Robert Pointz

Sir Robert Pointz or Poyntz (1588–1665) was an English landowner and politician. He sat in the House of Commons for Gloucestershire, between 1626 and 1629.

Life

Pointz was the son of Sir John Poyntz, Lord of the Manor of Iron Acton, Gloucestershire, and his second wife Elizabeth Sydenham, daughter of Anthony Sydenham. He matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford on 15 March 1605, aged 16. He had already in 1604 made a teenage marriage to Frances Gibbons, daughter of his stepmother Grissell Roberts by her first husband Gervase Gibbons. Frances brought him a comfortable inheritance which made him financially independent of his father, who was notorious for improvidence and died penniless. As so often in that age, however, a dispute over the Gibbons inheritance led to a lawsuit, which dragged on into the late 1630s. In the last stages of the litigation Robert, though generally regarded as a "sober and learned man", became so irritated that he insulted one of the judges, and as a result, was briefly committed to the Fleet Prison.

Apart from his father's insolvency, the principal threat to his political career was his family's traditional attachment to the Roman Catholic faith. Robert himself was a zealous Protestant, but his sister Elizabeth, Lady Thurles, mother of the first Duke of Ormond, was a prominent recusant.