Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Holland, Guy
HOLLAND, GUY (1587?–1660), jesuit, who sometimes assumed the name of Holt, was born in Lincolnshire in or about 1587, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1605. On being converted to Roman catholicism he retired to Spain, and entered the English College at Valladolid on 26 Nov. 1608. He was ordained priest, and in May 1613 was sent to England, where he joined the Society of Jesus in 1615. He was arrested, with other fathers, in March 1627–8, at the London residence of the society. On 14 July 1628 he was professed of the four vows. For forty-five years he laboured on the English mission, chiefly in the London district, and in the ‘residence of St. Mary,’ or Oxford district, of which he was at one time superior. He died in England on 26 Nov. 1660, aged 73.
He is author of: 1. ‘Exceptions’ made against the ‘Discourse of the Infallibility of the Church of Rome,’ by Lucius Cary, lord Falkland, which appeared at Oxford in 1645, 4to. Lord Falkland replied in ‘A View of some Exceptions made against the Discourse,’ &c., Oxford, 1646, 4to. Bishop Barlow distinctly declares that Holland wrote the answer to the ‘Discourse’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, ii. 569), but in the British Museum Catalogue the authorship is ascribed to the Rev. Thomas White, alias Blackloe. Another reply to the ‘Discourse’ was written by Hugh Paulinus or Serenus Cressy [q. v.] 2. ‘The Grand Prerogative of Humane Nature. Namely, the Souls naturall or native immortality, and freedome from corruption, shewed by many arguments, and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous Authour, who hath adventured to impugne it. By G. H., Gent.,’ London, 1653, 8vo, pp. 134. Other works, left ready for the press, are said to have been stopped by the censors owing to one or two points in which the author deviated from the common opinion of the doctors.
[Addit. MS. 5871, f. 174; De Backer's Bibl. de la Compagnie de Jésus; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 309; Foley's Records, i. 700, vii. 365; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Lewis's Lives of Lord Clarendon's Friends, i. 166; Nichols's Discovery of the Jesuits' College at Clerkenwell (Camden Society's Miscellany, vol. ii.), p. 48; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 117; Southwell's Bibl. Scriptorum Soc. Jesu, p. 311; Wallace's Anti-Trinitarian Biography, i. 157; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]