DR GEORGE HOLME (1676-1765)
Rector of Headley 1718-1765
by Joyce Stevens
I was educated at two schools named after their founders: The Holme School, Headley, and Eggar's Grammar School, Alton. Of Dr Holme I knew nothing until many years had passed, but at Alton we remembered John Eggar at the annual Founder's Day Service in St Lawrence Church. It was a familiar local name, for the family came from Chawton and Bentley, and were farmers and land-owners. Another branch lived in Standford. The school was established by Act of Parliament in 1641, and this was the last public document signed by Charles I.
It was not until Canon Tudor Jones published his booklet on Headley in 1966 that I first learned anything about Dr Holme, and then strangely it was an announcement of his death in the Salisbury Journal of 15th July 1765. He had been Rector of Headley for 47 years and is described as "an affectionate husband, a faithful friend and a humane master. His many benevolent acts will not soon be forgot by his parishioners, of which his endowing a charity school is a proof." Exactly a month before his death at the age of 89 he baptised George White, and his writing in the Baptismal Register is firm and good.
Members of The Headley Society have just completed a record of all the Monumental Inscriptions in the parish churchyard and were astonished to realise that no memorial to Dr Holme existed. There is a very elaborate marble tablet to his wife on the North wall of the nave, almost opposite the door. She died five years before her husband, and translated from the Latin it reads:-
Sacred to the memory of Catherine, the deeply regretted wife of George HOLME, D.D., Rector of this Church, the fifth daughter of John LEIGH, Esq., of North Court in the Isle of Wight. She was a truly remarkable woman, adorned with intellectual gifts as well as physical beauty, in whom the fire of continual devotion to God, ready charity towards her neighbour and wifely love for her husband burnt unceasingly. She gave a hundred pounds to increase the value of this Benefice, also eighty pounds to build Headley School; also when dying, she left twenty pounds to the poor, whom she had always assisted in her lifetime. After enduring for more than ten years with wonderful patience the torture of a painful disease, she fell asleep peacefully in the Lord on June the 3rd, A.D. 1760, aged 80. Her husband, deeply mourning, set up this monument, that the memory of her many and great virtues might not quickly perish, and that some record might survive of his own love for his excellent wife.
With curiosity aroused, we began our researches. As the living has been in the gift of Queen's College, Oxford, for 340 years, that was the obvious place to start, and we are very much indebted to Mr John Kaye, Keeper of the Archives, for the wealth of information he provided.
It begins: "He was the son of Richard Holme, probably of Penrith, Cumberland...."
Penrith! Our previous Rector, Dick Woodger, moved there last August, and his wife Janet is an experienced and enthusiastic genealogist. So now we had two sources of information: academic and genealogical.
From Queen's we know that he entered as "a poor child" (aged 18) in 1694. He moved up the foundation to become a taberdar (the name denoting a special gown worn by certain scholars on grants) in 1701, and Fellow in 1704. He took his BA in 1699, MA in 1702, and his BD and DD together in 1718 when he was presented to the Living of Headley aged 42.
Next comes an intriguing aside. "He served for some time as a chaplain at Algiers." How surprising! Chaplain to whom or what, and what did the post entail? Clearly another line of research was called for, because Algeria was a Moslem country inhabited by Arabs and Berbers, and the whole Mediterranean coastline was plagued by the fierce Barbary pirates led by the two Barbarossa brothers.
It seems a very adventurous move for a young man, straight from the sheltered life of Oxford. Did he want to see the world before settling down, or was he inspired by missionary zeal, or the chance to make some money? The journey itself would have been long and hazardous.
Back to Queen's College for enlightenment. Mr Kaye could tell me only that several Queen's fellows are recorded as having taken up this appointment with the Merchants of Algiers, a board of traders maintaining a 'factory' there. They had nothing to do with the college, nor a Bishop, nor any public body, but must have been Protestants.
So I turned again to Janet Woodger, who provided two addresses: the Most Revd Chais Abdel Malik (President Bishop of the Episcopal Church Jerusalem and the Middle East), at the Diocesan Office, PO Box 87, Zamalek, Cairo; and, much nearer home, Mrs Vanessa Wells, Secretary of the Jerusalem and Middle East association at 1 Hart House, Farnham. I wrote to both immediately.
A warmly friendly letter from the Bishop's secretary regretted that their archives did not go back that far, as it was the early 19th century before the first missionary arrived in Egypt. In Farnham, too, the first record is dated 1889, but Mrs Bell suggested that Dr Hopwood at the Middle East Centre, St Anton's College, Oxford might be able to help. But no-their first record is 1840. However, he and his archivist pointed out that it was quite common for Anglican clergy to act as chaplains in cities and ports overseas where there was a resident British Diplomat or merchant community. They directed me to the Guildhall Library, as overseas chaplains came under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London.
A search there by the Keeper of Manuscripts, Mr Stephen Freeth, could find no mention of George Holme. The Assistant Archivist at Lambeth Palace Library also searched their indexes, but with no luck. Finally, I resorted to the Internet via Jo Smith, and had two replies. One suggested the Levant Company records are at the Public Record Office but, although copious, they are business documents useful only to traders and not relevant for our purposes. The second reply came from Eve McLaughlin, so well-known to family historians world-wide through her series of Guides to genealogy-her comments were helpful and thought-provoking. A 'factory' was a warehouse where goods were bought, sold and bartered-not a manu-factory. The Merchants of Algiers were probably English, trading in carpets, gold ornaments, embroidered slippers and the like, in exchange for English manufactured goods.
"Being mixed up with business men was a good place to come by the pickings," she says, and I must confess such thoughts had crossed my mind in trying to account for the 'poor child's' later prosperity. Indeed, as early as 1715 he paid for the marble pavement in Queen's College new Chapel, and in 1734 a silver Communion Flagon for Headley church.
***
And now, what of the man himself, and his background? Janet Woodger has for three months been searching every available source, starting with our Parish Registers. She has them on microfiche, so is still very much in touch with Headley. She has also consulted the International Genealogical Index (IGI) of the Church of the Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); Penrith Parish Registers; the Internet (which provided her with 27 possibilities); Penrith Library; the retired assistant county archivist (a member of Dick's congregation); and the history of Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Penrith. She remarks: "It is extraordinary to think that all our children attended the Holme School in Headley, moved 350 miles a year ago, and now attend the school that enabled him to go to Oxford and achieve so much in life."
One of the problems of her researches has been the number of Holmes in old Cumberland and Westmoreland, including two Richards. One was a schoolmaster/clergyman, the other a brazier (worker in brass). If the latter was George Holme's father, it might explain the grant that enabled the 'poor child' to go up to Oxford.
Finally, after a prolonged search of Wills in the Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle, Janet thinks that this branch is the most likely. If so, George was the third of six children, three of whom died in infancy, only the eldest, Margaret, and youngest, James, also surviving. But there is no further record of them in the Penrith registers, so perhaps they moved away from the area.
George Holme was a bachelor of 42 when he came to Headley, but in 1724 he was married at Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight to Catherine, the fifth daughter of John Leigh of North Court, Shorwell. Wondering how they met, I wrote to the island's Record Office, and am much indebted to Mr R.H. Smout, County Archivist, for a great deal of useful information, including the Leigh family tree and prints of the family mansion (see over).
The small village of Shorwell has several imposing houses and a remarkable church full of unusual historic treasures and memorials to several generations of the Leigh family, who held the patronage there at the time.
It would have been very natural for Dr Holme to visit the island, as several incumbents were Queen's College men, and Cumbrians, probably his contemporaries-so we may presume match-making and/or a holiday romance. They were very happy together for thirty-six years, but as they had married in late middle-age there were no children.
By now the 'poor child' had become a generous benefactor, owning property in Linsted and Whitmore Vale, and at Churt and Ash in Surrey. The rents and profits from these he used to make gifts and established several charitable trusts. In 1755, with his wife Catherine, he built and endowed the school at Headley-and in his Will, dated a month before he died, he left his Surrey properties to Queen's College in Trust for the benefit of poor scholars of the College who were not in receipt of any other grants. This Trust, called the Holme Exhibition Trust, still exists, as does the Holme Trust in Headley, which is administered by the Rector and Trustees.
We catch a glimpse of the man from Dr Holme's own words when he explains his generosity towards education: "in consideration of his natural love and affection for his said wife [she seems always to have shared in his beneficence] and for the liberal education which he received at Queen's College."
Extracts from the notes drawn up by the first Trustees are interesting:-
The school is to continue for ever, is to consist of 1 master and any number of children, but only 12 shall be upon the charity. It shall be called Headley Charity School.
In choosing the 12 children to be educated free, preference is to be given to children of the poor inhabitants of Headley, and the number filled up from the like of Bramshott and Kingsley.
Dr Holme is building a school-house on the said surrendered piece of ground and intends to build a schoolroom and house for the master.
The Foundation Deed stated that the children were to be educated "in such principles of learning and knowledge as are most proper for such young persons, that is to say, the boys in Reading, Writing and Common Arithmetic, and the girls in Reading, Writing and Arithmetic and in Sewing and Knitting."
[We shall include an article on the Holme School in a later edition-Ed]
The original school, built on part of the 'waste of the Lord of the Manor of Bishop's Sutton' (the Bishop of Winchester), finally closed in 1991 and is now an exclusive antique bedding centre. Headley children today go to the newer building on the western edge of the village-but it is still called The Holme School.
Catherine Holme died in 1760, and for five more years the old man soldiered on alone, faithfully carrying out his duties, and making entries in the registers in his usual firm handwriting. Then we see: "George Holme, D.D. Rector was buried July 7th 1765. From thence till Mich. 1766 Tho Monkhouse M.A. supplyed the curacy of Hedley and had the care of the Registers of baptisms, Burials & Marriages committed to him, in the absence of Wm Sewell M.A. the present Rector." The next entry was not recorded until 18 Oct 1766-a lapse of some fifteen months.
***
At our Founder's Day Service in Alton each year, the pupils of Eggar's Grammar School used to sing some verses of the 44th Chapter of Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha: "Let us now praise famous men, And our fathers that begat us ... Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, And were men renowned for their power." But it finished: "And some there be which have no memorial, Who are perished as though they had never been."
How many people living here now realise the significance of The Holme School's name, or know anything about the man who served Headley so well and for so long?
Inspired by this study of his life, and with the approval of the rector and the Church Council, we are planning a memorial tablet to be placed next to that of his wife so , after a space of 235 years, in the next millennium the name of Dr George Holme "will not soon be forgot."