MORE, Robert (1581-1626), of Loseley and Catshall, Surr.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1604
1624

Family and Education

b. 21 May 1581, 1st s. of (Sir) George More of Loseley by his 1st w. Anne, da. and coh. of (Sir) Adrian Poynings. educ. Corpus, Oxf. 1595, BA 1598; M. Temple 1600. m. Frances, da. of Sampson Lennard by Margaret Fiennes, Baroness Dacre, 6s. 5da. Kntd. bet. 17 Oct. 1601 and 28 Feb. 1604.

Offices Held

Jt. keeper with fa. and gd.-fa. of Farnham little park 1600; jt. constable with fa. of Farnham castle ?1603-8; j.p. Surr. temp. Jas. I-d.; dep. lt. by 1619; gent. pens. to Jas. and Chas. I.

Biography

More entered Parliament while still a minor, and was elected knight of the shire before he was 25. Guildford was for Elizabethan and Jacobean Parliaments virtually a More family borough. It provided Robert with his first membership of the House of Commons, and a reserve when a county seat was not available. His father lived to be nearly 80, and he did not succeed either to the family estates or to his father’s and grandfather’s prominent position at court or in Surrey. In the Loseley manuscripts there are few references to him, and the state papers and acts of the Privy Council scarcely mention his name. Even after he became a deputy lieutenant he was inactive in county affairs. Perhaps the intention was to make him a courtier rather than a local gentleman. Probably the ‘grandson of Sir William More’ at whose christening the sponsors were Anne, Countess of Warwick, and the Earls of Lincoln and Leicester, he was given an excellent education, and probably entered the band of gentlemen pensioners early in James I’s reign. When he died, after ‘many years’ service’ in the place, £150 was owing to him in wages. His wife was a daughter of Margaret, Baroness Dacre, and an undated letter from Robert to his father refers to his being in attendance on Lady Dacre, who lived until 1612, and presumably used her influence to further her son-in-law’s prospects. If he was the Robert More who wrote to Sir Robert Cecil in August 1599 that he had been ‘at court on Friday last, but could not have the opportunity to speak with’ him, it suggests that he was not at that time in regular attendance at court. Nothing is known of him in the 1601 House of Commons, to which he was returned styled ‘esquire’. By the time of the 1604 return he was a knight.

More died either 2 or 10 Feb. 1626, and was buried in the Loseley chapel at St. Nicholas’s, Guildford. His epitaph, which describes him as a gentleman pensioner to James and Charles I, states that he died ‘aged forty-four years and a half, ten weeks and one day’. No will is known. His inquisition post mortem gives him as seised of lands in Catshall, Surrey, presumably settled on him by his father.

Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 3; (lx), 84; Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 67; iii. 137; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 437; Surr. Arch. Colls. xxiv. 180; HMC 7th Rep. 674b, 675b, 676a, 678b.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes