private meeting with the king, when at Charles’s request they
drew up the answer which they advised him to return to the
parliament. This interview was not communicated to the other
commissioners or to parliament, and though doubtless their
motives were thoroughly patriotic, their action was scarcely
compatible with their position as trustees of the parliamentary
cause. Holles was also appointed a commissioner at Uxbridge
in January 1645 and endeavoured to overcome the crucial
difficulty of the militia by postponing its discussion altogether.
As leader of the moderate (or Presbyterian) party Holles now
came into violent antagonism with Cromwell and the army
faction. “They hated one another equally”; and Holles
would not allow any merit in Cromwell, accusing him of cowardice
and attributing his successes to chance and good fortune.
With the support of Essex and the Scottish commissioners
Holles endeavoured in December 1644 to procure Cromwell’s
impeachment as an incendiary between the two nations, and
“passionately” opposed the self-denying ordinance. In return
Holles was charged with having held secret communications
with the king at Oxford and with a correspondence with Lord
Digby; but after a long examination by the House he was
pronounced innocent on the 19th of July 1645. Determined
on Cromwell’s destruction, he refused to listen to the prudent
counsels of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who urged that Cromwell
was too strong to be resisted or provoked, and on the 29th of
March 1647 drew up in parliament a hasty proclamation declaring
the promoters of the army petition enemies to the state; in
April challenging Ireton to a duel.
The army party was now thoroughly exasperated against Holles. “They were resolved one way or other to be rid of him,” says Clarendon. On the 16th of June 1647 eleven members including Holles were charged by the army with various offences against the state, followed on the 23rd by fresh demands for their impeachment and for their suspension, which was refused. On the 26th, however, the eleven members, to avoid violence, asked leave to withdraw. Their reply to the charges against them was handed into the House on the 19th of July, and on the 20th Holles took leave of the House in A grave and learned speech . . .After the riot of the apprentices on the 26th, for which Holles disclaimed any responsibility, the eleven members were again (30th of July) recalled to their seats, and Holles was one of the committee of safety appointed. On the flight of the speaker, however, and part of the parliament to the army, and the advance of the latter to London, Holles, whose party and policy were now entirely defeated, left England on the 22nd of August for Sainte-Mère Eglise in Normandy. On the 26th of January 1648 the eleven members, who had not appeared when summoned to answer the charges against them, were expelled. Not long afterwards, however, on the 3rd of June, these proceedings were annulled; and Holles, who had then returned and was a prisoner in the Tower with the rest of the eleven members, was discharged. He returned to his seat on the 14th of August.
Holles was one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the king at Newport on the 18th of September 1648. Aware of the plans of the extreme party, Holles threw himself at the king’s feet and implored him not to waste time in useless negotiations, and he was one of those who stayed behind the rest in order to urge Charles to compliance. On the 1st of December he received the thanks of the House. On the occasion of Pride’s Purge on the 6th of December Holles absented himself and escaped again to France. From his retirement there he wrote to Charles II. in 1651, advising him to come to terms with the Scots as the only means of effecting a restoration; but after the alliance he refused Charles’s offer of the secretaryship of state. In March 1654 Cromwell, who in alarm at the plots being formed against him was attempting to reconcile some of his opponents to his government, sent Holles a pass “with notable circumstances of kindness and esteem.” His subsequent movements and the date of his return to England are uncertain, but in 1656 Cromwell’s resentment was again excited against him as the supposed author of a tract, really written by Clarendon. He appears to have been imprisoned, for his release was ordered by the council on the 2nd of September 1659.
Holles took part in the conference with Monk at Northumberland House, when the Restoration was directly proposed, and with the secluded members took his seat again in parliament on the 21st of February 1660. On the 23rd of February he was chosen one of the council to carry on the government during the interregnum; on the 2nd of March the votes passed against him and the sequestration of his estates were repealed, and on the 7th he was made custos rotulorum for Dorsetshire. He took a leading part in bringing about the Restoration, was chairman of the committee of seven appointed to prepare an answer to the king’s letter, and as one of the deputed Lords and Commons he delivered at the Hague the invitation to Charles to return. He preceded Charles to England to prepare for his reception, and was sworn of the privy council on the 5th of June. He was one of the thirty-four commissioners appointed to try the regicides in September and October. On the 20th of April 1661 he was created Baron Holles of Ifield in Sussex, and became henceforth one of the leading members of the Upper House.
Holles, who was a good French scholar, was sent as ambassador to France on the 7th of July 1663. He was ostentatiously English, and a zealous upholder of the national honour and interests; but his position was rendered difficult by the absence of home support. On the 27th of January 1666 war was declared, but Holles was not recalled till May. Pepys remarks on the 14th of November: “Sir G. Cartaret tells me that just now my Lord Holles had been with him and wept to think in what a condition we are fallen.” Soon afterwards he was employed on another disagreeable mission in which the national honour was again at stake, being sent to Breda to make a peace with Holland in May 1667. He accomplished his task successfully, the articles being signed on the 21st of June.
On the 12th of December he protested against Lord Clarendon’s banishment and was nearly put out of the council in consequence. In 1668 he was manager for the Lords in the celebrated Skinner’s case, in which his knowledge of precedents was of great service, and on which occasion he published the tract The Grand Question concerning the Judicature of the House of Peeres (1669). Holles, who was honourably distinguished by Charles as a “stiff and sullen man,” and as one who would not yield to solicitation, now became with Halifax and Shaftesbury a leader in the resistance to the domestic and foreign policy of the court. Together with Halifax he opposed both the arbitrary Conventicle Act of 1670 and the Test Oath of 1675, his objection to the latter being chiefly founded on the invasion of the privileges of the peers which it involved; and he defended with vigour the right of the Peers to record their protests. On the 7th of January 1676 Holles with Halifax was summarily dismissed from the council. On the occasion of the Commons petitioning the king in favour of an alliance with the Dutch, Holles addressed a Letter to Van Beuninghen at Amsterdam on “Love to our Country and Hatred of a Common Enemy,” enlarging upon the necessity of uniting in a common defence against French aggression and in support of the Protestant religion. “The People are strong but the Government is weak,” he declares; and he attributes the cause of weakness to the transference of power from the nobility to the people, and to a succession of three weak princes. “Save what (the Parliament) did, we have not taken one true step nor struck one true stroke since Queen Elizabeth.” He endeavoured to embarrass the government this year in his tract on Some Considerations upon the Question whether the parliament is dissolved by its prorogation for 15 months. It was held by the Lords to be seditious and scandalous; while for publishing another pamphlet written by Holles entitled The Grand Question concerning the Prorogation of this Parliament (otherwise The Long Parliament dissolved) the corrector of the proof sheets was committed to the Tower and fined £1000. In order to bring about the downfall of Danby (afterwards duke of Leeds) and the disbanding of the army, which he believed to be intended for the suppression of the national liberties, Holles at this time (1677–1679) engaged, as did many others, in a
