king received him with great favour; he took part in the siege of Gloucester, charged at Newbury, and was permitted to take his seat with other peers at councils of war (ib. vii. 242). In March 1644 Clare again changed sides, protesting to the House of Lords that ‘the cause only and no other particular by-respects had brought him back,’ and that what he had observed at Oxford had ‘opened his eyes to understand the goodness of the cause’ (Letter of 2 April 1644, Lords' Journals, vi. 495). During his absence Clare's estates had naturally been sequestered by the parliament, but he was discharged from his delinquency by orders dated 13 and 17 July 1644 (Cal. of Committee for Advance of Money, p. 627). In spite of the repeated efforts of his friends, he was not, however, readmitted to his seat in the House of Lords (Sydney Papers, ed. Blencowe, pp. 7, 10, 19; Lords' Journals, vi. 718). Henceforth he played no part in public affairs. At the Restoration he was appointed one of the council established for the supervision of the colonies (Doyle, Official Baronage, i. 393). He succeeded in retaining his recordership of Nottingham, and also procured the grant of a free market to be held three times a week in Clement's Inn Fields, Middlesex (3 Aug. 1661; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661–1662, p. 58; cf. Howell, Londinopolis, 1657, p. 344).
Clare died on 2 Jan. 1665–6, and was buried in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. He left one son, Gilbert, who succeeded him, and several daughters (Collins, p. 168).
Gilbert Holles, third Earl of Clare (1633–1689), born 24 April 1633, was an active member of the country party during the reigns of Charles II and James II. Clare bailed Monmouth when he was arrested in 1682. He was also one of those peers who petitioned for the continuance of the parliament of 1679 and against the calling of a parliament at Oxford in 1681. In 1685 he protested against the bill reversing Lord Stafford's attainder, and his last public action was to subscribe the petition for the immediate calling of a parliament which was presented to James II on 17 Nov. 1688. He died 16 Jan. 1688–9. He married Grace, daughter of William Pierrepont of Thoresby, Nottinghamshire, second son of Robert, earl of Kingston. His son John (1662–1711) is separately noticed.
[Collins's Historical Collections of the Noble Families of Cavendish, Holles, &c., 1752; Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray; several letters of Clare's are printed in the Fairfax Correspondence and the Strafford Letters.]
HOLLES, JOHN, Duke of Newcastle (1662–1711), born on 9 Jan. 1661–2, was the eldest son of Gilbert Holles, third earl of Clare [see under Holles, John, second Earl of Clare]. Like his father, he was a staunch protestant and whig. To him, when Lord Haughton, Dryden dedicated his play, ‘The Spanish Friar’ (1681), saying that he recommended ‘a Protestant play to a Protestant patron’ (Poetical Works, ed. Christie, p. xliv). On 14 Jan. 1688–9 he was returned to the Convention parliament as member for Nottinghamshire, but on his father's death, two days later, he was called to the upper house as Earl of Clare. He took an active part in promoting the accession of William and Mary (Kennett, Hist. of England, iii. 543–4), was made gentleman of the bedchamber to the king on 14 Feb. 1688–9, and acted as bearer of the queen's sceptre with the cross at the coronation on 11 April following. In March of the same year he became lord-lieutenant of Middlesex, and in June gave orders for a strict search to be made for the arms and horses of papists (Luttrell, Brief Relation, 1857, i. 542, 561). In February 1689–90 he married Lady Margaret Cavendish, third daughter and coheiress of Henry, second duke of Newcastle (ib. ii. 13). The duke, at his death in July 1691, left him the bulk of his estate (ib. ii. 270). His brothers-in-law, the Earls of Thanet and Montague, disputed the will, but Holles eventually triumphed in the law courts (ib. iii. 208, 272). With Lord Thanet he fought a duel on the night of 13 May 1692, in which both were wounded (ib. ii. 451). In October 1691 Holles asked the king to create him Duke of Newcastle. The king merely promised to consider the request, whereupon Holles immediately resigned his offices, and retired to his seat at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (ib. ii. 301). In January 1693–4 he succeeded to the estates of his kinsman, Denzil, third lord Holles of Ifield (ib. iii. 259).
Holles was now one of the richest and most powerful men in the kingdom. The king promised to make him Duke of Clarence (ib. iii. 300). It was, however, pointed out that the title of Clarence had always been appropriated to princes of the blood, and that of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was therefore substituted, 14 May 1694. To compensate him for the disappointment, he was promised the next Garter that should fall vacant. He was also made high steward of East Retford, lord-lieutenant of Nottinghamshire (4 June 1694), and a commissioner of Greenwich Hospital (20 Feb. 1695). In the latter year, when William III made his progress after his return from the Netherlands, Holles met
