MORE, John III

The man who represented Totnes in the Parliament of 1435 cannot be identified with absolute certainty, for there were at least two others of the same name active in Devon at the time, one of them probably his father. In view of the geographical proximity of the towns of Totnes and Dartmouth, and the problems that beset the elder John More and motivated him to seek election, it is likely that the Totnes MP was his son and sought election at his father’s behest.

The younger More was resident in Totnes by December 1424.2 H.R. Watkin, Totnes Priory and Town, i. 351. There is no indication that he played any significant part in the life of the town, and it is probable that he owed his return to Parliament to the regional standing of his putative father, who by the 1430s had risen to become a Dartmouth merchant of some influence and was at the time of the election serving as deputy butler in that port.3 C67/37, m. 59; Watkin, Dartmouth, 184-5. When the elder More died within three years of the Parliament, it was left to the younger John to fill his place in south-western mercantile society. More now took up residence in Dartmouth, where in 1441 the churchwardens of St. Saviour’s allocated 18d. for the construction of a ‘dale’ between his house and that of John Tydeworthy.4 Watkin, Dartmouth, 336. He appears also to have taken over his putative father’s business, and he may have been the man of this name who in 1440 was shipping ale and grain to Calais.5 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 441-2. His business rapidly expanded and by the late 1450s he can be found trading in substantial quantities of wine. Yet, as the volume of More’s trade grew, so did the vexations that arose from it. Thus, in early 1461 he was summoned into the court of common pleas to answer one John Warburton for four tuns of sweet wine called ‘bastard’ and two tuns of ‘wyne symple’, which he had sold to him in May 1459 at Kingsbridge, but had, apparently, failed to deliver.6 CP40/800, rot. 125d. It was a namesake, the lawyer John More of Columpton, who in Apr. 1446 at Kingswear fell victim to an assault by five leading Dartmouth burgesses (Robert Steven*, Robert Wenyngton alias Cane*, John Brushford*, Nicholas Stebbing*, and Thomas Lanoy I*): KB27/743, rot. 46d.

More never rose to the same degree of prominence as his putative father and is not known ever to have held office, either locally or under the Crown. He did however command some respect in Dartmouth, where he was made a trustee of the guild of St. John the Baptist in 1464.7 Watkin, Dartmouth, 141. There is no further certain reference to him in the records thereafter. Members of his family continued to be active in Dartmouth into the early sixteenth century.8 Ibid. 221, 231, 232, 237, 239.