, 37. Religion was always a contentious issue, and Holles was not above using it to needle his opponents. On 23 September he seconded John Selden’s* conservative view in the grand committee that liberty of conscience must be strictly limited, for ‘if no deity, then dissolve all bonds between men’.435Harington’s Diary, 38. On 18 November Holles and Stapilton was teller in favour of an immediate second reading of the ordinance for imposing the Solemn League and Covenant throughout England and Wales – a provocative move that was defeated in the Commons.436CJ iv. 725a. When an ‘objectionable’ book by William Dell was considered by the House in December, Holles was named to the committees appointed to investigate the author and examine the text, and he and Stapilton were tellers in favour of bringing in candles to continue the debate.437CJ v. 10b, 11a. Dell, as Fairfax’s chaplain, was an obvious target.

Ireland had re-emerged as a major source of factional tension in the summer of 1646. In July a scheme was unveiled which would see a large part of the New Model redeployed to Ireland. Holles approved of this attempt to kill two birds with one stone. On 31 July he and Stapilton successfully prevented a move led by Hesilrige and Cromwell, to have the debate on Ireland referred to a grand committee, and thus delayed indefinitely; but they narrowly lost the subsequent vote, to send four regiments of foot and two of horse from the New Model to reinforce the troops already in Ireland.438CJ iv. 631b, 632a. When his old enemy John Gurdon denounced the plan as ‘a plot’, Holles protested vigorously and was himself ‘excepted against’ by the other MPs.439Harington’s Diary, 30. The coup de main had failed, and Holles was forced to return to a more subtle ways to improve the situation for his Irish allies. On 11 August he was named to a committee to consider how money might be raised for Ireland; and at the beginning of September he renewed his contacts with Inchiquin and his friends in London, especially Sir Philip Percivalle*.440CJ iv. 641b; HMC Egmont, i. 312, 324. On 16 September Inchiquin wrote to Percivalle concerning attempts by the Independents to channel all the available money for Munster to his rival, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), despite Holles’s efforts to prevent it.441HMC Egmont, i. 316. On 23 September Holles attended the Star Chamber committee when it discussed Irish finances, and on 29 September he was present when the committee considered the forces in Munster and the status of the Ulster commissioners, including Clotworthy.442CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 518, 520. In the Commons, on 25 September he had joined Stapilton as teller in favour of raising £40,000 for Ireland from the excise and the credit of the Irish assessment.443CJ iv. 677a. All such attempts to bolster the Irish forces were thrown into disarray by news from Dublin in early October that Ormond had abandoned his treaty with the Confederate Irish, and was now prepared to surrender Dublin to Parliament. The Independents, led by Viscount Lisle, now had the upper hand, and the negotiations were conducted by the Committee of Both Kingdoms. In mid-October he was appointed to the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs and ordered to attend this body and give counsel, but he would play little part in the talks that followed.444CJ iv. 690b, 693b. His only mention in the Journal during the next two months was on 7 December, when he was teller in favour of sending some non-New Model units to reinforce Dublin.445CJ v. 3b. It was only with the failure of the negotiations that Holles was able to exert any real influence over Irish affairs, and he was present at the Derby House Committee on 18 December when the forces bound for Dublin were ordered to sail north to Ulster instead.446CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 727.

If the affairs of Ireland were full of frustrations for Holles in the second half of 1646, those of Scotland ran more smoothly. The failure of the Newcastle Propositions – and in particular the king’s refusal even to consider a Presbyterian church settlement – encouraged the Scots to change their policy of intervention in England; instead, they offered to withdraw their army in return for the payment of money owed to them. This suited both factions at Westminster, although the Presbyterians argued for generous terms for their allies. Later Holles praised the patience of the Scots in the face of provocation, having ‘no thoughts but of settling a peace, laying down of arms, calling the people, and all things to revert into their own channel’.447Holles, Memoirs, 64. The payment of money owed to the Scots was a stumbling block, however, as ‘our incendiaries hung by every twig, sticking fast to their principles to dissatisfy the Scots, and break with them (if possible) at every point’.448Holles, Memoirs, 66. As Baillie commented, the departure of the Scots would also give Holles and his allies control of affairs, as ‘this was the only means to get that evil army disbanded, the king and peace settled according to our minds’.449Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 16. The parting must be amicable, however, and on 14 August, when the committee to negotiate with the Scots was discussed, Holles opposed the inclusion of the violently anti-Scottish Cromwell on its membership.450Harington’s Diary, 32. On 27 August Holles and Stapilton were tellers in favour of offering the Scots a further £200,000 to leave, and although this was defeated, an additional £100,000 was voted through, with Holles and Stapilton again acting as tellers, on 1 September.451CJ iv. 655b, 659a. On 2 September it was said that Holles ‘nettled’ at Independent attempts to rile to Scots by demanding the return of key garrisons.452Harington’s Diary, 34. The final sum agreed was £400,000, and Holles managed to stave off an Independent attempt to revise this figure on 5 September, going on to join the committee to raise the first half from the City of London.453CJ iv. 663a. When he reported from this committee five days later, he and Stapilton narrowly lost a vote to secure the loan against the as yet uncertain income from the sale of delinquents’ estates.454CJ iv. 665a. In later months, Holles was involved in making sure the money was raised ready to be sent north.455CJ iv. 721a; v. 1b, 12a.

As well as withdrawing their army across the border, the Scots were also required to surrender the king to Parliament’s custody, and this led to Holles’s involvement in a further round of negotiations. On 18 September he joined Stapilton as teller in favour of the Commons debating the ‘king’s person’, and on the same day went to the Lords with assurances that any consultation with the Scots on the subject would not interfere with the treaty already on foot.456CJ iv. 672a-b. On 24 September he was named to a committee of both Houses to consult with the Scottish commissioners on arrangements for the handing over of the king.457CJ iv. 675a. There the matter stalled until the details of the financial package had been finalised, and the Scottish Parliament had overcome its qualms at selling its king. On 28 November, Holles and Stapilton were tellers in favour of amending an answer to the Scottish commissioners, but the changes were voted down.458CJ iv. 730a. Only at the very end of the year, as the Scots prepared to march north, did the Commons begin to conclude its deliberations. On 26 December Holles and Lewis were tellers in favour of continuing the debate on the king’s person.459CJ v. 30a. On 5 January 1647 Holles and Stapilton were tellers against an unpopular motion to transfer of the king’s person into the hands of the army – a division won by 130 to 69 votes – and he was named to the subsequent committee that instructed the Scots to put the king into the care of a parliamentary committee.460CJ v. 42b.

The deal with the Scots also included another attempt to force the king to accept the Newcastle Propositions. On 22 September Holles was named to a committee to reduce the propositions into a single ordinance, which could then be presented to the king as the will of Parliament.461CJ iv. 673b. Again, the process appears to have stalled in the next two months, and by then the situation had changed. On 26 December, Holles was named to a committee to restart negotiations with the king along the same lines as the Newcastle Propositions, but only once the king was in safe custody, and the Scots had withdrawn their troops.462CJ v. 30a. Other measures followed rapidly. On 28 December Holles was among those named to a committee to consider a report by Lewis that recommended that the king should agree to abolish the court of wards; the same day Holles reported from the committee on the king’s person, that the king should be pressed to reopen talks on the Newcastle Propositions; and he joined Stapilton and others as manager of the conference with the Lords on the same matter.463CJ v. 31b, 31b, 32a. Despite the king’s obvious opposition to the terms, the old propositions retained the support of the leading Presbyterians by the end of 1646.

The Presbyterian ascendancy, Jan.-Mar. 1647

With the Scots gone, and the king in Parliament’s hands, it looked as if settlement in England would be quickly achieved in the new year of 1647. The Presbyterians, bolstered by ‘recruiter’ elections in the west country, were now in the ascendant. Their immediate ‘design’ was ‘to disgrace and heave out the Independents, and with a private end (as they say) to make way for the king’.464Nicholas Pprs. i. 74. Good relations were retained with the Scots as they completed the withdrawal of their forces across the border. On 25 January Holles, Stapilton and Lewis reported a conference on papers of ‘great importance’ received from Scotland; the next day Holles was named to a committee to prepare a letter to the Scots; and on 3 February he was ordered to arrange for a jewel to be sent to commander of the Scottish forces, the earl of Leven.465CJ v. 63b, 65b, 73b, 81b. The Presbyterians investigated allegations against the Committee for Compounding on 3 February, with Holles managing a conference on the case, and acting as teller with Stapilton in a vote to bring a report the next day.466CJ v. 73b. On 4 February he was added to the Commission for Compounding – an appointment confirmed two days later.467CJ v. 75b, 78a. There were other signs of Holles’s increasing personal authority within the Commons. On 18 January the committee on the 1629 case at last reported, and Holles was granted £5,000 in compensation for his losses and sufferings.468CJ v. 54b-55b. On 16 March the Commons also resolved that Holles should have custody of the £6,000 set aside as the portion of his sister Eleanor, and since sequestered because of the delinquency of her Irish Catholic husband.469CJ v. 114b; Bodl. Firth c.5, ff. 130v, 154v. This vote was carried to the Lords by Stapilton, confirmed by the upper chamber on 18 March, and an ordinance passed a month later.470CJ v. 114b; LJ ix. 86a, 159b.

Presbyterian influence over the conduct of the Irish war was also increasing during the early months of 1647. The Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs, formerly the stronghold of the Independents, included Holles, Lewis, Gerard and other Presbyterians among its members in January, and they were soon joined by Clotworthy on his return from Ulster.471CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 729-30. The departure to Munster of Viscount Lisle and his cronies in February weakened Independent control of this committee still further, and this coincided with a stroke of good fortune – the arrival of news, on 20 February, of Ormond’s decision to reopen negotiations with Parliament for the surrender of Dublin. Holles was present when the committee received the news, and he was immediately sent to the Scottish commissioners to ask that the Ulster regiments would march south to distract the Confederates forces now threatening Dublin.472CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 729. Two days later Holles and Clotworthy were sent to the Committee for Compounding to demand the payment of money allocated for Ireland.473CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 730. The Presbyterians continued to push for action in later weeks, and on 15 March Holles reported from the Derby House Committee the state of the Irish army.474CJ v. 112a. They were also working in the Commons to prevent the renewal of the commission of Parliament’s lord lieutenant, Viscount Lisle. This was of great concern to Inchiquin, who had found Lisle a most unwelcome presence in Munster. On 9 March, Percivalle assured Inchiquin that Lisle’s patent would soon run out, ‘and as Holles told me… there is no likelihood of any more of that kind’.475HMC Egmont, i. 369. The decision not to extend Lisle’s term was taken on 1 April, and moves were made to separate civil and military power in the country. Holles was successful as teller in favour of commissioners being appointed to direct and manage the Irish war on the same day, despite the opposition of the Independents.476CJ v. 131b. The expiry of Lisle’s commission was also an important factor in the negotiations with Ormond, who received news from London in mid-April that ‘your lordship’s friends in this kingdom are the most prevailing, judicious men, that are your most entire affecters and honourers’; in particular, Holles and Stapilton had demonstrated their desire to serve Ormond, ‘in regard no man succeedeth you in equal honour as lord lieutenant, but that the kingdom shall be governed by justices as formerly’.477Bodl. Carte 20, f. 613.

The attack on the New Model, Mar.-May 1647

The rapidly changing situation in Ireland encouraged Holles and his allies to resurrect their plan – first attempted in July 1646 – to send the New Model army across the Irish Sea, and thus remove the last remaining obstacle to peace. As Holles later stated the army was ‘a let and hindrance to the settling of all government, both civil and ecclesiastical’.478Holles, Memoirs, 70. There had been moves to disband the army even before news of Ormond’s change of heart. On 17 February Holles was teller with Stapilton against the disbandment of garrisons first – a division they won by only two votes – and there ensued a debate on how many cavalry regiments of the field army would be retained.479CJ v. 90a. Two days later, Holles and Stapilton were also successful – this time in establishing that only those foot regiments required for garrison duties would be retained.480CJ v. 91a. Pressure on the New Model was maintained on 8 March, when Holles and Stapilton were again successful as tellers on a motion that all officers of the New Model must conform to the church government as established by Parliament.481CJ v. 108a. The main assault on the army only began at the end of March, once the Presbyterian position at Westminster was secure. A delegation from the Derby House Committee visited army headquarters to arrange for the sending of regiments to Ireland, but was met by a council of war which demanded that certain conditions be met first. In the meantime, on 22 March, the Commons ordered Holles and Stapilton to meet officers who had presented a petition concerning the payment of arrears, to tell them that they would be paid, but ‘the management of the affairs of the public’ was none of their business.482CJ v. 120a. The next day Holles, Stapilton and Lewis were appointed reporters of a conference on the army, and on 25 March Holles reported that the City – now a firm member of the Presbyterian alliance - felt threatened by the close proximity of the army.483CJ v. 121a, 124a. On 27 March, when the commissioners returned from the army’s headquarters, Holles was named to a committee to consider papers concerning the army, and on 29 March he was one of those chosen to prepare a declaration upon a new military petition.484CJ v. 127b, 129a. Immediately afterwards, Holles, possibly taking advantage of a thinly attended House, hurriedly introduced this ‘declaration of dislike’ against the army’s petition, ‘declaring the petition to be seditious, and those traitors who should endeavour to promote it after such a day, and promising pardon to all that were concerned therein, if they should desist by the time limited’.485Ludlow, Mems. i. 149-50. All who upheld the petition were to be considered ‘enemies of the state and disturbers of the public peace’.486CJ v. 129a-b. Holles reported the declaration back to the House, which adopted it, and sent it to the Lords for approval.487CJ v. 129b.

Holles’s gamble was that the army would split over whether or not to serve in Ireland, but the effect of the ‘declaration of dislike’ was very different, as the New Model closed ranks against an external threat.488Gentles, New Model Army, 151. Tempers were already beginning to fray in the Commons. On 30 March Holles, Clotworthy and Lewis were appointed managers of a conference on information received from the army, and the votes concerning the Irish service.489CJ v. 130a. On the same day, after ‘a very hot debate in the House, and some rude expression from [Henry] Ireton*’ concerning the army’s petition, Holles challenged him to a duel.490Clarendon, Hist. iv. 238; Ludlow, Mems. i. 189-90. Ireton declined, and, according to one account, Holles ‘took him by the nose, and told him if his conscience kept him from giving men satisfaction, it should keep him from quarrelling [with] them’.491Add. 27990, f. 40v. On 2 April the Commons demanded that Holles and Ireton behave themselves – and the two men engaged to do so.492CJ v. 133a. News of the row soon spread, and had reached the royalists in exile within a fortnight.493Harington’s Diary, 47; CCSP i. 373. Some thought it was this incident that had ‘incensed the whole party’ of the army against Holles, leading directly to moves to impeach him.494Clarendon, Hist. iv. 238.

The Presbyterian dominance continued in April, aided by the perhaps deliberate absence from the House of men like Vane II and Cromwell.495Crawford, Holles, 140. Presbyterian power in the Commons is suggested by the line-up in key committees. For example when a committee was appointed to attend the City to raise £200,000 to pay off the army and fund the sending of troops to Ireland on 2 April, it was made up almost entirely of enemies of the army, including Holles, Stapilton, Waller, Clotworthy and Lewis.496CJ v. 133a. The Presbyterian bond with London also strengthened at this time. Holles was an important contact with London, and in later weeks he took the City’s militia ordinance to the Lords, reported the common council’s answer about the £200,000 loan, and took the Commons’ votes on the same to the Lords.497CJ v. 144a, 145a, 149a-b, 146b; LJ ix. 142a, 146a. The Derby House Committee was confirmed in its status as a Presbyterian body on 7 April, when Massie and Jephson were added, and the membership of Holles, Clotworthy and Lewis was confirmed.498CJ v. 135b. When Holles attended the committee on the same day, it was decided that some of its members – including Clotworthy – should go to Fairfax to arrange for regiments to be drawn out for Irish service, and to treat with the soldiers concerning the terms of service.499CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 735. On 13 April Holles reported from the Derby House Committee on the pay and conditions to be offered troops recruited for Ireland, and on 15 April he went to the Lords with an order ensuring that the Derby House Committee would work together with the Star Chamber committee for signing of warrant for Ireland.500CJ v. 140b, 143b. During April and May the same committee continued to arrange the day to day business of the disbandment of regiments in England, and their transport to Ireland, and throughout this period Holles was assiduous in his attendance.501CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 739-40; SP21/26, pp. 48-72.

Holles was rapidly becoming a hate figure in the army. On 20 April a letter from Suffolk warned of the anger aroused among the ordinary soldiers, who used ‘most bitter language against the Parliament, and against Stapilton, Erle and Holles by name’.502Add. 70005, f. 248v. This did not deter Holles in his efforts to disband and transport the New Model, however. On 22 April he reported to the Commons a letter from the commissioners sent to the army, which outlined the progress of the recruitment of soldiers for Ireland.503CJ v. 151a. On 23 April Holles was named to a committee on obnoxious publications, including the ‘Apology of the Soldiery’.504CJ v. 153a. One army source accused Holles of having made out that the weakly-supported Apology was ‘the sense of the whole army, and so launched forth into high expressions against it’.505Clarke Pprs. i. 15. Nor was the army reassured by Holles’s cosy relationship with the City of London at the end of April and beginning of May. He attended the Lords on 29 April to demand their concurrence with the £200,000 loan, as Ireland was in such urgent need, and on 1 May he joined Stapilton and Erle as reporters of the conference on the same.506CJ v. 157b, 158a, 159a, 160a; LJ ix. 161b. On 4 May he was messenger to the Lords with the ordinance for the London militia, and on the same day acted as teller with Stapilton on a motion declaring the Commons’ ‘dislike’ of a petition from those citizens ‘well-affected’ to the army.507CJ v. 161b, 162a; LJ ix. 174a. On 5 and 6 May Holles reported the common council’s opinions on security for the loan, and went to the Lords with the Commons’ votes on these; on 12 May he again reported from the common council, and on the same day he was named to the committee on the ordinance for the loan – a committee dominated by Presbyterian MPs.508CJ v. 163a, 165a, 168a, 168b; LJ ix. 180b. Holles was also involved in the manipulation of public opinion in London. On 18 May the army agitators were told that Holles had promised to deliver the petition of the ‘well-affected party’ in the City to the Commons, ‘though he himself is nominated to have justice done on him’.509Clarke Pprs. i. 85-6. This may have been a ploy to expose the radical views of some of the army’s friends, as the ‘scandalous petition’ of a ‘rude multitude of people styling themselves well-affected citizens of London’ was voted to be burned on 20 May, with Holles and Erle acting as tellers in favour of the motion, and Holles and Massie winning a further division, to ensure the burning would happen both in the City and Westminster, to attract wide publicity.510Add. 31116, p. 619; CJ v. 179b.

Although Holles had been named to two committees designed to conciliate Cromwell and Fairfax with grants of land (5 and 11 May), there is no sign that he was prepared for compromise.511CJ v. 162b, 167a, In an obvious provocation, on 24 May the Derby House Committee (with Holles in attendance) issued details of the first regiments to be disbanded and sent to Ireland; they included those of Fairfax and Cromwell’s protégés, John Hewson* and Sir Hardress Waller*.512SP21/26, p. 62. According to Whitelocke, he was ‘taken into private consultation’ with Holles and his friends ‘about their design of disbanding the army’ on 25 May. Whitelocke claimed that he advised them not to force the issue, but ‘Holles and his party, believing the advantage which they had in this, which would please the people and ease their taxes, not well considering the army’s mutiny, did resolutely prosecute their design’.513Whitelocke, Diary, 193. This confidence is clear from other sources. On 25 May Holles reported to the Commons from the committee on disbanding of the army, and a subsequent division to disband immediately was carried by the Presbyterians.514CJ v. 182b, 183a; Crawford, Holles, 146. On 28 May Holles and other leading Presbyterians signed the Derby House Committee’s letter to Fairfax, instructing him that £7,000 was being sent ‘towards the disbanding of your army’, and on the same day he reported from the committee to the Commons that four regiments had already signed up for service in Ireland.515Clarke Pprs. i. 107; CJ v. 192a. On 31 May the Derby House Committee wrote to Fairfax demanding compliance with earlier orders to disband, with Holles and Stapilton among the signatories.516Clarke Pprs. i. 114.

The army retaliates, June-July 1647

Events in early June showed that Holles and his allies had pushed the army too far. On 1 June Parliament received Fairfax’s letter refusing point-blank to disband, and his stand was supported by the Independents in the Commons. In the next few days the House moderated its stance, and agreed to pay the soldiers’ arrears of pay.517Crawford, Holles, 146. Worse was to follow. On 3 June Holles received a message from the guards at Holdenby that they feared that the army would soon seize the king.518Harington’s Diary, 55. By then the king had already been taken to Newmarket by Cornet George Joyce. According to John Rushworth, this was a pre-emptive strike, for ‘if they had had the king – I mean Holles and Stapilton etc – the Scots had come in to have crushed this army’.519Fairfax Corresp. iii. 353. Holles reported the coup to the Commons on 8 June, presenting a letter from Joyce directed to Cromwell, or in his absence to Hesilrige or Charles Fleetwood*, and he used this to infer ‘that those three gentlemen had correspondence with that cornet, and so had intelligence of that party’s carrying away the king’ – a charge hotly denied by Hesilrige.520Add. 31116, p. 624. The Presbyterians were suddenly on the back foot. A vote to concur with the Lords in demanding the removal of the king to Oatlands was lost by 33 votes, despite Holles acting as teller in favour.521CJ v. 203a. The prospect of the army moving its headquarters closer to London alarmed MPs, and on 11 June the Commons ordered Holles and others to prepare a letter to Fairfax requiring him to keep at least 40 miles from the capital, and on the same day Holles was named to a committee of both Houses to meet the militia committee and consider how London might be put in a posture of defence.522CJ v. 207a-b. The recent reforms of the London militia raised hopes that the local soldiers, in conjunction with the ‘reformadoes’ in the City, might be able to resist an attack by the New Model. One newsletter wrote that the ‘tumults and insolences’ of the disbanded soldiers in London, had prompted Holles and Stapilton to attend them with promises of more money.523Clarke Pprs. i. 136. Also on 14 June, Holles was named to a committee of both Houses to prepare a declaration justifying Parliament’s recent actions to preserve the peace and safety of the nation.524CJ v. 210a. On 15 June a vote was passed requiring Fairfax to surrender the king to Parliament – a division in which Holles acted as teller for the yeas.525CJ v. 211a-b. This was a futile gesture, as it was already apparent that the Presbyterians had lost the backing of the City and its militia; and they were also losing their grip on the Commons. This was apparent on 16 June, when Holles and Stapilton were out-voted as tellers by Hesilrige and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, who pushed through a motion to send a month’s pay to the army.526CJ v. 214a.

On 14 June the army named ‘Eleven Members’ they held responsible for the current political crisis. These included Holles and his main allies, Stapilton, Lewis and Clotworthy. As they did not withdraw from the House, on 23 June the army demanded their suspension.527Crawford, Holles, 152. On 25 June the army marched to Uxbridge, and the next day Holles and the others were granted leave of absence for their own safety.528CJ v. 225a. Colonel Adrian Scrope* delivered the army’s impeachment of the Eleven Members to the Commons on 6 July.529CJ v. 236a. Most of the charges against Holles were basically true. He had indeed held private talks with the royalists at Oxford, collaborated with the Scots, plotted ‘to destroy the army and their friends’ and forced the recall of Viscount Lisle from Ireland. Whether they could be lumped together and treated as ‘treason’ was another matter.530A Particular Charge or Impeachment (1647), pp. 2, 4-7, 17, 19-20 (E.397.17); W. Prynne, A Full Vindication and Answer of the XI Accused Members (1647), pp. 5-8, 17, 25 (E.398.17). Holles stayed away from the Commons for the next few weeks, and on 23 July Percivalle reported that he had still not returned, although with the Presbyterian coup three days later, he was more optimistic, as ‘Holles is shortly here expected’.531HMC Egmont, i. 435-6. There is evidence to suggest that Holles was one of those behind the ‘forcing of the Houses’, and he certainly attended a meeting of seven of the Eleven Members on 26 July.532Crawford, Holles, 156. Yet Holles’s movements over the next few days are surprisingly shadowy. It was said that Holles and Stapilton had sent for all their allies to attend the Commons, once the Speaker had returned on 30 July.533CCSP, i. 386. In early August Holles apparently met Lord Mountnorris (now Viscount Valentia) in London.534HMC Egmont, i. 441. He was present in the House on 1 August when he was named to a committee to allow the ‘committee of safety’ (which had been set up in June for mobilisation against the army) and the London militia committee to disarm disaffected persons, but this is his only mention in the Journal during the Presbyterian ‘coup’ of July-August.535CJ v. 263a. He was probably more active behind the scenes, signing at least one warrant from the committee of safety in its attempt to make London’s militia forces more combat ready.536Perfect Occurrences no. 31 (30 July-6 Aug. 1647), 207 (E.518.14).

Exile and return, Aug. 1647-Apr. 1660

With the army’s march on London, Holles and the other Eleven Members went into hiding. Seven of them, including Holles, Stapilton, Lewis, Clotworthy and Nicoll, had received travel passes by 12 August, and wrote to Edward Harley* that ‘we intend to go away speedily, and mostly to the Low Countries’.537Add. 61989, f. 155. Holles parted company with his friends soon afterwards, and crossed to France. In his absence, the Independents moved against him at their leisure. On 4 September he was summoned to attend the Commons before 16 October; he was replaced as commissioner for compounding on 23 September; and he was disabled from sitting as a MP on 27 January 1648.538CJ v. 291b, 314a, 589b. In the meantime, Holles had reached Normandy, where he joined his mother and his eldest son, who had been abroad since 1645, and settled down to write his version of events – the Memoirs, eventually published in 1699.539CJ v. 109b, 249a; Crawford, Holles, 164-5, 167. The reception of ‘the main pillar and proto-martyr of Presbytery’ by the exiled royalists was initially encouraging.540Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 19 (18-25 Jan. 1648), sig. Tv. (E.423.21). In December 1647 Sir Edward Nicholas† told Sir Richard Browne that Holles ‘doth now profess himself a royalist and for episcopacy since he came over’, and in the spring of 1648 he visited his nephew, the earl of Strafford, and was summoned to attend the queen at St Germain.541BL, Richard Browne Corresp. 2, vol. V, unfol.

Before anything came of these approaches, in the summer of 1648 the fragmentation of the Independent party and the hope of a new treaty with the king had transformed the political climate at Westminster. On 3 June the Commons resolved to discharge Holles from impeachment, and on 8 June his disablement as an MP was overturned.542CJ v. 584a, 589b. Soon afterwards, Holles returned to Dorset, where he was living ‘privately at his country house here at Cerne’ by the beginning of August 1648. He was in contact with local gentlemen like John Fitzjames*, who wrote to London to enquire ‘how many of the Eleven Members sit at this present in the House, and how entertained’.543Alnwick, Northumberland 548, f. 20. The signs were encouraging, and Holles had rejoined the Commons by 14 August; two days later he joined Lewis and John Swynfen* as reporter of a conference on the king’s letter.544Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1226; CJ v. 673a. In the next few weeks Holles played a minor role in moves to settle the country after the failed Scottish invasion, and on 1 September he was nominated as one of the commissioners to treat with the king at Newport.545CJ v. 678a, 681a, 697a. He arrived on the Isle of Wight on 15 September, ready for the negotiations to begin three days later.546HMC de Lisle, vi. 576. On 18 September he signed the commissioners’ answer to the king’s paper requesting propositions, and he was also involved in further despatches throughout October and early November.547CCSP i. 451; HMC Portland, i. 501, 503-4. On 9 November, when many of the commissioners returned to London, Holles was one of those who stayed with the king, and he was still signing letters to Lenthall from the Isle of Wight as late as 22 November.548Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 33 (31 Oct.-14 Nov. 1648), sig. Yy2v (E.470.33); HMC Portland, i. 504-5. While the details of his role in the negotiations are obscure, it is interesting that, in a repeat of the 1644 embassy to Oxford, Holles was ‘intimate with the earl of Lindsey, and by him conveyed all his opinions and projects to the king’, receiving in return the promise of the office of secretary of state if the treaty proved effective.549HMC Portland, i. 593. On 1 December Holles, newly returned to Westminster, was thanked by the Speaker for his part in treating with the king, and presented his account of the negotiations.550CJ v. 92a. It was on the strength of his report that the Commons voted on 4 December that the king’s latest reply would be the basis for a lasting peace treaty. The army had already decided to intervene to prevent any deal being reached, and Pride’s Purge on 6 December, during which Holles was inevitably secluded, once again forced Holles to flee to the continent.551A Vindication (1649), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5); Crawford, Holles, 176-7.

Nothing is known of Holles’s reaction to the regicide or the establishment of the republic. According to Nicholas, in the spring of 1650 Holles again expressed his willingness to work with the royalists, and through his cousin Gervase Holles he ‘made a kind of offer to the king at Jersey, which was not so accepted as perhaps he expected’.552Nicholas Pprs. i. 171. In June, using his brother-in-law, Oliver Fitzwilliams, as go-between, Holles promised the king that he would raise a Presbyterian army in England in his support.553Nicholas Pprs. i. 186. In March 1651 it was rumoured that Holles had been offer the post of secretary of state once the king enjoyed his own again, and soon afterwards he had visited Caen and Rouen to consult with leading royalists.554Nicholas Pprs. i. 227, 237. In early April 1651 it was rumoured that Holles had been issued with blank commissions from the king, which he had then distributed to leading Presbyterians across England.555CSP Dom. 1651, p. 127. By then the authorities in England had intelligence from other sources that Holles had encouraged the king to ally with the Scots, and on 15 April the council of state issued orders for the seizure of his estates.556HMC Portland, i. 585; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 149. On 17 April the Committee for Compounding implemented the sequestration of his lands in Dorset, Wiltshire, Surrey, Devon and Somerset. This was challenged, the next month, and the committee agreed to let Holles see the charges against him and to have his goods restored on payment of a bond. In November the committee had retreated further, ordering that unless the charges against Holles could be proved within a month, he was to be released from the bond – and he was duly absolved in January 1652.557CCC 2772.

In March 1654 Cromwell, as lord protector, offered an amnesty to Presbyterians in exile, and Holles returned to Dorset.558Crawford, Holles, 182. During the protectorate, he remained in retirement, and was reluctant to engage even with local politics – preferring to rely on friends such as Fitzjames to restore goods confiscated from his houses by local officials, as in the early months of 1656.559Alnwick, Northumberland 551, ff. 52, 62, 65v. He was emboldened to petition the protectorate council in March 1657, concerning the possibility of purchasing the lands of his brother-in-law, Oliver Fitzwilliams, on trust for his sister, and this was referred to four councillors (including his kinsman, Edmund Sheffield, 2nd earl of Mulgrave) who gave their approval, once the consent of the Irish government had been obtained.560CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 300; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 840. The aura of suspicion that surrounded Holles did not dissipate, however. In April 1658 William Goffe* heard information about a plot in Sussex which alleged that ‘Mr Denzil Holles and Sir William Waller were also engaged’.561TSP vii. 80, 99. The fall of the protectorate in May 1659 did not improve matters. In August 1659, during the abortive risings associated with Sir George Boothe* and others took place across the country, Holles was arrested but soon released.562CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 137, 165.

General George Monck’s* march south in January 1660, and the decision to allow the return to the Commons of the MPs secluded in December 1648, gave Holles the opportunity to involve himself in national affairs once again. On 23 February 1660 he was elected as a councillor of state with 61 votes.563Add. 70059; CJ vii. 849b. He was quickly rehabilitated. On 2 March the Commons resolved that all orders against Holles passed in 1647 and 1648 were to be obliterated from the Journals, and on 12 March he was restored to his post as custos rotulorum of Dorset.564CJ vii. 859b, 871a. He was named to the committee on the House of Lords on 13 March, and on 16 March the Commons ordered that Holles, William Morice* and Arthur Annesley* attend George Monck to satisfy his concerns.565CJ vii. 872b, 880a. Holles was elected for Dorchester in the Convention elections in April, and reluctantly agreed to the unconditional restoration of Charles II in the following month. He was created Baron Holles of Ifield in June 1661, and died in February 1680, to be succeeded by his eldest son, Francis Holles*.

Conclusion

Denzil Holles’s parliamentary career during the 1640s falls into two distinct parts. In the first two years he was one of the king’s most intemperate enemies, a man who made inflammatory speeches, provoked the king to impeach him as one of the ‘Five Members’, and goaded Parliament into armed conflict; yet from the autumn of 1642 he was equally determined in his efforts to make peace with the king, whether at Oxford (1643), Uxbridge (1645), Newcastle (1646) or Newport (1648). Holles had angered the king in the months leading to civil war, and as a supporter of peace he demonstrated a similar lack of diplomacy at Westminster, and took some astonishing risks, notably at Oxford in November 1644, when he conducted private negotiations with the king. The Savile affair was so dangerous to Holles because the allegations were substantially true. It was this quest for peace – and alarm at the prospect of a settlement dictated by the Independents – that encouraged Holles to ally first with Essex and then with Presbyterians like Stapilton, Lewis and Waller. These were marriages of convenience, and Holles was careful to keep some distance between himself and the Presbyterian faction in 1645 and for much of 1646. Indeed, Holles can properly be described as a ‘leader’ of the Presbyterian interest only for a very short period of time – between the death of Essex in September 1646 and the army’s attempt to impeach him in June 1647 - and even then it is not clear that he shared all the priorities of his allies. It is revealing that, while Holles supported the ‘forcing of the Houses’, he played little part in the Commons in late July and early August 1647.

This flexible approach can be seen in Holles’s other political dealings. He courted the Scots support in 1641 and again in 1645-6, but in 1643-4 was among their most vociferous detractors, and he never sympathised with their rigid religious agenda. His links with the Irish Protestants, based in part on kinship ties, were perhaps more enduring, but again there is at the least the suspicion that he and they wanted rather different things from the relationship. Although Holles retained strong connections to the court at Oxford, and made immediate approaches to the royalists in exile when forced to flee to the continent in 1647 and 1648, he was not a crypto-royalist, and greeted the unconditional restoration of 1660 with dismay. Political flexibility should not mask a basic consistency in his ultimate aim. Throughout the civil war years Holles had sought a negotiated peace based on limiting the powers of the crown and the church, with Parliament as the guarantor; but he would accommodate neither the religious radicalism of the New Model nor a return to the status quo ante bellum.