retirement from his profession at the height of his career. In London he designed the hospital and chapel of St. Katharine in the Regent's Park (1827), Christ Church, Westminster (1841), and the French Protestant Church in Bloomsbury Street. In the provinces, among other works, he was the architect of Pynes House, Devonshire (for Sir Stafford Northcote), Hodsock, near Worksop, Nottinghamshire (for Mrs. Chambers), Castle Melgwyn, South Wales, and restored or added to numerous buildings, including Warwick Castle and Crewe Hall, though in both these cases Poynter's work has since been destroyed by fire. As architect to the National Provincial Bank of England, he designed buildings for it in several towns. Poynter was frequently employed on arbitration cases, and held the office of official referee to the board of works.
Poynter took an important part in the establishment of government schools of design, and was the first inspector for the provinces appointed in connection with the school of design then at Somerset House. He was one of the committee of management appointed in 1848 to supervise the district schools of design, and in 1850 was appointed inspector of them. He was one of the first to urge the importance of making drawing a compulsory subject in national and elementary schools. He was an original member of the Arundel Society, the Graphic Society, and the Archæological Institute, and contributed several papers to the proceedings of the last. A student of heraldry, he made drawings to illustrate Sandford's ‘Genealogical History of England.’ He collaborated with Charles Knight (1791–1873) [q. v.] in his attempts to produce good and cheap pictorial literature, contributing illustrations to Knight's ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘Pictorial History of England,’ and the articles on literature, science, and art to the latter work.
Poynter died at Dover on 20 Nov. 1886. He married, first, in 1832 at the chapel of the British embassy, Paris, Emma, daughter of the Rev. E. Forster, by Lavinia, daughter and only child of Thomas Banks, R.A. [q. v.] By her he had one son, Sir Edward John Poynter, president of the Royal Academy, and three daughters, of whom Clara, wife of Mr. Robert Courtenay Bell, attained distinction as a translator from foreign languages. Poynter married, secondly, Louisa Noble, daughter of General Robert Bell, by whom he left a daughter.
[Proceedings of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1887, pp. 113, 137; private information.]
POYNTER, WILLIAM, D.D. (1762–1827), catholic prelate, born at Petersfield, Hampshire, on 20 May 1762, was sent by Bishop Challoner to the English College at Douay, where he became prefect of studies, was promoted to the priesthood, and took the degree of D.D. In 1793 he and the other seminarists were transferred by the French revolutionary authorities to the castle of Dourlens, and they were afterwards imprisoned in the Irish College at Douay. At last, on 25 Feb. 1795, they were sent to England, where they landed on 2 March. Poynter was nominated by Bishop Douglass to be vice-president of St. Edmund's College, near Ware, and he became president of that college in 1801, when Dr. Gregory Stapleton was made apostolic vicar in the midland district. Stapleton made Poynter his vicar-general.
He was appointed coadjutor to Dr. John Douglass [q. v.], vicar-apostolic of the London district, by papal brief, dated 3 March 1803, and he was consecrated bishop of Halia at St. Edmund's College on 29 May. He succeeded to the vicariate per coadjutoriam on the death of Douglass, 8 May 1812. Poynter was of a gentler disposition than John Milner [q. v.], and was adverse to the bold manner in which that controversialist carried himself towards his political opponents. While on a visit to Rome he drew up his ‘Apologetical Epistle’ to Cardinal Litta, prefect of the propaganda, dated 15 March 1815, in which he defended himself against certain charges brought against him and the other vicars-apostolic by Bishop Milner. The document was not intended to be made public, and was not actually published till 1820, when it was translated and printed, without the knowledge of Poynter, by Charles Butler, in his ‘Historical Memoirs of the English Catholics’ (vol. iv. appendix, note 1). Poynter suffered himself to be persuaded into becoming president of the ‘Catholic Bible Society,’ an institution founded in 1813 by the ‘Catholic Committee,’ and afterwards, in 1816, condemned by the holy see as ‘a crafty device for weakening the foundations of religion’ (Brady, Episcopal Succession, iii. 186). In 1823 he obtained from the holy see the appointment of Dr. James Yorke Bramston [q. v.] as his coadjutor, cum jure successionis. In conjunction with the other English and Scottish catholic prelates, he issued the famous ‘Declaration of the Catholic Bishops, the Vicars Apostolic, and their Coadjutors in Great Britain.’ He died in Castle Street, Holborn, London, on 26 Nov. 1827 (Gent. Mag. 1827, pt. ii. p. 571), and was buried
