Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Holloway, Richard
HOLLOWAY, Sir RICHARD (d. 1695?), judge, was son of John Holloway, B.C.L., who was an official to the archdeacon of Berkshire and a ‘covetous civilian and public notary’ of Oxford. Richard Holloway is said to have been a fellow of New College, but his name does not appear in the list of graduates. He was admitted a member of the Inner Temple on 7 Feb. 1634, and was called to the bar on 24 Nov. 1658. His name does not appear in any law reports, and he probably practised locally in Oxford, where he lived opposite the Blue Boar in St. Aldate's parish. In February 1666 he was elected recorder by the mayor and burgesses of Wallingford (Cal. State Papers, Dom.) He was reader of his inn in Lent 1675, and in 1681 was one of the counsel for the prosecution of Stephen College [q. v.] at Oxford on a charge of high treason (xi. 331). In 1677 he had become a serjeant-at-law (Wood, Life, p. lxxix), and was already a knight and king's serjeant in June 1683 (Luttrell, Diary, i. 260). On 25 Sept. 1683 he was appointed a judge of the king's bench, and in November was one of the judges before whom Algernon Sidney was tried. He also concurred in the sentences on Titus Oates and on the Earl of Devonshire for assaulting Colonel Thomas Colepeper [q. v.] For these acts he, with the other judges, was summoned before parliament after the revolution, and, having been favourable to the dispensing power, was excepted out of the Act of Indemnity, 2 William and Mary. This was in spite of the fact that he had resisted James's claim to impose martial law in time of peace without consent of parliament, and as one of the judges at the trial of the seven bishops had declared their petition not to be a seditious libel, and had thereby brought upon himself dismissal from his judgeship on 4 July 1688. He withdrew to Oxford, where he lived in Nov. 1695, when he drew up Anthony à Wood's will.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Bramston's Autobiogr. pp. 272, 310; Luttrell's Diary, i. 449; State Trials, viii. 591, ix. 867, x. 45, 157, 515, 1315, xi. 1200, 1368, xii. 426; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. Life; and Fasti, ii. 12.]