MORE, William II (by 1511-68 or later), of Derby.

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

Constituency

Dates

Nov. 1554
1563

Family and Education

b. by 1511, prob. s. of Roger More. m., at least 1s.1

Offices Held

Bailiff, Derby 1554-5, 1562-3.2

Biography

This man may have been a draper and vintner—trades combined by an earlier William More of Derby, perhaps the Member’s grandfather, in 1519. In 1543 the 1st Earl of Rutland’s executors bought black cloth from ‘William Moor of Derby’: two years earlier the comptroller of Rutland’s household had bought seven gallons of ale from one of the same name.3

More owned corn and fulling mills in Derby and the surrounding district, some of them jointly with William Bainbridge and Humphrey Buxton. In 1568 he and William More junior, presumably his son, took over the lease of certain mills from Bainbridge in exchange for the mortuaries and other profits of All Saints’ and St. Alkmund’s parishes in Derby. It may have been the Member of Parliament who, with his widowed mother Joan, was granted leases at Spondon and Chaddesden, Derbyshire. In the following year a William More rented land in Fiskerton, Nottinghamshire, formerly belonging to Thurgarton priory.4

More was almost certainly senior bailiff of Derby at the time of each of his elections to Parliament. In January 1555 he had been prosecuted, together with Bainbridge, for leaving the House without permission before the end of the session. There are no further parliamentary references to him: the ‘Mr. William Moor’ who in October 1566 sat on the succession committee was no doubt of Loseley.5

No will or inquisition post mortem has been found.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

  • 1. C1/1139/47-8; CPR, 1560-3, p. 316.
  • 2. W. Hutton, Hist. Derby, 80-1.
  • 3. LP Hen. VIII; HMC Rutland, iv. 311, 342.
  • 4. St. Ch. 4/9/47; I. H. Jeayes, Cal. Recs. Derby, 31, 35; CPR, 1560-3, pp. 264, 316.
  • 5. E. Coke, Institutes (1671), iv. 18-19; D’Ewes, 127.