Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/434

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accused of complicity in an attempt to depose Cromwell from the protectorate, and when elected member for the county in the parliament of 1656 he was excluded by Cromwell (Noble Regicides, ii. 84). He was elected M.P. for Bishop's Castle in January 1658 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. pt. iv. p. 405). He survived the Restoration, and died in May 1662.

More married, first, a daughter of his kinsman, Jasper More, by whom he had three children; by a second wife he had three sons and four daughters.

His eldest son, Richard (1627-1698), born in 1627, was admitted of Gray's Inn on 26 May 1646 (Reg. ed. Foster), was in 1644 lieutenant in Lord St. John's regiment, was made commissioner for compounding in 1646, frequently serving in that capacity until 1659 (cf. Cal. Proc. Committee for Compounding, passim), became commissioner for advance of money (Cal. pp. 1045,1648), Serjeant of Gray's Inn (Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 428), and sat in parliament as member for Bishop's Castle from 1680 until his death in 1698. He married, first, Ann, daughter of Sir Isaac Pennington [q. v.], lord mayor of London, but had no issue by her, from whom he was subsequently divorced; and, secondly, Dorcas Owen, by whom he had two sons, Thomas (d. 1731) and Richard, slain in battle in 1709.

Robert More (1703-1780), son of Robert, third son of Samuel More, travelled widely in Europe; in Spain he became intimate with Benjamin Keene [q. v.] and the Spanish ministers, and was the means of introducing many reforms into the administration. He was an enthusiastic botanist, a friend of Linnæus, and F.R.S. (cf. Dillon, Travels through Spain, p. 107, &c).

More must be distinguished from several officers of that name in the parliamentary army, especially Colonel John More of Bank Hall, Lancashire, who was M.P. for Liverpool in 1640, took part in the siege of Lathom House and several other actions during the civil war, was one of the king's judges, served in Ireland in 1650, and commanded Cromwell's Guards (cf. Discourse of the Warr, Chetham Soc.; Norris Papers, Chetham Soc.; Gregson, Portfolio of Fragments; Baines, Lancashire and Cheshire; Whitelocke, Memorials, p. 93; Cal. State Papers, Dom. passim; Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, p. 332; Noble, Regicides, ii. 84); and from Samuel Moore or More, born in 1617, who wrote a preface to Robert Dingley's ‘Messiah's Splendor,’ 1649, and a work entitled ‘Θεοσπλαγχνισθεις, or the Yernings of Christ's Bowels towards his languishing Friends,’ 1648, 1654. The latter has a portrait engraved by W. Marshall. There was also a Colonel William Moore, who served in Ireland in 1656 (Noble, ii. 84).

[Hist. MSS. Comm., passim, especially 10th Rep. Appendix, pt. iv., containing the Corporation of Bishop's Castle MSS.; Peacock's Army Lists; Cal. State Papers, 1641-59, passim; Official Returns of Members of Parliament; Blakeway's Sheriffs of Shropshire; Visitations of Shropshire (Harl. Soc.); Castles and Old Mansions of Shropshire, pp. 28-9; Garrisons of Shropshire, pp. 50-2; Mercurius Britannicus, 1-8 April 1644; Noble's Regicides, ii. 84-5; Webb's Memorials of the Civil War in Herefordshire, i. 388, ii. 12; Hulbert's County of Salop, pp. 266-7; Owen and Blakeway's Hist. of Shrewsbury, i. 458, 460; Burke's Landed Gentry; authorities quoted.]

A. F. P.

MORE or MOORE, Sir THOMAS de la (fl. 1327–1347), alleged chronicler, passed for three centuries as the unquestioned author of a short chronicle entitled ‘Vita et Mors Edwardi Secundi, Gallice conscripta a generosissimo milite Thoma de la Moore, et in Latinum reducta ab alio quodam ejus synchrono,’ first printed by Camden in his ‘Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica,’ &c., in 1603, and re-edited for the Rolls Series by Bishop Stubbs in 1883 in the second volume of ‘Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II.’ This chronicle, from which historians have drawn some of the most graphic details of Edward II's last days, was regarded as a contemporary Latin translation of a supposed French work by More, whence Geoffrey Baker [q. v.] or Galfrid le Baker de Swynebroke was also credited with having drawn his chronicle extending from 1303 to 1356. But Bishop Stubbs has proved that the ‘Vita et Mors’ usually associated with More's name is nothing but an abstract and extract from Baker's chronicle (Pref. to his edition, p. lxxi). He still thought it possible, however, that the lost French original of the latter, written by Sir Thomas de la Moore, might some day be recovered. Mr. Maunde Thompson has, however, come to the conclusion that no such original ever existed. Its existence was inferred from the passage in Galfrid le Baker (ed. Thompson, p. 27), where, in speaking of the deputation which went to Kenilworth in January 1327, to receive the king's abdication, he adds: ‘Quorum comitivam, aderens predicto episcopo Wintoniensi, tu generose miles qui hec vidisti et in Gallico scripsisti, cuius ego sum talis qualis interpres, te dico domine Thoma de la More, tua sapienti et inclita presencia decorasti.’ But Mr. Thompson is almost certainly right in holding that Baker is obviously only acknowledging his indebted-