Hollings was born in Yorkshire in or about 1556, matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1573, when he was aged 17, and was admitted B.A.
Renouncing Protestantism, he withdrew to France, and was, 14 May 1579, received into the English College of Douay, then temporarily removed to Rheims.
On 21 August of the same year he left the college to proceed on foot to Rome, in company with five other students, who were admitted into the English College there in the following October.
Hollings, however, does not appear to have become a member of the college, though he certainly resided there for several years, and became an intimate friend of John Pitts the biographer.
He was ‘highly venerated for his great knowledge, and the success he obtained in that faculty’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon.