Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/207

  B.A. in 1523–4, M.A. in 1527, B.D. in 1535, and D.D. in 1557. He was elected about 1534 fellow of Corpus and also of the college of St. John the Baptist at Stoke-by-Clare, Suffolk, where Matthew Parker [q. v.], to whose friendship Pory owed his preferments, was dean. In 1557 Pory was elected master of Corpus, and on 13 Dec. of the year following he became vice-chancellor of the university.

From 1555 to 1564 Pory was rector of Bunwell, Norfolk; from 1555 or 1556 till 1561 vicar of St. Stephen's, Norwich; from 1558 to 1569 rector of Landbeach, Cambridgeshire; from 21 Dec. 1559–60 prebendary of Ely; from 19 Aug. 1560 rector of Pulham St. Mary, Norfolk; and from 1 May 1564 prebendary of Canterbury, resigning this prebend in 1567 for the seventh stall at Westminster (, i. 53, iii. 355).

On the visit of the queen to Cambridge in August 1564 he was one of the four senior doctors who held the canopy over her as she entered King's College Chapel (, Progresses of Eliz. i. 163). He also took part in the divinity act held before the queen on the thesis ‘major est scripturæ quam ecclesiæ auctoritas.’ He afterwards attended Elizabeth when she visited Oxford in 1566, and was incorporated there. During his mastership a new library was fitted up in the college, the north side of which was reserved for the manuscripts which Archbishop Parker was intending to present. Pory persuaded the archbishop to increase the endowments of his old college, and showed anxiety to turn them to a useful purpose. But he declined to resign his mastership when disabled by failing health from performing his duties, and Parker instigated complaints against him before the ecclesiastical commissioners. Much pressure was needed before Pory consented to withdraw. Thomas Aldrich was appointed master of Corpus on 3 Feb. 1569–70 (Parker Corresp. p. 356). Pory gave up all his preferments about the same time, and is held to have died in 1573. One John Pory acted as one of the two conductor yeomen at Parker's funeral on 6 June 1575.

[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr.; Bentham's Hist. and Antiq. of Ely, p. 244; Strype's Works, index; Le Neve; Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xv.; Symon Gunton's Hist. of Church of Peterborough; Masters's Hist. of Corpus Christi; Wood's Fasti, i. 175; Blomefield's Norfolk; Willis's Survey of Cath. ii. 378; State Papers, Dom. Eliz. ubi supra; Nichols's Progresses of Eliz. i. 163; Cole MSS. 5813 f. 60, 5807 f. 33, 5843 f. 441; Lansdowne, 12, No. 35, fol. 12, and 981, fol. 58; Willis and Clark's Arch. Hist. of C. i. 253, 255, 267.]  PORY, JOHN (1570?–1635), traveller and geographer, born about 1570, may have been grandson or nephew of John Pory, D.D. (d. 1573?) [q. v.] He entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1587, graduated B.A. 1591–2, and M.A. 1595, and was incorporated M.A. at Oxford on 18 April 1610. After leaving Cambridge about 1597, Pory became a sort of pupil of Richard Hakluyt [q. v.], who calls him his ‘very honest, industrious, and learned friend,’ and who for three or more years assisted and encouraged him in the study of cosmography, conceiving him possessed of ‘special skill and extraordinary hope to performe great matters in the same, and beneficial for the common wealth’ (, Voyages, 1600, vol. iii. dedication).

At Hakluyt's instigation, Pory translated, with some notes of his own, ‘A Geographical Historie of Africa, written in Arabicke and Italian by John Leo, a More,’ London, 1600, sm. fol. A copy is in the Grenville Library. The work, which was reprinted by Samuel Purchas [q. v.] in part ii. of his ‘Pilgrimes,’ brought Pory considerable notoriety. He was returned to parliament as a member for the borough of Bridgwater, Somerset, on 5 Nov. 1605, and settled in London. He became intimate with Sir Robert Cotton (Addit. MS. 4176, fol. 14). In the autumn of 1607 he travelled in France and the Low Countries, and sought the support of Dudley Carleton in a scheme for introducing silk-loom stocking weaving into England (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–1618, p. 54). He was still in parliament on 17 July 1610 (, Memorials, iii. 193), but retired shortly after. On 21 May 1611 he obtained license to travel for three years (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–18, p. 33), and some months later he accompanied Lord Carew, first to Ireland and afterwards to Paris. There in January 1612 he delivered to Cardinal Perron a treatise written by Isaac Casaubon [q. v.] and the bishop of Ely, in answer to a letter from the cardinal to the king, and he handed to Thuanus, the historian, some materials collected for his use by Sir Robert Cotton and Camden. In 1613 he went through Turin to Venice (Court and Times of James I, i. 255), and thence passed to Constantinople, where he was patronised by Sir Paul Pindar [q. v.] He remained in Turkey until January 1616. In 1617 Carleton wrote from The Hague that ‘if Pory had done with Constantinople and could forbear the pot (which is hard in this country), he shall be welcome unto me [as a secretary], for I love an old friend, and he shall be sure of good usage’ (ib. ii. 29). After a brief visit to London he spent part of 1617 in Turin with Sir Isaac Wake, ambassador to Savoy (ib. p. 521). 