Sir John Popham

Sir John Popham (c. 1531 to 10 June 1607) was an English judge and politician from Wellington, Somerset, who served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 1580 to 1583, Attorney General from 1581 to 1592, and Lord Chief Justice of England from 1592 until his death. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and trained at the Middle Temple, he represented Lyme Regis and Bristol in Parliament before rising to the senior legal offices. As Lord Chief Justice he presided over a series of high profile trials, including those of the Jesuit Robert Southwell in 1595, Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, among them Guy Fawkes, in 1606, and he had earlier taken part in the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. He founded Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, which opened in 1604 and still operates, and he financed and organized the short lived Popham Colony on the coast of Maine in 1607 to 1608. He died at Wellington and was buried at the Church of St John the Baptist there, under an elaborate surviving monument.