Holinshed, RAPHAEL, an English chronicler, belonged to a good Cheshire family, and, according to Wood, was educated at one of the universities, and became a minister of God's word. He appears also to have been steward to Thomas Burdet of Bromcote, in Warwickshire, and died between 1580 and 1584. The work with which his name is connected is The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, published in two folio volumes in 1577. This edition, together with its predecessor, the Chronicle of Hall, was the direct source from which Shakespeare drew the materials for his English historical plays. If we except the history of King John, which stands by itself, these form a regular historical sequence of English kings from Richard II. to Henry VIII., the reign of Henry VII. alone omitted as unsuitable for dramatic representation. And it is not a little interesting and significant that these cover exactly the same period as Hall's Chronicle—a period full of great action and tragical catastrophes profoundly touched with pathos.
The first edition of Holinshed contained many woodcuts which were omitted in the second edition (3 vols. folio; usually bound in two, 1586-87), as well as a number of passages cancelled by order of the Privy-council as disagreeable to Queen Elizabeth. These castrations were published separately in black letter like the original, by Dr Drake in 1723, and are inserted in their proper places in the splendid edition of the Chronicle published in six 4to volumes (1807-8). This last edition has the particular merit of an exceptionally full index.
Holinshed was by no means the only writer of the work which bears his name, and, indeed, its whole history is not a little interesting. Early in the reign of Elizabeth the queen's printer, Reginald Wolfe, a German by birth, planned 'a Universal Cosmographie of the whole world, and therewith also certain particular histories of every known nation,' and for the historical part of the work had engaged Raphael Holinshed among other men. When the gigantic work was nearly completed Wolfe died, after twenty-five years' labour at his scheme. Those who were to bear the cost of printing the whole now took fright at the expense, and resolved to do only so much of it in the meantime as related to England, Scotland, and Ireland. Holinshed having the history of these countries in hand, application was made to Harrison to furnish the descriptions of Britain and England to be prefixed to the whole. Of the three volumes in the second edition, the first is made up of these and Holinshed's own history of England till the Conquest. The second contains the Description of Ireland by Richard Stanihurst, the translator of Virgil's Aeneid into English hexameters, himself a Catholic and the uncle of Archbishop Ussher; then the history of Ireland to its Conquest, adapted from Giraldus Cambrensis, by John Hooker or Vowell, uncle of the Judicious Hooker; next the history of Ireland to the year 1509 by Holinshed; its continuation to 1547 by Stanihurst; and thence to 1586 by Hooker. The second volume contains further the Description of Scotland by Harrison; the history of Scotland by Holinshed, down to 1571, and by Francis Boteville, or Thin, the Lancaster herald, with the help of others, from 1571 to 1586. This was mainly compiled from Bellenden's translation of Boece, John Major, and the continuation of Boece by John Ferreri. The third volume is made up of the history of England from William the Conqueror down to 1577 by Holinshed, and from 1577 down to 1586 by the famous antiquary Stow, Fr. Thin, Abraham Fleming, and others. In the modern six-volume edition of 1807-8 these are more conveniently arranged; the first four volumes being devoted to the history of England, the fifth to Scotland, the sixth to Ireland, each having the Description of its proper country prefixed.
Holinshed was an honest and industrious man, and had the advantage of being able to consult the manuscripts of Leland. In the 'Preface to the Reader,' at the beginning of the third volume of the second edition, he says: 'My speech is plain, without any rhetorical show of eloquence, having rather a regard to simple truth than to decking words.' And in his conclusion to the reign of Elizabeth, Abraham Fleming, the contributor of many valuable notes throughout the entire work, describes with modest truthfulness those who had laboured together as 'men of commendable diligence, though not of deepest judgment.'