Dublin. Powell is said to have continued printing in Dublin for fifteen years, but the only subsequent reference to him is the appearance of his name as a member of the Stationers' Company in the charter of 1556. Other Powells—Thomas, William, and Edward—were printers in London during Elizabeth's reign.
[Arber's Transcript, vol. i. pp. xxviii, xxix, xxxiii, vol. ii. pp. 66, 97, 692; Ames's Typogr. Antiq., ed. Herbert and Dibdin, iv. 310–11; Timperley's Encycl. pp. 314, 325; Hazlitt's Handbook, pp. 156, 588, and Collections, 3rd ser. p. 179; Cat. Trin. Coll. Library.]
POWELL, Sir JOHN (1633–1696), judge, a member of an old Welsh family, son of John Powell of Kenward, Carmarthenshire, was born in 1633. He was taught as a boy by Jeremy Taylor (see Heber, The Whole Works of Taylor, ed. 1822, i. xxvi), and afterwards proceeded to Oxford. Possibly he may be the John Powell of Jesus College who matriculated in 1650, graduated B.A. in 1653, and M.A. in 1664 (Foster, Alumni Oxon.) In 1650 he was admitted a member of Gray's Inn; he was called to the bar in 1657, and became an antient in 1676. The extent and nature of his practice at the bar are not recorded, but on 26 April 1686 he was knighted and appointed a judge of the common pleas. In the following Trinity term he was, with the rest of the judges, called upon for his opinion as to the king's dispensing power, and prudently reserved his judgment; but as he escaped dismissal, he cannot have indicated any decided opinion against it. In 1687 he was, on 16 April, removed to the king's bench, and during James's reign always accompanied Sir Robert Wright, the chief justice of the king's bench, on circuit. Accordingly he participated in the responsibility for the sentence passed upon the Earl of Devonshire for his assault on Colepeper, for which, after the Revolution, he was summoned before the House of Lords, but received no punishment. On 29 June 1688, upon the trial of the seven bishops, he expressed, both during its progress and in his judgment, his opinion that the Declaration of Indulgence was a nullity, and his inability to see anything seditious or criminal in the conduct of the bishops. In consequence he, with Mr. Justice Holloway, who expressed the same views, was dismissed on 7 July. At the beginning of the next reign he declined the offer of the post of lord keeper of the great seal, and he was restored to the bench in May 1689, but was placed in the common pleas. He was sworn in on 11 March 1689, and died at Exeter, of the stone, on 7 Sept. 1696. He was buried at Broadway, near Llangharne, Carmarthenshire, where he had a country seat, and left a son Thomas (d. 1720) of Broadway, Carmarthenshire, who was created a baronet in 1698. The title became extinct on the death of Sir Thomas's son Herbert in 1721. His epitaph is given in Heber's edition of Taylor's ‘Works,’ 1822, i. cccxv. His portrait, by an unknown hand, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
[Foss's Judges of England; State Trials, xi. 1198, 1369, xii. 426; Parl. Hist. v. 311, 333; Bramston's Autobiography (Camden Soc.), pp. 225, 278; Luttrell's Diary, i. 447, 449, iv. 108; Gent. Mag. 1839, pt. ii. p. 22; Macaulay's Hist. ed. 1875, ii. 204, iv. 32; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 263, 359.]
POWELL, Sir JOHN (1645–1713), judge, was born in 1645 at Gloucester, of which city his father, though a member of a Herefordshire family, was a citizen, eventually becoming mayor in 1663. He was not related to either of the contemporary judges of the same name. Whether he went to a university or not is uncertain; he may well have been either of the John Powells who graduated at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1663 and 1672. In 1664 he became a member of the Inner Temple, and was called to the bar there in 1671. Three years later he was elected town clerk of Gloucester, and sat for that city in the parliament of 1685. In September 1685 he was expelled from his office, but regained it on application to the king's bench in 1687. He was included in the first creation of serjeants after the Revolution, and in May 1691 the king gave orders for his appointment to the bench of the common pleas, but, through the interposition of Sir William Pulteney's friends, the appointment was not completed till the end of October or beginning of November, and then he received a judgeship in the exchequer with knighthood (Luttrell, ii. 303). On 29 Oct. 1695 he was transferred to the common pleas, and on 24 June 1702 was again transferred to the queen's bench. Here he was one of the majority of judges who, on the trial of the celebrated leading case of Ashby v. White (Lord Raymond's Reports, p. 938), arising out of the Aylesbury election, decided against the plaintiff (Luttrell, Diary, v. 358, 380, 519). On 14 June 1713 he died at his house at Gloucester on returning from Bath. There is a monument to him in Gloucester Cathedral, which is figured in Bigland and Fosbrooke's ‘Gloucestershire,’ ii. 134, and the inscription is also given in Archdeacon Rudge's ‘Gloucester,’ p. 89. His judicial character, both for learning and fairness, stood high. He was humane, as is shown by his remark on a charge of witchcraft in
