HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS 
attracted to itself whole constellations of wits and illustrious men 
of letters, who clustered round the engaging personality of its 
genial and cultivated master, the third Lord Holland. He had 
‘ adopted the political faith of his famous uncle, and Holland House 
was for long the centre of the social life of the Whig party. To 
mention Holland House at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
is to think of Rogers, and Sydney Smith and Sheridan, of Campbell 
and Moore, Byron and Scott ; of Mackintosh and Canning, Hallam, 
Macaulay, of Talleyrand, “ the diplomatic wit and witty diploma- 
tist;”? of Guizot, Madame de Staél; of Philip Francis, supposed 
author of “ Junius,” of Sir Samuel Romilly, of Lords Chancellor 
Thurlow, Lyndhurst, and Erskine; of Eldon, who spoke for the 
prosecution, at the trial of Queen Caroline, and of Brougham, who 
defended her, and who later carried the Reform Bill; of the 
two Humboldts, and Sir Humphrey Davy, Lord John Russell, and 
Palmerston, of Lord Holland himself, actively interested in the 
abolition of the Slave Trade, Catholic Emancipation and Reform— 
nor can we forget the extraordinary woman who kept these guests 
in order, and whose pungent wit added spice, and sometimes 
vinegar, to the intellectual diet. 
The active history of the house begins when Henry Rich, Baron 
Kensington and Earl of Holland, married the only daughter of 
Sir Walter Cope of Cope Castle, Kensington, and succeeding in 
right of his wife, changed the name of the mansion to Holland 
House, and entertained there lavishly. The second son of the 
Earl of Warwick and of Penelope his wife—the ‘‘ Stella” of Sir 
Philip Sidney, Rich was a splendid courtier, and a great favourite 
of James I. He modelled himself on the pattern of the Duke of 
Buckingham, and almost equalled him in magnificence. 
However, when the Civil Wars broke out, the Earl wavered in 
his allegiance to King Charles—played fast and loose, and as a 
consequence, did not retain the confidence of either of the con- 
tending parties. Clarendon remarks that he was “a fine gentle- 
man in good times, but too much desired to have ease and plenty 
when the King could have neither, and did think poverty the most 
unsupportable thing that could befall any man in his condition.” 
The sequel was naturally and inevitably tragic. Rich, returning 
to the King’s side, headed an unsuccessful Royalist rising at 
Kingston-on-Thames—was taken prisoner, kept for a time a 
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