Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/340

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Moone
334
Moor

cost 50,000l. to bring out. Moon's taste and persuasive manners were humorously noticed in some verses by Hood (cited in City Press, 28 Oct. 1871, p. 2, col. 6). He received the patronage of the English and many European courts, and was invited by Louis-Philippe as a private guest to St. Cloud.

In 1830 Moon was elected a common councilman; in 1843 he acted as sheriff of London and Middlesex; in 1844 he was chosen alderman of Portsoken Ward; and in 1854 he became lord mayor. On 28 April 1855 he received at Guildhall the emperor and empress of the French, and was created a baronet on 4 May following. Moon in turn visited Paris, where the emperor made him a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. In the spring of 1871 he resigned his aldermanic gown, acceptig that of Bridge Without. He died at Brighton on 13 Oct. 1871, and was buried on the 20th in Fetcham Churchyard, Surrey. By his marriage, on 28 Oct. 1818, to Anne, eldest daughter of John Chancellor, carriage builder, of Kensington, he had four sons and four daughters. Of the former the eldest is the Rev. Sir Edward Graham Moon (b. 1825), rector and patron of Fetcham. Lady Moon died on 24 May 1870.

[City Press, 21 and 28 Oct. 1871; Illustrated London News, 21 and 28 Oct. 1871 (with portrait); Men of the Time, 1868, p. 594; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715-1886, iii. 972; Walford's County Families, 1893.]

G. G.


MOONE, PETER (fl. 1548), poet, was author of 'A Short Treatise of certayne Thinges abused in the Popysh Church, long used, but now abolyshed, to our consolation, and God's Word avaunced, the Lyght of our Salvation.' This is a poem in thirty-seven eight-line stanzas, rhyming a b a b b c b c, the last line being a refrain used in all the stanzas. After the poem follows, 'To God onely gyve the glory, quod Peter Moone. Imprinted at Ippyswyche by me, Jhon Oswen.' The work is excessively rare. The date 1548 is added in writing in the copy in the British Museum. There is an allusion to 'my Lorde Protector' [Somerset] in the poem. Hunter suggests that 'Mrs. Amy Moon of Norfolk,' second wife of Thomas Tusser [q. v.], was a relative, 'perhaps sister,' of the poet (Chorus Vatum, Add. MS. 24488-506).

[Tanner's Bibliotheca, p. 531; British Museum Cat.]

R. B.

MOOR. [See also Moore and More.]

MOOR, EDWARD (1771–1848), writer on Hindoo mythology, born in 1771, was appointed a cadet on the Bombay establishment of the Hon. East India Company in May 1782, and sailed for India in the September following, being then under twelve years of age. In consequence of adverse winds the fleet in which he sailed put into Madras in April 1783, and Moor was transferred to the Madras establishment. He was promoted lieutenant in September 1788, and three months later adjutant and quarter-master of the 9th battalion native infantry. Though then but seventeen, his 'very great proficiency' in the native tongue was noticed in the certificate of the examining committee. On the outbreak of war in 1790 Moor resigned his adjutancy, and proceeded in command of a grenadier company of the 9th battalion to join the brigade under Captain John Little, then serving with the Mahratta army at the siege of Dharwar. He was of the storming party on the assault of that stronghold on 7 Feb. 1791, and on 13 June he was shot in the shoulder while heading the leading company in an assault of the hill fort Doridroog, near Bangalore. He rejoined his corps within four months, and on 29 Dec. 1791 led the two flank companies of the 9th battalion at the battle of Gadjmoor, where the enemy, though vastly superior in numbers, were totally routed, and Moor was specially complimented on his gallantry in renewing the British attack on the right. In this engagement Moor received two wounds, and was eventually compelled to return home on sick leave. During his consequent leisure he wrote 'A Narrative of the Operations of Captain Little's Detachment and of the Mahratta Army commanded by Purseram Bhow during the late Confederacy in India against the Nawab Tippoo Sultan Bahadur' (London, 1794, 4to). Moor re-embarked for Bombay in April 1796, with the brevet rank of captain, and in July 1799 he was appointed garrison storekeeper (commissary-general) at Bombay, a post which he held with credit until his departure from India in February 1805. In 1800, at the request of Governor Duncan, he made a 'Digest of the Military Orders and Regulations of the Bombay Army,' which was printed at the expense of the government. The latter, on 14 Sept. 1800, awarded the compiler ten thousand rupees for the original work, and two thousand more for the additions subsequently made to it. The state of his health precluding his return to India, Moor retired from the company's service in 1806, receiving a special pension for his distinguished service in addition to his half-pay.

In 1810 Moor published his 'Hindu Pantheon' (London, roy. 4to), a work of considerable value, which for more than fifty years remained the only book of authority in English