Holles of Ifield, Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles of Ifield (1599–1680)

English statesman. He first entered Parliament in 1624, where he opposed the foreign policy of the Duke of Buckingham, and was one of the five members who held the Speaker in his chair while John Eliot's protestations were passed in 1629. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Holles fought at the battles of Edgehill and Brentford, but his belief that a settlement should be negotiated with Charles I and his Presbyterian principles soon made him lose favour with Oliver Cromwell. He fled to France in 1649, returning in 1659 at the invitation of Monck. He went to the Hague to invite Charles II to return to England in 1660, and was made a peer the following year, but gradually moved into opposition to Charles, owing to his own convinced political and religious sympathies.