[citation needed] Holt was not born into wealth, being described years later in the 1788 Clavis Campanalogia (a bellringing textbook) as "a poor unlettered youth", which could well account for his untimely death.
Although an underprivileged and illiterate working class member of society, John Holt became a very highly placed individual in the art of method ringing.
Despite the fact that his ringing career spanned less than a decade, his contributions had incalculable impacts and he remains one of the most famous names in the history of the art.
In 1752 he left the Union Scholars and became a member of the Ancient Society of College Youths, to this day a thriving company.
The document did not become available until the following year, after the composer's death, the delay possibly being a result of the objections made by Benjamin Annable, a leading London ringer.
Virtually all composition achievements in the history of ringing have resulted from an evolutionary progression, where composers of one generation work on the foundations laid by their predecessors.
Not only were Holt's Grandsire Triples peals groundbreaking, original, and uninfluenced from earlier composers' work, they also remained virtually unparalleled for over a hundred years; it was only in the second half of the 19th century that other composers began to discover the secrets of the mathematics of Grandsire Triples composition which had been known only by Holt prior to then.
Indeed, Holt himself conducted the peal from a manuscript whilst sitting in the ringing chamber when the composition was rung for the first time.
William Dixon was the first person to conduct the composition whilst himself participating in the performance, a feat he achieved at St Michael Coslany, Norwich, on 22 August 1752.
Parker's Twelve-Part, published in the later years of the nineteenth century, took over as the 'easiest' Grandsire Triples composition for conductors, and remains so to the present day.