Deaths on February 17

Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles, English politician (b. 1599)

Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles PC (31 October 1598 – 17 February 1680) was an English statesman, best remembered as one of the Five Members whose attempted arrest by Charles I in January 1642 sparked the First English Civil War.

When fighting began in August, Holles raised a Parliamentarian regiment which fought at Edgehill before it was nearly destroyed at Brentford in November 1642. This marked the end of Holles' military career and he became leader of the Parliamentarian 'Peace Party', those who favoured a negotiated settlement with the king. A social conservative from a wealthy family, he came to see political radicals like the Levellers and religious Independents like Oliver Cromwell as more dangerous than the Royalists.

Following victory in the First English Civil War, he led those who opposed Cromwell and his supporters, and was one of the Eleven Members suspended in June 1647. Recalled prior to the Second English Civil War in June 1648, he was excluded again by Pride's Purge in December and went into exile before being allowed home in 1654. After The Restoration of 1660, Charles II made him Baron Holles and Ambassador to France from 1663 to 1666, an appointment that proved unsuccessful.

Holles gradually became part of the Whig opposition, backing the 1673 Test Act and exclusion in 1679 of the Catholic heir, James, Duke of York. He died in February 1680 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. One biographer summarised his career by saying; "...successful in almost everything he privately undertook, (he was) unsuccessful in almost everything he publicly undertook, (while) his passionate parliamentarianism was constantly counter-productive".