By 1495 Port had settled at
Etwall in Derbyshire as a result of his marriage to the daughter of John Fitzherbert (d.1502). Port studied law at the
Middle Temple, where he was
Reader in 1509, Lent Reader and treasurer in 1515, and governor in 1520. In 1504 he was one of the commissioners appointed to raise a subsidy in
Derbyshire. On 2 June 1509 he was made King's solicitor, and on 26 November signed a proclamation as member of the
Privy Council. In the same year he was "keeper of the King's books", and in 1511 clerk of the wardrobe. Before 1512 he was appointed attorney to the
earldom of Chester, and in that year he appeared as one of the commissioners selected to inquire into the extortions of the masters of the mint. In 1515 and most succeeding years he served on the commission for the peace in
Derbyshire. In 1517 he was
clerk of exchange in the Tower, and in 1522 was made serjeant-at-law. He acquired an extensive practice as an advocate, and in 1525 he was made a
Justice of the King's Bench and knighted. He was on the commission for gaol delivery at
York, and in June went on the northern circuit as justice of
assize. He was also a member of Princess Mary's council. In 1535 he was placed on the commission of
oyer and terminer for
Middlesex to try
John Fisher and
Thomas More, and in the following year was similarly employed with regard to
Anne Boleyn. Port died on or about 14 March 1540. Port's son,
John Port the Younger, took a prominent part in the transactions relating to the foundation of
Brasenose College, Oxford. He gave to it a garden lying on the south side of the college, and completed John Williamson's bequest of £200 ''to provide stipends for two sufficient and able persons to read and teach openly in the hall, the one philosophy, the other 'humanity.'' The stipend was (then) 4 shillings a year, but the limitation to the descendants of Williamson and Port was abolished by
Oxford University in 1854. John the Younger was also the founder of
Repton School, and the land on which the family Manor House once stood in Etwall is now the grounds of a
Secondary School which still holds the Port family crest of three birds within its own school crest. ==Marriages and issue==