MORE, Alexander (1598-1636), of Grantham, Lincs.

More was the grandson of Richard More, a land speculator from Lichfield who settled in Grantham. After denouncing his eldest son Hugh as a Jesuit convert in the year of the Armada, Richard was elected for the borough to the next Parliament. More’s father, the son of a second marriage, inherited the bulk of Richard’s property and held municipal office in Grantham.4 E.M. Unsworth, ‘Hugh More of Grantham and the More Fam.’, Lincs. Historian, ii. no. 12, pp. 43-5; CPR, 1563-6, p. 350, 375; 1569-72, p. 460; Lincs. Peds. 688. More’s elder brother evidently died young. Two of his younger brothers were committed to the Anglican church: Gabriel More was chaplain to the duke of Buckingham in 1624,5 HMC Cowper, i. 164. and lost his living during the Civil War, while Henry More, the most distinguished of the family, was the most prolific member of the group of philosophical divines now known as the Cambridge neo-Platonists.6 Par. Regs. of Grantham, p. xiii; Oxford DNB, xxxix. 47-8. More himself received a university education, was subsequently admitted to Gray’s Inn and, according to one contemporary pedigree, went on to become a lawyer. In 1628 he was returned for Grantham on his father’s corporation interest, but left no trace on the records of the third Caroline Parliament. Shortly after the end of the first session he married the daughter of Buckingham’s receiver-general, Richard Oliver, who, like More himself, held a seat in the Commons. More died intestate on 7 Jan. 1636 in his father’s lifetime, and was buried at Grantham. With him the parliamentary record of the family ended.7 C142/535/115; Lincs. Admins. (Brit. Rec. Soc., Index Lib. lii), 293.