1 Ackerman, James S., The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

2 Airs, Malcolm and Tyack, Geoffrey, , eds, The Renaissance Villa in Britain 1500–1700 (Reading, 2007)Google Scholar.

3 Gutted in November 1940, the shell survived in an increasingly unstable condition until 1954, when the roofless remains were reduced to their existing state as a backdrop for open-air theatre. Also see Nicholas Cooper, ‘The Saving of Holland House 1940–1965’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, forthcoming.

4 Summerson, John, ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe in Sir John Soane's Museum’, Walpole Society, 40 (1966), pp. 71–72Google Scholar.

5 Earl of Ilchester, The Home of the Hollands 1605–1820 (London, 1937), and Chronicles of Holland House 1820–1900 (London, 1937).

6 Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England [hereafter RCHM], West London (London, 1925), pp. 75–77. The investigators’ site notes are in Swindon's Historic England Archive, together with a series of survey plans prepared by the Historic Buildings Section of the London County Council.

7 Princess Marie Liechtenstein, Holland House, 2 vols (London, 1874). Thomas Faulkner, History and Antiquities of Kensington (London, 1820), pp. 94–181.

8 A separate volume on the house by the London Survey, North Kensington, was envisaged but never begun.

9 For the ‘new rich’ of 1900 and their houses, see J. Mordaunt Crook, The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches (London, 1999).

10 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965); Gerald E. Aylmer, The King's Servants (London and Boston, 1974); Mervyn James, ‘English Politics and the Concept of Honour’, in Mervyn James, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 308–415; Linda Levy Peck, Court Culture and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1993); Courtney Erin Thomas, If I Lose Mine Honour I Lose Myself (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2017).

11 Richard C. Barnett, Place, Profit and Power: A Study of the Servants of William Cecil (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969), p. 11.

12 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series [hereafter CSP Dom.], Charles I, 23 vols (London, 1858–97), V, William Murray to Sir Henry Vane, 18 December 1631.

13 This article gives dates in new style.

14 Barnett, Place, Profit and Power, pp. 55–58.

15 Calendar of the Salisbury (Cecil) Papers [hereafter Salisbury Papers], 24 vols (London, 1883–1976), XVI, p. 415, n.d. [1604].

16 CSP Dom., Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, James I, 12 vols (London, 1856–72), VIII, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 11 May 1606.

17 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 42 vols (London, 1860–1953), 2, 16 January 1607.

18 Salisbury Papers, XV, 7 March 1603; 28 March 1603.

19 Salisbury Papers, XVI, William Stallenge to Viscount Cranborne, 8 November 1604.

20 Salisbury Papers, XVII, Chief Justice Popham to Robert Cecil, 26 June 1605.

21 Salisbury Papers, XXI, 31 December 1610, Arthur Agarde.

22 Salisbury Papers, XVIII, Arbella Stuart to Robert Cecil, 11 April 1606.

23 Norman E. McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols (Philadelphia, PA, 1939), I, p. 163, Chamberlain to Carleton, 2 October 1602.

24 Anthony F. Upton, Sir Arthur Ingram (Oxford, 1961), pp. 25–27 and 107–48.

25 Walter Dereham, ‘Holland House and Earls Court: The History and Topography’, British Archaeological Association Journal, 23 (1917), pp. 57–78. Kensington Central Library, Stephen Pasmore, ‘Thomas Henshaw and the Manor of West Town Kensington in the Seventeenth Century’, lecture given 2 December 1964.

26 CSP Dom., Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, James I, VIII, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 11 May 1606 (‘Lady Norris at Cope Castle, separated from her Lord’).

27 Christopher Morris, ed., The Journeys of Celia Fiennes (London, 1947), p. 277.

28 McClure, Letters, I, p. 258: Chamberlain to Carleton, 7 July 1608.

29 Salisbury Papers, XXIV, W. Cope, 26 April 1609.

30 Maurice Lee, ed., Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain 1603–1624: Jacobean Letters (New Brunswick, NJ, 1972), p. 110: Carleton to Chamberlain, 21 April 1609. For the king's cormorant, Marcus Beike, ‘Die Geschichte de Kormoranfischerei in Europe’, Vogelwelt, 133 (2012), pp. 1–21. For the ponds, Salisbury Papers, XII, Adrian Gilbert to Cecil, 18 September 1602 (‘The ponds […] will look trim like Mr Cope's ponds’). See also Sally Miller, ‘“The Ponds or Water Maze”, An Early Seventeenth-Century Water Garden at Cope Castle in Kensington’, Garden History, 42 (2014), pp. 21–40.

31 On Theobalds, see Salisbury Papers, XII, Houghton to Cecil, 30 September 1602; X, Johnson to Cope, January 1603. For Hyde Park, see Howard M. Colvin, ed., The History of the King's Works, 6 vols (London, 1963–82), III.2, p. 158. Salisbury was keeper of Hyde Park.

32 McClure, Letters, I, p. 503 (3 February 1614).

33 McClure, Letters, I, p. 554 (4 April 1614).

34 London, Sir John Soane's Museum, T.93. Summerson, ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe’, pp. 71–72 and plate 43.

35 Summerson identifies the underdrawing as being executed in pencil.

36 For instances, see Nicholas Cooper, Houses of the Gentry, 1480–1680 (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 135–41.

37 Summerson. ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe’, p. 72. Several other plans in Thorpe's book, however, are annotated with slight, supplementary sketch plans in a not dissimilar way: Sir John Soane's Museum, T.43, T.99, T.145, T.171, T.182.

38 The eastern wing was extended to the north in the nineteenth century, creating an irregular bay division.

39 Faulkner (Kensington, p. 133) says that its window was given to the Earl of Moira, whose house at Donington in Leicestershire had recently been built by the elder William Wilkins. There was no such window at Donington in 2019, nor in any of the churches of the district. The cusped, arched opening at Holland House recalled gothic echoes in other contemporary domestic chapels, for example at Bramshill, Charlton and Hatfield.

40 Charles J. Richardson, Architectural Remains of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I From Accurate Drawings and Measurements Taken From Existing Specimens (London, 1840), plate 5.

41 CSP Dom., Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, James I, VIII, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 11 May 1606.

42 RCHM, West London, p. 76.

43 Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, Hatfield MS C.P.M. Supp. 23, 24.

44 ‘Notebooks of George Vertue, I’, Walpole Society, 18 (1930), p. 88.

45 Charles L. Kingsford, A Survey of London by John Stow Reprinted From the Text of 1603, 2 vols (London, 1908), II, p. 23. The Bible's present whereabouts is unknown.

46 The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino (London, 1995), pp. 33–35.

47 Gottfried von Bulow, ‘Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, Through England in the Year 1602’, Royal Historical Society Transactions, 6 (1892), pp. 24–26. The identification of Kopf with Cope was made by Hope Mirrlees (note 48).

48 Hope Mirrlees, A Fly in Amber: Being an Extravagant Biography of the Romantic Antiquary Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (London, 1962), pp. 73–74.

49 Arthur Macgregor, Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections From the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London, 2007), p. 66. Part at least of Cope's picture collection remained in the house until the 1720s. His pictures included the Holbein portrait of Nicholas Kratzer now in the National Portrait Gallery. See also ‘Notebooks of George Vertue, IV’, Walpole Society, 24 (1935–36), p. 69.

50 Salisbury Papers, V, Cope to Robert Cecil, 10 December 1595. For Stickells: Mark Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall 1540–1640 (New Haven and London, 2009), pp. 46 and 59–60.

51 Manolo Guerci, ‘Salisbury House in London: The Strand Palace of Sir Robert Cecil’, Architectural History, 52 (2009), pp. 39–40.

52 Dereham, ‘Holland House and Earls Court’, p. 73.

53 John Summerson, ‘John Thorpe and the Thorpes of Kingscliffe’, The Unromantic Castle (London, 1990), pp. 17–40.

54 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Gough Drawings A3, f. 81r.

55 Sir John Soane's Museum, T.34.

56 A ‘great house clock’ is recorded on the top floor in an inventory attached to a lease of 1673: Kew (Surrey), National Archives (hereafter NA), E 214/1059; ‘the Clock turret’ in a repair bill of 1667 (n.s.), E 192/15/4; and payment for ‘the great clock at Kensington’, probably for keeping it in order, in 1662 (n.s.), E 192/13/16.

57 Andrea Palladio, I quattro libri dell'architettura (Venice, 1570), Book 2, p. 52; Summerson, ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe’, p. 52; Summerson, ‘John Thorpe’, p. 39; Sir John Soane's Museum, T.34.

58 Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Livre d'Architecture (Paris, 1559), plate 12.

59 Colvin, History of the King's Works, III.1, p. 107.

60 McClure, Letters, II, p. 580.

61 Alastair Bellamy and Andrew McRae, Early Modern Literary Studies, Text Series 1 (Sheffield, 2005) p. 115. Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (London, 1650), pp. 26–27.

62 Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars, 3 vols (London, 1819), I, p. 115.

63 Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629, 6 vols (London, 2010), VI, pp. 30–32.

64 Calendar of State Papers […] Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice [hereafter CSP Ven.], 38 vols (London, 1864–1940), II, Pesaro to Doge and Senate, 30 May 1625.

65 CSP Ven., Pesaro to Doge and Senate, 21 August 1625.

66 CSP Ven., Contarini to Doge and Senate, 24 November 1625.

67 Wotton, Northamptonshire archives, FH 2860.

68 Albert J. Loomie, Ceremonies of Charles I: The Note Books of John Finet (New York, 1987), pp. 53–55 and 194.

69 Clarendon, History, I, pp. 248–49.

70 CSP Dom., Charles I, IV, Dowager Countess of Suffolk to Holland, 9 March 1630.

71 Manuscripts of the Earl Cowper Preserved at Melbourne Hall, 3 vols (London, 1889), II, pp. 14–15.

72 Manuscripts of the Earl Cowper, p. 62.

73 Clarendon, History, II, p. 206.

74 For the lower figure: John L. Beatty, Warwick and Holland (Denver, 1965) p. 130; for the higher: Barbara Donagan, ‘A Courtier's Progress: Greed and Consistency in the Life of the Earl of Holland’, Historical Journal, 91 (1976) pp. 331–37. Donagan's figure is to be preferred.

75 Aylmer, The King's Servants, p. 231.

76 CSP Dom., Charles I, XI, 13 July 1637.

77 Thomas Carte, The Life of James Duke of Ormond, 2 vols (London, 1851), I, p. 12; Complete Peerage, XI (1949), p. 551 (Desmond/Ormond); NA, E 192/18/7 (Sunderland).

78 Clarendon, History, III, p. 374.

79 David Howarth, Lord Arundel and his Circle (London, 1985), p. 194.

80 Rudolf Wittkower, ‘Puritanismo Fiero’, Burlington Magazine, 90 (1948), pp. 50–51. R. Malcom Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia, PA, 1987), p. 122.

81 Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, 2 vols (Oxford, 1907), I, p. 218.

82 Ruth Saunders Magurn, The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Cambridge, MA, 1955), p. 313.

83 CSP Ven, II, Soranzo to Doge and Senate, 12 October 1629.

84 London, Parliamentary Archives, HCT/37, House of Lords Journal, 17 December 1645.

85 His rental income may have been no more than £1000: see Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 761.

86 Clarendon, History, I, pp. 645–46.

87 Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (London, 1732), p. 386.

88 British Library [hereafter BL], Add MS 23069, f. 19. ‘Note-Book and Account-Book of Nicholas Stone transcribed by W.L. Spiers’, Walpole Society, 7 (1919), p. 8.

89 Faulkner, Kensington, pp. 120–21.

90 CSP Dom., Charles I, VI, 5 April 1633.

91 NA, E/192/15/20.

92 Photographs show the soffits of these arches apparently painted directly on to stone. Irregularities in the dimensions of the adjacent panels, probably shown accurately by Richardson (note 100), may be the result of these alterations.

93 NA, E 192/15/20.

94 Summerson, ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe’, p. 48, plate 8; Sir John Soane's Museum, T.22.

95 Nicholas Stone undertook work at Tart Hall, though it is not known what he did; Dianne Duggan, ‘Tart Hall: The Countess of Arundel's Casino at Whitehall’, in The Renaissance Villa in Britain, ed. Airs and Tyack, pp. 167–79, reproducing Wenceslaus Hollar's print Spring in which the house shown has long been accepted as an image of Tart Hall. See also John Harris and Gordon Higgott, Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings (New York, 1989), plate 118. For Swakeleys, see Walter Godfrey, Swakeleys, Ickenham, London Survey Monograph 13 (London, 1933).

96 Daniel Parsons, ed., The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven (London, 1836), pp. 51–52.

97 Quoted in Roy Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England (London, 1979), p. 178.

98 NA, E 192/15/20. Bucket had earlier worked extensively for Salisbury at Salisbury House and Hatfield; see Edward Towne, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters 1547–1625’, Walpole Society, 76 (2014), pp. 44–47.

99 NA, E 192/16/4–5.

100 Richardson, Architectural Remains, plate 4; Victoria and Albert Museum, 93.H.17/19,28.

101 ‘Notebooks of George Vertue, IV’, p. 159, and Faulkner, Kensington, p. 136. The ribbed ceiling shown in late photographs was installed in 1891 by Jacksons of Rathbone Place. See BL, Add MS 61806, f. 77.

102 Ian Bristow, Architectural Colour in British Interiors, 1615–1840 (New Haven and London, 1996), pp. 11–13.

103 NA, E 192/16/4–5.

104 For the Theobalds panelling: Mark Girouard, ‘The Smythson Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects’, Architectural History, 5 (1962), p. 150.

105 NA, E 192/15/20.

106 Compare the timber balustrade with balls shown in a portrait reproduced by Strong, Renaissance Garden, plate 65.

107 NA, E 192/16/4-5.

108 The house remained in the possession of Holland's descendants and collaterals until the 1740s, but some portraits recorded in the house in the eighteenth century and subsequently taken to Bilton Grange may have been brought in later; see Earl of Ilchester, The Home of the Hollands 1605–1820, p. 30 and Appendix D. Holland's own property was forfeited in 1649 on his conviction for treason, although some, unspecified, was bought back by his widow.

109 Jean Vittet and Arnaud Brejon de Lavergnée, La Collection de tapisseries de Louis XIV (Dijon, 2010). I am grateful to Helen Wyld for information about these hangings.

110 Faulkner, Kensington, p. 132; Earl of Ilchester, Chronicles of Holland House, p. 459. Swindon, Historic England Archive, RCHM investigator's notes (West London).

111 George Radcliffe, The Earl of Strafforde's Letters and Dispatches, with an Essay Towards his Life, 2 vols (London, 1739), I, p. 51: Francis Cottington to Viscount Wentworth, 5 August 1629.

112 NA, E192/15/6; E 214/795.

113 Leeds, West Yorkshire Archives, WYL100/EA/13/74. This source covers all of the work from 1637 except where otherwise noted.

114 Kensington Central Library, map by J. Johnson and W. Brazier (1734) after a survey by Edward Bostock Fuller (1695).

115 The ‘cantellavell eaves’ may have resembled those at Lees Court of 1652.

116 For Matthew Goodrich, see Mary Edmond, ‘Limners and Printmakers’, Walpole Society, 47 (1978–80), pp. 175–76. Elsewhere, Goodrich had worked at the queen's houses, which may have established a link with Holland as her steward.

117 CSP Dom., Charles I, XV, 3 December 1639. ‘Of the second sort’ refers to the ornament in their borders.

118 Malcolm Airs, ‘Inigo Jones, Isaac de Caus and the Stables at Holland House’, Georgian Group Journal, 13 (2003), pp. 141–60.

119 Giles Worsley, The British Stable (New Haven and London, 2004), p. 42. Given a width of 6 ft to each stall, twenty-eight stalls would require 168 ft of manger. The extra foot (169 ft) when measured for payment is easily accounted for by a very slight cumulative error in setting-out.

120 BL, Add MS 61809, f. 22.

121 NA, E 192/16/10.

122 In 1668 the Royal Mews accommodated 151 horses of eight different types; see Arthur Macgregor, ‘The Royal Stables: A Seventeenth-Century Perspective’, Antiquaries Journal, 76 (1996), pp. 181–200.

123 Colvin, History of the King's Works, IV.2, pp. 162–64.

124 John Harris, ‘Inigo Jones and the Prince's Lodging at Newmarket’, Architectural History, 2 (1959), pp. 26–40.

125 Radcliffe, The Earl of Strafforde's Letters and Dispatches, II, p. 118: Garrard to Strafford, 9 October 1637. For Fonthill, John Harris, The Artist and the Country House (London, 1979), p. 262; for Wilton, John Bold, Wilton House and English Palladianism (London, 1988), pp. 78–80. For all, Worsley, The British Stable, pp. 72–86.

126 NA, E 214/775.

127 NA, E 214/1059.

128 These springs were a source of instability for the west side of the house throughout its history.

129 NA, E 192/17/1.

130 Colvin, History of the King's Works, IV.2, pp. 48–49. A letter from Holland to Strafford is dated at Bagshot in September 1637.

131 Higham, Charles S. S., Wimbledon Manor House under the Cecils (London, 1962), p. 32Google Scholar, plate 5; Harris and Higgott, Inigo Jones, p. 236.

132 ‘Notebooks of George Vertue, II’, Walpole Society, 20 (1931–32), p. 31.

133 See above, and also Newman, John, ‘Nicholas Stone's Goldsmiths' Hall: Design and Practice in the 1630s’, Architectural History, 14 (1971), pp. 30–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134 Colvin, History of the King's Works, III.1, p. 330.

135 Jervis, Simon Swynfen, ‘The Paston Prospective’, Burlington Magazine, 160 (2018), pp. 536–44Google Scholar.

136 NA, E 214/775.

137 BL, Egerton Ms 1973. The unusual contract required the very careful dismantling and storage of structural elements, roof trusses, windows, stair parts, and so on, for reuse. Their subsequent fate is unknown.

138 Lewis, Wilmarth S., ed., The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, 48 vols (New Haven, 1937–83), XXX, p. 114Google Scholar: Walpole to C. H. Williams.

139 Colvin, History of the King's Works, V, pp. 242–43.

140 Faulkner, Kensington, pp. 120 and 131–32.

141 Earl of Ilchester, The Home of the Hollands, pp. 191–92.

142 Leigh Hunt, ed. Austin Dobson, The Old Court Suburb, 2 vols (London, 1855; 1902), I, p. 159.

143 Many items were lost when the house stood in ruins. Others, taken into the care of the LCC in 1954, are in the Historic England store at Wrest where they are largely misidentified as English.

144 BL, Add MS 61807–10.