Popham’s long and distinguished military career took him from the field at Agincourt to the role of councillor to the Regent of France, John, duke of Bedford, and the later lieutenant-general, Richard, duke of York, and before his first election to Parliament he served Henry VI as a diplomat and treasurer of his Household. Doubtless in recognition of the wealth of his experience in the French wars the Commons assembled in November 1449 chose him to be their Speaker, but for the first time in a medieval Parliament the nominee’s expressed wish to decline the office (ostensibly on the grounds of age and ill-health) was respected, and he was allowed to stand down.12 For a fuller account of Popham’s career, see J.S. Roskell, ‘Sir John Popham’, Procs. Hants Field Club, lii. 43-55 (repr. in Parl. and Politics, iii. 353-68).
Despite being a younger son, Popham’s father and namesake accumulated land in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Huntingdonshire valued in 1412 for the purposes of taxation at £63 13s. 4d. a year.13 Feudal Aids, vi. 456, 462, 536. This income was largely derived from the estates that came to Sir John senior through his two advantageous marriages. The MP could not expect to benefit from the death in 1419 of his stepmother, Isabel Romsey,14 CP25(1)/290/59/44; Hants RO, Bulkeley and Coventry mss, IM53/1383; C138/38/31. but by then, following his father’s death, he had inherited the former Zouche estates which his mother had brought with her in marriage, notably South Charford in the Avon valley in Hampshire, Chinnor in Oxfordshire, and Eynesbury and other properties in Huntingdonshire.15 VCH Hunts. ii. 274; VCH Oxon. viii. 60. In addition, he took over from his deceased father a lease on property in English Street, Southampton, which he retained until his own death.16 Cart. God’s House (Soton. Rec. Ser. xx), 367. In the meantime Popham used some of the profits of war to invest in other widely dispersed manorial holdings. Dealings with the financially-straitened Cheynes of Drayton Beauchamp, undertaken while he was briefly at home in the early 1430s, resulted in him receiving a yearly rent of 20 marks from the manor of Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire, paid from 1433 by Sir John Cheyne I* and his brother Thomas, and at the same time they sold him their manor of Rolleston in Leicestershire. Another purchase from the same period brought him Great Paxton in Huntingdonshire.17 E326/12656; CAD, i. B910; ii. B3128; Leics. Med. Village Notes ed. Farnham, v. 334; CP25(1)/94/35/12. Thus, by the date he first entered the Commons in 1439 Popham possessed South Charford, Chinnor and Rolleston, six manors in Huntingdonshire, property in Little Canford in Dorset, ‘Baconsplace’ in Southampton, and ‘Amlerplace’ in Downton, Wiltshire.18 Bulkeley mss, IM53/1385. Even so, according to the tax assessments made three years earlier his income from land had then amounted to only £40 p.a., while the bulk of his income, as much as £82, derived from annuities he had been granted by Henry V and Edward, duke of York (d.1415), in gratitude for his exemplary service as a soldier in Normandy.19 E179/240/269; E163/7/31/1; E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (vii).
Certain of the estates of the main line of the Popham family (Sir John’s uncle Henry and his son Sir Stephen) had been restricted to the male line by entails made in the early years of the century,20 CPR, 1401-5, p. 93; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 29; C138/33/36. which meant that when Sir Stephen died in 1444 leaving four daughters as his heirs these particular properties should have passed directly to Sir John. When inquisitions post mortem failed to mention the entail, he resorted in Easter term 1445 to litigation in the court of common pleas to claim title to the Hampshire manors of Popham, Farringdon, Alvington and Binsted from his late cousin’s feoffees, (Sir) John Lisle II* and others. The justices awarded judgement in his favour, whereupon he permitted the feoffees to continue to hold the manors to his use. After the death in 1448 of his uncle Henry’s widow, he also came into possession of moieties of the manor of West Dean and East Grimstead, straddling the border of Hampshire and Wiltshire, and Steeple Langford.21 C139/121/18; 131/21; C140/9/7; CP40/737, rot. 406; VCH Hants, ii. 484; iv. 521-2; CFR, xviii. 94-95. Thus, from the 1440s until his death his income was increased by a further £30 p.a. or more.
Said to be aged over 50 in 1445,22 C139/121/18. John had probably been born sometime between the years 1388 and 1392, and like his cousins may have been educated at the college Bishop Wykeham had recently founded at Winchester.23 Winchester Coll. muns. 78; VCH Hants, ii. 272. A continued link with the college is indicated by his witnessing of a grant to it of the manor of Burton, I.o.W., in 1440 (CCR, 1435-41, p. 440), and it was doubtless on his instructions that his executors donated to the college some damask altar cloths. A boss in Fromond’s chantry bears the Popham arms: Archaeologia, lxxv. 155, pl. xxvii, fig. 3. His military career perhaps began as early as 1412, for in that year William de Foreste of Brittany petitioned Henry IV for letters of safe conduct to come to England and remain until he had paid his ransom to ‘John Popham’, by whom he had been taken prisoner.24 SC8/250/12477; C81/654/7115. Quite likely he had joined the retinue which Edward, duke of York, took to Aquitaine in the force commanded by the duke of Clarence, for this would explain York’s subsequent regard for him. Along with his cousin Stephen, John was recruited among the lances in York’s company for Henry V’s major expedition to Normandy in 1415. Shortly before they embarked the duke’s younger brother, the earl of Cambridge, was placed in the custody of Popham’s father the constable of Southampton castle, pending arraignment on charges of high treason. As a member of the household and immediate entourage of the duke, John was singled out in the will York made on 17 Aug., during the siege of Harfleur, by bequeathing to him ‘mes nouvelles brigandiers couvertez de rouge velvet queux Grove me fist, mon bassinet qe je port, et mon meilleur cheval’. He was probably knighted on the field at Agincourt, where his lord was slain when commanding the right wing of the army. In the following January the late duke’s feoffees, following his instructions, granted Popham for life a yearly rent of 20 marks from the manor of Vastern (in Wootton Bassett), Wiltshire, as reward for his good service.25 CP, xii (2), 903; E101/45/2; Reg. Chichele, ii. 65; CCR, 1413-19, p. 294.
Nearly 40 years later Sir John was to claim in a petition against the workings of the Act of Resumption of 1455 that it was expressly in recognition of his actions at Agincourt that Henry V, on 12 Feb. 1417, granted him a further annuity, of the substantial sum of 100 marks charged on the Exchequer, although the patent itself makes no mention of the battle. At the time of the grant Sir John was committed to taking part in the King’s resumption of the conquest of Normandy. Four days earlier he had contracted to provide a troop of ten men-at-arms and 30 archers and to cross over to Harfleur in advance of the royal army in order to safeguard the town. He and his men were mustered at Southampton on 19 Mar.,26 SC8/28/1364; E101/70/1/574; PPC, ii. 213; CPR, 1416-22, pp. 64, 74-75. and helped garrison Harfleur until the King arrived in late July. They then joined the royal forces in the task of reducing Normandy, and in December Popham was appointed bailli of Caen. While Henry V was staying at Caen on 5 May following he rewarded Sir John with the conquered castles and lordships of Torigny-sur-Vire and Planquery along with a number of houses in Caen and Bayeux, all to hold in tail-male. Shortly before this, Popham had named attorneys to look after his affairs at home, presumably in the knowledge that his father was dying and the expectation that he would soon come into his inheritance. In October, by letters patent dated at the siege of Rouen, he succeeded his late father as constable of Southampton.27 DKR, xli. 681, 686, 702; xlii. 367.
Yet he remained in France for the time being, as bailli of Caen leading a force of some 66 men in August 1419, and in December 1420 also taking on the captaincy of Bayeux, some 20 miles to the west.28 Add. Ch. 11635; Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 26043/5578; 25766/796; Archives Départementales du Calvados, F1297. He travelled back to England with the King early the following year. There, a week after the coronation of Queen Katherine, he was given assignments at the Exchequer to cover the arrears of the first two terms of his royal annuity.29 E403/646, m. 14. Popham returned to France with the royal army later in 1421, remaining there until Henry V’s death in August 1422 and beyond. In September he was replaced as captain of Bayeux and bailli of Caen, probably so that he might take up office as chancellor of Normandy by appointment of the Regent, John, duke of Bedford. He undertook to maintain a force of 12 men-at-arms and 36 archers during a term which perhaps lasted for more than a year. In July 1423 Bedford referred to him as one of his ‘amez et feaulx conseilliers’.30 Chron. du Mont-St.-Michel ed. Luce, i. 125-7. Whether or not Popham had been briefly in England in May that year, when the council of the young King Henry VI confirmed his appointment as constable of Southampton castle and his annuity of 100 marks, he did not return home for a more prolonged stay until the summer of 1424. Then, he was paid at the Exchequer £65 5s. 5d. in cash, and £340 5s. 11d. by assignments, in settlement of the arrears of his annuity which had accrued since 1417.31 CPR, 1422-9, p. 111; E403/666, m. 6. Although appointed to the Hampshire bench, in March 1425 he prepared to resume military activities in France, raising a considerable force of 30 men-at-arms and 90 archers to cross to Bedford’s support.32 E404/41/187; E403/669, m. 18; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 299, 300, 302. Popham’s contingent joined the earl of Warwick’s army in Maine, where he was present at the surrender of Le Mans, Mayenne and other towns, and took up the captaincy of St. Suzanne.33 Bibliothèque Nationale, Clairambault 186/45-47.
Sir John’s qualities were recognized further in his appointment as ‘chancellor to the Regent of France and captain in the army for the conquest of Maine and Anjou’, a role he undertook at least before October 1426. This was no doubt a profitable period for him, for large fortunes were being made from booty and ransoms, and he is reputed to have died rich, ‘leaving great treasure of strange coynes’.34 J. Stow, Surv. London ed. Kingsford, ii. 33-34. For one of his prisoners, the ‘Seigneur de Zouzac’, see DKR, xlviii. 234. But not all went smoothly. In April 1428 when he, Sir William Oldhall* and William Glasdale were ‘felowes togedre’ and ‘botefelowes in armes of alle winnings of war’ at the siege of ‘Newchastel’ on the river Saltre, the castle yielded to them and they took five important prisoners, who were ransomed for 1,770 ecus. However, the redoutable Glasdale died not long afterwards, at the siege of Orléans, and Popham was forced to petition Chancery against his executors for 500 ecus, part of his share of the proceeds. The three brothers-in-arms had also agreed to share profits of war with Sir Thomas Rempston†, and after the recovery of Le Mans in May 1428, where they served under John, Lord Talbot, they joined together to pursue Glasdale’s claim against Talbot and others to a prisoner taken by one of his subordinates. The suit came before the Parlement at Paris.35 C1/12/188; English Suits Parlement of Paris, 205-8. Popham later sued Glasdale’s wid. Elizabeth for his share of the ransoms. By then she had married Sir Thomas Blount† (d.1456) of Barton Blount, Derbys., who had been treasurer of Normandy in 1429-33, but The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 258-9 fails to note her marriage to Glasdale. In Mich. term 1439 (perhaps while Popham was attending Parl.) the Blounts had an action pending against him for imprisoning and maltreating Elizabeth until she entered a bond to him in £83 6s. 8d. to secure her release: CP40/715, rot. 438d. That December Popham was mustering troops at Orléans, but on 1 Jan. 1429 he indented to serve for a year as lieutenant of Rouen.36 Add. Ch. 11693. This did not mean he was continually with the garrison, for in April he mustered the nobility of Normandy at Vernon and reviewed troops in Paris, where shortly afterwards he was granted in tail-male ‘l’ostel de Thorigny’ in the Rue du Temple, a mansion which probably pertained to his Norman lordship.37 English Suits Parlement of Paris, 301-2. It was most likely at this stage in his career that Popham served the Regent, Bedford, as his chamberlain, perhaps succeeding to this office in June, when a previous occupant, Sir Thomas Rempston, was captured at the battle of Patay, for at that time Popham was with Bedford at Rouen castle. He probably visited England before the end of his contract at Rouen, for in November following he was party to a recognizance in Chancery ensuring the payment overseas of 250 gold marks to Lord Talbot (also taken captive at Patay), this being probably part of the negotiations for Talbot’s ransom.38 Archives Nationales, Monuments Historiques, K 63/7/4; CCR, 1429-35, p. 27. Although his lieutenancy of Rouen had come to an end, before too long he was back across the Channel, after contracting on 18 Feb. 1430 to join the major expedition escorting Henry VI to France for his coronation. For this, Popham enlisted a retinue of 11 men-at-arms and 36 mounted archers.39 E101/70/4/675.
Popham’s whereabouts for the next few years are poorly documented, but quite likely he remained continuously overseas until the spring of 1434. He was required to attend the meeting of the great council held at Westminster from 24 Apr. to 8 May that year, no doubt so that his wealth of experience of affairs in France might be used to support Bedford’s case when he and Gloucester quarrelled over the criticism of the conduct of the war. Both Sir John and his cousin Sir Stephen appeared on the list of notables who were to be sworn to the peace in Hampshire at that time.40 PPC, iv. 12; CPR, 1422-9, p. 396. From then on, Popham’s service to the Crown took on a diplomatic as well as a military character. He was appointed a member of the English embassy sent to the Congress of Arras in the summer of 1435, travelling in July in advance of the main party of ambassadors and staying abroad after their withdrawal from negotiations. The English refused to discuss the possibility of Henry VI’s renouncing the French crown,41 He was to be advanced a prest of £100 on 1 June 1435: E404/51/294. and formal proceedings ended on 6 Sept. Four days later Popham sailed from Calais to Harfleur with the earl of Suffolk, from whence they rode to Rouen. Whether they reached the Norman capital before his lord the duke of Bedford died there on the 14th is unclear. Popham was present at a meeting of the grand conseil at Rouen on 29 Oct., but disembarked in England on 15 Nov. The Exchequer paid him £1 a day for his expenses, as commencing on 13 July and ending at his disembarkation.42 E101/322/38-39; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of the English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 431; E404/51/294; E403/719, m. 12; Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 26060/2661.
Bedford’s death and the perfidy of the duke of Burgundy led to renewed military activity, in which Popham was involved. He was ordered on 12 Dec. 1435 to take musters of nearly 1,000 men at Portsdown after Christmas, and in the new year to act as a commissioner of array in Hampshire. In February he was put down to lend the Crown 100 marks for a new expeditionary force to Normandy under the command of Richard, duke of York, then appointed lieutenant-general of the conquered territories in France.43 PPC, iv. 326. Three years earlier, shortly before he came of age, York had agreed with the feoffees of his late uncle, Duke Edward, to continue payment of the annuities of a number of the latter’s retainers, of whom Popham was by this time the most important.44 CCR, 1429-35, p. 260. It has been speculated that this link between Sir John and the younger duke matured into a close personal connexion, but there is no strong evidence that this was indeed the case, or that Popham became an adherent of York in the civil-war years. For the time being their association focused on the conflict in France. On 5 May Popham negotiated with the Council the terms on which he would join York’s expedition. He secured a surcease of process at the Exchequer for the prests for which he was still held responsible in the accounts of William Allington I*, the former treasurer of Normandy, a grant of £38 still owing for his mission to Arras and Rouen, and fresh assignments for payment of arrears of his royal annuity (amounting to some £265), as well as immediate settlement of this annuity for the last two terms. (Indeed, the Council directed the Exchequer to give him preference before others.) Although he also asked that the tenure of his Norman lordships be converted from fee tail-male to fee simple, this particular request was ignored. That Sir John’s personal contingent was just three men-at-arms and 12 archers is further indication that his role was restricted to that of ‘counsellor’ to York, for which he was paid just over £89 livres tournois by the receiver-general of Normandy on 1 Jan. 1437.45 PPC, iv. 337-9, 340-3; E404/52/331, 332, 395, 396; Add. Ch. 11930. Presumably this payment marked the end of his sojourn in France, however, for he was probably back in England by 23 Jan. (when appointed to an ad hoc commission) and in April he was chosen from a short-list of four to succeed the recently deceased (Sir) John Tyrell* as treasurer of the royal household. The post encompassed that of treasurer for the wars, for which his knowledge of the situation in France amply qualified him. He was to occupy the office for two years.46 PPC, v. 8; E101/408/23.
During his term Popham evidently retained contact with the duke of York, and in February 1438 new arrangements were made regarding his royal annuity of 100 marks, so that he might draw it directly from the fee farm due from York’s estate at Builth, instead of from the Exchequer, where arrears now amounted to 500 marks. The Exchequer was ordered to pay these arrears, and on 6 Feb. he received fresh assignments for £254 in lieu of payment of some £287 for which he held a dozen tallies which he had been unable to redeem. These arrangements were agreed in order to persuade Popham to do the King ‘le meilour service a ceste foiz en notre ambassade per de la meer’, and a few days later he was given a prest for £100 for a journey to France to confer with the lieutenant, the earl of Warwick.47 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 134, 139, 168; E404/54/155, 163, 165; 55/141; E403/729, m. 12. Sir John’s brief while absent from the Household from 19 Mar. to 20 Oct. was to negotiate for peace with representatives of Charles VII, but all proved to little effect. He and Lewis John* had also been empowered to investigate the state of the English garrisons and report back to the Council, so after meeting Warwick at Rouen he rode west to Brittany. His new status as a knight banneret entitled him to be paid at the daily rate of £2, and this with the costs of his retinue of 14 men meant that over and above the advances made at the Exchequer £346 was owed at his return home. Even so, the audit was not carried out until February 1439.48 DKR, xlviii. 322; PPC, v. 86, 88-89, 95; E101/323/5, 6.
On 24 Feb. Popham was one of only five commoners who attended a great council of the lords held at Westminster.49 PPC, v. 108. Yet in April he surrendered his office as treasurer of the Household to Sir Roger Fiennes*, perhaps because combining the duties of diplomat and treasurer had proved too much of a strain, and his skills were needed for a new embassy to which he was appointed a month later. As well as negotiating with Charles VII’s envoys for peace, this embassy was instructed to treat about commercial intercourse between England and Flanders and Brabant. Popham left London on 15 May and throughout June he and Master Stephen Wilton were engaged in preliminary discussions and the arrangements for the formal meetings of the parties, deciding where the convention was to be held. On 30 June at St. Omer they received oaths of security from the duchess of Burgundy in anticipation of a conference between her, the French, and Cardinal Beaufort, the head of the English delegation. After ‘graunde et laboriense communicacon’ on 5 Aug. Popham returned to England with other of the ambassadors for consultation with Henry VI regarding the French proposal for a long truce in return for Henry’s renunciation of the French crown. Popham sailed back to Calais on the 30th. But although a truce for three years was agreed with Burgundy, nothing could be done to end the stalemate with France. By the time Popham disembarked in England on 7 Oct. his expenses amounted to £290, of which £190 was outstanding.50 Anglo-French Negotiations 1439 (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 97, 99-101, 109, 112; E404/55/267; 56/44; E159/216, brevia Mich. rots. 1d, 33; E364/73, m. Ad; PPC, v. 339, 377. He had ‘lent’ the King 100 marks in May: E401/763, m. 8; E403/734, m. 3.
Very shortly after his return home, Sir John was elected knight of the shire for Hampshire in the Parliament due to meet on 12 Nov. 1439. No doubt he was able to inform his fellow Members of the Commons about the state of affairs across the Channel. During the Christmas recess, on 26 Dec., he took out a patent exempting him for life from being put on juries, or appointed to further royal office against his will. This was prompted in part by his continuing concern at the failure of the Exchequer to pay the sums owing for his past services. After the dissolution, on 12 May 1440 he stood surety at the Exchequer for an old companion-in-arms, Sir William Phelip†, now Lord Bardolf, when he was given custody of Dunwich.51 CPR, 1436-41, p. 363; CFR, xvii. 154. On 27 July following he himself was given a new and additional annuity of £40 for life charged on the petty custom collected in the port of London, expressly for good service to Henry V and Henry VI and overseas, his readiness to serve in war and on embassy, and his management of the office of treasurer of the Household.52 CPR, 1436-41, p. 432; E159/217, recorda Mich. rots. 2d, 6. As before, the grant was probably made to induce him to undertake further work in France. The duke of York had recently been reappointed lieutenant-general, and once more nominated Popham as a member of his official council.53 Wars of the English, ii (2), 586. The account in P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 34, contains many errors as it conflates information about Popham with references to Lord Fanhope. On 16 July York had switched payment of Popham’s royal annuity of 100 marks from Builth to the ducal estates in Dorset, thus guaranteeing future payment – or so it was promised.54 SC6/1113/11; Johnson, 237. Yet in the event York did not cross to France until a year later, in June 1441, and even then Sir John himself stayed in England until, on 13 Nov. 1441, he was chosen by the King’s Council to convey certain instructions to the duke at Rouen, including warnings about immediate threats to Harfleur, Caen and Honfleur. Customs officials at Southampton were ordered to requisition ships to ensure a speedy passage for him. He now relinquished his custody of Southampton castle, held on a grant for life since his father’s death in 1418, in favour of the earl of Huntingdon. Once more, he agreed to travel only after he received promises of preferment at the Exchequer for payment for his previous embassies, but the King was ‘wel inclined to his said desire’. He was once more to be paid wages at the rate of £2 a day, and was given an advance of £120.55 PPC, v. 155-6, 158, 162, 168, 179; CPR, 1441-6, p. 48; E404/58/70, 86. The burgesses of Southampton bade him farewell with a gift of two gallons of wine: Southampton City Archs., Soton. recs. SC5/1/6, f. 12. Popham took with him £5,000 to pay York’s forces and was away from 1 Dec. until 28 Feb. 1442. In May the Exchequer still owed him £60 for his endeavours.56 E404/58/155.
This seems to have been Popham’s last enterprise overseas. In August following the clerk of the Council noted that he was to be sent for to be seneschal of Guyenne, and to lead the army there, but Sir William Bonville* was also ‘entreated’ to serve in this capacity, and the latter proved the more willing candidate.57 PPC, v. 203; M.G.A. Vale, English Gascony, 122. From then on Popham began to slip out of the prominence which his long French experience had given him in the diplomacy of the previous seven years, and his activities by royal commission took on a mainly local complexion. For instance, also in August 1442, he was ordered to take musters of the force of 2,260 men assigned by Parliament to keep the seas under the leadership of his cousin Sir Stephen Popham. For reasons of age he was past active employment in the field, yet his reputation as a veteran remained high, and this prompted both Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, and Ralph, Lord Sudeley, to nominate him for election to membership of the Order of the Garter in April 1447, although he proved unsuccessful.58 Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, 132-3.
There is nothing to show whether Popham again visited his estates in Normandy, before their loss in the autumn of 1449. His landholdings there, albeit on a small-scale in comparison with those of Sir John Fastolf, were nevertheless valued at 2,000 crowns,59 R.A. Massey, ‘Lancastrian Land Settlement in Normandy’ (Liverpool Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 102-3; E. Anquetil, Présentations et Collations de Bénéfices du Diocèse de Bayeux, 17, 59. and he was accustomed to using the title ‘seigneur et baron de Thorigny’. As news came of the renewal of war and the disastrous fall of the English garrisons in Normandy to the forces of Charles VII, Popham was elected on 13 Oct. to the Parliament called for 6 Nov. Rouen capitulated just a few days before it assembled. Of all the MPs elected Popham was one of just three now thought to have been veterans of the 1415 campaign to France,60 The others being John Skelton II* (who like Popham had served in the retinue of Edward, duke of York) and, less certainly, Sir Robert Conyers*. and none of his companions knew at first hand as much as he did about the French conquest and the hard struggle to maintain it under Henry V and Bedford, or since Bedford’s death. As a knight banneret and in age he was senior among the knights by rank in the House. The Commons probably remembered, too, that he had been chancellor of Anjou and Maine, the very provinces the duke of Suffolk, now facing impeachment, had let go in his effort to salvage Normandy and Guyenne. Popham’s personal history, the loss of his estates in Normandy and the difficulties he had experienced in recovering what was due to him from the Exchequer, qualified him to represent the interests of the dispossessed. No doubt for these reasons, his fellows elected him Speaker. It was common form for the Speaker-elect to refer modestly to his own inadequacy and request to be passed over. Popham asked to be excused expressly ‘debilitate sui corporis guerrarum fremitibus, ipsius Domini Regis et Patris sui obsequiis, ac diversarum infirmitatum vexationibus, necnon senii gravitate multipliciter depressi, considerata’.61 PROME, xii. 82. We may doubt the seriousness of his condition; although he was probably at least 55 years old, perhaps nearer 60, he survived almost 13 years more, and was hale enough to attend Parliament. Yet, remarkably, his request to be exonerated was granted (a suspiciously unique proceeding in the case of the medieval Speakers), and the Commons elected in his place the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, William Tresham*, who had already been Speaker three times before. Popham thus escaped the responsibility of leading the Commons in a turbulent three sessions which ended, at Leicester, in June 1450 as news came of the collapse of order in the south-east.62 J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 27, 70, 235, 237.
Popham was appointed to only four royal commissions subsequently, including one in December 1452 to raise loans for the relief of the earl of Shrewsbury’s army in Aquitaine, and in May following he saw fit to renew his letters of exoneration from such tasks.63 CPR, 1452-61, p. 74. It seems that he ceased to be useful to the duke of York, too, for he proved unable to secure a complete exemption from the workings of the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament of 1455 which met after the Yorkist victory at St. Albans. Accordingly, his royal annuity of 100 marks, officially charged on York’s fee farm for Builth, was scaled down to 40 marks.64 PROME, xii. 407; SC8/28/1364. Nevertheless, the implication of the ratification of a grant of the fee farm of Bluith to the King’s half-brother Jasper, earl of Pembroke, in February 1459 is that Popham technically remained entitled to the annuity at its original rate until his death. Perhaps he had recovered it in the meantime.65 CPR, 1452-61, p. 497. Significantly, he took legal action against William Browning I*, the receiver of York’s estates in Dorset, for the sum of 100 marks which he claimed Browning had been bound over to pay him on 9 May 1458. He failed to gain satisfaction and his executors were still pursuing Browning ten years later.66 CP40/800, rot. 182; 829, rot. 279. It is very doubtful that he played any part at all in the circumstances which brought the Yorkist dynasty to the throne.
It was in the early 1460s that claimants to the Hampshire manor of Rockbourne and property in Wiltshire, all once held by Sir Walter Romsey (d.1403), the father of Popham’s stepmother, asked that he be summoned to Chancery to give evidence on their behalf, since he had ‘very knowledge of the right and title’. His half-brother, Thomas, would have had a valid claim to the estate, had he not died without issue, and Sir John himself had earlier witnessed transactions regarding it.67 Bulkeley mss, IM 53/1383; Stonor Letters (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), pp. lii, liv, 58 (where Sir John is confused with his fa.); C1/29/31, 32; CCR, 1435-41, p. 429. His final official duty came in 1462 when he was sent a dedimus potestatem to summon and examine the ‘olde men and other of the countre’ to discover the truth of a claim to the manor of Winnall in Winchester against the prior of St. Swithun’s.68 Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), 395-6.
Sir John apparently never married, and was to leave no legitimate children. He began to put his affairs in order in the late 1450s. In 1459 he made settlements of his estates, arranging that after his death Mangre in Huntingdonshire, South Charford, Chinnor, rents from his lands in Dorset and probably also his manor of Eynesbury, should pass for her lifetime to Alice, daughter of John Malyns and wife of William Herteshorn* (who had sat for Bedfordshire as one of his colleagues in the same Parliament of 1449), with remainder to Alice’s daughter Elizabeth, the wife of Charles Bulkeley of Nether Burgate, Hampshire, and her descendants. Quite possibly Alice was his niece on his mother’s side.69 CP25(1)/293/73/443; C140/9/7. Alice duly took possession of South Charford after Popham’s death: Bulkeley mss, IM 53/1387-8. For Popham’s previous contact with Charles Bulkeley, the son of William Bulkeley, justice of Chester, for whom he acted as a feoffee, see CPR, 1446-52, p. 201; CCR, 1454-61, p. 93. Late in life he lived in the parish of St. Sepulchre outside Newgate, in the suburbs of London, and became a generous benefactor of the parish church, where he was commemorated in stained glass, and with a statue over the porch, engraved with a record of his offices, including those of chancellor of Normandy and treasurer of the King’s household. Yet it was the nearby Charterhouse, founded for the Carthusians in the late fourteenth century by other notable soldiers, that he most favoured, and on 21 July 1460 he was formally admitted to the confraternity of the monks, who promised that he would be remembered in daily masses, and prayers said in perpetuity. He had recently endowed the Charterhouse with his manor of Rolleston in Leicestershire, and had built two chapels on the south side of the priory church. There, in the one dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, he was to be interred.70 Stow, ii. 33-34, 83; E326/4531, 8775, 10061, 10068, 11894; C143/452/22; J. Nichols, Leics. ii (2), 442. Popham died on 14 Apr. 1463. A monumental brass referred to him as lord of ‘Turney’ in Normandy as well as of Charford and Alvington. The family manors in Hampshire and Wiltshire which he had held ever since the death of Sir Stephen Popham, and were still in the hands of feoffees headed by Sir John Lisle, reverted on the failure of the male line to Sir Stephen’s four daughters.71 C140/9/7; 56/39; V. and A. Cat. of Brass Rubbings ed. Clayton, 142. The brass is now in St. Laurence’s church, Reading. While endowing the Charterhouse, Popham had been assisted by William Baron*, the teller of the Exchequer, and Henry Gymber‡, who were among his executors. In July 1463, three months after he died, Gymber and two of his co-executors lent the Crown £200, presumably from the knight’s estate, and later that decade they and their fellows, including Maurice Berkeley*, a Hampshire neighbour of the deceased, brought suits in the common pleas against Popham’s debtors. Berkeley was to remember him in his own will in 1474.72 E403/830, m. 1; CP40/821, rot. 282; 829, rot. 279; PCC 15 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 108v-109v).