- Served the Black Prince in Gascony, as an ambassador between the prince and Pedro I when this had to leave Castile.
- Was handed over to Du Guesclin in 1374, after the town of La Rochelle fell to a Franco-Castilian attack, when Enrique of Castile used Poynings as part of a bargaining deal of prisoners in exchange for the French soldier's rights to Soria.
- Lord Poynings accompanied the Duke of Lancaster on his Peninsular expedition to claim the crown of Castile in the name of his wife Constanza (1386). [João2, ch. 83]
- Died through illness during the Duke of Lancaster's campaign (1387).
- Bibl: Sydney Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt : King of Castile and Leon, Duke of Aquitaine and Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Lincoln, and Leicester, Seneschal of England (London: Constable &, 1964); Peter Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 57, 193 and 194.
Ponjns
Chronicle entries in which Poynings, Lord appears:
Crónica de D. João I, part 2, ch. 83