Sir John, lord chief justice of the common pleas in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was the eldest son of Mr Edward Popham of Huntworth, in Somersetshire, and born in the year 1531. He was sometime a student of Balliol College, Oxford, "being then," as Anthony Wood says, "given at leisure hours to many sports and exercises." After quitting the university, he established himself in the Middle Temple, where, during his novitiate, he is said to have indulged in that kind of dissipation to which youth and a vigorous constitution more naturally incline, than to the study of voluminous reports; but, satiated at length with what are called the pleasures of the town, he applied sedulously to the study of his profession, was called to the bar, and in 1568 became summer or autumn reader. He was soon afterwards made serjeant at law, and solicitor-general in 1579. In 1581 he was appointed attorney-general, and treasurer of the Middle Temple. In 1592 he was made lord chief justice of the king's bench, and the same year received the honour of knighthood. In the year 1601 his lordship was one of the council detained by the unfortunate Earl of Essex, when he formed the ridiculous project of defending himself in his own house; and, on the earl's trial, Sir John gave evidence against him relative to their detention. He died in the year 1607, aged seventy-six, and was buried in the south aisle of the church at Wellington in Somersetshire, where he generally resided as often as it was in his power to retire. He was thought somewhat severe in the execution of the law against capital offenders; but his severity had the happy effect of reducing the number of highway robberies. He wrote, 1. Reports and cases adjudged in the time of Queen Elizabeth; 2. Resolutions and judgments upon cases and matters agitated in all the courts at Westminster in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign.