Background
He was a son of Robert de Holland, 1st Baron Holand and Maud la Zouche.
He was a son of Robert de Holland, 1st Baron Holand and Maud la Zouche.
In 1346, he attended King Edward III into Normandy in the immediate retinue of the Earl of Warwick. And, at the taking of Caen, the Count of Eu and Guînes, Constable of France, and the Count De Tancarville surrendered themselves to him as prisoners.
He was from a gentry family in Upholland, Lancashire. In his early military career, he fought in Flanders. In 1343, he was again on service in France.
At the Battle of Crécy, he was one of the principal commanders in the vanguard under the Prince of Wales and he, afterwards, served at the Siege of Calais in 1346-1347.
However, during his absence on foreign service, Joan, under pressure from her family, contracted another marriage with William Montacute, 2nd Earl of Salisbury (of whose household Holland had been seneschal). This second marriage was annulled in 1349, when Joan"s previous marriage with Holland was proved to the satisfaction of the papal commissioners.
Between 1353 and 1356 he was summoned to Parliament as Baron de Holland. In 1354 Holland was the king"s lieutenant in Brittany during the minority of the Duke of Brittany, and in 1359 co-captain-general for all the English continental possessions.
Another son, John became Earl of Huntingdon and Duke of Exeter.
He was engaged, in 1340, in the English expedition into Flanders and sent, two years later, with Sir John Doctorate"Artevelle to Bayonne, to defend the Gascon frontier against the French.