Randle Holme

Randle Holme was a name shared by members of four successive generations of a family who lived in Chester, Cheshire, England from the late years of the 16th century to the early years of the 18th century. They were all herald painters and genealogists and were members of the Stationers' Company of Chester. All four painted memorial boards and hatchments, and some of these can still be found in Cheshire churches.

The first to bear the name, he was born in Chester, the son of Thomas Holme, a blacksmith whose family came from Tranmere, which was then in Cheshire, and Elizabeth Devenett from Kinnerton, Flintshire. He was apprenticed to Thomas Chaloner who was deputy to William Flower, Norroy King of Arms in 1578. He was elected an alderman by 1604 and appointed as a servant to Prince Henry by May 1607. In 1600 and again in 1606 Holme was appointed deputy herald of the College of Arms in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales.

Holme's main duty was to arrange funerals of those entitled to bear arms but he also made an income from painting hatchments and memorial boards. From the early 1620s ill health prevented him from undertaking long journeys and his son Randle Holme II deputised for him by making the annual Easter reports to the College of Arms. He was fined for not attending the coronation of Charles I in 1626 and for refusing a knighthood in 1631. Holme was sheriff of Chester in 1615–16 and mayor in 1633–34. He remained in the city of Chester during the siege of Chester in the Civil War from September 1645 to February 1646 and also during the plague of 1648. Supported by Sir William Brereton he was made a commissioner for peace and oversaw the repair of the city walls.

...
Wikipedia