Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/More, Richard (d.1643)
MORE, RICHARD (d. 1643), puritan, sprung from an ancient family which took its name from the parish of More, near Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, was son of Robert More of Linley, who was buried at More on 20 March 1603–4. His cousin, Jasper, whose only son had already been killed in a duel in 1607, died in 1613, leaving three daughters. Richard accordingly succeeded Jasper in the family estates of Larden and More, but was always called of Linley, which he inherited from his father. In 1610 he was elected a burgess of Bishop's Castle ‘in regarde of his neare neighbourhode to that place’ (‘Bishop's Castle MSS.’ in Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. pt. iv. p. 406). More is often said, in error, to have been sheriff of Shropshire in 1619 (cf. Blakeway, The Sheriffs of Shropshire, p. 215). Before 1633 he was a justice of the peace, and in that capacity had to find the offenders who had taken down Enoch ap Evan's body from the gibbet. Evan was a puritan, and his murder of his mother and brother was the occasion of an attack upon the puritans in ‘The Looking-glasse of Schism,’ by Peter Studley, London, 1635. To this More replied in ‘A True Relation of the Murders, etc.,’ but license to print was refused; Studley, however, heard of the book, and retorted in ‘An Answer to Certaine Invective Criminations.’ More was elected to the Short parliament as member for Bishop's Castle on 12 March 1639–40, and to the Long parliament for the same constituency on 12 Oct. 1640. When in 1641 a committee of the house was appointed to inquire into the complaints about the refusal of licenses for printing books, More's ‘True Relation’ was brought before it, and was ordered to be printed. More added an appendix in reply to Studley's ‘Answer.’ Before 1641 More had prepared a translation of Mede's ‘Clavis Apocalyptica.’ The book was ordered to be printed on 18 April 1642. It appeared in 1643, under the title ‘The Key of the Revelation,’ with a preface by Dr.Twisse. Through the opening year of the civil war More actively supported the parliamentary cause in Shropshire (cf. Commons' Journals, 1643, iii. 47, 72). He died on 6 Dec. 1643. He married a sister of Sir Thomas Harris, bart., of Boreaton, sheriff of Shropshire, in 1619. His son Samuel is separately noticed.
More must be distinguished from several contemporaries of the same name, viz. Richard Moore (1619–1683) [q. v.], dissenting divine; Richard More (fl. 1612), who, with Sir George Somers, Sir Thomas Gates [q. v.], and Captain Newport, was in 1609 wrecked on the Bermudas, became deputy-governor of the islands, and was author of a ‘Copie of Articles,’ in which the colonists bound themselves to defend the church of England against ‘all atheists, popists, Brownists, and all other heretiques and sectaries whatever’ (cf. A Plaine Description of the Barmudas, now called Sommer Islands, London, 1613, 4to); Richard More, bookseller, of St. Dunstan's Churchyard, who prefixed verses to the 1614 edition of ‘England's Helicon’ (cf. Brydges, Censura Literaria, i. 420–1); and, lastly, Richard More, author of the ‘Carpenter's Rule,’ London, 1602, 4to (cf. Cat. of Early Printed Books, ii. 1110).