His portraits, which have graced various local publications, show a massive, bland-looking man in red judicial robes. Because he never visited our shores, there has been a tendency to gloss over his role as a mere projector, a moneyman interested in a quick return on investments.

British author Douglas Rice changes that perception with the first modern biography of the man. And what an extraordinary figure Popham proves to be. Born in Hunt near Bridgewater in the English West Country, John was the second son of a well-to-do gentleman.

As is the case with many Elizabethans, the early records are sketchy, though in Popham’s case colorful. He was said to have been kidnapped by gypsies when a child, after which his health which had been sickly before, was strengthened by he wandering life he led with these lawless associates; he grew up too be a man of extraordinary stature and activity of body.”

He went on to enter Balliol College, Oxford, and was later admitted to Middle Temple. Various sources suggest that while he was studying law, Popham supported himself as highwayman.

Around 1557, John, now married, was called to the bar. The year previous he had received several properties at the death of his father and from this point the man began to build a family, never looking back.

Author Rice, a teacher and publisher who came across Popham Beach during a teacher exchange program in the 1980’s, weaves an extraordinary political and sociological tale of his subject’s rise to the very top of the power structure. A favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and of James I a well, Popham would hold, and use, a variety of offices, including Attorney General, Lord Chief Justice and, briefly, Lord Chancellor.

But it was his knowledge of the law and how to apply it for the benefit of the Crown that made him so useful to the monarchs and so feared by the common people. While other favorites lost their positions and heads, Popham kept his, remaining a bulwark, in all-political broils.

Not only did Sir John help secure the stability of the English state, he was also a colonizer of land in Ireland, the East Anglian Fens (which he had drained) and America. Indeed, he seems to have been a man who never stopped working for the good the state (which was in fact his own good). Indeed, he was one of the real founders of what would become the British Empire.

For out local purposes, Rices’s account of Popham’s connection to Sir Ferdinando Gorges (1565-1647) is key. In 1601, while serving as the messenger of the Queen, Popham was imprisoned by the Earl of Essex and left with his henchmen. Always stoic, the Chief Justice replied that at his age, death would be “but cutting off a few years.” Gorges, though an Essex man, rowed Popham and his fellows to safety thus saving the jurist and himself and beginning a partnership in American colonization. Indeed, this seems to be the genesis of the Province of Maine.

This is a rock-solid study based on documentary evidence and a careful reading of earlier publications, most all of it from British sources. In the end, we are presented with a far more substantial portrait of Sir John than we had and, it seems to his reader, that the law was used as a weapon to advance various quasi-government projects and notions.

One of those activities was the foundation of what would become Maine. This is a book to savor and enjoy.