Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/455

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More
449
More

ried William Daunce, son of Sir John Daunce, apparently about 1535 (cf. Pat. Rot. 12 June, 27 Henry VIII), and the third daughter, Cecilia, was wife of Giles Heron, and lived at Shacklewell, a hamlet of Hackney; she seems to have had a son Thomas (Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ii. 35).

[The earliest life of More, The Life Arraignement and Death of that Mirrour of all true Honour and Vertue, Syr Thomas More, was first published at Paris, 1626, with a dedication to the Countess of Banbury. It is by William Roper, More's son-in-law, and was reprinted by Hearne in 1716. An edition from a better manuscript was issued by the Rev. John Lewis in 1729; other reissues of Lewis's editions are dated 1731, 1765 (Dublin), and 1817, carefully edited by the Rev. S. W. Singer. It is full of attractive anecdote, and is the original source of all information respecting More's personal history. Manuscript copies are in Harl. MSS. 6166, 6254, 6362, and 7030. In 1556 Ellis Hey wood wrote Il Moro (Florence), dedicated to Cardinal Pole, a fanciful account of More's relations with his learned guests at Chelsea. In 1588 appeared at Antwerp Stapleton's Tres Thomæ (i.e. St. Thomas, Thomas à Beckett, and More). Stapleton interweaves the narrative of Roper with passages from More's correspondence and notices of him in contemporary works. Contemporary English translations exist in manuscript in the Bodleian and Lambeth Libraries; it was reissued at Cologne in 1612, and again in 1689, both in the collected edition of the Latin works, and in a separate volume at Gratz. A life written in Queen Mary's reign by Nicholas Harpsfield is in Harleian MS. 6253, and another, written in 1599, with a preface signed ‘B. R.,’ appears in Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biog. ii. 143-85. More's great-grandson, Cresacre More (noticed above), a strong catholic, first published, probably in Paris, a new life, largely dependent on Stapleton and Roper, but adding many details, about 1631. This was reissued in 1726, and by the Rev. Joseph Hunter in 1828. Hunter first showed that Cresacre, and not his brother Thomas, was the author. J. Hoddesdon's Tho. Mori Vita et Exitus, or the History of Sir Thomas More, London, 1652, 12mo, is a mere compilation. An Italian life by Dominico Regi, first published at Milan in 1675, was reissued at Bologna in 1681. Thomas Morus aus den Quellen bearbeitet, by Dr. T. G. Rudhart, Nuremberg, 1829, is of value. Sir James Mackintosh's useful Life (1830) in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia was separately reissued in 1844. But by far the best modern life, although unsatisfactory in its treatment of More's attitude to Lutherans, is by Father T. E. Bridgett, Life of Blessed Thomas More, 1891. More's Controversial Tracts, and the replies to them by Tindal, Frith, and Joye, give many biographic hints; while the Erasmi Epistolæ—especially that to Ulrich von Hutten, 23 July 1519, No. 447—are invaluable; cf.Le Clerc's edition (Leyden, 1706). Nisard's Renaissance et Réforme, Paris, 1855, contains an admirable essay on More. Philomorus, a brief Examination of the Latin Poems of Sir Thomas More, by John Howard Marsden [q. v.], 1842, 2nd edit. 1878, gives a gossipy account of More without quoting any authorities. Other sources are: Foss's Judges of Engl. v. 203; Lord Campbell's Chancellors; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 79 seq.; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 54; Henry VIII's Letters and Papers, with the Calendars of the Venetian and Spanish State Papers; Seebohm's Oxford Reformers; Lupton's Colet; Faulkner's Chelsea, 1829, i. 92-126; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, i. 449 sqq.; Woltmann's Life of Holbein (1874); Strype's Works; Burnet's Reformation; Ellis's Original Letters; Brewer's Henry VIII ; Friedmann's Anne Boleyn; Chauncey's Martyrs. Dibdin's edition of the Utopia, 1808, and Professor Arber's, 1869, both supply many useful bibliographical details; cf. also Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn, Maitland's Books at Lambeth, and Brit. Mus. Cat. Mr. William Morris's preface to his reprint of the Utopia is suggestive. Miss Anne Manning's Household of Sir Thomas More (1851) is a fanciful but attractive sketch. A play on More's career, written about 1590, was edited by Dyce for the Shakespeare Society in 1844 from Harl. MS. 7368, and a tragedy by James Hurdis [q. v.] was issued in 1792. In Southey's Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 1829, More's ghost is introduced as a sympathetic interlocutor in a discussion on the evils of modern progress.]

S. L.

MORE, THOMAS (d. 1685), author, was son of John More of Paynes Farm in the parish of Teynton, near Burford, Oxfordshire. On 22 June 1632 he matriculated from Merton College, Oxford, of which he became postmaster, and is said to have graduated B.A. He afterwards emigrated to St. Alban Hall. In 1642 he was called to the bar from Gray's Inn (cf. Reg. ed. Foster, p. 213). He joined the parliamentary army, took the covenant, and became in succession a gentleman of the guard to the Earl of Essex, lieutenant to a troop of horse belonging to Captain Richard Aylworth under the command of Colonel Edward Massey [q. v.], and cornet to the life guard of Sir Thomas Fairfax. Habitual indulgence in drink aggravated an hereditary tendency to insanity, and he failed both as a lawyer and a soldier. Dr. Skinner, bishop of Worcester, in ignorance of his real character, conferred holy orders on him. In one of his mad fits More fell downstairs at Burford, and died from his injuries ‘about Michaelmas’ 1685. He was buried at Teynton.

More was author of: 1. ‘The English Catholike Christian; or, the Saints' Utopia: a treatise consisting of four sections— i. Josuah's Resolution; ii. Of the Common

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