Life
Pounde was born at Belmont (Beaumond), Farlington, Hampshire. He was the eldest son of William Pounde and Helen/Anne, the sister or half-sister to Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. He is reported to have been educated at Winchester College. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 16 February 1559/60, and with the death of his father the same month, he succeeded to Belmont, and soon after was appointed esquire of the body to Queen Elizabeth. He acted the part of Mercury in George Gascoigne's Masque, performed before the queen at Kenilworth in 1565. During the reveries of Christmastide, 1551, while dancing before the queen, he stumbled and fell at her feet. The queen reportedly kicked him and said, "Rise, Sir Ox". Pounde, humiliated, replied "Sic transit gloria mundi" and thenceforward retired from court life.
Shortly afterwards he was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church, probably by Father Henry Alway, and after some time of seclusion at Beaumond, began an active career as a proselytizer. He was in the Marshalsea Prison for six months in 1574; in the Winchester jail for some months in 1575/6; and in the Marshalsea again from 9 March 1575/6 to 18 September 1580, being made a Jesuit lay-brother by a letter dated 1 December 1578 from the Father-General Mercurian, sent at the instance of Father Thomas Stevens, S.J., the first Englishman to go to India. From the Marshalsea Pounde was removed to Bishop's Stortford Castle, and thence to Wisbech. Then he was in the Tower of London, from 13 August 1581 to 7 December 1585. He was in the White Lion, Southwark, from 1 September 1586, till he was sent back to Wisbech in 1587, where he remained nearly ten years. He was again in the Tower of London, from February 1596/7 to the autumn of 1598, when he was again committed to Wisbech. From Wisbech he was relegated to Wood Street Counter where he remained for six weeks from 19 December 1598. After that he was in the Tower again until 7 July 1601. He was then in Framlingham Castle for a year. In 1602 he was in Newgate, and in the following year he was indicted at York. Afterwards he was in the Gatehouse, Westminster, for some time, and then in the Tower (for the fourth time) for four months, and lastly in the Fleet Prison for three months. He was finally liberated in late 1604 or early in 1605, having spent nearly thirty years in prison.
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