bishopric of Sodor and Man. He made successful endeavours to uphold the rights of the see, and involved himself in much litigation. He printed two charges, ‘A Pastoral Letter to the Congregation at Warrington,’ 1848, and two sermons. He died at Bewsey House, Bournemouth, on 31 May 1877, and was buried at Warrington on 5 June. He married, on 21 Feb. 1833, Percy Gore, eldest daughter of William Currie of East Horsley Park, Surrey, and had issue: Horace (d. 1857); Percy William, rector of Thorpe-Achurch, Northamptonshire; Henry Lyttleton, lieutenant-colonel of the Oxfordshire light infantry; and five daughters.
[Men of the Time, 1875, p. 820; Guardian, 6 June 1877, p. 772; Manx Sun, 2 June 1877 p. 4 and 9 June 1877 p. 5.]
POWYS, Sir LITTLETON (1648?–1732), judge, eldest son of Thomas Powys of Henley in Shropshire, the representative of one branch of the ancient Welsh family of Powys, by his first wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Adam Littleton, bart., was born about 1648, and named after his maternal grandfather. He became a student of Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in May 1671. In 1688 he took the side of William of Orange, read his declaration at Shrewsbury, and, when the new government was established, was appointed a judge on the Chester circuit in May 1689. In 1692 he became a serjeant (Luttrell, Diary, ii. 404, 427) and a knight, and eventually was raised to the bench of the exchequer on 29 Oct. 1695 (cf. Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1697–1702, lvii. 54). He was transferred to the court of king's bench in June 1700 (see Luttrell, Diary, iv. 653, v. 11), but did not take his seat till 29 Jan. 1701. While a member of this court he was one of the majority of judges who heard the well-known leading case Ashby v. White, arising out of the Aylesbury election, and decided against the plaintiff (see Luttrell, Diary, v. 358, 380, 519). At the age of seventy-eight he retired on a pension of 1,500l. a year on 26 Oct. 1726, and died on 16 March 1732.
He appears to have been a dull, respectable judge, not so able as his brother, Sir Thomas Powys [q. v.], but less of a political partisan. His infelicitous way of expressing himself made him the object of much pointless satire (Harris, Life of Lord Hardwicke, i. 82, 84; Cooksey, Lord Somers and Lord Hardwicke, pp. 57, 66).
[Foss's Judges of England; State Trials, xv. 1407–22; Raymond's Reports; Public Records, 9th Rep. App. ii. 252; Collins's Peerage, viii. 578.]
POWYS, Sir THOMAS (1649–1719), judge, second son of Thomas Powys of Henley, Shropshire, and younger brother of Sir Littleton Powys [q. v.], was born in 1649. He was educated at Shrewsbury school, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1673. He became solicitor-general, and was knighted on 23 April 1686, when Finch was dismissed. Burnet (Own Time, iii. 91) calls him a compliant young aspiring lawyer. Having acquiesced in the appointment of Roman catholics to office, and argued in favour of the king's dispensing power, he was promoted to be attorney-general in December 1687. He accordingly conducted the prosecution of the seven bishops in June 1688, and acted with such conspicuous moderation and fairness (ib. iii. 223) as to show his own personal disapproval of the proceedings. During the reign of William III he acquired a fair practice, especially in defence of state prisoners, among whom was Sir John Fenwick, and at the bar of both houses of parliament. He sat in parliament for Ludlow from 1701 to 1713, was made serjeant and queen's serjeant at the beginning of Anne's reign, and on 8 June 1713 a judge of the queen's bench; but as he and his brother Sir Littleton Powys too frequently formed judgments in opposition to the rest of the court, he, as the more active and able of the two, was removed, on Lord-chancellor Cowper's advice, when King George I came to England (14 Oct. 1714). His rank of king's serjeant was restored to him.
He died on 4 April 1719, and was buried at Lilford in Northamptonshire. He was twice married: first to Sarah, daughter of Ambrose Holbech of Mollington, Warwickshire; and secondly, to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Meadows [q. v.] He had issue by both; and his great-grandson Thomas Powys was created Lord Lilford in 1797.
[Foss's Judges of England; Clarendon Correspondence, ii. 507; State Trials, xii. 279; Raymond's Reports; Collins's Peerage, viii. 579; Luttrell's Brief Relation.]
POYER, JOHN (d. 1649), royalist, was in 1642 mayor of Pembroke, distinguished himself by his zeal for the parliament, and became a captain in its service. Carew Castle in Pembrokeshire was surrendered to him by the royalists in March 1644 (Phillips, Civil War in Wales, i. 212, ii. 147, 152; Report on the Portland MSS. i. 31). Poyer was a strong presbyterian, and in 1648 he went over to the king's party. In February 1648, when the parliamentary forces in Wales were about to be disbanded, he refused to surrender the government of Pembroke to Colonel Fleming, whom Fairfax had ap-
