Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Holland, Seth
HOLLAND, SETH (d. 1561), dean of Worcester, was educated at All Souls' College, Oxford, where he was admitted b.A. 19 Dec. 1534, and commenced M.A. 31 March 1539 (Oxf. Univ. Reg. Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 179). He was elected a fellow of his college, and after taking orders became rector of Fladbury, Worcestershire, and chaplain to Cardinal Pole. In 1555 he was chosen warden of All Souls' College, and on 26 April in that year he was installed as prebendary of Worcester. On 12 Aug. 1557 he was installed dean of Worcester in the place of Philip Hawford, alias Ballard, the last abbot of Evesham, and about the same time he was instituted to the rectory of Bishop Cleeve, Gloucestershire. Shortly before Mary's death, Cardinal Pole, then lying on his deathbed, sent Holland to the queen, with a letter in which he dwelt on his fidelity, and begged Mary 'to give credit to whatever he shall say on my behalf' (Phillips, Life of Pole, 1767, ii. 277). As Holland refused to comply with the religious changes introduced after Elizabeth's accession, he was removed from the wardenship of All Souls, and in October 1559 he was deprived of the deanery of Worcester. He was committed prisoner to the Marshalsea, and, dying in confinement, was buried on 6 March 1560-1 in St. George's parish, Southwark, 'out of the King's Bench prison,' being brought to the church by about threescore gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Oxford, 'for he was a grett lernydman' (Machyn, Diary, p. 252).
[Bridgewater's Concertatio Ecclesiae Catholicae. iii. 104; Burrows's Worthies of All Souls, pp. xiv, 75; Chambers's Worcestershire Biog., p. 59; Dodd's Church Hist. i. 510; Kennett's MSS. 46 f. 309; Maitland's Reformation Essays, p. 445: Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), iii. 70, 80, 559; Strype's Annals, i. 50, 246, fol.; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 26, 107.]