[LX.] Sir John Popham gave sentence according to lawe; but being a great person and a favourite, he[704] procured a noli prosequi.
I have seen his picture; he was a huge, heavie, ugly man. He left a vast estate to his son, Sir Francis (I thinke ten thousand pounds, per annum); he lived[705] like a hog, but his sonne John was a great waster, and dyed in his father's time.
He[706] was the greatest howse-keeper in England; would have at Littlecote 4 or 5 or more lords at a time. His wife (Harvey) was worth to him, I thinke, 60000 li., and she was as vaine as he, and she sayd that she had brought such an estate, and she scorned but she would live as high as he did; and in her husband's absence would have all the woemen of the countrey thither, and feast them, and make them drunke, as she would be herselfe. They both dyed by excesse; and by luxury and cosonage by their servants, when he dyed, there was, I thinke, a hundred thousand pound debt.
Old Sir Francis, he lived like a hog, at Hownstret in Somerset, all this while with a moderate pittance.
Mr. John would say that his wive's estate was ill gott, and that was the reason they prospered no better; she would say that the old judge gott the estate unjustly, and thus they would twitt one another, and that with matter of trueth.
I remember this epitaph was made on Mr. John Popham:—
Here lies he, who, not long since,
Kept a table like a prince,
Till Death came, and tooke away.
Then ask't the old man, What's to pay?
[707]Memorandum:—at the hall in Wellington[AW] in the countie of Somerset (the ancient seate of the Pophams), and which was this Sir John's, Lord Chiefe Justice, (but quaere if he did not buy it?) did hang iron shackells, of which the tradicion of the countrey is that, long agoe, one of the Pophams (lord of this place) was taken and kept a slave by the Turkes for a good while, and that by his ladie's great pietie, and continuall prayers, he was brought to this place by an invisible power, with these shackells on his legges, which were here hung up as a memoriall, and continued till the house (being a garrison) was burn't. All the countrey people steadfastly beleeve the trueth hereof.
[708]Lord Chief Justice Popham first brought in (i.e. revived) brick building in London (scil. after Lincolne's Inne and St. James's); and first sett-afoote the Plantations,—e.g. Virginia (from Fabian Philips)—which he stockt or planted out of all the gaoles of England.