Randle Holme

Towards the end of the fourteenth century a moiety of the manor of Tranmere (aka Tranmore or Tranmole) in "Wirrall Hundred" (sic) was acquired by Robert de Holme on his marriage to Matilda, one of the two daughters and coheirs of William de Tranmole, lord of that manor. His descendants for some eight or nine generations continued to hold and occupy that estate untill the reign of James I when it was sold by William Holme, of Chester, who had succeeded to it on the death of his young nephew, John Holme, who died in 1611. The father of this William Holme was Richard Holme, of Tranmole, gentleman, whose younger brother, Thomas Holme, was the first of his family, to settle in Chester, about the middle of the reign of Elizabeth I. The family were to provide four Cheshire anti­quaries and "heralds" all with same name.



The College of Arms, sometimes referred to as the College of Heralds, is a royal corporation consisting of professional officers of arms, with jurisdiction over England, Wales, Northern Ireland and some Commonwealth realms. The heralds are appointed by the British Sovereign and are delegated authority to act on behalf of the Crown in all matters of heraldry, the granting of new coats of arms, genealogical research and the recording of pedigrees. The College is also the official body responsible for matters relating to the flying of flags on land, and it maintains the official registers of flags and other national symbols. Having a "coat of arms" became something of an obsession with the gentry. By the fifteenth century, the use and abuse of coats of arms was becoming widespread in England. Officers of arms had made occasional tours of various parts of the kingdom to enquire about armorial matters during the fifteenth century, however, it was not until the sixteenth century that the process began in earnest. In 1530 one such officer was commissioned to travel throughout his province (in his case, south of the Trent) with authority to enter all homes and churches. Upon entering these premises, he was authorized to "put down or otherwise deface at his discretion... those arms unlawfully used". He was also required to enquire into all those using the titles of knight, esquire, or gentleman and decided if they were being lawfully used. These "visitations" continued until the late 17th Century as gentry enthusiasm for coats of arms as an enhancement to social standing persisted before waning.

The Holme family made their money from the organisation of funerals and the production of funerary hatchments or memorial boards. A funerary hatchment is a depiction, often within a black lozenge-shaped frame, generally on a black (sable) background, of a deceased's heraldic achievement, that is to say the escutcheon showing the arms, together with the crest and supporters of his family or person. The funerary hatchment was usually placed over the entrance door of the deceased's residence at the level of the second floor, and remained in situ for six to twelve months, after which it was removed to the parish church. The practice developed in the early 17th century from the custom of carrying a heraldic shield before the coffin of the deceased, then leaving it for display in the church.

Randle Holme I (c1571-1655)
The first of the four Cheshire anti­quaries and heralds who bore this distinctive name, was the fourth son of Thomas Holme, and, as he is described as dying in the eighty-fourth year of his age in 1655, was probably born about the year 1571; but the existing registers of St Michael's do not begin so early. He took up the trade of an arms-painter, and was enrolled as a member of the Company of "the Painters, Glaziers, Embroiderers, and Stationers" of Chester, of whom not only he, but his son, grandson, and great-grandson were all distinguished and influential members. He was apprenticed on the 10th January, 1587, to Thomas Chaloner, of Chester, arms-painter (and a distinguished antiquary and herald), for the term of ten years, and some eleven years later married his master’s widow Elizabeth, the daughter of Thomas Alcock, of Chester. By this marriage he succeeded to the papers of his wife’s late husband, and it is very probable that the possession of these collections led to his taking up the study of genealogy and family history as a profession, in conjunction with his other business as an arms-painter.

In March, 1600-1, William Segar, "Norroy king of arms", appointed “Randall Holme resident in the citty of Chester” as his deputy, to keep a “regester booke of Funeralls” in the counties of Chester, Lancaster and North Wales,” wherein “I will that he shall truelie enter, from time to time, the Armes and Creastes, Match, issue and decease of all such persons of Coate Armor and worship as it shall please God to call out of this transitory life, and shall receave worshipfull enterment according to their estates and degrees.” He was also to demand and collect the “due fees” as stated in the schedule to his appointment, and "to account for the same to the said Norroy king of arms". This appointment was confirmed by Richard St. George, Norroy, on the 20th May, 1606.

In October, 1615, Holme I was elected one of the two sheriffs of Chester, and in 1622 he rebuilt or enlarged his house at the Bridge Street end of Castle Street. This is now the "Olde Kings Head" named after Charles I. During the 1620s and 30s, Randle exchanged letters with the College of Arms in which he explained the problems he was having in obtaining the necessary fees from the gentry and of unlicensed painters offering to arrange funerals and to paint heraldic decorations for them at a reduced rate, thus undercutting the College’s fees. On one occasion, about November 1630, he wrote to Sir Gilbert Houghton of Houghton Towers, Lancashire, requesting that he send his father’s funeral certificate and the appropriate fee of £6, 13s and 4d forthwith or else find himself in danger of appearing in the Earl Marshal’s court. Likewise, in March 1637/8 he wrote to a Mrs Mainwaring desiring her husband’s certificate and the fee of £3 6s 8d. This amount was due to the College of Arms because he had been a gentlemen buried with an armorial display, had the funeral not had such a display the fee would have been £2. In this letter he complains that the shields of arms had been prepared by a man named Dutton, when it ought to have been his business as a Deputy herald to have done them and he intended to take action against Dutton.

Charles I was an almost bankrupt monarch. A large fiscal deficit had arisen in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. There was little financial capacity for Charles I to wage wars overseas. Throughout his reign Charles was obliged to rely primarily on volunteer forces for defence and on diplomatic efforts to support his sister, Elizabeth, and his foreign policy objective for the restoration of the Palatinate. England was still the least taxed country in Europe, with no official excise and no regular direct taxation. In 1625 Holmes was one of those in the city of Chester who were asked to contribute to the exchequer of Charles I, the "loan" as it was termed, demanded from him being £10. Holmes preserved a note of the “privy seal” sent to him about this loan, which reads as follows:


 * To our Trusty and well beloved Randle Holmes of Chester, gent. By the King. Trusty and welbeloved having observed in the presidents and customs of former tymes that the Kings and Queens of this our Realm upon extraordinary occasions have used to resort to those contributions which arise from the generallity of subjects or to the private helpe of some well affected by way of loane ec, the sumrae which we require is ten pounds, the person to collect it is Sir Georg Booth Knt and Bart, with  promise to repay it within 18 months &c. Given under our privy seale at Hampton Court 19 No­vember in the first yeare of our reigne, 1625.

To raise revenue without reconvening Parliament, Charles I resurrected an all-but-forgotten law called the "Distraint of Knighthood", in abeyance for over a century, which required any man who earned £40 or more from land each year to present himself at the king's coronation to be knighted. Relying on this old statute, Charles fined individuals who had failed to attend his coronation in 1626. A copy of the receipt given to him by Sir George Booth, is preserved in Harl. MS. 2022, as follows:


 * Com. Cest. 15 Oct. Ano. R. R. Caroli Angl’ &c Ano 1631. Received this day and yeare above saide of Randle Holme cittizen and Alderman of the said citty the sume of ten pounds. And is in discharge of a composition made with myselfe and other his Majesties Commissioners for his con­tempt in not attending and receiving the order of Knighthood at his highness Coronation according to the law in that case provided. I say rec the sume of £10 by me G Booth

During the Civil War, when Chester was besieged by the parliamentary army, Holme was living at his ancestors' house in Bridge Street, which had come to him on the death of his elder brothers. For twenty years he had not been twenty miles from home, as a rupture made travelling painful; besides, departure from the city would have necessitated ‘great loss of his estate.’ Throughout the siege he was ‘well affected’ to the parliament. Sir William Brereton looked upon him as ‘a friend of trust’ and set him at work, so soon as the parliamentary forces had entered the city, to superintend the repair of breaches in the walls. He took the national covenant and negative oath on 5 April 1645, and was afterwards placed by the parliament in the commission of the peace. A nephew, Thomas Alcock, officiously took upon himself, on pretence of ‘tender care’ for his uncle, and of a fear that he had committed some act which might render him liable to sequestration, to arrange that Holme should pay a composition fine of 160l. for his property. The fine was not paid. Holme died, after suffering heavy pecuniary loss, in January 1655, aged 84, and was buried at St. Mary-on-the-Hill, Chester.

Randle Holme II (c1601–1659)
Randle Holme (II) the second of that name, was, the second son of his father by his first wife, and was baptized at St Mary on the Hill, on the 15th July, 1601. He followed his father’s business of a “painter” and was also a  partner with  him in his official duties in connection with the Heralds’ College. On the 29th September, 1625, he married Katherine, eldest daughter of Matthew Ellis, of Overleigh (see; Cowper), gentleman, by whom he had a family of three sons and five daughters. After the death of his first wife he married secondly, in September, 1643, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Dodd, of Chester, and the relict of Samuel Martin, of Chester, merchant, but had no issue by her.

In 1633–4 (during his father's mayoralty) he was sheriff of Chester, and ten years later was himself mayor. On 1 Jan. 1644 his name occurs in the king's commission dated from Oxford, directing the seizure of the rebels' goods in Chester. After the surrender of the city to the parliamentarians, an order, dated at Westminster 1 Oct. 1646, directed his removal from the office of alderman. In 1655 (soon after his father's death) he petitioned Cromwell to remit the unpaid fine of 160l. levied on his father through the intermeddling of his cousin Thomas Alcock (see above).

Randle Holme III (1627–1700)
In November 1664 he was appointed by Charles ‘sewer of the chamber in extraordinary, in consideration of his losses.’

Like his father and grandfather, he was an heraldic painter, professional genealogist, and acted as deputy Garter for Cheshire, Shropshire, Lancashire, and North Wales. His conduct in office appears, in the new Norroy King of Arms (1660–77) Sir William Dugdale's opinion, to have been irregular, and in 1668 Dugdale—who in his diary contemptuously refers to him as ‘Holmes the paynter’—caused him to be indicted for illegally marshalling the funeral of Sir Ralph Assheton. Randle Holme II and Randle Holme III each had the misfortune to succeed his father during the  Commonwealth, in  1654/55  and  1659  respectively. He was tried at the Stafford assizes and fined £20. Holme may well have been appointed deputy by one of the Commonwealth Norroys, William Ryley or George Owen, whose acts as such were now declared void. Dugdale’s pursuit included forays into the north to destroy Holme’s monuments, but fortunately several of them still survive.

He was the principal contributor to the Holme collection of manuscripts. He was the author of a work—now exceedingly rare—entitled: ‘The Academy of Armory, or a storehouse of Armory and Blazon containing the several variety of created beings and how borne in Coats of Arms, both Foreign and Domestic, with the Instruments used in all Trades and Sciences, together with their terms of Art,’ printed for the author at Chester in 1688, in three books, ending with an address to the reader promising a fourth book.

Randle III married three times. First, in 1655, he married Sarah Soley from Forton, Shropshire, by whom he had a son and four daughters before she died ten years later. Next, he married Elizabeth Wilson of Chester by whom he had seven sons and two daughters. Lastly, he married Anne Birkenhead. Randle III died on 12 March 1699/1700 and was buried at St Mary’s three days later.

Randle Holme IV (c1659–1707)
son of the foregoing, continued the family collections of manuscripts to 1704. He married Margaret, daughter of Griffith Lloyd of Llanarmon, co. Denbigh. He died and was buried at Chester in 1707.

Sources and Links

 * The Holme collection of manuscripts, chiefly consisting of heraldic and genealogical memoranda connected with Cheshire and North Wales, in 260 volumes, were, after the fourth Randle Holmes's death, purchased by Francis Gastrell, bishop of Chester, acting in behalf of Robert Harley, first earl of Oxford. In 1753 they were sold to the British Museum trustees, and are now numbered Harleian MSS. 1920–2180.
 * Earwaker, J. P., (1891). The four Randle Holmes, of Chester, antiquaries, heralds, and genealogists, c 1571 to 1707. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 4. Vol 4, pp. 113-170.