Father William Holt the Jesuit
1545 – 1599
William Holt was born in 1545 at Ashworth in Lancashire, a member of the Holts of Ashworth, a cadet branch of the ancient Holt family of Stubley and Rochdale. Though relatively obscure as a gentry family in their own right, the Holts of Ashworth were brought into the full glare of Elizabethan politics by William, who became one of the most active and controversial English Jesuits of his generation — a man described in his own time as equally capable of inspiring fierce loyalty and fierce criticism.
William was educated at home before entering Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1563. He took his B.A. in 1566, was elected fellow of Oriel College on 29 February 1568, and proceeded M.A. in 1572. In 1573 he was incorporated M.A. at Cambridge. His studies led him to a growing dissatisfaction with the religious settlement in England. In 1574 he left Oxford and was admitted to the English College at Douai, where he continued his theological studies until 1576, when he was ordained priest and sent to Rome to assist in establishing the English College there. He entered the Society of Jesus on 10 November 1578. The English College was placed under Jesuit governance in April 1579.
In 1581 he was sent back to England to assist in the work begun by Fr. Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion. He spent a short period in missionary labour in Staffordshire, and was then despatched by Fr. Parsons on a special mission to Scotland, travelling together with the Jesuit William Crichton at the end of 1581. Their purpose was to open communications with Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox, to pursue the possible conversion or deposition of the young James VI, and to send intelligence to Mary Queen of Scots and to Philip II of Spain through the Spanish ambassador Mendoza. Holt also communicated with Henry I, Duke of Guise, and in May 1582 had a meeting with him in Paris to discuss the prospect of a Catholic military intervention in England.
At a meeting in Paris it was proposed that the Duke of Guise should land with an army in the south of England, that James, with a Scottish force, should enter the northern counties, and that the English friends of the House of Stuart should be summoned to the aid of the injured Queen of Scots. This scheme was communicated to Mary through the French ambassador and to James VI through Fr. Holt.
Queen Elizabeth had meanwhile sent the diplomat Robert Bowes to Scotland to counteract the influence of Lennox and guard against Jesuit intrigues at the Scottish court. In March 1583, Bowes prevailed upon the king to authorise the arrest of Holt at Leith, as he was on the point of departing for France. Holt, who was travelling under the alias Peter Brereton, was kept for a time in Bowes’s custody, and the letters found on him were forwarded to Francis Walsingham.
James VI soon took matters into his own hands and had Holt imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, while Queen Elizabeth demanded his surrender as an English subject and pressed that he should be put to torture to compel him to reveal the secret correspondence and plans of the Catholics in England. When Queen Elizabeth heard of Fr. Holt’s arrest she sent orders to her agents at Edinburgh to insist that he should “be put to the bootes” to extort from him the secret correspondence and plans of the Catholics in England.
Cardinal Allen records that though placed under examination, Holt “admirably preserved both faith, courage and taciturnity” and no important disclosure was drawn from him. Whether torture was actually applied has been disputed by later historians: Bowes’s own letters suggest that it was threatened rather than carried out, though Allen believed otherwise. James VI was himself concerned about the extent of Holt’s intrigues at his court. The king eventually allowed Holt to slip from the castle, on 16 July, taking credit with the Duke of Guise for permitting his escape, while ridding himself of Bowes’s persistent demands for surrender. Holt sought refuge for a time in Flanders and visited the college at Rheims. The King formally refused his release from the castle until August 1584, when he was ordered to leave the country.
In 1585 Holt returned to Scotland once more to continue his work on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, and was harboured by George Gordon, 6th Earl of Huntly, in the north of the country. In 1586 he was summoned to Rome and appointed Rector of the English College on 24 October 1586, a post he held for approximately a year and a half.
In 1588 he was sent to Brussels where he resided for ten years as agent of the King of Spain and administrator of the funds devoted by that monarch to the support of English Catholic exiles. The English Catholics in exile at this time were divided into two broad factions: one, headed by Fr. Parsons and supported by Cardinal Allen, looked to Spain for the restoration of the Roman church in England; the other, representing the wishes of English Catholics at home, was opposed to Spanish succession and hoped to reach terms with James VI of Scotland. Fr. Holt was a partisan of the Spanish faction and made no endeavour to conciliate his opponents. Canon Tierney records that he “was a man of character and talent, but the austerity of his manners was embittered by the violence of his politics.”
While in Brussels, Holt became associated with the renegade English Catholic soldier Sir William Stanley, and the two were linked to a series of plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Edmund York, who was executed for high treason in 1595, is said to have confessed that Holt promised him forty thousand ducats if he would murder the queen; the same allegation was repeated at the trial of the Jesuit Robert Southwell. Patrick O’Collun, an Irish soldier executed for treason in 1594, stated that Holt had promised him a generous pension and granted him absolution for the killing of the queen, having told him that such an act would constitute tyrannicide against a heretical ruler. Elizabeth was alarmed by the plots being formed against her in the Low Countries and sought to negotiate with Archduke Ernest the surrender of Holt among others, though no ambassador was sent to pursue the matter.
The extreme character of Holt’s conduct eventually drew representations to Rome itself. Pope Clement VIII was reported to have said to one Barret regarding Holt: “I have lately received letters from the Low Countries concerning a certain father who dominates and tyrannises there.” The matter was referred to Cardinal Archduke Albert, and by him committed to the provincial of Germany, Oliver Manareus, and Don Juan Battista de Tassis. Holt’s supporters secured signatures to two memorials in his favour. He was not removed from his office, but was admonished to show greater moderation. So long as Cardinal Allen lived he had exerted a moderating influence over Holt; after Allen’s death in 1594 that check was removed. Holt was finally replaced in his Brussels post in 1598.
He travelled to Rome, and was thence sent to Spain. He died early in 1599, immediately after landing at Barcelona, aged approximately fifty-three.
Father Holt had great influence among the English Catholic exile community and was regarded by Walsingham and the Elizabethan government as one of the most dangerous Jesuit operatives in Europe. Within his own order his energy and conviction were acknowledged, even by those who deplored his methods. The only writing of his which is preserved is a memoir entitled Quibus modis ac mediis religio Catholica continuata est in Anglia, published by Knox in the Douay Diaries, pp. 376–384. Letters from him survive among the State Papers. A letter to him from Mary Queen of Scots is preserved in Labanoff’s Lettres de Marie Stuart, vi. 333.
The principal biographical account of William Holt is the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900), vol. 27, which draws on the State Papers, Cardinal Allen’s letters, Bowes’s dispatches, and the Douay Diaries. The History of Parliament Online entry for William Holt MP (c.1571–1637) of Ashworth provides important context on the family. Additional detail is drawn from the Wikipedia article on William Holt (Jesuit), itself based on the DNB, and from the entries for Patrick O’Collun and William Crichton.
