When Willoughby surrendered Barbados to the parliamentary fleet under Sir George Ayscue, Poyntz found St. Christopher's untenable, and retired to Virginia (Whitelocke, Memorials, iii. 405; Oldmixon, British Empire in America, ii. 15, 280; Oliver, History of Antigua, 1894, vol. i. p. xx). But the articles between Willoughby and Ayscue contain a clause permitting Poyntz to retire to Antigua with other gentlemen having estates there (Cal. State Papers, Col. 1675–6, p. 86). It is stated that in 1661 he was again appointed governor of Antigua, and held the post till superseded by Lord Willoughby in 1663, but no trace of his tenure of office appears among the colonial state papers. It is added that he then retired to Virginia, and died there at some unknown date (Maclean, p. 183; Antigua and the Antiguans, 1844, i. 20). A portrait of Poyntz, from an original in the possession of Earl Spencer, is engraved in Sir John Maclean's ‘Memoir.’ Others appear in Ricraft's ‘Survey of England's Champions,’ 1647, chap. xix., and in ‘England's Worthies,’ by John Vicars, 1647, p. 91. Sir John Maclean also gives a picture of a contemporary portrait-medal (p. 169).
Poyntz, according to the pedigree given in Aubrey's 'History of Surrey' (iv. 212), married 'Anne Eleanor de Court Stephanus de Cary in Wirtemberg.' In a letter from his wife to Speaker Lenthall in 1647 she signs her name 'Elisabeth.'
Poyntz was the author of the following pamphlets:
- The ‘Vindication’ cited above (1645–6).
- ‘The Vindication of Colonel-general Poyntz against the Slanders cast forth against him by the Army; with the barbarous manner of the Adjutator's surprisal of him at York,’ 4to, 1648 [no place].
The ‘British Museum Catalogue’ also gives a list of letters by Poyntz, which were printed in pamphlet form between 1645 and 1647. Some unprinted letters by Poyntz are to be found among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library, and among the manuscripts of the Duke of Portland.
An elder brother, John Poyntz (fl. 1660), born in 1606, was active in the civil war in Ireland and England on the parliamentary side (cf. A True Relation of the Taking of Roger Manwaring, Bishop of St. David's, London, 1642, 4to). In 1658 he was captain in the navy, and in 1663 clerk of the revels. He subsequently travelled ‘in the greatest part of the Caribee Islands and most parts of the continent of America, and almost all his Majesty's foreign plantations;’ in 1683 he projected a scheme for the purchase and colonisation of Tobago (cf. The Present Prospect of the … Island of Tobago, London, 1683, 4to, by Captain John Poyntz, and Proposals offered by Capt. John Poyntz); but his plan came to nothing (A Geographical Description of Tobago [1750?], p. 66).
[A life of Poyntz, by Sir John Maclean, is contained in the Historical and Genealogical Memoir of the family of Poyntz, 1886, pp. 159–84.]
PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH (1802–1839), poet, third son of William Mackworth Praed, of Bitton House, Teignmouth, Devonshire, serjeant-at-law, and for many years chairman of the audit board, was born on 26 July 1802 at 35 John Street, Bedford Row, London. His father was the grandson of William Mackworth, second son of Sir Humphry Mackworth [q. v.], who took the additional name of Praed upon his marriage about 1730 to Martha, daughter and heir of John Praed of Trevethow in Cornwall (for the Mackworth pedigree see Blore's Rutland, pp. 128–9). The maiden name of the poet's mother was Winthrop. The Winthrops of New England are a branch of the same family. Winthrop Praed was a delicate and precocious child. His mother died a year after his birth, and his earliest education was superintended by an elder sister, to whom he was tenderly attached; she died in 1830. He gave up pressing occupations in order to attend her in her last illness. In 1810 he was placed at Langley Broom school, near Colnbrook, under a Mr. Atkins. He read Plutarch and Shakespeare, and became a good chess-player. He wrote dramas and sent poems home, which were carefully criticised by his father. On 28 March 1814 he entered Eton in the house of F. J. Plumtre, afterwards a fellow of Eton College. An elder brother helped him in his studies; and Plumtre gave prizes for English verse, which were generally divided between Praed and George William Frederick Howard (afterwards seventh Earl of Carlisle) [q. v.] In 1820 he started a manuscript journal, the ‘Apis Matina,’ of which he wrote about half. It was succeeded by the ‘Etonian,’ the most famous of school journals. Walter Blount was Praed's colleague as editor. Some of his contributors were already at college. Among the chief writers were H. N. Coleridge, Sidney Walker, C. H. Townshend, and John Moultrie, who describes Praed in his ‘Dream of Life’ (Moultrie, Works, 1876, p. 421). Praed signed his articles as ‘Peregrine Courtenay,’ the
