HOLLAND, SIR HENRY, Bart. (1788-1873), English physician and author, was born at Knutsford, Cheshire, on the 27th of October 1788. His maternal grandmother was the sister of Josiah Wedgwood, whose grandson was Charles Darwin; and his paternal aunt was the mother of Mrs Gaskell. After spending some years at a private school at Knutsford, he was sent to a school at Newcastle-on-Tyne, whence after four years he was transferred to Dr J. P. Estlin’s school near Bristol. There he at once took the position of head boy, in succession to John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, an honour which required to be maintained by physical prowess. On leaving school he became articled clerk to a mercantile firm in Liverpool, but, as the privilege was reserved to him of passing two sessions at Glasgow university, he at the close of his second session sought relief from his articles, and in 1806 began the study of medicine in the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1811. After several years spent in foreign travel, he began practice in 1816 as a physician in London—according to his own statement, “with a fair augury of success speedily and completely fulfilled.” This “success,” he adds, “was materially aided by visits for four successive years to Spa, at the close of that which is called the London season.” It must also, however, be in a great degree attributed to his happy temperament and his gifts as a conversationalist—qualities the influence of which, in the majority of cases belonging to his class of practice, is often of more importance than direct medical treatment. In 1816 he was elected F.R.S., and in 1828 F.R.C.S. He became physician in ordinary to Prince Albert in 1840, and was appointed in 1852 physician in ordinary to the queen. In April 1853 he was created a baronet. He was also a D.C.L. of Oxford and a member of the principal learned societies of Europe. He was twice married, his second wife being a daughter of Sydney Smith, a lady of considerable literary talent, who published a biography of her father. Sir Henry Holland at an early period of his practice resolved to devote to his professional duties no more of his time than was necessary to secure an income of £5000 a year, and also to spend two months of every year solely in foreign travel. By the former resolution he secured leisure for a wide acquaintance with general literature, and for a more than superficial cultivation of several branches of science; and the latter enabled him, besides visiting, “and most of them repeatedly, every country of Europe,” to make extensive tours in the other three continents, journeying often to places little frequented by European travellers. As, moreover, he procured an introduction to nearly all the eminent personages in his line of travel, and knew many of them in his capacity of physician, his acquaintance with “men and cities” was of a species without a parallel. The London Medical Record, in noticing his death, which took place on his eighty-fifth birthday, October 27, 1873, remarked that it “had occurred under circumstances highly characteristic of his remarkable career.” On his return from a journey in Russia he was present, on Friday, October 24th, at the trial of Marshal Bazaine in Paris, dining with some of the judges in the evening. He reached London on the Saturday, took ill the following day, and died quietly on the Monday afternoon.
Sir Henry Holland was the author of General View of the Agriculture of Cheshire (1807); Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly and Greece (1812-1813, 2nd ed., 1819); Medical Notes and Reflections (1839); Chapters on Mental Physiology (1852); Essays on Scientific and other Subjects contributed to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews (1862); and Recollections of Past Life (1872).
HOLLAND, HENRY FOX, 1st Baron (1705-1774), English statesman, second son of Sir Stephen Fox, was born on the 28th of September 1705. Inheriting a large share of the riches which his father had accumulated, he squandered it soon after attaining his majority, and went to the Continent to escape from his creditors. There he made the acquaintance of a countrywoman of fortune, who became his patroness and was so lavish with her purse that, after several years’ absence, he was in a position to return home and, in 1735, to enter parliament as member for Hindon in Wiltshire. He became the favourite pupil and devoted supporter of Sir Robert Walpole, achieving unequalled and unenviable proficiency in the worst political arts of his master and model. As a speaker he was fluent and self-possessed, imperturbable under attack, audacious in exposition or retort, and able to hold his own against Pitt himself. Thus he made himself a power in the House of Commons and an indispensable member of several administrations. He was surveyor-general of works from 1737 to 1742, was member for Windsor from 1741 to 1761; lord of the treasury in 1743, secretary at war and member of the privy council in 1746, and in 1755 became leader of the House of Commons, secretary of state and a member of the cabinet under the duke of Newcastle. In 1757, in the rearrangements of the government, Fox was ultimately excluded from the cabinet, and given the post of paymaster of the forces. During the war, which Pitt conducted with extraordinary vigour, and in which the nation was intoxicated with glory, Fox devoted himself mainly to accumulating a vast fortune. In 1762 he again accepted the leadership of the House, with a seat in the cabinet, under the earl of Bute, and exercised his skill in cajolery and corruption to induce the House of Commons to approve of the treaty of Paris of 1763; as a recompense, he was raised to the House of Lords with the title of Baron Holland of Foxley, Wiltshire, on the 16th of April 1763. In 1765 he was forced to resign the paymaster generalship, and four years later a petition of the livery of the city of London against the ministers referred to him as “the public defaulter of unaccounted millions.” The proceedings brought against him in the court of exchequer were stayed by a royal warrant; and in a statement published by him he proved that in the delays in making up the accounts of his office he had transgressed neither the law nor the custom of the time. From the interest on the outstanding balances he had, none the less, amassed a princely fortune. He strove, but in vain, to obtain promotion to the dignity of an earl, a dignity upon which he had set his heart, and he died at Holland House, Kensington, on the 1st of July 1774, a sorely disappointed man, with a reputation for cunning and unscrupulousness which cannot easily be matched, and with an unpopularity which justifies the conclusion that he was the most thoroughly hated statesman of his day. Lord Holland married in 1744 Lady Georgina Caroline Lennox, daughter of the duke of Richmond, who was created Baroness Holland, of Holland, Lincolnshire, in 1762. There were four sons of the marriage: Stephen, 2nd Lord Holland (d. 1774); Henry (d. an infant); Charles James (the celebrated statesman); and Henry Edward (1755-1811), soldier and diplomatist.
See Walpole’s and other memoirs of the time, also the article [Fox, Charles James].
HOLLAND, HENRY RICH, 1st Earl of (1590-1649), 2nd son of Robert, 1st earl of Warwick, and of Penelope, Sir Philip Sidney’s “Stella,” daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st earl of Essex, was baptized on the 19th of August 1590, educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, knighted on the 3rd of June 1610, and returned to parliament for Leicester in 1610 and 1614. In 1610 he was present at the siege of Juliers. Favours were showered upon him by James I. He was made gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles, prince of Wales, and captain of the yeomen of the guard; and on the 8th of March 1623 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kensington. In 1624 he was sent to Paris to negotiate the marriage treaty between Charles and Henrietta Maria. On the 15th of September he was created earl of Holland, and in 1625 was sent on two further missions, first to Paris to arrange a treaty between Louis XIII. and the Huguenots, and later to the Netherlands in company with Buckingham. In October 1627 he was given command of the troops sent to reinforce Buckingham at Rhé, but through delay in starting only met the defeated troops on their return. He succeeded Buckingham as chancellor of Cambridge University; was master of the horse in 1628, and was appointed constable of Windsor and high steward to the queen in 1629. He interested himself, like his elder brother, Lord Warwick, in the plantations; and was the first governor of the Providence company in 1630, and one of the proprietors of Newfoundland in 1637. In 1631 he was made chief-justice-in-eyre south of the Trent, and in this capacity was responsible for the unpopular revival of the obsolete forest laws. He intrigued at court against Portland and against Strafford, who expressed for him the greatest contempt. In 1636 he was disappointed at not obtaining the great office of lord high admiral, but was made instead groom of the stole. In 1639 he was appointed general of the horse, and drew ridicule upon himself by the fiasco at Kelso. In the second war against the Scots he was superseded in favour of Conway. He opposed the dissolution of the Short Parliament, joined the peers who supported the parliamentary cause, and gave evidence against Strafford. He was, however, won back to the king’s side by the queen, and on the 16th of April 1641 made captain general north of the Trent. Dissatisfied, however, with Charles’s refusal to grant him the nomination of a new baron, he again abandoned him, refused the summons to York, and was deprived of his office as groom of the stole at the instance of the queen, who greatly resented his ingratitude. He was chosen by the parliament in March and July 1642 to communicate its votes to Charles, who received him, much to his indignation, with studied coldness. He was appointed one of the committee of safety in July; made zealous speeches on behalf of the parliamentary cause to the London citizens; and joined Essex’s army at Twickenham, where, it is said, he persuaded him to avoid a battle. In 1643 he appeared as a peacemaker, and after failing to bring over Essex, he returned to the king. His reception, however, was not a cordial one, and he was not reinstated in his office of groom of the stole. After, therefore, accompanying the king to Gloucester and taking part in the first battle of Newbury, he once more returned to the parliament, declaring that the court was too much bent on continuing hostilities, and the influence of the “papists” too strong for his patriotism. He was restored to his estates, but the Commons obliged the Lords to exclude him from the upper house, and his petition in 1645 for compensation for his losses and for a pension was refused. His hopes being in this quarter also disappointed, he once again renewed his allegiance to the king’s cause; and after endeavouring to promote the negotiations for peace in 1645 and 1647 he took up arms in the second Civil War, received a commission as general, and put himself at the head of 600 men at Kingston. He was defeated on the 7th of July 1647, captured at St Neots shortly afterwards, and imprisoned at Warwick Castle. He was tried before a “high court of justice” on the 3rd of February 1649, and in spite of his plea that he had received quarter was sentenced to death. He was executed together with Hamilton and Capel on the 9th of March. Clarendon styles him “a very well-bred man and a fine gentleman in good times.”[1] He was evidently a man of shallow character, devoid of ability, raised far above his merits and hopelessly unfit for the great times in which he lived. Lord Holland married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Walter Cope of Kensington, and, besides several daughters, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Robert, succeeded him as 2nd earl of Holland, and inherited the earldom of Warwick in 1673.
[1] Hist. of the Rebellion, xi. 263.