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 In the second war against the Scots he was superseded in favour of Conway.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.
HOLLAND, HENRY RICHARD VASSALL FOX, 3rd Baron
(1773–1840), was the son of Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland,
his mother, Lady Mary Fitzpatrick, being the daughter of the
earl of Upper Ossory. He was born at Winterslow House in
Wiltshire, on the 21st of November 1773, and his father died
in the following year. He was educated at Eton and at Christ
Church, Oxford, where he became the friend of Canning, of
Hookham Frere, and of other wits of the time. Lord Holland
did not take the same political side as his friends in the conflicts
of the revolutionary epoch. He was from his boyhood deeply
attached to his uncle, C. J. Fox, and remained steadily loyal
to the Whig party. In 1791 he visited Paris and became acquainted
with Lafayette and Talleyrand, and in 1793 he again
went abroad to travel in France and Italy. At Florence he
met with Lady Webster, wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, Bart.,
who left her husband for him. She was by birth Elizabeth
Vassall (1770–1845), daughter of Richard Vassall, a planter
in Jamaica. A son was born of their irregular union, a Charles
Richard Fox (1796–1873), who after some service in the navy
entered the Grenadiers, and was known in later life as a collector
of Greek coins. His collection was bought for the royal museum
of Berlin when he died in 1873. He married Lady Mary Fitzclarence,
a daughter of William IV. by Mrs Jordan. Sir Godfrey
Webster having obtained a divorce, Lord Holland was enabled
to marry on the 6th of July 1797. He had taken his seat in
the House of Lords on the 5th of October 1796. During several
years he may be said almost to have constituted the Whig party
in the Upper House. His protests against the measures of the
Tory ministers were collected and published, as the Opinions
of Lord Holland (1841), by Dr Moylan of Lincoln’s Inn. In 1800
he was authorized to take the name of Vassall, and after 1807
he signed himself Vassall Holland, though the name was no part
of his title. In 1800 Lord and Lady Holland went abroad and
remained in France and Spain till 1805, visiting Paris during
the Peace of Amiens, and being well received by Napoleon.
Lady Holland always professed a profound admiration of
Napoleon, of which she made a theatrical display after his fall,
and he left her a gold snuff-box by his will. In public life Lord
Holland took a share proportionate to his birth and opportunities.
He was appointed to negotiate with the American envoys,
Monroe and W. Pinkney, was admitted to the privy council on the
27th of August 1806, and on the 15th of October entered the
cabinet “of all the talents” as lord privy seal, retiring with
the rest of his colleagues in March 1807. He led the opposition
to the Regency bill in 1811, and he attacked the “orders in
council” and other strong measures of the government taken
to counteract Napoleon’s Berlin decrees. He was in fact in
politics a consistent Whig, and in that character he denounced
the treaty of 1813 with Sweden which bound England to consent
to the forcible union of Norway, and he resisted the bill of 1816
for confining Napoleon in St Helena. His loyalty as a Whig
secured recognition when his party triumphed in the struggle
for parliamentary reform, by his appointment as chancellor of
the duchy of Lancaster in the cabinet of Lord Grey and Lord
Melbourne, and he was still in office when he died on the 22nd
of October 1840. Lord Holland is notable, not for his somewhat
- ↑ Hist. of the Rebellion, xi. 263.
