Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/420

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
More
414
More

exchequer. Elizabeth's favours were continued by James I, who with his queen twice visited More at Loseley, in August 1603 and in 1606. More was appointed receiver-general or treasurer to Prince Henry soon after the accession, and probably held this post till the prince's death in November 1612 (cf. Birch, Life of Prince Henry, p. 228). On 9 July 1611 More was made chancellor of the order of the Garter. After the arrest of Sir Gervase Helwys [q. v.] (1 Oct. 1615) More received the important and dangerous post of lieutenant of the Tower. The first state prisoner committed to his care was Robert Carr, earl of Somerset [q. v.], on 2 Nov. 1615. On Somerset's refusal to appear for trial More is said to have gone to Greenwich at midnight, and roused James, who was in bed. James, with tears in his eyes, besought his advice, and More subsequently persuaded the prisoner to give way, by the assurance that his trial was only a matter of form. James afterwards rewarded him by a gift of 1,000l., of half of which he was said to have been cheated by Annandale (Weldon, Secret History of James I, ii. 233). The details of the story are not absolutely correct. James was at Newmarket at the time. It seems that some protest was made by Somerset before the trial, and that the king directed More in May 1616 to induce him to submit; if he still refused he was to be forced; but that if he seemed 'distracted in his wits' the trial must be adjourned (see letters printed in Kempe's edition of Loseley MSS.; Spedding, Life of Bacon, ii. 103-5, 131). In January 1617 More, 'wearye of that troublesome and dangerous office,' was trying to sell his post at the Tower, and in March Sir Allen Apsley (1569?-1630) [q. v.] (sworn lieutenant in his place on 3 April) bought it for 2,400l. More retired to Loseley, where in August he entertained Prince Charles. In 1621 he was granted a lease of crown lands at 60l. a year, in lieu of his pension as chancellor of the Garter, and in 1629 received a grant of 1,200l. for the surrender of this office. Although in 1624 'his long and faithful service to the king' is spoken of, James seems to have henceforth neglected him, and there are extant at Loseley many unanswered memorials of his to the king. He is spoken of as infirm and weak of body at James's funeral, but in spite of advancing age and infirmities kept his seat in parliament, and continued to speak (cf. the debate on Wentworth's election for Yorkshire). In August 1625 he opposed, as unconstitutional, Whistler's proposal to apply to the lords on the question of supply. That he supported Charles's early policy, however, is shown by the remark in March 1626 that he had 'lately shown leanings to the court,' and he voted for supply (Forster, Eliot, i. 277, 311, 315; Fawsley, Debates, Camd. Soc.) In 1625 he was one of the collectors of loans in Surrey. He died at Loseley on 16 Oct. 1632, aged 78, and was buried in the chapel there.

He published ‘A Demonstration of God in his Workes,’ London, 1597, 4to. ‘Principles for Young Princes,’ London, 1611 and 1629, is very doubtfully assigned to him (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vii. 57).

By his wife Anne (d. 1590), daughter of Sir Adrian Poynings, widow of a Hampshire gentleman, More had four sons and five daughters. The eldest, Robert, born 1581, was knighted by James, and died seven years before his father, to whose estates his eldest son, Poynings More, succeeded. More's third daughter, Ann, born in 1584, was secretly married in 1600 to John Donne [q. v.] A portrait of Sir George More is at Loseley.

[Manning's Surrey, i. 95, &c.; Carew's Letters (Camd. Soc.), p. 19; Nichols's Progresses of James I, i. 250, 556, ii. 374, iii. 119; State Papers from 1601 to 1630; Gardiner's History, ii. 351, 353. iv. 66, 120; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714; Loseley MSS. ed. Kempe, 1836.]

E. T. S.

MORE, HANNAH (1745–1833), religious writer, born 2 Feb. 1745, at Stapleton, Gloucestershire, near Bristol, was fourth of the five daughters of Jacob More. Jacob More (d. 1783), born at Thorpe Hall, Harleston, Norfolk, had been educated at Norwich grammar school, with a view to taking orders. His prospects of an estate at Wenteaston, Suffolk, having been ruined by a lawsuit, he took a place in the excise, and afterwards obtained from Lord Bottetourt the mastership of the free school of Fishponds, Stapleton, where he married Mary, the daughter of John Grace, a farmer. His relatives had been generally presbyterians, and two of his great-uncles Cromwellian captains. He was himself a tory and high churchman. He and his wife were intelligent and sensible, and desired that their daughters should be so brought up as to be able to make their own living.

Hannah was a delicate and precocious child. Before she was four she had learnt to read by listening to her sisters' lessons, and could say the catechism so well as to astonish the clergyman of the parish. Her nurse had attended Dryden in his last illness, and Hannah was eager for stories about the poet. When she was eight she was fond of listening to stories of classical history and anecdotes from Plutarch related by her father. He then began to teach her Latin and mathematics, and was 'frightened