The Life and Achievements of Sir John Popham 1531 - 1607

Even now the ambiguities of his career remain, for in spite of a lifetime of devoted service to his country, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chief Justice lives in popular imagination as a terrifying ghost. This book relishes the legends but overall aims to present a more balanced portrait. The first full-length biography of Sir John Popham, it uses his own letters and other contemporary documents to reveal the forceful personality and wide-ranging concerns of a top official at the very center of English government. John Popham was born in the West of England, in a North Somerset backwater; but it faced out toward the sea, to Ireland and America. He early acquired a legendary character. Abducted by gypsies as a child, he made his career in the law, and it is said that at the same time as practicing as a barrister in London he also acted as a highwayman. Hard work led to rapid promotion: a Member of Parliament for Bristol, he became Speaker of the House of Commons by the personal wish of the Queen. In the 1580s, Popham was a key figure in the national scheme to establish an English colony in Ireland. Sbortly afterward he financed a privateer commanded by his nephew. As Attorney-General and during fifteen years as Lord Chief Justice, Sir John played a prominent part in most of the leading trials the day, including those of Mary Queen of Scots, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Ralegh, and the Gunpowder Plotters. He acquired a formidable reputation as a persecutor of recusants and hanging judge, as well as notoriety for corruption in a famous case of child murder. A very rich man through his legal practice, Sir John built a fine mansion at Wellington in Somerset, acquired Littlecote in Wiltshire, and married his children into property. He lived briefly at Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire, where a murderous legend attests to the power of his personality. HIs energy was unlimited: at the age of seventy-four he undertook a major project to drain the Fens near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, producing a significant waterway