MORE, Richard (c.1576-1643), of Linley Hall, More, Salop.

The Mores were an ancient Shropshire family, of that there is no doubt, but quite where the ancestors of Richard More fit into the pedigree is uncertain. In fact, a number of doubtful assertions are made about the Mores of Linley and Larden that are difficult either to substantiate or refute. Millichope, in the parish of Munslow, is said to have been ‘from early times’ the property of the Mores, and the founder of the family seems to have been one of the attendants of William I, who gave his name to More parish.18Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 3, vii. 132. Linley was secured by Robert More, Richard’s father, only in the early 1580s.19Salop Archives, 1037/7/36. Robert More died in 1604, and the resulting inquisition post mortem provides the only clue as to Richard’s birth date.20C142/284/71. His mother, Susan, was one of the Davenport family of Bulkington, north Warwickshire. Whereas the Mores were numerous and difficult to disentangle in the Bishop’s Castle area, the Davenports were new to Weston-in-Arden in the late 1570s and within a generation had sold most of their interest there.21Dugdale, Warws. ed. Thomas, i. 62; VCH Warws. vi. 51. Richard More was privately educated, and showed much scholarly aptitude: he was said to have been able to read the Old Testament in the Hebrew at the age of 10. It was the death of his father that ‘diverted’ him from going to university, but he developed his academic interests, notably in ancient languages, this setback notwithstanding.22Hardwick, Saints Gain by Death, epistle dedicatory, sig. A3i.

Richard More’s marriage, in 1592 to Sarah Harris of Shrewsbury, is another suggestion that his family was more likely to marry into trade than into the ranks of the county gentry, although his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Harris, acquired a baronetcy; his son, More’s nephew, a knighthood.23PROB11/157/433. In March 1603, Richard and Sarah More successfully brought an action at the council in the marches of Wales at Ludlow against a group of property owners who had held Linley before More’s father, alleging a conspiracy to encroach on the Mores’ freehold interest; Linley had been conveyed to trust when Richard and Sarah married.24Salop Archives, 1037/7/36, 37. After Robert More’s death, Richard and Sarah lived in Linley, retrieving a lease of the property made to the parson of More.25Salop Archives, 1037/9/56; 1037/10/2. They acquired a wider range of properties from their cousin, Jasper More, of Larden and an escheator of Shropshire.26Salop Archives, 1037/12/13. The story often repeated is that Jasper More’s only son was killed in a duel in 1607, and that he subsequently made Richard More his heir.27DNB; Oxford DNB. The heralds’ visitation record of 1623 makes it clear that Jasper More once had three sons, none of whom is mentioned in his will, made in May 1610.28Vis. Salop 1623, ii. (Harl. Soc. xxix), 366; PROB11/123/341. The marriage settlement between Richard More’s eldest son, Samuel More*, and Jasper More’s daughter, Katherine, concluded in October of that year, settled on Richard and Sarah the manor and advowson of More, as well as six other Shropshire manors, but only in the context of a settlement which was intended to benefit Samuel More.29Salop Archives, 107/10/3.

Jasper More was dead by May 1614, and Richard More’s legacy through the marriage alliances of these two branches of the Mores was later tainted by the failed marriage of his son, Samuel. The inheritance in any case led to no dramatic leap in status of the Mores of Linley, but in 1610 Richard was admitted to the corporation of Bishop’s Castle as a burgess, an honour which has misled one authority into asserting that the burgess-ship was for Parliament, not merely of the town.30Oxford DNB. The grant of this privilege was submitted by More to the proprietor of the borough, William Compton, 1st earl of Northampton, for approval. Northampton reasserted his view that an increase in the number of burgesses was prejudicial to his interests, but acknowledged that in More’s case, a gentleman of ‘worth and ability’, living near the town, would provide ‘assistance in the government of that corporation’.31HMC 10th Rep. iv. 406. The timing of More’s admission to the corporation seems to relate more to the enhancement of his status through the settlement with Jasper More than with the parliamentary by-election at Bishop’s Castle, which had been a settled a month prior to Northampton’s concession.

Richard More must have been involved in the attempts, ultimately successful, by his son Samuel to extricate himself from his marriage with Katherine, and presumably approved of Samuel’s disowning of his children from the marriage. Richard and Sarah More were ‘continually vexed and grieved’ by the violent conflict between their son and his wife over the young children, and eventually stopped seeing their grandchildren in order to avoid Katherine More’s outbursts. At the very least, Richard More did nothing to disrupt the plan which entrusted four of his own young grandchildren to the Mayflower in 1620, to begin new lives. At least two of them died before reaching their settlement in America.32New England Hist. and Gen. Reg. July 1960, 163-4, 166; New York Gen. and Biog. Record, xxxvi. 218-9. This solution to the family’s problems would have arisen through Richard More’s apparent links to America, if he can be safely identified as the man who acquired shares in the Somers Island Company in 1618.33Smith, Generall Historie, 188-9. He was an executor of his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Harris, in 1630. When Harris’s will was read to More in the presence of the testator, presumably on his deathbed, More expressed surprise as to the smallness of the marriage portions Harris had settled on some of his children. Harris explained that it was because they had been disobedient, but authorised More to increase them if he saw fit. More insisted that such powers be recorded in a codicil, and the result was that this testamentary deathbed dialogue was captured for posterity in Harris’s will.34PROB11/157/433. Harris’s enhanced social standing almost certainly impacted upon More; after 1630 the latter appeared in the commission of the peace and was advanced after many years of obscurity, to be a head burgess – member of the governing inner circle – in Bishop’s Castle. By the late 1630s, More was prominent in the Shropshire magistracy. In 1637 and 1638, he was one of a group of JPs who petitioned the privy council over rating inequalities, working in this as in a range of local government issues with Humphrey Walcot and sometimes Sir Robert Harley*.35Salop County Records, i. 1; HMC 10th Rep. iv. 418; T. Froysell, [Yadidyah] or The Beloved Disciple (1658), 120. A commissioner for both the subsidy and the more contentious Forced Loan in the 1620s, More showed no tendencies towards political opposition, at least in secular affairs, in the years before 1640.

In June 1635, More wrote an account of a notorious murder case in Shropshire, in response to an attack on the alleged puritans of the Bishop’s Castle district. He intended the book to be published, but permission for this was withheld by the licensing authorities, which much preferred there to be no challenge to the interpretation constructed by the Arminian Shrewsbury minister, Peter Studley. Enoch ap Evan, a husbandman, butchered his nearest relatives in what Studley insisted was a crime he had strayed into as a result of adopting unorthodox religious views. These opinions, in turn, had been arrived at under the influence of puritanism.36P. Studley, The Looking-Glasse of Schisme (2nd ed. 1635); A True Relation of a Barbarous and Most Cruell Murther (1633); R. More, A True Relation (1641); P. Lake, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and a Shropshire axe-murder’, Midland Hist. xv. 37-64. More’s intended book was aimed at correcting errors of narrative, but also ‘for the vindication of my neighbourhood’.37More, A True Relation, Sig. A5ii. It gave More an opportunity to deny that he was a puritan, if the term was to mean schismatic: ‘I have always disliked nonconformity’.38More, A True Relation, 6-7. He drew on his residence of nearly 40 years in the area to assert that none of the local clergy did anything other than kneel at communion, and listed many of them by name. Furthermore, his vindication of the ministry in south Shropshire extended to the recently-deceased bishop of Hereford, Augustine Lindsell, a supporter of Archbishop William Laud.39More, A True Relation, 59.

More’s position seems to have been one which sought accommodation between those of different shades of Protestantism, in the interests of local harmony. His appointment of the known Laudian, George Lawson, to the rectory of More seems to confirm that Richard More was driven quite strongly by notions of church unity.40Condren, George Lawson’s Politica, 12-16. But the names of both laity and clergy that More cited in support of his denial that puritanism had brought shame to his home territory did include active puritans such as Sir Robert Harley* and Humphrey Walcot of Walcot, and to the mind of the puritan minister Thomas Froysell, More was a one of the three pillars of godliness in the district, together with Harley and Walcot.41More, A True Relation, 126, 132, 133; Froysell, The Beloved Disciple, 120; Froysell, A Gale of Opportunity (1652), 112. Froysell identified the axis between More and Walcot as particularly strong; but

They two, uniting their beams together, refreshed your country with the warmth of their influence; executing justice, relieving the poor, placing orphans, punishing offenders, suppressing the profanation of Sabbaths, countenancing the godly, supporting the course of godliness and religion, honouring and backing the faithful ministers of God.42Froysell, Gale of Opportunity, 112-3.

Although it was denied publication, More’s eirenic work was effective in enhancing his standing in the corporation of Bishop’s Castle, whose members first elected him as bailiff (mayor) in 1637, and then returned him as a burgess to the Short Parliament. He made no recorded impact on this assembly. He was returned again to the second Parliament of 1640, and took a more active part in its proceedings. He may have been the ‘Mr Moore’ named to the sub-committee on the sufferings of ministers and abuses in the licensing of books (23 Nov.). This body began life under the auspices of the grand committee on religion, chaired by Sir Robert Harley. It was revived on 13 February as a full committee of the House, and during 1641, as a consequence of the committee’s benign patronage, More’s book on the Shropshire murder case finally saw the light of day in print.43Procs. LP i. 260; ii. 428, 437; More, A True Relation, advertisement to the reader.

More was named to a committee on Ship Money in Hertfordshire, on 5 December: his nephew, Sir Paul Harris, son of his close friend and brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Harris, had been a Ship Money sheriff in Shropshire, and More’s interest in the topic may have drawn on the family’s experience of administering the tax.44CJ ii. 45b; Condren, George Lawson’s Politica, 11. He cannot be identified again with certainty in the Journal – John Moore and Thomas Moore were two others, with varying spellings of the surname, in the House at the same time – until 1 April 1641, when he was named to a committee to restrain bishops from interfering in secular affairs, along with Sir Robert Harley and Humphrey Salwey, two other puritan elder statesmen from his part of the west midlands. More may have been back in Linley in January 1641, as Brilliana Harley reported him then at a private fast day, where a severe illness afflicting More’s wife was noted.45CJ ii. 115a; Brilliana Harley Letters, 108. He was in various ways closely associated with Harley, who had been involved with the committee on licensing books, and on various occasions he or his servants acted as couriers for Harley’s family.46Brilliana Harley Letters, 116, 123, 142, 143. More took the Protestation in the House on 3 May, and two days later joined a committee charged with disseminating it through the country in order to elicit support for Parliament. As a Parliament-approved author, More was an obvious choice for inclusion in a committee in which public relations were essential, but as Harley’s experiences in Herefordshire showed, there was significant scepticism towards the Protestation in the Welsh marches.47CJ ii. 133a, 136a.

More was given leave of absence in July, and met Brilliana Harley soon after his return to Linley, to report on events in London. It was probably not until December that he reappeared in the Commons, when Sir Simonds D’Ewes recorded him as one of three Members arranging accommodation in London for commissioners from the Scots: on the face of it, rather an unlikely assignment for a thoroughly provincial absentee, and perhaps a lapse by the diarist.48D’Ewes (C), 311. On 21 February 1642, the committee for printing and publishing began to investigate the possibility of licensing a translation by More of Joseph Mede’s Clavis Apocalyptica (1623). Like his book on the Shropshire murders, More’s translation had been completed some time previously, but unlike the former book, the translation was intended originally simply for More’s personal use. More had access to the papers of one Haydock, probably Richard Haydock (1569/70-c.1642), who was alleged to have preached sermons in his sleep, to help refine his translation of Mede’s work. The approval of the committee for this book, an exposition of Revelation, was granted on 18 April; George Thomason, the London bookseller and collector, picked up his copy on 27 September 1643.49J. Mede, The Key of the Revelation (1643), title pages and translator’s preface (E.68.6): ‘Richard Haydock’, Oxford DNB.

More’s two successful submissions to the licensing committee gave him a reputation in 1642 as a persuasive communicator. On 24 March, he was named to a committee to explain the actions of Parliament in addressing the rebellion in Ireland, underscoring again the role he had acquired as one of the apologists for the parliamentary cause. In July, he provided the diarist Framlingham Gawdy* with various bits of hot news from within the heart of the palace of Westminster: on the impeachment of Henry Hastings, who had published the king’s commission of array in Leicester, and on the irritation among the Lords that the king had rejected their advice in favour of the more uncompromising counsels of ‘cavaliers’.50CJ ii. 493b; PJ iii. 180, 223. More was no mere purveyor of news, however: with William Pierrepont* and Sir John Corbet* he was ordered to Shropshire to oversee the enforcement of the militia ordinance, and reported from the region on 12 September, praising the good work of Sir John Price in securing the Montgomeryshire magazine, while deploring the hostile actions of the Herberts of Chirbury.51CJ ii. 686a, 762a. A week later, he was in the House, to confirm that he had brought in his own plate, worth £120, for the cause.52CJ ii. 772b; PJ iii. 478. After the outbreak of civil war, More was among the signatories to the association of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire, which committed itself to expelling from those counties forces raised without consent of Parliament (8 Oct.).53HMC Portland, iii. 100.

More was active in liaising between components of the parliamentarian war effort. With Sir John Corbet he was added to a committee to vet the judges for their loyalty as they went on circuit, and with Harley helped manage the raising of £16,000 from voluntary subscriptions in order to finance a regiment of dragoons. Again with Corbet, he was sent by the House with messages to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, the Parliament’s lord general (3 Oct.) and in November joined the committee for the commandeering of horses.54CJ ii. 774a, 774b, 787b, 791b, In January 1643, he, Harley, Sir John Corbet and Humphrey Salwey were added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers, in More’s case a reward for his publishing work in the interests of the godly. Another interest that from January More shared with Harley was the treatment of military prisoners, including the terms of their exchange with captured parliamentarians. More was named to the committee on prisons, which between January and August was chaired by Harley. More succeeded Harley in the chair, and probably retained it until his death.55CJ ii. 920a, 964a; iii. 200b, 201a, 263b. The committee dealt with shipboard prisoners as well as those on land, and took cognizance of those remanded into the custody of the serjeant-at-arms.56CJ ii. 203b, 211b, 216a,

Among More’s other interests in the Commons in 1643 were the definition of delinquency, which touched directly on the classification of prisoners, and the ordinance for creating a military association between Warwickshire and Shropshire, which More took to the Lords on 16 February. On 24 April he joined Harley’s committee on superstitious monuments. In June. the military association in the midlands was expanded to include other counties, with Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh as commander-in-chief, and again More took up the order to the Lords.57CJ ii. 957b, 967b; iii. 57b, 121b. In May, he was active in examining some individuals who had subscribed money for the forces in Shropshire, and also worked on proposals to raise money on the security of Welsh cloth production, presumably through the Shrewsbury markets. In July he was the conduit for seizures from the royalist Lady Windsor of plate; proceeds of the sales were to be sold and employed for use in Shropshire.58CJ iii. 86a, 186b. Later in 1643, More’s interests were mostly concentrated on the committee for prisoners and on various initiatives emanating from Shropshire to secure not only that county for Parliament, but to fortify it so that the county served as a bridgehead for a conquest of mid and north Wales.59CJ iii. 278a, 280a, 298b, 321a The names of the earl of Denbigh, Sir Thomas Myddelton* and Thomas Mytton* figured strongly in these orders.

Among More’s last committee appointments was to the elections committee which was chaired by Harley, a final confirmation that More was squarely within the political axis of the knight for Herefordshire. More’s career at Westminster was as a learned apologist for the causes of the godly and the Parliament. His last recorded committee nomination was on 27 November 1643, when, following reports of the successes of the army of Sir Thomas Myddelton in north Wales, but also complaints from the Shropshire committee to More that they were being neglected, a group was established to raise money for Myddelton’s advance.60CJ iii. 321a, 340a; HMC Portland, i. 158. More is said to have died on 6 December 1643, although contemporary proof of this is difficult to find. On his deathbed he asked how godly ministers were being supported, and it was reported that his credo was ‘Every man must rise or fall with the public’. Henry Hardwick, who in 1644 published the funeral sermon he gave at More’s obsequies, recognised that it was his public service in the cause of Parliament that raised More to some distinction: ‘Our learned and religious brother did shine most bright in the evening of his days’.61Burke’s Commoners, iii. 428; Hardwick, Saints Gain by Death, Sig. A3ii, 23-4.