picions were not dispelled before the poet's death. He was buried at Maulden on 1 Dec. 1702 (Genealogia Bedfordiensis, ed. Blaydes, p. 414).
Pomfret married at Luton, on 13 Sept. 1692, Elizabeth Wingate, by whom he had one surviving son, John Pomfret, baptised at Maulden on 21 Aug. 1702, who became rouge croix pursuivant of arms in July 1725, and, dying on 24 March 1751, was buried at Harrowden in Bedfordshire (Hist. Regist. 1725; Noble, Hist. of the College of Arms, pp. 362, 394; Gent. Mag. 1751, p. 141).
Pomfret's poems were printed in Johnson's ‘English Poets’ (1779, vol. xxi.), Chalmers's ‘Poets’ (1810, vol. viii.), Park's ‘British Poets’ (1808, supplement, vol. i.), Roach's ‘Beauties of the Poets’ (1794, vol. ii.), and Pratt's ‘Cabinet of Poetry’ (1808, vol. ii.) The exclusion of Pomfret from more recent literary manuals and anthologies sufficiently indicates that Johnson's strange verdict finds few supporters at the present day. At the end of the fourth edition of ‘The Choice’ (1701) is advertised ‘A Poem in Answer to the Choice that would have no wife.’
[Cole's Athenæ Cantabr. (Addit. MS. 5878, f. 167); Graduati Cantabr.; Cibber's Lives of the Poets, vol. v.; Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, ii. 3; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Blaydes's Genealogia Bedfordiensis, pp. 186, 409, 414; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. ii. 27, viii. passim; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, ii. 239; works in British Museum; Bodleian and Huth Library Catalogues.]
POMFRET, SAMUEL (1650–1722), divine, born at Coventry in 1650, was educated at the grammar school of Coventry and subsequently under Dr. Obadiah Grew [q. v.], and under Ralph Button [q. v.] at Islington. When he was about nineteen his mother died, and he attained religious convictions. After acting as chaplain to Sir William Dyer of Tottenham, and afterwards of High Easter, Essex, he served for two years in the same capacity on board a Mediterranean trader. Upon his return to England Pomfret preached a weekly lecture in Lincoln's Inn Fields, until he received a call to Sandwich, Kent, where he remained seven years. At length he was arrested for nonconformity, but escaped his captors on the way to Dover Castle. About 1685 he opened a service in a room in Winchester Street, London, which was so crowded that eventually the floor gave way. A new meeting-house, capable of holding fifteen hundred people, was then erected for him in Gravel Lane, Houndsditch. The church was invariably crowded, and Pomfret administered the sacrament to as many as eight hundred communicants. The zeal which he displayed in itinerant preaching wore out his health, but when unable to walk he had himself carried to his pulpit in a chair. He died on 11 Jan. 1722. His assistant from 1719, William Hocker, predeceased him by a month, on 12 Dec. 1721. Thomas Reynolds (1664–1727) [q. v.] preached funeral sermons on and issued memoirs of both. Pomfret's wife survived him, but all his children died before him. Pomfret only published two sermons (1697 and 1701). ‘A Directory for Youth,’ with portrait, was issued posthumously, London, 1722.
[Works and Sermon, with portrait, in Dr. Williams's Library; Memoir by Reynolds, prefixed to Funeral Sermon, 1721–2, 2nd ed. 1722; another edition, entitled ‘Watch and Remember,’ London, 1721–2, differs slightly; Wilson's Hist. of Diss. Churches, i. 165, 397, 473; Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of Dissenters, ii. 341; Granger's Hist. of Engl., Continuation by Noble, iii. 158; Toulmin's Hist. of Prot. Dissenters, pp. 572, 245, 247; Meridew's Warwickshire Portraits, p. 48; Bromley's Cat. of Portraits, p. 226; Chaloner Smith's Brit. Mezz. Portraits, iv. 1701.]
PONCE, JOHN (d. 1660?), author, a native of Cork, studied at Louvain in the college of the Irish Franciscans. He became a member of the order of St. Francis, and, after further studies at Cologne, he removed to the Irish College of St. Isidore at Rome, where he was appointed professor of philosophy and theology. Ponce contributed to the Franciscan edition of the works of Duns Scotus, issued at Lyons in 1639. He published at Rome in 1642 ‘Integer Philosophiæ Cursus ad mentem Scoti,’ in two volumes 4to, containing upwards of fifteen hundred pages of small type in double columns. A third volume of about nine hundred pages was issued at Rome in 1643. Ponce dedicated the work to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, from whom he had received many favours, and who held the office of ‘protector of Ireland.’
Ponce disapproved of the courses pursued in Ireland by those who opposed the nuncio Giovanni Battista Rinuccini [q. v.] In the ‘Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction’ are preserved two letters written by Ponce at Paris in 1648 in relation to transactions in Ireland.
In 1652 Ponce published at Paris ‘Cursus Theologicus,’ in a folio volume. His views on affairs in Ireland were enunciated in ‘Richardi Bellingi Vindiciæ Eversæ’ (Paris, 1653), impugning the statements which had been promulgated by Richard Bellings [q. v.]
