WILLS AND SETTLEMENTS

Although the wills and settlements are very extensive, running to some 236 items, arranged, in strictly chronological order, into 28 bundles, the number of documents that are of first rate importance is really rather limited. The main estate was subject to six major settlements over 150 years and most of the documents here described are little more than subsidiaries to these six important transactions. The major settlements were:- the will of Sir Robert Holmes, 1697, unfortunately missing (See IWCRO FAM/23 for a transcript, original in PCC Series, 1692, folio 203), the marriage settlement of Thomas Holmes and Anne Aspley, 1727, JER/HBY/104/8, the will of Thomas Holmes, 1764, see JER/HBY/208/1, the settlement of Henry Worsely, 1808, JER/HBY/123/1, the will of Leonard Thomas Worsley Holmes, 1825, JER/HBY/123/1, and the marriage settlement of Elizabeth Worsley Holmes and William Henry Ashe a'Court, 1833, JER/HBY/124/5.

There are a number of documents in the wills and settlements dealing with the extremely complex affairs of the insolvent Newport bankers, Henry and John Roberts, who were connected with the Holmes family through Lucretia Sowle, one of Thomas Holmes's sisters and with the Worsleys through Margaret Roberts, sister of Henry Worsley. There is also an interesting and unusual group of deeds under which Leonard Troughear made provision for his mistresses and their children, e.g. JER/HBY/113/3 and JER/HBY/115/5.

The sheer bulk of the class is mostly accounted for by the numerous off-spring of Henry Holmes and his wife Mary, the natural daughter of Sir Robert Holmes. The parish registers of Yarmouth and Thorley record the baptisms of twenty children to this couple of whom eleven, seven girls and four boys, survived to adulthood. In 1727 the entire estate, as it then stood, was settled on the eldest son Thomas in tail male, with remainders to each of his brothers, also in tail male, and a final remainder jointly to his sisters. In the event none of the brothers produced any surviving, legitimate issue at all and by 1760 there was the imminent prospect of a break-up of the estate between seven sister co-heiresses. Thomas Holmes evidently prevailed on his sisters and the respective husbands of those who were married to release their rights in the Isle of Wight property to himself, in return for which they were indemnified against any claims of his second wife, Catherine, to widows' thirds. The sisters did, however, keep the valuable Limerick estate and the fee farm rents in Wales and much money and ingenuity was expended over the next fifty years in buying back or otherwise acquiring their shares.

Thomas Holmes settled his own purchases, notably the Freshwater estate, the property he had recovered from his sisters and further purchases made by his father after 1727 by will. This remarkable document, unfortunately only represented here by a much later copy, JER/HBY/208/1, contained very lengthy provisions to prevent a repetition of the debacle of his own first marriage settlement. To ensure that the estate passed unbroken into a male line he named seven male relations, his two brothers, four nephews and one great nephew, who were to have successive remainders, each in tail male, the nephews and great nephew on condition that they took the name Holmes. The first three individuals, his two brothers and nephew Thomas Troughear, all predeceased him without issue and the estate duly passed to the fourth named successor, his nephew Leonard Troughear.

This Leonard Troughear, later second Lord Holmes, had two daughters but no son so, on his death in 1804, the next provisions for inheritance under the will of Thomas Holmes came into operation. By this time, however, the next three successors, John Troughear, Thomas Roberts and Thomas Worsley were all dead and the final provision for "any other son of Robert Worsley of Pidford" was activated. It was in this obscure fashion that the Pidford and Westover estates were united in the person of Henry Worsley of Pidford.

Henry Worsley, who now became Worsley Holmes, seems to have had more relaxed views about what should happen to the estate after his death. He, as life tenant, and his son Leonard Thomas Worsley Holmes, as tenant expectant in tail, entered into a common recovery in 1808 and a new, simple settlement of the Westover estate was made, JER/HBY/119/1, for Leonard and his heirs. Leonard had two daughters only and, by his will, JER/HBY/123/1, he settled his entire estate exclusively on the elder, Elizabeth, but wrapped up in an elaborate double trust from which much trouble was to arise, see JER/HBY/126/2. The marriage settlement of Elizabeth and William Henry Ashe a'Court, JER/HBY/124/5, did little more than confirm this arrangement. A disentailing assurance was entered into in 1857, JER/HBY/128/2, and a new settlement made for the eldest son of Elizabeth and William Henry, JER/HBY/128/5.

Pidford Farm was settled on Henry Worsley and his heirs in 1748, see JER/HBY/105/9. To Pidford he added numerous purchases of his own. Under his will all this property passed to his son, Leonard Thomas Worsley Holmes, but some of it, including Watergate Farm, was sold in 1815 under an order in Chancery. See JER/HBY/186/5 and IWCRO Ward/276.