John de Ponz

John de Ponz, also called John de Ponte, John Savan, or John of Bridgwater (c.1248–1307) was an English-born administrator, lawyer and judge in the reign of King Edward I. He served in the Royal Household in England for several years before moving to Ireland, where he practised in the Royal Courts as the King's Serjeant-at-law (Ireland). He later served as a justice in eyre (itinerant justice), and then as a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland). He was a gifted lawyer, but as a judge was accused of acting unjustly. A case he heard in Kilkenny in 1302 can be seen as a precursor of the Kilkenny Witchcraft Trials of 1324, and involved several of the main actors in the Trials. In about 1372 he joined the household of Edward's first Queen, Eleanor of Castile, whom he served for many years in several capacities, including deputy steward of the Queen's household and Constable of Leeds Castle, Kent, which the Queen bought in 1378.

In Ireland

It may have been the Queen's death in November 1290 which prompted him to join his brother Roger in Ireland the following year. He was clearly a qualified lawyer, though no details of his legal education survive. He became King's Serjeant in 1292, He was also licensed to appear before the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) and the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). In 1300 he was one of the four justices appointed to hear the pleas in County Louth (William Alysaundre, Robert de Littlebury and Sir Walter l'Enfant the younger being among the others). In 1301 he received a permanent appointment as justice in eyre (itinerant justice) for four counties including County Kilkenny (where he heard a notable case involving the future actors in the Witchcraft Trials), County Tipperary (where his conduct gave rise to complaints of injustice), and County Cork. In 1302-3 he was itinerant justice for County Meath, jointly with Robert de Littlebury, with a salary of 40 marks. In 1304 he was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (which was then simply called "the Bench"). Outlawe also seems to have been his mother's business partner.

There was a further important aspect to the case, which had a bearing on the later Trials: the Sheriff and Seneschal pleaded that the money seized from Outlawe was forfeit by Adam and Alice to the Crown, as the penalty for their numerous crimes, including the homicide of Alice's first husband, the elder William Outlawe, and for sheltering a notorious thief called Roesia Outlawe, for which crimes Adam, Alice and Roesia were all in prison under sentence of death. Cogan was clearly a somewhat litigious individual, as shown by a previous lawsuit in 1293–4 against the Abbey of St Thomas the Martyr (near Dublin) over the right to ownership of lands at Ballymckelly.

Personal life

He held lands in Dorset as well as at Bridgwater,

He was still alive in the autumn of 1306, and probably died in 1307.