MORE, Samuel (1594-1662), of Larden Hall, Shipton, and Linley Hall, More, Salop.

Shortly after leaving school at Shrewsbury, when aged 16, Samuel More entered a disastrous marriage with his cousin, Katherine More of Larden. This was to blight his life for many years, doubtless for long after he had extricated himself by a series of costly and personally exhausting legal expedients. The marriage was evidently intended to unite two branches of the Mores, if only to judge from the marriage settlement of 1610, which consolidated their manorial holdings.18Salop Archives, 1037/10/3. Jasper More, the father-in-law, held Samuel in esteem when he made his will some months after the marriage, and between 1612 and 1616 four children were born to Samuel and Katherine.19Salop Archives, 1037/10/41; New England Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxiv. 164. By the spring of 1616, however, More could no longer tolerate the ‘common fame’ of his wife’s adultery with Jacob Blakeway, a husbandman and ‘a fellow of mean parentage and condition’. Katherine alleged there was a contract between Blakeway and herself prior to her marriage which invalidated her union with More. He, for his part, saw by ‘the apparent likeness and resemblance of most of the said children in their visages and lineaments of their bodies’ that they were Blakeway’s, and left Shropshire in abject disarray.20New England Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxiv. 165.

From April 1616 More took service with Edward, Lord Zouche. Zouche had been lord president of the council in the marches of Wales 1602-7, and had sold Weston-in-Arden, Warwickshire, to More’s grandmother’s family back in the 1580s, which suggests a relationship between the Zouche family and the Mores existed before Samuel More became a ‘man-of-business’ in London.21New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxiv. 165; CP xii (2), 950-1; VCH Warws. vi. 51. His departure for service in Zouche’s household was probably precipitated by Katherine and Jacob Blakeway’s attempt in June 1616 to secure a divorce in the bishop’s consistory court at Hereford. Pursuing the pre-contract idea, they argued a case of jactitation of matrimony, complaining against Samuel’s contention that his marriage with Katherine was binding. The case pre-empted proceedings against Blakeway, who secured a pardon for his adultery.22New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxiv. 166; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 526. More fought back, to try to achieve recognition that the relationship with Blakeway really was adulterous. Pursued in six courts, both common law and ecclesiastical, the case reached its culmination in the summer of 1620, when Katherine lost her appeal against the divorce sentence that More had secured.23New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxiv. 166, 168. Both parties claimed to be ruined, Katherine complaining ‘with crocodile’s tears’ that her father’s estates were lost, while Samuel insisted that only £33 a year clear came from her dowry.24New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxiv. 167. The real losers were the children, who were disowned by More, and sent away to escape ‘the great blots and blemishes’ thought to be upon them. They were dispatched to take ship, originally intended for Virginia, but in the event on the Mayflower for New England. Only one child reached his destination alive. In 1622, with the marriage annulled and the children gone, there was still fighting over the ownership of Larden.25Salop Archives, 1037/10/10.

More remained in service with Zouche until his lord’s death in 1625, and through his patronage found a seat in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624, as well as a freeman’s place both in Hastings and Rye. By 1627 More had married again. It was not until 1633 that the marriage settlement was drawn up, and the delay must have reflected the bridegroom’s justifiable caution. The marriage evidently had the support of More’s cousin, Sir Paul Harris, as well as the Zouche family, and marked some recovery of his fortunes. During the 1630s, More seems to have attempted to restore his estates in Shropshire: one of his land investments was with Humphrey Walcot, a leading puritan in south Shropshire and an associate of his father, Richard More.26Salop Archives, 1037/10/18; 1037/8/66; Coventry Docquets, 632.

More found no place in commissions from chancery or exchequer before the civil war, nor was he admitted to the commission of the peace. Even after the outbreak of the war, he was slow to play any part independent of his father, who by then was sitting as a burgess for Bishop’s Castle. In April 1643 he was named to the local committee for the defence of the county in the regional parliamentarian association, and soon after was despatched, doubtless in an agreement between Richard More and Sir Robert Harley*, to organise the defences of the Harleys at Brampton Bryan castle. Brilliana Harley valued More’s presence at Brampton Bryan, and continued to express her confidence in him during the ensuing siege by the royalists. It was More who on 29 October had to report, in two letters written in succession on the same day, first her terminal illness, and then her death.27Letters of Brilliana Harley, 200, 201, 208; HMC Portland, iii. 111, 117, 118.

After Brampton Bryan surrendered, More was soon given the task of garrisoning another house in the region, Hopton Castle. He was given command of it by the owner, Robert Wallop* and after his arrival in February 1644 found himself again besieged by the troops of Sir Michael Woodhouse. On 13 March, More was obliged to surrender unconditionally, having refused an earlier demand that he should yield. He and the small garrison believed they would become prisoners, but Woodhouse, following strictly the prevailing military code, put 29 men of the garrison, its surviving complement, to death. Only More was spared. More was convinced that his casual mention of acquaintance with Secretary Edward Nicholas† saved him from an identical fate.28HMC Bath, i. 29, 36, 37; Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 3, viii. 305-8, 310; Salop Archives, 445/284-6. He was sent to prison in Ludlow, and was released in May as part of a prisoner exchange.29HMC 4th Rep. 266. Immediately upon release More became a prominent and effective member of Parliament’s Shropshire county committee, based at Wem. Through the rest of the year he was an administrator supporting Basil Fielding, 2nd earl of Denbigh as commander-in-chief of the associated midlands counties, but never gave up his military duties entirely. More helped organise raids against royalist garrisons, and kept Denbigh informed of local intelligence.30HMC 4th Rep. 267, 269; Warws. RO, CR 2017/C10/2. In February 1645, he was sent to garrison Rowton Castle, and in the spring signed various letters to Speaker William Lenthall* and to Sir William Brereton*, which speak of a growing military confidence among the Shropshire committeemen.31CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 308; Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer no. 102 (27 May-3 June 1645), 816-7 (E.286.20); Brereton Letter Bks. i. 209, 217, 231, 238-9, 241-2, 243, 276, 277-8, 290-1, 303, 431, 443; Bodl. Tanner 60A ff. 11, 52.

Thereafter, More’s military career was as a garrison commander. He was appointed to Montgomery castle in June 1645, and in August presided at a rendezvous near Stretton of soldiers from Montgomeryshire, Herefordshire and Shropshire. There he was apparently identified with enthusiasm as a leader of the Shropshire county committee, ‘for that he lived near them and hath showed himself a man faithful to his country, and of unblameable conversation’.32Mercurius Veredicus no. 19 (16-23 Aug. 1645), 138 (E.278.19); CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 441; CJ iv. 235b. In about July 1646, More, George Devereux* and Edward Vaughan* signed a petition from Montgomeryshire to Parliament, requesting the settlement of a ‘lawful magistracy’ in the county and the appointment of a new high sheriff in what was probably an attempt to challenge the power of the committee of that county and its allies among the soldiery.33NLW, Wynnstay ms K3/2, item 77. More was the only one of the three not to be elected to Parliament several months later.

In the pattern of his appointments to be governor successively of Ludlow and Hereford, the hand and influence of Sir Robert Harley is evident. More had after all assisted Brilliana Harley, and maintained his contact with Barmpton Bryan after her death: it was he who in April 1645 advised the final surrender of that garrison to Woodhouse. Two years later, in April 1647, More wrote to thank Harley and the other Herefordshire MPs for the confidence they demonstrated in him by appointing him governor of Hereford.34CJ iv. 561a, v. 125a, 211a; HMC Portland, iii. 155. In the spring of 1647 he was made an elder of the prototype Presbyterian church in Shropshire, and there seems little doubt that like his father and Sir Robert Harley he leant in the direction of conservative puritanism. In the eyes of the army, however, he had become a ‘creature’ of Harley’s.35Clarke Pprs. ii. 159.

Unlike the Harleys, however, More seemed able to accommodate himself to the regicide. He drew closer to Bishop’s Castle corporation in the late 1640s. He had been made bailiff (mayor) there in 1647, and became a lessee of town property. Whatever his views of events in London, he attended town council meetings on a number of occasions in 1649, and served again as bailiff during the rule of the Rump Parliament.36Salop Archives, 1037/8/4; 1037/8/6; Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 221 ff. There was enough temporary doubt about his loyalties in government circles to raise a question as to his fitness for the Shropshire commission of the peace, and he was indeed removed from the bench at some point in 1652-3. But he was restored under the protectorate and retained his place as a magistrate into the early 1660s.37CJ vi. 187a; C193/13/4, f. 82; C193/13/6, f. 74. His links with radical figures were strengthened in 1650 when his son Richard (bearing the same forename as the survivor among the children More had cast away to America) married a daughter of Isaac Penington*. The marriage made him a kinsman of John Corbett*. Bridget Penington brought £1,500 to the match, a significant advance on the settlements in either of More’s own marriages.38Salop Archives, 4134/4/1; Herefs. RO, T74/200. Despite these associations with radicals, More was no hardliner. In 1651, at a time when suspicion of royalists was at a height, he signed the council order advancing Job Charlton*, a closet cavalier, to the place of burgess in the town, and later conveyed his interest in Bishop’s Castle town property to him.39Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 218v; Salop Archives, 1037/8/6.

More was as accepting of the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell* as he was of the Rump. He continued to appear in the commission of the peace and the assessment commissions, and was named as a commissioner among the ‘triers and ejectors’ in the Cromwellian church settlement. His election to Parliament as knight for Shropshire should have been uncontroversial, but his name appeared on the list of those excluded.40CJ vii. 425a. It has been noted that among the More papers is a handwritten copy of Edward Sexby’s Killing No Murder, a republican polemic, but it would be straining the evidence to link this with any personal views of Samuel More.41Oxford DNB. He was not among those rounded up in the crackdown against Shropshire royalists and fellow-travellers launched by the government earlier in 1656.42Bodl. Rawl. A.34 p. 901. It seems more likely that he was thought to be too Presbyterian, too much linked with men of the stamp of Edward Harley*. His exclusion did not bring his local government career to a halt, in any case, and it was doubtless for his qualities as a local dependable that the Bishop’s Castle corporation returned him to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659. There, he was named (5 Feb.) to the committee on ministers in Wales, a vehicle of revenge for the embittered victims of millenarianism under the Rump.43CJ vii. 600b. That committee nomination, slight though it probably was in terms of occupying More’s time, nevertheless tends further to confirm that a linkage between himself and the Harley interest persisted. On 31 March, More was listed in a large committee on the parliamentary representation of Durham, and the following day was included among the committee for the affairs of Ireland, his most important assignment.44CJ vii. 622b, 623a.

At the Restoration, it seemed likely at first that More would survive in politics. He voted in the Bishop’s Castle parliamentary election for the Convention, and continued to sign council orders there until late September 1661.45Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 228v. The monarchical government took a less benign view of him than Bishop’s Castle corporation, however, and on 20 February 1662 he was struck out of the commission of the peace for Shropshire.46C220/9/4, f. 72. There seems to be no evidence to support the assertion that he was re-appointed to his governorship of Ludlow.47Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, xi. 183; Oxford DNB. On 18 June 1662, a writ was issued in London for his arrest for a debt of £600, but this was never executed, as he had died on 3 May and was buried at More.48Salop Archives, 1037/2/44. His eldest acknowledged son, Richard†, is said to have been a long-serving commissioner for compounding all through the 1650s, but it is hard to accept this is the same individual, described as of Linley, who became a head burgess of Bishop’s Castle in September 1657 in the place of the late Esay Thomas*, and who as bailiff affixed the seal to the return of Samuel More to Parliament in 1659.49Aylmer, State’s Servants, 213-4; Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 223, 226. It was certainly Samuel’s son Richard who sat for three Parliaments from 1681 as a whig, representing Bishop’s Castle.50HP Commons 1660-1690.