Family and Education

Offices Held

Searcher, Exeter and adjacent coasts 25 Oct. 1404-Mar. 1408.

Commr. of inquiry, Cornw., Devon, Dorset, Som. Jan. 1405 (illegal exports of tin).

Alnager, Devon and Cornw. Mich. 1405-7.

Controller of customs and subsidies, Plymouth and adjacent ports in Cornw. 14 May 1406-Jan. 1407.

Biography

Apart from the notices of Holt’s appointments to various royal offices in Devon and Cornwall, all of which involved either the detection of smuggling or the collection of revenues payable on merchandise for sale or export, surprisingly little is recorded of him. He was probably a native of Devon. Certainly, in June 1400, he became a feoffee of the Devonshire manors of Kigbeare, Melbury and Torre, and of the reversion of the manor of Langford, on behalf of Sir William Langford*. It was again as Langford’s feoffee that in 1404 he presented a new incumbent to the rectory at Monk Okehampton. He was still living in 1414.

CCR, 1409-13, p. 257; Reg. Stafford ed. Hingeston-Randolph, 188. He was not the William Holt whose widow, Margaret, was granted a licence by Bishop Stafford in 1412 to be enclosed as an anchorite in a house next to the chapel at Dodbrooke, Devon: Reg. Stafford, 134.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes