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The Family of Poyntz and its Catholic Associations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

T. B. Trappes-Lomax
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Extract

In a list of influential persons of about the year 1574, in a section devoted to Catholics, occur the names of Sir Nicholas Poyntz and his wife. The name of Sir Nicholas Poyntz also occurs in a list, dated 1580, of Catholics who had been arrested or confined to their houses or to the houses of Protestants. Challoner, writing of James Fen, gives incidental information about Sir Nicholas: “James Fenn … having … lost his wife, betook himself to the service of Sir Nicholas Poyntz, an eminent Catholic gentleman, whom he served in quality of steward … A learned and pious priest, who used to frequent Sir Nicholas's house, taking notice of the excellent qualifications … of Mr. Fenn … advised him to quit that worldly employ and go over to Rheims to the English College … Mr. Fenn took the counsel … and went over to Rheims, where he was made priest … in 1580.” The College diary does not record the year of his arrival at Rheims, but his studies for the priesthood probably lasted some four years. Sir Nicholas was therefore entertaining, if not harbouring, a priest in about 1575.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1961 , pp. 68 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1961

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References

Notes

1. CRS. viii. 141.

2. Harleian MS. (British Museum) 360. f.65.

3. Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1924 ed.), 89, 90.

4. Fenn had been born about 1540 and was a graduate of Oxford.

5. Thirty copies of this two-volume book were privately printed by W. Pollard & Co., Exeter, in 1886.

6. Five and a half miles South-East of Thornbury, Gloucestershire.

7. Four miles West of Iron Acton.

8. Maclean, op. cit., i.89.

9. Ibid, i.77, citing Harleian MSS. 286. 56-57.

10. Ibid, i.84, citing S.P. Dom. xlvii. n.43, being a letter of that date from the Earl of Shaftesbury to John Osborne.

11. Salome, M., Life of Mary Ward, 65.Google Scholar

12. CRS. ii.297. The Monmouthshire County Archivist cannot identify any Signate near Monmouth and believes the word is a mistranscription for Tregate on the Herefordshire bank of the River Monnow. Tregate Castle Farm, which is probably the house occupied by “Mr. Poynes” is three miles from the centre of Monmouth town.

13. S.P.Dom. James I (1605), xiv, n.40, quoted in full in Foley, Records S.J., iv. 370, 371.

14. Maclean, i.97. She was buried at Iron Acton.

15. Foley, vii.628; CRS. xxxvii.198.

16. Maclean, i.85.

17. Ibid, ii.116, 117.

18. Allison and Rogers, A Catalogue of Catholic Books (1956), no.656. See also Southern, A. C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose, (1950), Bibliography no.117.Google Scholar

19. This is South Fawley Manor House, five miles South of Wantage, built between 1614 and 1621 by Sir Francis Moore, Knight, a lawyer and M.P. At the time of Poyntz's residence, it was the property of Sir Richard Moore, 3rd Baronet. The Rev. James Angel was here for some years about 1750. Its Catholic life ended with the sale by the fifth Baronet in 1765, though William Nicholas Knight O.F.M. was attending the Fawley Catholics from Whatcombe about 1775.

20. Maclean, ii.199.

21. CRS. xl.137.

22. Information from the English Convent, Bruges.

23. Maclean, ii.278.

24. Foley, vii.629.

25. Estcourt and Payne, English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715, 230. Edward Poyntz is almost certainly the younger brother of Giles.

26. Oliver, Collections, 387. The same is said of the burial of Mrs. Temperance Poyntz on 3 June 1721.

27. Letters from Rev. Alban Butler of 13 July and 6 September 1764 to Rev. C. Stonor, in Westminster Cathedral Archives, B.46. no.76,78; Cretineau-Joly, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, v.chap.4.

28. Stonyhurst Archives, C.I.2.no.102.

29. Ibid. C.I.1.no.35, and C.I.1.no.7.

30. Ibid. C.I.1.no.38.

31. Son of Edward Poyntz of Marsh, Somerset, by his wife Margaret, daughter of Amyas Chichester of Arlington, Devon.

32. He left Douai for England on 7 March 1622.

33. David (Augustine) Baker O.S.B. who was living in London at the time.

34. Challoner, op.cit.

35. Vivian's edition of the 1620 visitation.

36. About ten months elapsed between Powell's leaving Leighland and his arrest on 22 February 1646.

37. Royalist Composition Papers, second series, xlix.719, cited by Maclean, ii.271.

38. Maclean, ii.271,282. The phrase indicates that he had in mind what the English law held to be superstitious uses, such as masses for the repose of his soul or gifts to religious orders. The will was proved on 15 December 1666. See Downside Review, xxxvll.31.

39. It is printed in Abstracts of Somerset Wills, vi.38. It was proved on 18 November 1691.

40. It is printed in Downside Review, xxxvi.71-76. It was not attached to the will as it contained “superstitious” clauses such as a legacy to her chaplain Joseph Berriman O.S.B.

41. This statement is probably not strictly true. The expectation of life for a man twenty-five years old in 1558 was thirty-one years. (Information from the Registrar General.) It is true that Dom Sigebert Buckley O.S.B., who was born about 1517, survived to 1610; but so long a life was exceptional. The Benedictines of the Cassinese and Spanish congregations began to reach England from about 1602. It is just possible that one or more of the twenty-eight monks of the Westminster community, which had been restored by Queen Mary, found their way to Leighland.

42. There was one interruption in the Benedictine sequence if, as Oliver states in his Collections (p.181), William Anderson S.J. was here about 1750.

43. Estcourts and Payne, op.cit., 229.

44. Downside Review, xx.198.

45. Foley, vii.136. Downside Review, xx.198 says he stayed on until at least as late as 1773.

46. Downside Review, xx.198.

47. Oliver, Collections, 182.

48. The History of the Sydenham Family, 364.