Holles, Gervase (1606 -1675)

Gervase Holles was the only son of Frescheville Holles, of Grimsby, and Elizabeth, daughter and heir of John Kingston, and a kinsman of John Holles, Earl of Clare, by whom he was brought up. He was admitted to the Middle Temple 3 May 1628, came into the family estates in 1630, and married, 17 June 1630, Dorothy, daughter of John Kirketon. He spent four years rebuilding his house, and collecting materials for a history of Lincolnshire. He moved to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, 20 September 1634, where his wife and infant daughter died in the following January, and his son George in August 1635. He returned to the Middle Temple at Michaelmas that year, and was made Comptroller of that Society at Christmas. The next year he was made Mayor of Grimsby, and was elected Member of Parliament for Grimsby 26 March 1640. On 26 April 1641, he was expelled for objecting violently to the Scotch proposals, and although his expulsion was rescinded in December, he refused to return to the House. Holles fought on the royalist side during the Civil War as a Colonel in the Infantry. During the Commonwealth he was an exile in Holland, taking many of the manuscripts of his Lincolnshire history with him. The remainder were destroyed when his house was sacked during the fighting. Seven volumes are in Landsdowne Manuscripts 207 a f, an eighth volume is Additional MS 6118 in the British Library. After the Restoration he was made Master of Requests, and was elected Member of Parliament for Great Grimsby from 1661 until his death in 1675.