then the most lucrative in the gift of the crown; and Fox, who was poor and embarrassed, could not resist the temptation thus to accumulate a fortune for his children. The retirement of Pitt in 1761 and of Newcastle in 1762 produced no change in the position of Fox, who continued to render to the tory, Lord Bute, the same services which he had paid to Walpole and Chatham. He was once more intrusted, in 1763, with the lead of the commons, and undertook to procure a majority in favour of the peace of Paris concluded by Bute. It is said that several hundreds of members were bribed, and that the sum of £25,000 was expended by Fox in a single morning in this venal and disdisgraceful traffic. With corruption was joined the harshest intimidation. Great numbers of all ranks were dismissed from their offices, from the lord-lieutenants of counties down to clerks, tidewaiters, and doorkeepers, who were deprived of their bread, merely because "they had owed their situations to the recommendation of some nobleman or gentleman who was against the peace." This cruel policy, which was eagerly abetted by Fox, was in the first instance successful. The peace was approved of by a large majority. Bute, however, soon quailed before the storm which his illiberal measures had raised, and suddenly resigned. Fox retired from office at the same time, and as the reward of his unpopular services was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Holland. From this period until his death in 1774 he took little or no part in public affairs, and spent his time between Holland house and the villa which he had constructed at King's-gate in the isle of Thanet, which gave rise to a well-known and most bitter satire of the post Gray. Lord Holland was both an able statesman and a most effective speaker. In spite of his heavy and ungainly figure, his dark and lowering countenance, and his hesitating and ungraceful manner, he was a perfect master of parliamentary eloquence, and his strong sense, ready and genial wit, and aptness of illustration, rendered him one of the most formidable debaters of his day. He was an excellent man of business, clear, prompt, and decisive. He was possessed of indomitable courage, combined with a sweet and generous temper, and was a trusty friend and a staunch partisan; but he was ambitious, corrupt, and unscrupulous, and was detested by the great body of the people, who regarded him as a man of insatiable rapacity and unscrupulous ambition. If his moral principles and character had been equal to his abilities, he would have been one of the most powerful statesmen of his time.—(Walpole's Memoirs; Macaulay's Essays; Lord Mahon's History of England.)—J. T.
HOLLAND, Henry Richard Fox, afterwards Vassall, third Lord, was the only son of Stephen, second Lord Holland, eldest son of Charles James Fox, and was born at Winterslowhouse, Wiltshire, on the 21st November, 1773. By the death of his father he succeeded to the peerage when he was little more than a year old, and in his fifth year he lost his mother. His maternal uncle, the earl of Upper Ossory, took charge of his education, which was completed at Eton and at Christ church, Oxford. From an early age he took an interest in politics, and here he had for instructor his paternal uncle, the celebrated statesman, Charles James Fox. "Mr. Fox," says Lord Macaulay, "found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful a pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the young lord was only sixteen, and their friendship and mutual confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick." The whig principles thus imbibed and confirmed were adhered to by Lord Holland throughout life. He had twice travelled on the continent before he took his seat in the house of lords, where he delivered his first speech in the January of 1798. During his first tour, made before he quitted Oxford, he visited France in the throes of the great Revolution; in his second, two years later, he explored a great portion of Spain. Returning through Italy, he became acquainted in 1795 at Florence with Lady Webster, née Vassall, wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, and daughter of a very opulent planter. The result of their acquaintance was the divorce of Lady Webster from her husband, and her marriage to Lord Holland in England in the following year. Lord Holland, after his marriage, assumed the name of Vassall, but it has not been retained by his successor. Under Lady Holland's presidency, Holland house became famous for its hospitable reception of budding talent, for those reunions of political, literary, and artistic notabilities, which, more than his parliamentary or official career, have made Lord Holland celebrated, and at which a certain occasional awe of the hostess varied the pleasure given by the unfailing blandness and benignity of the host. In parliament, however. Lord Holland was long prominent and conspicuous. A certain hesitation marred indeed his oratorial ability; but, according to Lord Macaulay, "he was decidedly more distinguished in debate than any peer of his time who had not sat in the house of commons," a school of which the early death of his father had not allowed him to reap the advantages. He was frequent and active in debate, pursuing, and in a seemingly hopeless minority, the policy of which his celebrated uncle was the representative in the lower house. Constant defeat had, however, the result of leading him to embody his views in the permanent shape which the forms of the house of lords sanction:—Lord Holland's long series of "protests" form an able and elaborate summary of the history and policy of the whig party for many years. After the peace of Amiens he visited the continent again, and, with Mr. Fox, was introduced to the first consul. In the brief Grenville ministry of "all the talents," he was appointed privy seal on the death of Mr. Fox, retiring of course when it fell soon afterwards. He did not again take office until the principles which he had steadily supported for more than thirty years were triumphant. On the formation of the Grey ministry, he was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet, and retained the office while his party was in power until his death at Holland house, on the 22nd of October, 1840. It has been said that, latterly. Lord Holland headed a cabinet opposition to the eastern policy of Lord Palmerston. Lord Holland's acquaintance with Spain, as has been seen, was an early one, and his love of its literature led to his first appearance as an author. In 1806 he published an account of the "Life and writings of Lope de Vega," and of this a second edition, enlarged, was published in 1817. In 1807, the year after the appearance of his "Life of Lope de Vega," he published "Three Comedies from the Spanish," and he edited in 1808, with a preface, the fragment of the history of the reign of James II., the posthumous work of his uncle, Mr. Fox. Since his death, two works of the late Lord Holland have been published, edited by his son, the present lord. One is the "Foreign Reminiscences," the other, "Memoirs of the Whig Party during my Time." Of the latter only two volumes have appeared, bringing the narrative down to a period comparatively remote from our time. What interest either possesses is chiefly anecdotical. The year after Lord Holland's death, Mr. Moyland collected and edited the "Opinions of Lord Holland, as recorded in the journals of the House of Lords, from 1797 to 1841," being the protests formerly referred to. The volume was made the theme for an affectionate article on Lord Holland in the Edinburgh Review by the late Lord Macaulay, who fondly traced in it his reminiscences of Holland house and its owner—"the grace and the kindness far more admirable than grace with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed," where "the last debate was discussed in one comer, and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Sir Joshua's Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz."—F. E.
HOLLAND, Sir Nathaniel (Dance), a distinguished painter of the English school in history, portrait, and landscape, was the third son of Dance, the architect of the Mansion-house in London. Though born about 1743, he was in 1768 elected one of the original thirty-six members of the then newly established Royal Academy. He was a pupil of Hayman, and studied afterwards some time at Rome. He exhibited many pictures at the academy, first as Nathaniel Dance, then as an honorary exhibiter as Sir Nathaniel Holland. He had married a widow, a Mrs. Dummer, who possessed entailed property to the value of £18,000 a year; and he obtained a baronetcy and changed his name to Holland in 1800. He represented for some time East Grinstead in parliament; and died suddenly at Winchester, October 15, 1811. He had a country residence, Cranbury house, in the neighbourhood of that city. Sir Nathaniel Holland's pictures are still seen occasionally in private galleries, and some few are engraved. He bequeathed the great bulk of his property to his widow. Lady Holland, who died in 1825, leaving an immense personal fortune, the greater part of which was left to her nephew the earl of Cardigan.—R. N. W.
HOLLAND, Philemon, was born at Chelmsford in 1551.
