John Holt of Portsmouth

The Holts of Portsmouth were a politically active and commercially embedded family in Hampshire during the 17th and early 18th centuries, with strong ties to brewing, civic governance, and parliamentary service.

The Portsmouth Holt line begins with John Holt, a brewer of Portsmouth, who married Katharine Brickett, daughter and heiress of Anthony Brickett of Salisbury. Their son, Richard Holt (c.1635–1710), became the most prominent figure in the family. Educated at St John’s College, Oxford (BA 1655), and admitted to the Middle Temple in 1656, Richard Holt rose to national prominence as a Member of Parliament for Lymington and Petersfield across several sessions between 1685 and 1695. He married Margaret Whithed, daughter of Richard Whithed of Norman Court, further strengthening the family’s landed and political connections. Richard Holt inherited Nursted House in Buriton, near Petersfield, in 1670, which became the family seat.

The Portsmouth Holts were influential in local governance and taxation. Richard Holt served as a commissioner for assessment in Wiltshire, and was made Freeman of Portsmouth (1658, 1667) and Lymington (1677). These roles placed him at the heart of regional administration and fiscal oversight. His parliamentary career coincided with the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, and he would have been involved in debates over royal finance, trade regulation, and local infrastructure. The Holt name in Portsmouth thus represents a branch of the family whose legacy lies in civic leadership, legal education, and parliamentary service, rather than in commerce or industry.

The Portsmouth line is understood to descend from the Holts of Gristlehurst as a cadet offshot, the long established Lancashire gentry family whose pedigree reaches back to the fifteenth century.