MORE, Alexander (1598-1636), of Grantham, Lincs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

bap. 17 Dec. 1598, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Alexander More (d.1649), alderman of Grantham and Anne, da. of William Lacy of Deeping St. James, Lincs.1 educ. Christ’s, Camb. 1615, BA 1619; G. Inn 1620.2 m. 10 July 1628, Katherine (bur. 17 Feb. 1653), da. of Richard Oliver* of St. Clement Danes, Westminster, 2s. 3da. d. 7 Jan. 1636.3

Offices Held

Biography

More was the grandson of Richard More, a land speculator from Lichfield who settled in Grantham. After denouncing his eldest son Hugh as a Jesuit convert in the year of the Armada, Richard was elected for the borough to the next Parliament. More’s father, the son of a second marriage, inherited the bulk of Richard’s property and held municipal office in Grantham.4 More’s elder brother evidently died young. Two of his younger brothers were committed to the Anglican church: Gabriel More was chaplain to the duke of Buckingham in 1624,5 and lost his living during the Civil War, while Henry More, the most distinguished of the family, was the most prolific member of the group of philosophical divines now known as the Cambridge neo-Platonists.6 More himself received a university education, was subsequently admitted to Gray’s Inn and, according to one contemporary pedigree, went on to become a lawyer. In 1628 he was returned for Grantham on his father’s corporation interest, but left no trace on the records of the third Caroline Parliament. Shortly after the end of the first session he married the daughter of Buckingham’s receiver-general, Richard Oliver, who, like More himself, held a seat in the Commons. More died intestate on 7 Jan. 1636 in his father’s lifetime, and was buried at Grantham. With him the parliamentary record of the family ended.7

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Authors: Paula Watson / Andrew Thrush

Notes

  • 1. Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. li), 576-7, 687-8; Par. Regs. of Grantham ed. C.W. Foster (Lincoln Rec. Soc., par. reg. section iv), 32.
  • 2. Al. Cant.; GI Admiss.
  • 3. WCA, St. Clement Danes par. reg.; Cal. of Lincs. Wills ed. C.W. Foster (Brit. Rec. Soc., Index Lib. xli), 127; C142/535/115.
  • 4. E.M. Unsworth, ‘Hugh More of Grantham and the More Fam.’, Lincs. Historian, ii. no. 12, pp. 43-5; CPR, 1563-6, p. 350, 375; 1569-72, p. 460; Lincs. Peds. 688.
  • 5. HMC Cowper, i. 164.
  • 6. Par. Regs. of Grantham, p. xiii; Oxford DNB, xxxix. 47-8.
  • 7. C142/535/115; Lincs. Admins. (Brit. Rec. Soc., Index Lib. lii), 293.