5 June 1521, by Alice, daughter of William Knoell of Samford Orcas, Dorset. His family belonged to Somerset, and he was in the commission of the peace for that county from time to time. He was a barrister who was successful enough to be personally known to the king. In 1533 Henry gave him a wardship, and he was one of the administrators of the will of Catherine of Aragon. He was made a judge in 1547, and knighted by Edward VI. When Richard (afterwards Lord) Rich [q. v.] was ill, Portman was one of those who, by patent of 26 Oct. 1551, were commissioned to despatch chancery matters; and in the following January he was commissioned to aid the lord-keeper, the bishop of Ely, in similar affairs. He seems to have been of the old way of thinking in religious matters. He found no difficulty in keeping office under Mary; and he followed Day, the bishop of Chichester, in persuading Sir James Hales [q. v.] to abjure protestantism in 1554. The same year he was made chief justice. He died early in 1556–7, and was buried, with a stately funeral, on 10 Feb. 1556–7 at St. Dunstan's in the West, London. He married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Gilbert, and connected by descent with the legal family of Fitzjames. By her he had a son Sir Henry, who died in 1590, and a daughter Mary, who married John Stowell.
[Visitation of Somerset (Harl. Soc. 127); Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, v. 1694, XIII. i. 1023; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of Engl. iii. 230; Hooper's Works (Parker Soc.), ii. 378; Acts of the Privy Council, 1547–50, pp. 42, 265, 1552–4 p. 21, 1554–6 pp. 22, &c.; Strype's Eccles. Mem. I. ii. 253, II. i. 24, 521, ii. 205, 207, 253, III., i. 274, 511, ii. 261.]
PORTMAN, Sir WILLIAM (1641?–1690), captor of the Duke of Monmouth, the descendant of an old Somerset family, was eldest son of Sir William Portman (1610–1648) of Orchard Portman, fifth baronet, by Anna, daughter and coheiress of John Colles of Barton. The father was returned for Taunton to both the Short and Long parliaments of 1640, but was disabled, as a royalist, to sit on 5 Feb. 1643–4. On his death in 1648, William succeeded him as sixth baronet. He matriculated from All Souls' College, Oxford, 26 April 1659, and at the Restoration was made a knight of the Bath. He represented Taunton in parliament from 1661 until 1679, and from 1685 till his death. From 1679 to 1681 he sat for the county of Somerset. Putting aside Sir Edward Seymour [q. v.], he was accounted as influential a tory as any in the west of England. He was a strong ‘abhorrer’ during the crisis in Charles II's reign, and while attending parliament in May 1685 he received a mysterious warning of Monmouth's impending insurrection in the west. He directed the search of post-coaches in the neighbourhood of Taunton, in the hope of intercepting treasonable correspondence, and took an active part in investigating the causes of disaffection, and later on in organising the militia. After the battle of Sedgmoor (6 July 1685) Portman, with the Somerset militia, formed a chain of posts from Poole to the northern extremity of Dorset, with a view to preventing Monmouth's escape. On 8 July he and Lord Lumley captured the fugitive near Ringwood in the New Forest, and did not trust him out of their sight until he was delivered safe at Whitehall.
Three years later Portman's affection for the English church proved stronger than his devotion to James, and in November 1688 he joined the Prince of Orange at Exeter with a large following. William is said to have intended him for high promotion, but he died at his seat of Orchard Portman, near Taunton, on 20 March 1689–90 (Luttrell). Sir William was elected F.R.S. on 28 Dec. 1664. He married thrice, but had no issue. He left ‘an estate of 8,000l. a year’ to his nephew, Henry Seymour (d. 1728), a brother of Sir Edward, who assumed the name and arms of Portman. William Henry Portman, a descendant from a collateral branch, gave his name to Portman Square (begun in 1764), and was ancestor of Edward Berkeley Portman, viscount Portman [q. v.] Bryanston Square is named after the seat and estate purchased by Sir William in Dorset shortly before his death.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Burke's Peerage, s.v. ‘Portman;’ Roberts's Life of Monmouth, i. 213, 215, ii. 105, 110, 122, sq. 314; Macaulay's Hist. 1886, i. 301, 577; Luttrell's Diary, i. 478, ii. 23; Collins's Peerage, i. 195; Eachard's History, bk. iii. p. 770; Burnet's Own Time, i. 664; London Gazette; Wheatley and Cunningham's London, ii. 110; Walford's Old and New London, iv. 412.]
PORTMORE, first Earl of. [See Colyear, Sir David, d. 1730.]
PORTSMOUTH, Duchess of. [See Kerouaille, Louise Renée de, 1649–1734.]
PORTSMOUTH, first Earl of. [See Wallop, John, 1690–1742.]
PORTU, Mauritius de (d. 1513), archbishop of Tuam. [See O'Fihely, Maurice.]
PORY, JOHN (d. 1573?), master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, born at Thrapstone, Northamptonshire, was admitted to Corpus Christi College in 1520, and gra-
