by the American government. She returned to England with her husband, and died at York in 1825 at the age of ninety-five. A monument to her and her husband is in St. Saviour's Gate Church, York. There were two sons and two daughters by the marriage. The eldest son, Amherst Morris, entered the royal navy, and was first lieutenant of the Nymphe frigate, Captain Sir Edward Pellew, afterwards Viscount Exmouth [q. v.], in her famous action with the French frigate La Cleopatre. He died in 1802. The other son, Henry Gage Morris, also saw much service in the navy (see O'Byrne, Nav. Biog.), and rose to the rank of rear-admiral. He afterwards resided at York and at Beverley. He died at Beverley in 1852, and was buried in Beverley Minster. He was father of Francis Orpen Morris [q.v.] the naturalist.
The English attorney-general having given his opinion that property inherited by children at the demise of their parents was not included in the aforesaid attainder, in law or equity, the surviving children of Roger and Mary Morris in 1809 sold their reversionary interests to John Jacob Astor of New York for a sum of 20,000l, to which the British government added 17,000l, in compensation for their parents' losses.
Roger Morris the loyalist is sometimes confused with his kinsman and namesake, Lieutenant-colonel Roger Morris, who entered the Coldstream guards in 1782, and was killed when serving with that regiment under the Duke of York in Holland, 19 Sept. 1799.
[Burke's Landed Gentry, ed. 1886, vol. ii., under ‘Morris of Netherby;’ Appleton's Enc. Amer. Biography; Winthrop Sargent in Trans. Hist. Soc. Pennsylvania, vol. v.; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, London, 1884; Sabine's American Worthies.]
MORRIS, THOMAS (1660–1748), non-juror, born in 1660, may possibly be the Thomas Morris who graduated from King's College, Cambridge, B.A. in 1683, M.A. in 1688; in the latter year he was minor canon of Worcester and vicar of Claines, Worcestershire. Refusing to take the oath of supremacy in 1689, he was deprived of his ecclesiastical preferments, and reduced to live on the generosity of affluent Jacobites; he is nevertheless described as 'very charitable to the poor, and much esteem'd.' He died on 15 June 1748, aged 88, and was buried at the west end of the north aisle of the cloisters of Worcester Cathedral under a flat gravestone, on which was inscribed, at his request, the word, 'Miserimus,' without name, date, or comment. This inscription was nearly obliterated in 1829, but was soon after renewed with the more correct spelling, 'Miserrimus.'
In 1828 Wordsworth wrote in the 'Keepsake' a sonnet on 'Miserrimus,' apparently without any knowledge of Morris's history. It begins '"Miserrimus!" and neither name nor date.' Another sonnet, with the same title, by Edwin Lees, was published in 1828, and a third, by Henry Martin, was included in his 'Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems,' Birmingham, 1830, 8vo. In 1832 Frederic Mansell Reynolds [q. v.] published a novel, 'Miserrimus,' which reached a second edition in the next year, and was dedicated to William Godwin. In the advertisement to the second edition Reynolds says he 'would never have adopted this epitaph as the groundwork for a fiction had he been aware that the name and career of the individual who selected it were known.' The 'Gentleman's Magazine' (1833, i. 245) calls it 'a posthumous libel on an innocent and helpless person whose story is widely different from that here inflicted on his memory.'
[Gent. Mag. 1748, p. 428, s.v. ‘Maurice;’ The Worcestershire Miscellany, p. 140, Suppl. pp. 37–40; Bowles's Life of Ken, ii. 181; Green's Hist. and Antiquities of Worcester, App. p. xxvii; Mackenzie Walcott's Memorials, p. 28; Britton's Hist. and Antiquities of Worcester Cathedral, pp. 23–4; Chambers's Biog. Illustr. of Worcestershire, pp. 310–11; Rep. of Brit. Archæol. Assoc. at Worcester, August 1848, p. 130; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 354, 5th ser. xi. 348, 392–3 (by Cuthbert Bede), 432; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
MORRIS, Captain THOMAS (fl. 1806), song writer. [See under Morris, Charles.]
MORRIS, THOMAS (fl. 1780–1800), engraver, born about 1750, was a pupil of Woollett. He worked in the line manner, and confined himself to landscape, the figures in his plates being frequently put in by others. Morris was employed by Boydell, and, in conjunction with Gilpin and Garrard, produced some good sporting prints. His most important plates are: A landscape after G. Smith of Chichester, 1774; 'Hawking,' after Gilpin,' 1780; 'Fox Hunting,' after Gilpin and Barret (the figures by Bartolozzi), 1783; view of Skiddaw, after Loutherbourg, 1787; 'Horse, Mare, and Foals,' after Gilpin; 'Mare and Foals,' after Garrard, 1793; views of the ranger's house in Greenwich Park and Sir Gregory Turner's mansion on Blackheath, a pair, after Robertson; and views of Ludgate Street and Fish Street Hill, a pair, after Marlow, 1795. A series of Indian views, from drawings by Hodges and others, was engraved by Morris for the 'European Magazine.' He also executed a few original etchings, including two views on the Avon at
