PORTMAN, Sir Henry, 2nd Bt. (1596-1621), of Orchard Portman, Som.

The Portman family was first recorded at Taunton in the thirteenth century, and regularly represented the borough from 1302. In the 1400s they acquired an estate two miles away at Orchard, which ‘well brooks the name, for it is seated in a very fertile soil for fruit’. By the seventeenth century this property included ‘a large fair house, well befitting the possessions of the owners’. A.W. Vivian-Neal, ‘Orchard Portman’, Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. lxxxix. 46; OR; Particular Description of Som. ed. E.H. Bates (Som. Rec. Soc. xv), 61. Portman’s father, a ‘great landed baronet’, died in 1612 owning land in eight counties. The 16-year-old Portman’s wardship was sold for £2,300 to his mother, his uncles Sir Richard Gifford* and Sir Nicholas Halswell*, and several other trustees appointed by his father. HMC Downshire, iv. 8; Sales of Wards, 137-43; PROB 11/121, f. 47. In 1614 Portman became a trustee of a lectureship at White Lackington, Somerset. He was inaccurately reported three years later as having broken his neck. At about that time he succeeded his father as keeper of Roche forest, obtaining grants from first Anne of Denmark and then Prince Charles. An active officer, he even prosecuted poachers in Star Chamber in 1620. HMC Wells, ii. 368; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 484; Harl. 781, f.29v; STAC 8/237/18.

Portman, the first of his family to sit for Somerset, was returned to the 1621 Parliament without a contest. On 15 Feb. he was appointed to attend the conference with the Lords on the proposed joint petition against recusants. He was also named that day to consider the bill on sabbath observance. CJ, i. 522b-3a. However, his Commons’ service was cut short nine days later, when he died ‘of the smallpox or purples’. Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 347. In his will, drafted in November 1617, he left a third of his estate to his brother and heir John ‘for satisfaction of the law’, assigning the residue to trustees for payment of his other legacies and debts. The latter included £347 9s. owed to London tradesmen, and in particular a silkman. Portman’s widow subsequently married Sir Robert Kerr*, the future earl of Ancram. PROB 11/143, f. 417; T.G. Barnes, Som. 1625-40, p. 23n; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 404.