HOLLAND, Owen (d.1601), of Plas Berw, Llanidan, Anglesey.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

o.s. of Edward Holland of Plas Berw by Elin, da. of Rowland Griffith of Plas Newydd. m. Elizabeth, da. of Sir Richard Bulkeley, 8s. inc. Thomas II 5da. suc. fa. by 1561.

Offices Held

Escheator, Anglesey 1574-5, j.p. from c.1583, sheriff 1590-1, 1598-9.

Biography

Of Lancashire origin, a branch of the Holland family settled at Plas Berw early in the Tudor period. Holland’s own marriage into the Bulkeleys consolidated his position and explains his election for the shire in 1584. He may have attended the subsidy committee to which all the knights of the shire were appointed on 24 Feb. 1585.1

In 1576 Holland was summoned for an unknown reason before the Privy Council. Four years later, a letter from the Council recommending him to the lord chief justice of Ireland suggests that he sought employment there, but nothing further is known of it. He exchanged some land in 1596 with his neighbour and kinsman, Sir Henry Bagnall, acquiring thereby coal rights in the township of Ysceifiog, which Elizabeth had granted to Bagnall’s father in 1577. The coal had been worked by a succession of crown lessees since about 1450: Holland had been bargaining with some of them since 1576, and he now acquired from Bagnall the fee simple of some of the best coal-bearing lands. He had settled his inherited lands on his children in 1578, and between that date and 1599 he acquired many small properties in south-western Anglesey. He died 1 Feb. 1601. His eldest son Rowland had predeceased him, and the estate passed to his second son Thomas.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: H.G.O.

Notes

  • 1. Griffiths, Peds. 110; DWB, 360-1; Lansd. 737, f. 172v; 43, anon. jnl. f. 171; Trans. Anglesey Antiq. Soc. supp. 1915, p. 17.
  • 2. APC, ix. 117; xii. 18; Williams, Berw, 21-7; HMC 5th Rep. 416; UCNW, Plas Newydd v. 1426, 1430-2, 1436; NLW, Carreglwyd, ms i. 2063; Exchequer, ed. E. G. Jones (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. iv), 25.