• Name: Hollis, Timothy
• Gender: Male
• Death Date: 14  December  1790
• Occupation: reformer

Timothy Hollis was a gentleman of private fortune who was a supporter of political reform. He was uncle to John Hollis and also second cousin to Thomas Hollis who donated his fortune to Thomas Brand Hollis. Hollis was a member of the London Revolution Society and seems to have shared many of his cousin’s political interests. He left his estate to John Hollis. Godwin associated with many dissenting figures at dinners hosted by Timothy Hollis in 1789 and 1790.

There is some uncertainty over the plain Hollis entries in the diary, most of which have been attributed to John but those prior to Timothy's death have been coded as Timothy. It might be that not all those prior to this date are Timothy Hollis. Godwin notes in the 1796 lists that he first meets'Tim Hollis' in 1783, (J Hollis in 1782 and B Hollis in 1784). There is little to suggest that the Hollis's are not Timothy Hollis, and some, such as the meal with Joseph Priestley (15 April 1789) seem very likely to be Timothy Hollis. Where the attribution becomes much more difficult is when the use of Hollis persists after Timothy's death in 1790 - and the fact of its persistence does retrospectively throw some doubt on the attribution of earlier Hollis entries to Timothy Hollis. Timothy Hollis's will (courtesy of Harvard's library), indicates that he leaves his estate to J. Hollis, his nephew. This suggests that there is not another Hollis around to whom Godwin might transfer the name other than J Hollis. Disney's Memoirs of Thomas Brand Hollis also suggest that there were no other male Hollises.

Furthermore, the number of meals at Hollis where Brand and John Hollis are also present indicates that there can be a reasonable degree of certainty that 'Hollis' entries refer to Timothy Hollis prior to his death in December 1790. Also, plain Hollis is infrequently used until 1799.

As for the Hollis entries after 1790, this is certainly more problematic. There are 64 Hollis's noted 1791-1815. However, as Brand Hollis leaves London in 1801 and dies in 1804 - and given that there does not seem to be any other Hollis's on the scene, all Hollis's post-1801 have been coded as John. Further evidence for this can be found for many of these instances from contextual information (e.g. Godwin notes similar topics of conversation between a J. Hollis entry and a Hollis entry which occur close together). There are also entries such as the one for 15 April 1799 where B Hollis and Hollis appear together.

However, it must also be noted that Godwin continues to use J. Hollis alongside plain Hollis through the 1790s. There are also two references to Jno Hollis (25 November 1795 and 17 May 1801) which keeps the possibility of there being another Hollis in play although it seems unlikely.

• Will of Timothy Hollis, Houghton Library, Harvard University
• John Disney, Memoirs of Thomas Brand Hollis (London: T. Gillet, 1808).
• Mark Philp, Godwin’s Political Justice (London: Duckworth, 1986).

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.