William Holliday

Note : dates are given using the New Style calendar.
William Holliday (also spelled Hollidaie and Halliday) (c. 1565 – February 14, 1624) was a wealthy London businessman and chairman of the East India Company.

He was apparently born in Gloucestershire. It is not clear who his parents were: Burke's Commoners makes him out to be the son of Lawrence and Anne Holliday of Gloucester, but the children listed in Lawrence's will (1587) and the brother and sister named in William's will (1623) do not have the same names, so they appear to be different families. Nevertheless, according to William's will, he was a cousin of Sir Leonard Holliday, who was later Lord Mayor of London.

William was later sent to London, probably in the 1580s, where he served an apprenticeship in the Worshipful Company of Mercers, which controlled the city's textile industry. In 1594 he took part in the Duke of Cumberland's expedition to the Azores which involved the sinking of the great Portuguese carrack the Cinco Chagas. William evidently had a successful career as a mercer. He was also involved in the East India Company, of which his cousin Sir Leonard had been a founder, and was elected as a 'committee', i.e. director, in 1616. In 1617 he served as Master of the Mercers Company and was elected a sheriff for the year

. In February 1618, he was elected an alderman of the City. William's stature and success were reflected in the arranged marriages of his two daughters. In April 1619, after "long and ernest sollicitation" by the Marquess (later Duke) of Buckingham, who was acting on instructions from King James, he married off Anne to Sir Henry Mildmay. In 1621, William was elected governor of the East India Company, a position he held for the remaining three years of his life.

Margaret Holliday, daughter of William Holliday and wife of Sir Edward Hungerford (1596–1648) of Farleigh Hungerford Castle. 1633 portrait by Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen. The arms of Holliday are visible on the sinister side of the impaled escutcheon

He married circa 1600, Susan Rowe (or Susannah), the daughter of Henry Rowe, a prominent member of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers and later Lord Mayor of London, whose father, Sir Thomas, had been an earlier Lord Mayor. His widow later married the Earl of Warwick. She died in 1646. William and Susan had two daughters:

• Anne Holliday(born in 1602)
• Margaret Holliday (born circa 1603), younger daughter, whom in February 1620 her father married off to Sir Edward Hungerford (1596–1648) of Farleigh Hungerford Castle, Wiltshire, where survives the couples magnificent chest tomb and effigies.

• Smith, C.F. (1901). Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick

William died on 14 February 1624 and was buried in or near St Lawrence Jewry church. He left a substantial estate: around £40 000 in cash, and properties in London, Middlesex, and Gloucestershire.

Many years later, their daughter Margaret Hungerford erected a monument to William, Anne, and her sister Anne, in St Lawrence Jewry church. It was irreparably damaged during an air raid in 1940.

Shortly before his death in 1624, William obtained a grant of arms from the College of Arms. The arms were: Sable, three helmets argent a bordure of the last, i.e. a black shield displaying three silver helmets all within a silver border. The crest was a demi-lion guardant holding an anchor. This crest serves as the footrest of the effigy of Margaret Hungerford at Farleigh Castle. These arms and crest bear some resemblance to those of Sir Leonard Holliday, the differences being in the trimming of the helmet, the edging of the border, and the direction in which the lion faces.