MORE, John I

The activities of the Barnstaple MP of the early 1420s are not easy to distinguish from those of the several namesakes active in the county around the same time, but his would appear to have been a predominantly local career and a few more details may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 769

Thus it must have been he who in March 1423 was empanelled on the Barnstaple juries taking the inquisition post mortem of William Beaumont.2 C139/8/67. Three years later, More was the subject of outlawry proceedings in Cornwall, arising from a claim by the prior of Launceston that he had wrongfully carried off the priory’s goods from Newport (the priory’s town adjacent to the duchy borough of Dunheved). In the autumn of 1428 he purchased a pardon of his outlawry, which he successfully pleaded in the court of King’s bench on the following day. Among the sureties who guaranteed his future court appearance to answer the prior’s charges were two local lawyers, Thomas Dowrich I* and William Whitefeld*.3 KB27/670, rot. 43d.