In 1628, he was elected for Dorchester, where his father-in-law had significant influence. He played a prominent role in organising support for the Petition of Right and on 2 March 1629 was one of those who famously forced the Speaker to continue sitting, thus preventing Charles dissolving Parliament. A week later Charles dissolved Parliament, ushering in eleven years of Personal Rule, in which he attempted to regain all the ground lost. Holles, Sir John Eliot and seven others were prosecuted by the Star Chamber and fined; released on bail in October, Holles spent most of the next decade in obscurity.