HOLL, ELIAS. 



HOLLAND, LOUD. 



1,0 



retain a small portion of bis dominions under tho protectioa of the 

 British, (Mill. 7/iW. / Br,litk India ; Duff, Hat. of MaJtratou.) 



HULL, ELI AS, a distinguished German arcliitect, waa born at 

 Augsburg in 1 673. 11 u father, Johsnn Holl, wai likewise an architect, 

 and waa much employed by the celebrated graf Kuggcr of Augsburg. 

 Eliaa was taken when young to Venice, by a rich merchant of the 

 nameof Gmrb; and he then studied the Italian architecture, which 

 etyle he adopted in hit future works at Augsbuiy. though simplified 

 in part* and in decorations. Augsburg owes to Holl a great portion 

 of its public buildings, bat his masterpiece is the Rathhaus, or town- 

 hall, built 1015-20, which, though not among the largest, is one of 

 th handsomest in Europe. The facade is 147 feet wide, its depth 

 st 110 feet, and in the centre 152 feet high ; there is a print of it by 

 frttliMiv"T Kleiner. Holl built also several churches, and the castle or 

 palace of Schonfeld, and the palace of \Vilibadberg at Kichstadt. lie 

 died in 1636. aged sixty-three. 



HOLLAND, HKNRY RICHARD VASSAL FOX, LORD, was 

 the only son of Stephen, second Lord Holland. His mother was 

 Mary, daughter of John Fitzpatrick, first Karl of Upper Osaory. 



Sir Stephen Fox, Knight, distinguished for his magnificence and 

 public spirit, as well as for bis great wealth, having, in 1703, at. the 

 age of seventy-six, married a teoond wife, Chriitian, daughter of the 

 Rev. Charles Hope of Naseby in Lincolnshire, had by her, besides a 

 daughter, two sons, Stephen and Henry, and died in 1715 at the ago 

 of eighty-nine. Stephen became Earl of Ilchester; and Henry, who 

 figures in our political history as the rival of the first Pitt, was, in 

 1703, raised to the peerage as Baron Holland, of Foxley, in the county 

 of Wilt*, his lady having tho year before been made Baroness 

 Holland, of Holland, in the county of Lincoln. Both baronies passed 

 to their descendants. The eldest son of the first Lord Holland was 

 Stephen, the second lord ; his second ton was the Right Hon. Charles 

 James Fox. the celebrated orator and statesman. 



The subject of the present notice was born at Winterslow House, 

 in Wilts, the 21st of November 1773. On the 9th of January 1774, 

 that mansion, a splendid building, was destroyed by fire, and the infant 

 was with difficulty saved from the flames by his mother. On the first 

 of July the boy lost his grandfather, the first Lord Holland ; on the 24th 

 of the same month, his grandmother Lady Holland ; and on the 26th 

 of December in the same year, his father, the second Lord Holland ; 

 on which he succeeded to the peerage, when he was little more than 

 a year old. His mother died in 1778, and then the care of the child's 

 education devolved on her brother, the Karl of Upper Ossory. After 

 having been for some time at a school in the country, he was sent to 

 Eton, where he spent eight or nine years, and where George Canning, 

 Mr. Frrrc, the late Lord Carlisle, and other persons who subsequently 

 rose to distinction, were among his contemporaries and associate*. 

 In October 1790 be was entered ss a nobleman at Christchurch, 

 Oxford ; and took the honorary degree of muter of arts, in right of 

 his rank, in June 1792. 



Before leaving the University he made his first visit to the Conti- 

 nent, in the course of which he saw Copenhagen, Paris, and a part of 

 Switzerland. He arrived in France not long after the death of 

 Mirabeau, and soon after the acceptance of the Constitution, by 

 Louis XVI. after being brought buck from Varennes, which was on 

 the 13th of September 1791. In March -1793 be went abroad a second 

 time, and, Franca being now closed, directed his course to Spain, 

 over a great part of which country he travelled, studying the language 

 and literature, and making himself acquainted with the character and 

 manners of the peoj le. From Spain be proceeded to Italy; and 

 there, at Florence, in the beginning of the year 1795, first met Lady 

 Webster, the wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, with whom he returned 

 to England in June 1796, and whom he married the next year, after 

 she bad been divorced from her first husband, who obtained 60002. 

 damages in an action against Lord Holland. (See tho particulars in 

 the 'Annual Register' for 1797, pp. 10, 11.) After his marriage with 

 Lady Webster, Lord Holland assumed, by sign manual, her family 

 name of Vasial, which however has been laid aside by his children. 



He now took bis place in tho House of Lords. His first speech 

 was made on the 9th of January 1798, On the motion for committing 

 the bill for trebling the assessed taxes. He addressed the house both 

 early in the debate, and again at the close, in what is described as 

 having been a very animated and successful reply to Lord Qrenville, 

 who, while bo complimented the young peer on the ability with 

 which he had spoken, bad noticed some of his remarks in a way that 

 was considered to be personal. On tho division, nevertheless, Lord 

 Holland found himself one of a minority of six against seventy-throe ; 

 so that he had early and emphatic experience of the position in which 

 ho was to pass the greater part of his political life. He began also 

 on this occasion a system which ho probably carried to a greater 

 extent than any other peer ever did, by entering a long protest 

 against the bill on the Journals of tho House. This first of Lord 

 Holland's long series of protests, many of them very able papers, was 

 signed only by himself and Lord Oxford. 



From this date Lord Holland took a frequent part in the debates 

 fur the next four yean, being nil this time one of the steadiest 

 opponents of the administration, and seconding in the Upper Houta 

 the principal efforts of his uncle Charles James Fox in the Commons. 

 Among other measures which met with his opposition was the Union 



with Ireland, which he contended (8th May 1800) would both 

 impoverish that country and endanger the constitution of England. 

 A few days before this (on the 30th of April) he had moved that the 

 penal laws against the Roman Catholics should be taken into consider- 

 ation by a committee of the whole house. This motion, the first of 

 the kind that had been made in the Lords, was got rid of by the 

 previous question without a vote. 



Menu while, in 1800, before the war was suspended, he had paid a 

 visit to Germany, and returned from Dresden by Cologne and 

 Brussels, having obtained a French passport from Talleyrand, and 

 liberty to make use of it from Lord Qrenville, then foreign secretary, 

 lu tho summer of 1 802, after the conclusion of the peace of Amiens, 

 he repaired, with Lady Holland, to Paris, and was there soon after 

 joined by Mr. Fox, along with whom bo was introduced to the first 

 consul. From Paris. Lord and Lady Holland proceeded through 

 France to Spain, and they remained in that country till after the 

 breaking out of the war with England in January 1805, returning 

 home through Portugal by means of passports obtained through the 

 Prince of the Peace. 



He now resumed his attendance in the House of Lords ; and his 

 name, as before, appears frequently in the reported debates. He was 

 not admitted to office during tho ministry of Mr. Fox and Lord 

 Grcnville (January September 1806); but on the 28th of Augu-t he 

 and Lord Auckland were appointed joint-commissioners and j>li ni- 

 potentiarics for arranging and settling the several matters in dis- 

 cussion between this country and the United States, with Mr. Munro 

 and Mr. Pinckney, the United States commissioners ; and on the 27th 

 of the same month he was sworn of the privy council. An arrange- 

 ment of the differences with America was effected after a lung 

 ncgociation (with tho omission however of the impressment question) ; 

 but Mr. Jefferson refused his ratification, and it came to nothing. 

 On the 15th of October, after the death of Mr. Fox, Lord Holland was 

 appointed lord privy seal ; and he held that office for the six months 

 longer that the Grenville ministry lasted. 



In 1806, Lord Holland became an author by the publication of 

 ' Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio,' 

 in an octavo volume. This work, which was ropublished iu 1817, when 

 it was extended to two volumes by the addition of an account of Cuillen 

 de Castro and other matter, was creditable to his lordship's taste and 

 familiarity with the more popular parts of Spanish literature, without 

 being very teamed or profound. Lord Holland followed up his life of 

 Lope de Vega the next year by another octavo volume entitled ' Three 

 Comedies from the Spanish.' and in 1803 he edited anil introduced by 

 a preface of some length Mr. Fox's fragment entitled ' A History of 

 the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second.' 



On tho breaking out of the Spanish insurrection iu this last-mentioned 

 year, he hastened once more to visit the peninsula ; and he remained 

 there till the latter part of the year 1809. The rest of his public life 

 for many years was a continuation of tho same course of opposition 

 to the policy of the government with which he had sot out on bis 

 entrance into parliament. He took a leading part in most of the great 

 questions that came before the House of Lords, and distinguished 

 himself by his support of Sir Samuel Romilly's law amendments, by 

 his advocacy of Catholic emancipation and his opposition to the orders 

 in council, the cession of Norway and the detention of Bonaparte at 

 St. Helena. However opinion may differ as to the wisdom of his 

 politics, the praise at least of consistency cannot be refused to him. 

 He was one of the steadiest Whigs of the school of Mr. Fox. But in 

 those days the boundaries of party were much more clearly marked 

 than they are now, and almost the only sort of inconsistency that was 

 possible was going over openly from the one camp to the other, 

 changing from Whig to Tory or from Tory to Whig. 



When the unsuccessful attempt was made through the Marquis of 

 Wellesley to effect a union of parties in January 1811, it was proposed 

 that in the new ministry to be formed upon that principle Lord 

 Holland should occupy the post of first lord of the Admiralty. Like 

 the majority of his party, he supported without joining tho ministry 

 of Mr. Canning in 1827.' In 1828 he made what has been described 

 as his best speech in introducing the bill for tho repeal of the Test and 

 Corporation Acts to the House of Lords. At last, on tho accession of 

 the Whigs to power in November 1 830, he became once more a cabinet 

 minister as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.; and this ollico he 

 held (with the exception of the ministerial interregnum of a fortnight 

 in May 1832, and Sir Robert Peel's four months' tenure of power from 

 December 1834 to April 1835) till bis death at Holland House on the 

 22nd of October 1840. He was succeeded in bis titles by his sou, the 

 present Lord Holland. 



Tho only performances which Lord Holland sent to the press besides 

 those already mentioned were 'A Letter to the Itev. Dr. Shuttloworth 

 in favour of the Catholic Claims,' 8vo, London, 1827, and ' A Letter 

 from a Neapolitan to an Englishman,' which is stated to have been 

 privately printed in 1818, and to have been written to clear up some 

 misconception by Murat of a conversation which his lordship had had 

 with him. Hut since his death bis ' Foreign Reminiscences,' 1 vol. 

 8vo, 1850, have been given to the world by hit son, Hmry Edward, 

 the present Lord Holland. For the reputation of Lord Holland this 

 book would have been well left unpublished. It is utterly deficient 

 in everything like largeness of view, while on tho other hand it shows 



