John de Ponz
Roger was a clerk to Thomas Weyland, the English Chief Justice of the Common Pleas: soon after Weyland's removal from office for maladministration and his resulting exile in 1289/90, Roger took up employment in Ireland on the staff of the Justiciar of Ireland, William de Vesci.
[7] In 1300 he was one of the four justices appointed to hear the pleas in County Louth (William Alysaundre, Robert de Littlebury and Sir Walter l'Enfant the younger being among the others).
[3] Outlawe alleged that William le Kyteler or Kiteler, High Sheriff of County Kilkenny, on the orders of the Seneschal of Kilkenny, Fulk de la Freyne,[9] had entered his house with an armed force, dug up the floorboards, and unlawfully carried off "by night" a very large sum of money, amounting to £3000 deposited with William Outlawe in trust by Adam and Alice le Blound of Callan (Outlawe's mother and stepfather), and £100 of William's own money.
[3] It is noteworthy that Outlawe, Kyteler and Adam and Alice le Blound (and their families) were at the centre of the Kilkenny Witch Trials twenty years later.
[3] Adam and Alice pleaded in return that the charges of homicide and other crimes were a malicious invention, that Roesia had never been convicted of theft, and that all of them had found sureties for their good behaviour, and petitioned for their release.
The King ordered their release from prison, and commanded the officials to give an account of their conduct to the Justiciar of Ireland.
[3] We have another valuable glimpse of de Ponz in his judicial role when he was serving as justice for County Tipperary in 1304, shortly before his elevation to the Court of Common Pleas.
Walter, son of William de Dermor, brought an action for novel disseisin (the usual remedy for a plaintiff who claimed to have been wrongfully dispossessed of their property) against Elena Macotyr, his stepmother, and her second husband Thomas le Bret, to recover a house in Cashel and 300 acres of land.
[2] De Ponz, in defence of his conduct, gave the somewhat haughty reply that he had allowed the case to proceed "by his own will".
The case was heard by De Ponz and Thomas Cantock, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the plaintiff was successful.
[11] Cogan was clearly a somewhat litigious individual, as shown by a previous lawsuit in 1293-4 against the Abbey of St Thomas the Martyr (near Dublin) over the right to ownership of lands at Ballymckelly.
