nell circle, near his friend Gentili. In private life he was a man singularly beloved and esteemed. His biographer says: "His tall, lithe, powerful frame, and his noble head and eagle look were eminently characteristic. He was full of gesture and vivacity, yet withal was simple in manner and direct in speech." 163
Holinshed, Raphael, a distinguished chronicler, or rather collector of chronicles, was an Englishman, who seems to have been educated at one of the English universities, and to have taken orders in the church; but the only fact in his history known with tolerable certainty is that he died in 1580. In the six-volume 4to. edition of his Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, published in London in 1807-'8, the portion relating to Ireland occupies the sixth volume. It consists chiefly of excerpts from Stanihurst, Cambrensis, Flatsburie, and Marlborough, continued to the end of the Desmond war, by John Hooker, alias Vowell, a native of Devonshire, who came to Ireland as agent for Sir Peter Carew, represented Athenry in the Parliament of 1568, and died about 1605. The real value of Holinshed's work "depends on its learning and research, which have made it an invaluable aid to all who have since undertaken to illustrate the early annals of England [the United Kingdom]." 16 124 164
Holmes, Robert, a distinguished Irish lawyer, for many years father of the north-east Bar, was born in Dublin in 1765. He entered Trinity College in 1782, and was called to the Bar. In 1798 he entered the lawyers' corps of yeomanry. During a parade in the hall of the Four Courts, he threw down his arms on the announcement being made that the corps was to be placed under the command of the military authorities, dreading least he might be called upon to assist in the atrocities then perpetrated upon the country people. This led to a challenge, for giving which he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. In 1799 he published a passionate appeal against the Union. In 1803, although clear of participation in the plans of his brother-in-law, Robert Emmet, he was imprisoned for many months on suspicion. This of course retarded his advancement, but his great legal abilities eventually asserted themselves, and he rose to the highest eminence at the Bar. Never being able to forget the means by which the Union had been carried, and the sad fate of many of his relatives in 1798, he resolutely refused the offers of advancement, and even of a silk gown, made him by successive governments. The University Magazine says: "Few who had an opportunity of hearing will ever forget that splendid burst of impassioned eloquence by which the peroration of his speech, in the case of the Queen v. the Nation newspaper was distinguished. There is thought in every sentence; everlasting truths are enunciated in language of the rarest beauty; and when the old man, eloquent as he warmed with his subject, touched upon the sufferings of his country, her beauty, and her griefs, the musical intonation of his voice, his venerable and imposing aspect, the tear which stood trembling in his eye, the natural and simple grace of his gesture, all produced upon us an impression that can never be effaced. It was truly a fine sight to see him in his eightieth summer, advocating at the close of his life, with all the fire and all the vigour of his early years, those principles which persecution had failed to make him abandon, or temptation induce him to change."116 His Case of Ireland Stated, published in 1847, was an able advocacy of the Repeal of the Union. He died at the house of his daughter in London, 7th October 1859,331 aged 94. 116(31) 254(3) 331
Holt, Joseph, a leader in the Insurrection of 1798, was born at Ballydaniel, County of Wicklow, in 1756, of Protestant parents, descended from English planters in the reign of James I. At the breaking out of the insurrection he lived near Roundwood, in the County of Wicklow — a substantial farmer, a wool-buyer, and barony constable. From his own account, he does not seem to have been an United Irishman, or to have been engaged in any of the political plots of the time, but upon his house being burnt down by the yeomanry, he took to the mountains and gathered round him a formidable band of insurgents. It was "the possession of these superior qualities — for Holt's acts were his own, he had no instructor — added to his strict enforcement of discipline, and attention to the comforts and wants of his men, that enabled him, as the leader of a war of mountain skirmishes, to defy for six months the united efforts of the royal army, and the numerous corps of yeomanry [sometimes chasing parties into the very suburbs of Dublin] in an area of little more than twenty miles square, within thirty miles of Dublin at its further or ten at its nearest point of approach. Nor was it by skulking in the wild and secluded districts of bog and mountain which the County of Wicklow presents — a county the appearance whereof was most happily compared by Dean Swift to a frieze mantle fringed with gold lace. Holt frequently came in
