Family and Education

b. c.1546, s. of Thomas Duport^† of Shepshed and Queniborough, Leics. by Cornelia Norton (d.1595) of Kent. educ. Jesus, Camb. 1564; I. Temple 1564, called 1577. m. Anne (d.1623), da. of Thomas Highgate, 1s. 3da.

Offices Held

Recorder, Derby by 1603.2

Biography

The Duport family came from Caen, Normandy, to settle in Leicestershire in the reign of Henry IV. Duport’s father, Thomas, also a lawyer, bought a third of the extensive manor of Shepshed from Sir John Savage in 1572. In his younger days he had been associated with the household of the dukes of Suffolk. Later he was employed as a lawyer by Sir Ambrose Cave and was an executor of the will of Lady Mary Grey in 1578.3

It is not known whether any of this helped Henry Duport. He spent 13 years at the Inner Temple before being called and held only minor offices there. Still, his chambers in the Great Garden retained the name Duport’s Buildings for a number of years after his departure. He certainly had some standing at Derby by 1592, when he appeared as a witness in an Exchequer inquiry into a local land dispute, and though the first reference to him as recorder occurs in 1603, he may by then have been holding the post for some time. He was returned to Parliament for the borough in 1597, sitting on a committee dealing with benefit of clergy (7 Nov.) and another on the bill ‘for the reviving, continuance and explanation of divers statutes’ (3 Feb. 1598). As burgess for Derby he was also eligible to attend the monopolies committee (10 Nov.), and a committee concerning weavers (10 Nov.).4

Duport died intestate 29 Nov. 1640, when well into his nineties. An inquisition post mortem, taken at Leicester in August 1641, shows that he had outlived his children, the heirs being three grandchildren, the eldest, Duport Paulson, aged over 40. The Leicester archdeaconry court granted administration of his property to his heirs. His brother John, who died in 1617, was master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and vice-chancellor of the university.

Leicester Archdeaconry Ct. Wills and Admons. Index, 199; DNB (Duport, John).

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: M.R.P.

Notes

• 1. Folger V.b. 298.
• 2. Vis. Leics. (Harl. Soc. ii), 124; Leics. Arch. Soc. xv. 260, 277, 278, 279; Nichols, Leics. iii. 1015.
• 3. Nichols, ii(2), p. 470, n. 4; iii. 1015, 1021; iv. 803; Leics. Arch. Soc. xv. 260, 287; Strype, Annals, ii(2), p. 211.
• 4. Cal. I.T. Recs. i. 289, 330, 336, 347, 359, 376, 408, 445, 453; ii. 12; Nichols, iii. 1013, 1015; Venn, Al. Cant. i(2), p. 76; J. C. Cox, Churches of Derbys. iv. 77-8; D’Ewes, 552, 555, 592.