GORE, Sir John (1621-97), of Sacombe, Herts.

The identity of this MP has caused problems. All that the most authoritative sources say about the man who was elected for Hertfordshire in 1656 and then excluded is that he was called ‘Sir John Gore’.22CJ vii. 424a; To all the Worthy Gentlemen ([1656], E.889.8). It has therefore usually been assumed that he was Sir John Gore (1598-1659) of Gilston, the head of a prominent Hertfordshire gentry family. This in turn has caused some to claim that he was one of only three ex-royalists to be elected in 1656.23C.S. Egloff, ‘The search for a Cromwellian settlement’, PH vii. 312; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 68, 90. But he was not the only Sir John Gore living in the county in 1656. One of the printed lists of those elected in 1656 names the Hertfordshire MP as ‘Sir John Gore of Sarvin’.24A Perfect List of the Names of … Persons returned to serve in this Parliament 1656 (1656), 4 (E.498.5). That is not entirely helpful, as the place name ‘Sarvin’ seems garbled, but a revised version of this list issued by the same printer corrected this to ‘Sir John Gore of Sacum in the said county knight’.25A Catalogue of the Names of the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses ... in the last Four Parliaments (1656), 45 (E.1602.6). The 1656 MP must therefore have been Sir John Gore (1621-97) of Sacombe, who later sat as the MP for Hertford from 1677. He was a first cousin of the other Sir John Gore.26Burke LG, i. 83.

What has hitherto seemed decisively to rule out any possibility that Sir John Gore of Sacombe was the 1656 MP is the supposition that he was not knighted until 18 August 1660.27HP Commons 1660-1690, ii. 414-15. That assumption is indeed supported by one surviving list of knights dubbed by Charles II, which gives both the name and residence. But this document also records the knighting on 27 July 1641 of ‘Sir John Gore de Norcote and Sacomb’, while another source mentions ‘John Gore of Norcote’ on that date.28Lansd. 870, f. 68; Add. 32102, ff. 88v, 209v; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 210. ‘Norcote’ was a reference to Northcott in Southall, Middlesex, where Ralph Gore, father of Sir John of Sacombe, had owned land and where he had married a local woman, Agnes Young, widow of Christopher Merrick.29M. Temple Admiss. i. 134; Burke LG, i. 83; Vis. Mdx. ed. Foster, 39; VCH Mdx. iv. 46, 51; D. Lysons, The Environs of London (1792-6), iii. 323.. Moreover, there is firm evidence that John Gore of Sacombe was using the title of knight during the 1640s and 1650s, and the 1657 assessment act reveals two men called ‘Sir John Gore’ in Hertfordshire at that date, one ‘senior’ and one ‘junior’.30Add. Ch. 35446; A. and O. Gore of Sacombe, who was indeed born much later, referred to himself as ‘the younger’.31Add. Ch. 35446. All in all, there is thus no reason why Sir John Gore of Sacombe could not be the 1656 MP, as the printed list indicates, although why he seems to have been knighted a second time in 1660 remains unclear. This is unlikely to have been a confusion with his eldest son, John, who was then aged only about 12 and probably never knighted.32Le Neve’s Pedigrees, 107; Chauncy, Herts. ii. 63. But the complication remains that contemporaries almost never distinguished clearly between the two Sir John Gores.33A. and O.

The Gores could not claim long-established ties in Hertfordshire: instead they exemplified wealthy London merchants who had recently acquired country estates close to the capital. Their fortunes had been founded in the Elizabethan period by Gerrard Gore (d. 1607), a member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. Several of his sons also became Merchant Taylors, including his eldest, Richard Gore† (d. 1622), MP for London in 1604, Ralph (d. 1637) and the first Sir John Gore (d. 1636), lord mayor of London in 1624. By the early 1630s the last had purchased lands in Hertfordshire at Gilston, six miles to the south of Bishop’s Stortford, which later passed to his son Sir John ‘senior’.34VCH Herts. iii. 321; G.E. Cokayne, Some Acct. of the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs of the City of London (1907), 99-100. On the other hand, Sir John ‘junior’ of Sacombe, son of Ralph, probably first became associated with the county through marriage.

Gore of Sacombe must have married in about 1642, as his epitaph would claim that he and his wife had been married for 55 years, apparently ‘with all conjugal affection, greatly honoured and esteemed by all that knew them’.35Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 488. That wife was Katherine Boteler, daughter of Sir John Boteler†, whose seat was at Watton Woodhall, Watton at Stone in Hertfordshire. By 1648 Gore had bought the manor of Moor Place at Much Hadham, three miles to the west of Bishop’s Stortford, from the 10th or 3rd Baron Abergavenny, and made it his principal residence.36Add. Ch. 35446; Chauncy, Herts. i. 316; VCH Herts. iv. 63. Having sold some property in Middlesex previously promised to his wife as her jointure, that August he gave her in compensation a joint interest in the lands at Much Hadham.37Add. Ch. 35446. All this suggests that he had relocated to Hertfordshire since his marriage. But it was not until 1650 that he obtained lands at Sacombe and Bengeo, about six miles to the west of Much Hadham, and at Walkern. All three manors were bought from John Belasyse*, 1st Baron Belasyse, who needed to raise money for his composition fine.38Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 27, 426; Chauncy, Herts. ii. 63, 127; VCH Herts. iii. 137, 155, 425. Gore’s and Belasyse’s wives were first cousins and those lands had been acquired by the latter through his marriage.39Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 477. Gore then sold Moor Place to Sir Richard Atkins.40Chauncy, Herts. i. 316; VCH Herts. iv. 63.

These details help elucidate the roles of both Sir Johns during the civil war. As Sir John Gore of Sacombe cannot be placed with certainty in Hertfordshire until the late 1640s and then can only have been a recent arrival, it seems much more likely that the man who was involved in county affairs during those years was Sir John Gore of Gilston. That involvement included service on behalf of Parliament as a deputy lieutenant, justice of the peace and commissioner of oyer and terminer.41CJ ii. 602b; Herts. County Recs. ii. 342, 352; C181/5, p. 479. (The assumption that Gore of Gilston was a royalist rests only on the fact that he was named as a commissioner of array and that he was fined by the Committee for Advance of Money.42Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; CCAM 149. But he was never in arms against Parliament and his estates were never sequestered.) He, rather than Gore of Sacombe, is also perhaps more likely to have been the man appointed as a militia commissioner in December 1648.43A. and O.

Gore of Sacombe became involved in local politics during the 1650s. Appointments of Sir John Gore (with no residence specified) to the Hertfordshire commission of the peace were recorded in March 1652 and March 1653.44C231/6, pp. 234, 254. That could have been a clerical error, referring to the same man – possibly Gore of Gilston, since there is circumstantial evidence that he was acting as a justice of the peace several years later – but it seems more likely that both men were successively appointed.45Herts. County Recs. i. 121-2, ii. 452. One of them was sheriff of the county in 1654, and the usual assumption among Hertfordshire historians that this was Sir John Gore of Sacombe seems plausible because this man had served in the role in 1639.46List of Sheriffs, 64; Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 26, 426; Chauncy, Herts. ii. 63. When he stood for election as an MP in 1656, Gore of Sacombe must have been vulnerable to the accusation that he lacked long-standing ties to the county. Service as a justice of the peace and as sheriff would at have at least partly blunted that.

All five Hertfordshire knights of the shire elected in August 1656 were prevented from taking their seats when that Parliament assembled on 17 September 1656.47CJ vii. 425a. Gore then signed the remonstrance of the excluded Members.48To all the Worthy Gentlemen. If he took his seat when these excluded MPs were admitted to the House on the re-assembling of this Parliament in January 1658, he left no trace on its proceedings. However, as previously mentioned, both Gore of Gilston and Gore of Sacombe were named as Hertfordshire assessment commissioners by this Parliament in June 1657.49A. and O.

In July 1659 one of their neighbours, Sir Simon Fanshawe, informed the royalist agent Allen Brodrick† that ‘Sir John Gore’ would be able to provide 20 horses for a royalist uprising, although Brodrick thought that this was somewhat optimistic.50CCSP iv. 281. At about the same time Francis, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, wrote to his brother-in-law, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, ‘in favour of Sir John Gore suspected to be in a plot against the Parliament’.51Whitelocke, Diary, 522. These references could refer to either man, although Sir John Gore of Gilston died in early November 1659.52Clutterbuck, Herts. iii. 174-5; PROB11/297/352. His widow later married (Sir) Thomas Tyrrell*.

On 27 February 1660 Sir John Gore of Sacombe, together with Alban Coxe* and Sir Henry Blount, presented the Hertfordshire address for a free Parliament to George Monck*.53The Humble Addresse and Thanks of the Gentry, and other Free-Holders in the Co. of Hartford ([1660], 669.f.23.67). As that man was only an esquire, he cannot have been the ‘John Gore’ (worth £600 a year) nominated as a knight of the Royal Oak.54Burke Commoners, i. 689. Elected as the MP for Hertford in a by-election in 1677, Sir John made little impact in the dying days of the Cavalier Parliament. By 1688 financial difficulties forced him to sell his Hertfordshire estates and the next generation of the family instead settled in Ireland.55HP Commons 1660-1690. When he died in 1697, he was buried at Watton at Stone.56Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 488.