1521 he was one of the jury at Bristol before whom the Duke of Buckingham was indicted. In 1522 he joined in Surrey's expedition to Francis in command of the Santa Maria. In the following year he became vice-admiral, and was employed in command of some twelve or fourteen sail in preventing the return of Albany to Scotland. In 1523 he was administrator for his father. In 1527 he served as sheriff of Gloucestershire, and in 1530 was on a commission to inquire into Wolsey's possessions. He died in 1533, having married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Huddesfield; and, secondly, Joan, widow of Sir Richard Guilford. His eldest son, Sir Nicholas, born in 1510, was a prominent courtier during the latter part of Henry VIII's reign, and died in 1557. A portrait of Sir Nicholas by Holbein belongs to the Marquis of Bristol, and two drawings, also attributed to Holbein, to King Edward VII (Cat. Tudor Exhib. 1890, Nos. 79, 493, 500). Another, which is anonymous, belonged in 1866 to the Marquis of Ormonde.
Sir Nicholas's great-grandson, Sir Robert Poyntz (1589?–1665) matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 15 March 1604–5, was M.P. for Gloucestershire in 1626, 1628–9, and was knighted on 2 Feb. 1626–7 at the coronation of Charles I; he sided with the king during the civil war, and wrote ‘A Vindication of Monarchy …,’ 1661, 4to (Brit. Mus.); he was buried at Iron Acton on 10 Nov. 1665.
[Authorities quoted; Works in Brit. Mus. Libr.; Sir John Maclean's Memoir of the Poyntz family; Cotton MSS. passim; Letters, &c., of Henry VII (Rolls Ser.), and Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner, passim; Atkyns's Gloucestershire, p. 104, &c.; Visitation of Gloucestershire (Harl. Soc.); Wood's Athenæ, iii. 715–16; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club); Chron. of Calais (Camden Soc.); Rymer's Fœdera, orig. ed. xiv. 404; Brewer's Hist. of Henry VIII, ii. 149; Sandford's Genealog. Hist. p. 434; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire; Gough's Sepulchral Mon.]
POYNTZ, ROBERT (fl. 1566), catholic divine, a younger son of John Poyntz (d. 1544) and nephew of Sir Francis Poyntz [q. v.], lord of the manor of Alderley, Gloucestershire, was born at Alderley about 1535. He was educated at Winchester, and was, on 26 Aug. 1554, admitted perpetual fellow of New College, Oxford (Rawl. MS. D. 130, f. 63), graduating B.A. 5 June 1556, and M.A. 27 May 1560. But as a devout Roman catholic he abandoned, early in Elizabeth's reign, his friends and expectations in this country, and settled in Louvain. There he published ‘Testimonies for the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament of the Aultar, set foorth at large and faithfully translated out of Six Auncient Fathers which lyved far within the first six hundred yeres,’ … Louvain, 1566. Another work, ‘Miracles performed by the Eucharist,’ is also ascribed to him.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 356, Fasti, i. 149, 158; State Papers, Dom. Eliz. Add. xxxii. 30; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. i. 94, viii. 440; Palin's More about Stifford; Atkyns's Gloucestershire, pp. 104, 107; Visitation of Gloucestershire (Harl. Soc.); Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Pits, De Script. Illustr. Angl. p. 903, appendix; Maclean's Memoir of the Poyntz Family.]
POYNTZ, STEPHEN (1685–1750), diplomatist, born in London, and baptised at St. Michael's, Cornhill, in November 1685, was the second son of William Poyntz, upholsterer, of Cornhill, by his second wife, Jane, daughter of Stephen Monteage, merchant of London and Buckingham, whose wife was a sister of Richard Deane [q. v.] (Lipscomb, Buckinghamshire, ii. 579). He was educated at Eton, being a king's scholar and captain of Montem in 1702. On 17 Feb. 1702–3 he was admitted at King's College, Cambridge, and became in due course a fellow of his college, graduating B.A. in 1706, and M.A. in 1711.
Shortly after he left college he travelled with the Duke of Devonshire, and he was also tutor to the sons of Lord Townshend, with whom he was at The Hague in 1709 and 1710. For some time he seems to have acted as Townshend's confidential secretary, communicating on his behalf with the English ambassadors abroad, and, through his chief's influence, he was introduced into the diplomatic service. Poyntz was commissary in 1716 to James, first earl Stanhope, the secretary of state, and envoy-extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Sweden in July 1724; of this mission Poyntz acquitted himself well, though Sir Robert Walpole complained of the large sums which he drew from the English exchequer to secure Sweden's support. In 1728 he was sent as commissioner to the congress at Soissons, where he made the acquaintance of George, first baron Lyttelton [q. v.], and he remained in France until the summer of 1730.
On the formation of the household of the Duke of Cumberland, second son of George II, Poyntz was appointed as the young duke's governor and steward of the household, and throughout his life he continued the prince's trusted adviser. About 1735 he purchased from the family of Hillersdon an estate
