command of the fleet and army which were to reinforce Buckingham at the Isle of Rhé, but contrary weather and want of money prevented his sailing, and, when he did start, he met Buckingham's defeated force returning (Gardiner, vi. 190). He was severely blamed for the delay, but it was rather due to the general disorganisation of the government than to his remissness (Sanderson, Life of Charles I, p. 102).
On Buckingham's death, Holland was chosen to succeed him as chancellor of the university of Cambridge (Heywood and Wright, Cambride University Transactions during the Puritan Period, ii. 366; Cabala, p. 254). He was also for a time (September–November 1628) master of the horse, and was appointed constable of Windsor (27 Oct. 1629) and high steward to the queen (1 Dec. 1629). Like his brother, the Earl of Warwick, Holland took part in colonisation. He was the first governor of the Providence Company (4 Dec. 1630), and one of the lords-proprietors of Newfoundland (13 Nov. 1637) (Cal. State Papers, Col. 1574–1660, pp. 123, 260). But he preferred monopolies and crown grants as a quicker method of increasing his fortune (Court and Times of Charles I, i. 199, 221, 453; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1637, p. 189). On 15 May 1631 he was created chief justice in eyre south of Trent, and became thus associated with one of the most unpopular acts of the reign, the revival of the obsolete forest laws (Gardiner, vii. 362, viii. 77, 282).
Holland used his position at court and his influence with the queen to cabal against the king's ministers. He intrigued against the pacific and pro-Spanish policy of Portland, and challenged his son, Jerome Weston, to a duel. For a few days the king placed him under arrest, and he was obliged to make a submissive apology, though the queen's intercession saved him from severer punishment on 13 April 1633 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1633–4, pp. 3, 11, 14). As chancellor of Cambridge he did nothing to enforce uniformity, and resisted, though without success, Laud's claim to visit the university as metropolitan (Laud, Works, v. 555–82). With Strafford he was on still worse terms. They exchanged frigid complimentary letters, but the opponents of the lord-deputy habitually looked to Holland for support. Over Sir Piers Crosby's case they had an open quarrel, caused by Holland's refusal to be examined as a witness, and embittered still further by the slanders which Holland circulated against Strafford. In letters to intimate friends Strafford wrote of Holland with well-deserved contempt (Strafford, Letters, ii. 102, 122, 174, 189, 252).
In 1636 Holland hoped to be appointed lord high admiral, but was given the more appropriate post of groom of the stole and first lord of the bedchamber. By the queen's influence, however, he was made general of the horse (2 Feb. 1639) in place of the much more capable Essex (ib. i. 502, ii. 276). His sole exploit was the unlucky march to Kelso and the hasty retreat thence (3 June 1639), whereby he covered himself and the king's army with ridicule (Clarendon, ii. 39). But whether he was really to blame for the failure may be doubted, and the imputations on his courage were undeserved (Gardiner, ix. 27). His command also involved him in a quarrel with the Earl of Newcastle, which the intervention of the king prevented from ending in a duel (Rushworth, iii. 930, 946). In the second Scottish war Conway was appointed general of the horse instead of Holland. The latter's animosity to Strafford and the king's chief ministers, and the suspicion that he inclined too much to the party which desired peace with the Scots, were apparently the causes (Clarendon, ii. 45, 48, 81). In the privy council on 5 May 1640 he backed Northumberland in opposing the dissolution of the Short parliament (Laud, Works, iii. 284). During the early part of the Long parliament he acted with the popular party among the peers, and gave evidence against Strafford, though aiming at his exclusion from office, not at his death (Rushworth, Trial of Strafford, p. 543; Gardiner, ix. 361). The queen, whose favour he had lost for a time, won him back with the promise of the command of the army, and on 16 April 1641 he was made captain-general north of the Trent (ib. ix. 339; Clarendon, ii. 130, iii. 234). He carried out the business of disbanding the army with success, but the refusal of the king to grant him the nomination of a new baron reopened the breach between him and the court. Holland wrote to Essex hinting plainly that Charles was still tampering with the officers (ib. iv. 2; Gardiner, x. 3). When the king in January 1642 left Whitehall, Holland, though still groom of the stole, refused to attend his master, and declined to obey a later summons to York (23 March 1642). On 12 April 1642 Lord Falkland, by the king's command, obliged him to surrender the key which was the ensign of his office. This deprivation, which Clarendon regards as impolitic, was instigated by the queen. She had contracted so great an indignation against Holland, whose ingratitude towards her was very odious, that she had said ‘she would
