And at this period the war did in fact commence, and before the end of the first year of the long and awful contest which succeeded, Holland became weary of his new associates and occupations, and having, through the means of Lord Jermyn, established an indirect correspondence with the Queen, and recovered some share of her former good graces, suddenly presented himself in the King's garrison at Wallingford, and sent his offers of service to his Majesty then at Oxford. They were received, however, with more gravity. The King referred to the Privy Council the question whether he should be admitted, where it met with much opposition, but was at length determined in the affirmative. He came accordingly, but with no apparent consciousness of having offended; resumed with infinite ease all the airs of a courtier; became disgusted by encountering some degree of reserve, and at length mortally offended because he was not reinstated in his office of Groom of the Stole; and, after a very short stay at Oxford, took the advantage of a dark night, and, riding into the rebel quarters, again joined the Parliament. His reception, however, was not perfectly cordial. He was for a short time imprisoned, and during his confinement, attempted to make his peace by writing and publishing a declaration of his patriotic motives to the singular steps which he had lately taken, seasoned with reports of the King and his Council equally false and injurious.

He had now, however, lost all credit with the rebels, and was forced into retirement. He remained, unnoticed and forgotten, impatiently beholding from afar the gradual ruin of both the parties which he had alternately served and betrayed. One more opportunity to vacillate at length presented itself, and it was the last. In the spring of 1648, when the despair of the presbyterians, as well as of the royalists, suggested to them too late so many wild insurrections for the rescue of the King from the base hands into which he had fallen, Holland engaged the young Duke of Buckingham, and a few others of high rank, in a plan for a rising in Surrey. He received from the Prince of Wales a commission of General, and the Queen, who was at Paris, promised supplies

of money. Few endeavours were used to conceal the design, and, though the fruition of it had been long expected, it was prematurely executed. The Earl appeared in arms at Kingston-on-Thames, at the head of a small force, expecting to be joined by thousands, and on the following day, the seventh of July, was surrounded by a superior body of the rebel Horse and Foot, from which contriving to escape, with about an hundred cavalry, he fled, without resting, till he reached St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire, where he was seized and confined in Warwick Castle, and afterwards in the Tower of London. After an imprisonment of eight months, he was declared guilty of high treason by that detestable body which had named itself "the high court of justice," and his sentence referred to the House of Commons, where he was doomed to die by the casting vote of the Speaker, and, on the ninth of March, 1649, was beheaded in Palace Yard.

This unworthy nobleman, whose Lady has been already mentioned, left issue by her four sons, and five daughters. Robert, who succeeded to his titles, and afterwards to those of his uncle, the Earl of Warwick; Charles; Henry; and Cope. His daughters were Frances, married to William, fifth Lord Paget; Isabel, to Sir James Thynne, of Longleate, in Wilts; Susanna, to James Howard, third Earl of Suffolk of his family; Mary, to Sir John Campbell, afterwards created Earl of Breadalbin in Scotland; and Diana, who died unmarried. The titles of Earl of Warwick and Holland became extinct in this family by the death, in 1759, of Edward Rich, eighth Earl of Warwick, and fifth Earl of Holland, without male issue.