Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/178

Porter to the practice of two centuries. On Sidney's departure, in July 1693, Porter again became a lord justice, but for less than a month. Having been dismissed by James because he was a protestant, he was now threatened with vengeance because he was not protestant enough. Articles of impeachment were exhibited against him in the English House of Commons by Richard Coote, earl of Bellamont [q. v.], himself an Irish protestant; but the matter soon dropped. Lord Capel also urged the king to remove Porter; but William refused, and Porter continued to lead the more tolerant party.

On 30 Sept. 1695 Colonel Ponsonby presented articles to the Irish House of Commons, in which Porter was accused of favouring papists and refusing to discharge magistrates ‘who have imbrued their hands in protestant blood,’ of corruption in his office, and of various irregularities. On 25 Oct. Porter was heard in person, a chair being set for him within the bar of the House of Commons. The speech is unfortunately lost; but the house voted his explanation satisfactory by 121 to 77. That night he overtook the carriage of his enemy, Speaker Rochfort [see ], in a narrow lane. Porter's coachman tried to pass the other; but Rochfort lost his temper, produced the mace, and declared that he would not be driven. Porter complained to the lords that his servant had been assaulted and himself insulted, and a communication was made to the other house. The commons declared that the whole thing was pure accident, and the matter dropped. There were no street lamps in Dublin until after the act 9 Will. III, cap. 17, was passed.

Capel died in May 1696, and Porter was elected lord justice by the council immediately afterwards. Lord Dartmouth arrived in Dublin the night after Capel died, and found the whole town ‘mad with joy’(note to BURNET, ii. 159). Porter remained a lord justice until his sudden death, from apoplexy, at his own house in Chancery Lane, Dublin, on 8 Dec. 1692. He died insolvent, or very nearly so.

Whigs and tories formed different estimates of Porter. Lord Somers, on the part of the whigs (ib.), wrote to Shrewsbury after Porter's death that it was ‘a great good fortune to the king's affairs in Ireland to be rid of a man who had formed so troublesome a party in that kingdom.’ Dartmouth thought him a wise man, not actuated, as Burnet said, by ‘a tory humour,’ but bent upon uniting all protestants without distinction of party. And his friend Roger North says ‘he had that magnanimity and command of himself that no surprise or affliction, by arrest or otherwise, could be discerned either in his countenance or society, which is very exemplary; and in cases of the persecuting kind, as injustices and the malice of powers, heroical in perfection.’

[Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ; Clarendon and Rochester Correspondence, ed. Singer; Howell's State Trials, vol. vi.; Roger North's Life of Guilford; Pepys's Diary, ed. Mynors Bright; Burnet's Hist. of his Own Time, ed. 1823; Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniæ; Haydn's Book of Dignities; O'Flanagan's Lives of the Irish Chancellors; Oliver Burke's Hist. of the Irish Chancellors; Froude's English in Ireland, vol. i.; Macaulay's Hist. of England.]  PORTER, ENDYMION (1587–1649), royalist, descended from William Porter, sergeant-at-arms to Henry VII, was the son of Edmund Porter of Aston-sub-Edge, Gloucestershire, by his cousin Angela, daughter of Giles Porter of Mickleton in the same county. Giles Porter married Juana de Figueroa y Mont Salve, said to have been a relative of the Count of Feria, who was Spanish ambassador in England at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. On Lord Nottingham's mission to Spain in 1605, Giles Porter was employed as interpreter (, Commoners, iii. 577;, Memorials, ii. 76). Endymion Porter was brought up in Spain, and was sometime a page in the household of Olivares (, Life of James I, p. 225;, Rebellion, iv. 28). On his return to England he entered the service of Edward Villiers, and passed thence into that of his brother, then Marquis of Buckingham. Through Buckingham's influence he obtained the post of groom of the bedchamber to Prince Charles, which he continued to hold after the accession of Charles to the throne (, Hist. of England, iv. 370). On 20 Nov. 1619 the manor of Aston-sub-Edge was conveyed to Porter by his cousin Richard Catesby (note communicated by Mr. S. G. Hamilton). About the same time, or in 1620, he married Olivia, daughter of John Boteler (afterwards Lord Boteler of Bramfield) and of Elizabeth Villiers, sister of Buckingham.

Porter's knowledge of Spain and of the Spanish language opened his way to diplomatic employments. Buckingham used him to conduct his Spanish correspondence, and in October 1622 he was sent to Spain to carry the demand for Spanish aid in the recovery of the Palatinate, and to prepare the way for the intended journey of Prince Charles. In December he returned with the amended marriage articles, and with a secret message accepting the intended visit from