POPHAM, Sir Francis (1573-1644), of Wellington, Som., Littlecote, Wilts. and Stoke Newington, Mdx.

Popham was one of the richest men in England. The foundation of that fortune was the vast wealth which had been accumulated by his father, Sir John Popham, lord chief justice under Elizabeth I and James I. That had been invested in substantial land holdings throughout Somerset and Wiltshire. Sir Francis, as the only son, inherited everything. Added to this, his marriage to a wealthy heiress, Anne Dudley, had brought further lands in Middlesex. By the time he was elected to the Long Parliament in 1640, Popham was also one of the most experienced MPs, for he had sat in eight of the previous ten Parliaments.

Oddly enough, one of the two Parliaments in which he had not sat was the Short Parliament. Had he wished, he could presumably have stood at Minehead, a constituency where he had a strong interest as a consequence of his kinship with the Luttrells. (His daughter, Jane, was married to Thomas Luttrell†.) He perhaps preferred to let his son and heir, Alexander*, get his first chance to become an MP. However, the following October Popham stood as a candidate at both Minehead and Chippenham. At the former, the interest which had secured Alexander’s return in the Short Parliament contest now allowed Sir Francis to get elected. Despite this, Popham then stood at Chippenham, where, on 26 October, he lost out to Sir Edward Bayntun* and Sir Edward Hungerford*. Popham refused to accept the result and subsequently petitioned Parliament against Bayntun’s return.

The dispute over the Chippenham return did not prevent Popham from immediately taking his seat in the Commons as MP for Minehead. As early as 19 November 1640, he was named to the committee on the supply bill.27CJ ii. 31b; Procs. LP i. 196. Two days later he was among those MPs who indicated that they would be willing to make personal loans to Parliament.28Procs. LP i. 232, 235. Hearings on the Chippenham election were held early in 1641, although only after there had been complaints that the witnesses brought up to London to testify on Popham’s behalf had been intimidated by one of his opponents.29CJ ii. 68a, 81a. On 17 May 1641 he took the Protestation.30CJ ii. 148a; Procs. LP iv. 411, 419. He was also occasionally named to committees, such as those on abuses by postmasters (10 Feb. 1642), disbanding the army (20 May), reducing the number of people taking advantage of parliamentary immunities (25 May) and the bill on brewers (28 Feb. 1642).31CJ ii. 82a, 152a, 156a, 461a. Given his long-standing involvement in the Somerset militia, it is understandable that he seems to have taken an interest in the bills to regulate musters and the trained bands.32CJ ii. 212b, 223a. On 18 August 1641 he moved the motion for a writ for a new election at Hindon to replace the late Thomas Bennett*. As there was some doubt as to whether Bennett had ever been elected, this motion was not passed and the issue was referred to committee.33Procs. LP vi. 469-70, 473.

None of these matters can be said to have been Popham’s main parliamentary interest at this time, however. Throughout late 1641 and early 1642 his energies at Westminster were concentrated on the promotion of a private bill to confirm his possession of some lands. In 1616 Sir Bartholomew Michell had died, leaving extensive lands in Somerset to his nephew, Richard Michell. In 1636 Michell had agreed to let those lands to Popham on a 80-year lease. The complication was that multiple outlawries for debt against several of Sir Bartholomew’s trustees and against Richard Michell himself had created doubts about Michell’s title to those lands.34PA, HL/PO/10/2/7B. Meanwhile, Sir Bartholomew’s grandson Gregory Hockmore claimed he had been left disinherited by his grandfather. In October 1639 the king had intervened to rule that the exchequer judges should find for Hockmore and that the lands confiscated from Michell under the outlawry should be assigned to him.35CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 426, 571; 1639-40, pp. 49-50. Popham had a well-deserved reputation from being exceptionally litigious.36CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 495-6. This private bill was his way of fighting back.

The bill declared that, irrespective of Michell’s outlawry, the 1636 lease to Popham was still valid.37PA, HL/PO/10/2/7B. It was introduced to the Commons on 19 July 1641 and received its second reading ten days later.38CJ ii. 216a, 228a; Procs. LP vi. 10, 140-1. However, Popham had to obtain an order from the Commons on 14 August to prevent the further felling of timber on the lands in question.39CJ ii. 256a; Procs. LP vi. 417-18. Amendments to the bill were approved on 25 August and it was passed by the Commons on 28 August.40CJ ii. 270b, 275a-b; Procs. LP vi. 551. It was then among a number of bills sent up to the Lords on 23 November.41CJ ii. 323a; LJ iv. 451b. By March 1642 the Lords had made further amendments.42LJ iv. 453a, 463a, 482a, 486b, 508a, 581a, 649a. The Commons agreed to those changes on 24 March and sent the bill back up to the Lords on 26 March.43LJ iv. 663a, 674a-b; CJ ii. 492b, 494a, 496b; PJ ii. 73, 90. Under normal circumstances the granting of the royal assent to a private bill of this type would have been a formality. But these were not normal circumstances. The king had already withdrawn from London and his relations with Parliament were near breaking point. On 15 April the Lords decided to write to Charles requesting that he give his assent to this and another bill (for the forfeiture of John James’s lands).44LJ iv. 721b. The king replied saying that he had no objection to either but that he would prefer to wait until the end of the session before granting his assent.45PJ ii. 206. That doomed both bills. This was a session that would not end until after Charles had been executed and, having been left to languish in this constitutional limbo, both bills would soon be forgotten. All Popham’s efforts and expense in getting Parliament to agree to this legislation had been for nothing. His estates remained unsettled, moreover, and later generations of the family would have to seek further private bills to solve the problem.

During the last two years of his life Popham steadfastly supported Parliament in its civil war against the king. His lead was followed by all three of his surviving sons and one of them, Hugh, would be killed in 1643 fighting for Parliament. Together they helped mobilise the parliamentarian cause throughout Somerset. Yet when Sir Francis died, that county was held by their royalist enemies. One of Alexander Popham’s first important acts during the crisis of 1642 was to intercept the anti-Parliament petition being organised in the Bath area in early June 1642. Alexander immediately sent it to his father in London, where Sir Francis made sure that Parliament knew all about it.46CJ ii. 621b; LJ v. 130b, 133a-134a; PJ ii. 66. Popham had returned to Somerset by early August, by which time many of the local gentry were rising up to resist the efforts by the 1st marquess of Hertford (Sir William Seymour†) to implement the king’s commission of array. On 11 August Popham took on and defeated one of Hertford’s allies, Sir John Stawell*, in a minor engagement on the eastern edge of Sedgemoor.47Exceeding Joyfull Newes from the Earl of Bedford (1642, E.113.17). He quite possibly spent the winter of 1642-3 away from Westminster helping to maintain Parliament’s authority in Somerset, although he probably left any further fighting to his sons. He must still have been there in April 1643 when Parliament named him as one of the men to take charge of the cargo from the ship Edward Popham had seized on the Somerset coast.48CJ iii. 47b. By this stage Charles I was already singling Sir Francis out as one of his leading opponents in the south west. Two months before this the king had announced that he was removing Popham from the Somerset commission of the peace.49Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 9-10. Sir Francis and Alexander were also both exempted from the general pardon offered by Charles in June 1643.50LJ vi. 110b; Harl. 164, f. 278v.

By August 1643 Popham was back at Westminster.51CJ iii. 190a. His attendance in the Commons over the next ten months seems to have been fairly regular. The consistent theme was his continuing support for the war. Often his activity was directly linked to the progress of the campaigns in the west. That he was named to the committee for the safety of the western counties (27 Oct.) was only to be expected, but his appointment to committees concerning Gloucester (29 Sept., 10 Apr.), Southampton (26 Oct.) and the Isle of Wight (8 Feb.) equally reflected his diverse local interests.52CJ iii. 258b, 289a, 291a, 393b, 455b. By the time he was named on 11 November 1643 to the committee to consider whether trade should be permitted with towns under enemy control, many of his estates, not to mention his own constituency, were in royalist hands.53CJ iii. 308a. That was no doubt one major reason why he always so keen to support measures that would raise more money for the army.54CJ iii. 309b, 310a, 355a, 409a, 457a. In March 1644 he was included on the list of witnesses to be called to give evidence at the trial of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.55CJ iii. 422a. This was probably in connection with the accusation that Laud had interfered with the attempts to suppress church ales in Somerset, as Popham had signed the Somerset petition against them in 1633.56CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 350. But, if so, he was not called to give evidence.57State Trials, iv. 406-7. On 27 May he was given the job of drafting the letter to the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) concerning the case of Colonel Edward King†.58CJ iii. 508a. That may well have been the last piece of parliamentary business Popham undertook, as he died on 25 July 1644 at his house at Stoke Newington.59Marksbury par. reg.; c.f. CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 382-3. The funeral took place in the parish church there on 15 August in the presence of Speaker William Lenthall and other representatives from the two Houses.60Add. 71131; W. Robinson, Hist. and Antiquities of the Par. of Stoke Newington (1820), 34. The Popham estates then passed to Alexander as his eldest surviving son.