‘Frederic Seebohm.
‘Hitchin.’
No. 3 (Oct. 31, 1868).
‘Mr. Wright will find the lineage of Sir Thomas More and his father discussed at some length in my “Judges of England,” vol. v. pp. 190-206; and I have very little doubt that the John More whose marriage is recorded in the first entry was the person who afterwards became a Judge (not Chief Justice, as Mr. Wright by mistake calls him), and that Thomas More, whose birth is recorded in the third entry, was the illustrious Lord Chancellor. The only difficulty arises from John More’s wife being named “Agnes daughter of Thomas Graunger;” but this difficulty is easily discarded, since Cresacre More, who wrote between eighty and ninety years after the Chancellor’s death, is the only author who gives another name, and his other biographer, who wrote immediately after his death, gives the lady no name at all.
‘John More married three times; and he must have been a very young man on his first marriage with Agnes Graunger (supposing that to be the name of his first wife), by whom only he had children.
‘I have stated in my account that there were two John Mores who were contemporaries at a period considerably earlier, one of Lincoln’s Inn and the other of the Middle Temple. Of the lineage of the latter there is no account; but of the former I have stated my conviction that he was the father of the John More whose marriage is here recorded, and consequently the grandfather of Sir Thomas More; and thus, as both the John Mores had originally filled dependent employment in Lincoln’s Inn, the modest description of his origin given by Sir Thomas in his epitaph, “familiâ non celebri, sed honestâ natus,” is at once accounted for.
‘Edward Foss.’
No. 4 (Oct. 31, 1868).
‘Permit me to set your correspondent right in a minor particular, which he looks to as confirming his theory, though I trust he may be able to substantiate it otherwise. Mr. Wright says—“Milk Street, Cheapside ... is in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate:” it is not so, as several parishes intervene; Milk Street is within the walls, whereas St. Giles’s is without. Mr. Wright might have seen this by the wording of his first quotation:—“in parochia Egidij extra Crepylgate;” the word “extra” implies beyond the walls. Milk Street is in the ward of Cripplegate Within, not in the parish of St. Giles Without, Cripplegate—a distinction not obvious to strangers.
‘A great part of the district now called Cripplegate Without was originally moor or fen: we have a Moorfields, now fields no more; and a “More” or Moor Lane. I cannot suppose the latter to have been named after the author of “Utopia;” but as he really emanated from this locality, possibly his family was named from the neighbouring moor. The Chancellor bore for his crest “a Moor’s head affrontée sable.” I would not wish to affront his memory by adding more, but your readers will find something on this subject antè, 3rd S. xii. 199, 238.