Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Holland, Henry (d.1625)
HOLLAND, HENRY (d. 1625), Roman catholic divine, a native of Daventry, Northamptonshire, was brought up at Worcester, and afterwards sent to Eton College, whence he proceeded to St. John's College, Oxford, of which he was nominated a scholar by the founder, Sir Thomas White, in 1565. He was admitted B.A. on 1 Dec. 1569 (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 275). Having been converted to Roman catholicism, he withdrew to the English College at Douay in 1573. He applied himself to the study of theology, was ordained deacon on 6 April 1577, and graduated B.D. in the university of Douay in 1578. In the latter year the college was removed to Rheims, where Holland was engaged, with Gregory Martin and other scholars, in translating the Bible into English. He accompanied Dr. William Allen to Paris in April 1579, returned to the college in the following month, and on 19 March 1579–80 was ordained priest. In 1582 he was sent to the English mission, where he laboured for several years. On returning to Douay he resumed his studies, and was created by the university a licentiate of theology on 22 Sept. 1587 (Douay Diaries, p. 274). When Pits wrote his work, ‘De Angliæ Scriptoribus,’ he described Holland as being then (in 1611) very old, having for some years been divinity reader in the monastery at Marchiennes in Hainault. It would appear that he was afterwards appointed to a similar office in the monastery of Anchine (Aquicinctum), near Douay, where he remained till his death on 28 Sept. 1625. He was buried in the cloister of the monastery, and a monument was erected to his memory with a quaint Latin epitaph, which has been printed by Wood (Hist. et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. ii. 307).
He wrote: 1. ‘Urna Aurea, vel in Sacrosanctam Missam, maximeque in divinum Canonem Henrici Hollandi Expositio,’ Douay (Laurence Kellam), 1612, 12mo. 2. ‘Vita Thomæ Stapletoni,’ in ‘Opera quæ extant omnia Stapletonii,’ 4 vols., Paris, 1620, fol., a work probably edited by Holland. 3. ‘Carmina diversa,’ and also, says Wood, ‘other things printed beyond the sea which seldom or never come into these parts.’ A translation of a Latin letter by Holland, describing the perils to which priests were exposed in England, is printed in the appendix to part i. of Challoner's ‘Missionary Priests.’
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 385, Fasti, i. 183; Records of the English Catholics, i. 427; Dodd's Church Hist. ii. 382; Pits, De Angl. Script. p. 808; Gillow's Dict. Engl. Cath.; Duthillœul's Bibl. Douaisienne, p. 186.]