Family and Education

bap. 17 Apr. 1621, 1st s. of Ralph Gore, Merchant Taylor, of Milk Street, London by Agnes, da. and h. of Richard Young, Salter, of London, wid. of Christopher Merick of Northcote, Southall, Mdx. educ. M. Temple 1638. m. c.1642, Catherine, da. of Sir John Boteler, 1st Bt., of Watton Woodhall, Herts., 3s., 3da. suc. fa. 1637; kntd. 18 Aug. 1660.1

Offices Held

J.p. Herts. July 1660-82, ?1687-d., commr. for assessment Aug. 1660-80, 1689-90, loyal and indigent officers 1662, dep. lt. 1670-?82, 1687-d., commr. for inquiry into recusancy fines 1687.2

Biography

Gore’s grandfather was an Elizabethan alderman of London. Several branches of the family settled in Hertfordshire; Gore’s cousin and namesake was elected for the county in 1656 but excluded from the House. Gore probably purchased Sacombe, five miles from Hertford, during the Interregnum. He is credited on the list of knights of the Royal Oak with an estate of £600 p.a., but it is not known whether he had done anything to earn the honour proposed for him. After the Restoration he is found acting as henchman to Thomas Fanshawe in persecuting conventiclers. Perhaps this contributed to his defeat at Hertford by Edmund Feilde in 1675, but he was successful in another by-election two years later. Shaftesbury entered him as ‘worthy’, but later altered it to ‘vile’. But he appears in none of the lists of court supporters. He was named to only four committees, two for private bills, one to consider the debts of the Merchant Adventurers and the last for the preservation of fishing.3

Gore’s views may have changed with age, for he was removed from the commission of the peace with the exclusionists in 1682, and his appointment to the commission of inquiry into recusancy fines in 1687 suggests known sympathy with dissenters. He had run into serious financial trouble, and just before the Revolution he contracted to sell Sacombe for £21,400. He died on 14 Sept, 1697, aged 77, and was buried with his wife’s family at Watton at Stone. His children migrated to Ireland, but this branch of the Gore family does not seem to have produced any more Members of the English Parliament.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: John. P. Ferris

Notes

• 1. Boyd, London Units, 35016; Chauncy, Herts. ii. 58; Le Neve’s Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 107; Vis. Mdx. ed. Foster, 39; Lysons, Environs of London, iii. 323; Misc. Gen. et Her. ser. 2, ii. 246.
• 2. Cal. Treas. Bks. viii. 1695; CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 118.
• 3. Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 226; VCH Herts. iii. 425; HMC Verulam, 62.
• 4. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 218; HMC Lords, ii. 353-4; Misc. Gen. et Her. n.s. iv. 244.