MOORE, John (1646-1714) | History of Parliament

MOORE, John (1646–1714)

cons. 5 July 1691 bp. of NORWICH; transl. 31 July 1707 bp. of ELY

First sat 22 Oct. 1691; last sat 8 July 1714

bap. 5 May 1646,1 1st s. of Thomas Moore (1621-86), ironmonger of Market Harborough, Leics. and Elizabeth, da. of Edward Wright of Sutton-juxta-Broughton, Leics. educ. Market Harborough Free Sch.; Clare, Camb., matric. 28 June 1662, BA 1666, fell. 1667-77, MA 1669, DD 1681; ord. 1671; incorp. Oxf. 1673. m. (1) 22 May 1679,2 Rose (d. 18 Aug. 1689), 5th da. of Neville Butler of Barnwell Priory, Cambs. 3s. (1 d.v.p.), 3da. (1 d.v.p.); (2) c.1691, Dorothy, da. of William Barnes of Darlington, co. Dur., wid. of Michael Blackett of Morton Palms, co. Dur. and of Sir Richard Browne, bt., 3s.3 d. 31 Jul. 1714; will 27 Jul., pr. 30 Aug. 1714.4

Chap. to William III and Mary II, 1689-91; commr. eccl. preferment 1699.5

Chap. to Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham, 1670-82,6 to Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, 1682-91; vic. St Andrew the Less, Barnwell, Cambs. 1671-6; rect. Blaby, Leics., 1676-87, St Augustine, London, 1687-9, St Andrew, Holborn, 1689-91; preb. Ely, 1679-91.

Gov. Charterhouse 1710-d.7

Also associated with: Charles Street, St James, London; Petit France, Westminster.8

Likenesses: oil on canvas by G. Kneller, 1705, Clare, Camb.; oil on canvas by unknown artist (J. Kerseboom?), c.1705-10, Clare, Camb.; oil on canvas by follower of G. Kneller, 1707, Lambeth Palace; oil on canvas by I. Whood (aft. G. Kneller), 1736, CUL.

Bishop of Norwich under William III, 1691-1702

Moore’s father was a wealthy ironmonger. At his death in October 1686 his personal goods were valued at £1,518.9 Nevertheless, it was to the patronage of Lord Chancellor Finch that Moore owed his early career. Indeed, Moore’s rapid advancement in the Church of England was in spite of the opposition of his nonconformist father, son of the Interregnum preacher John Moore, and himself of ‘rigid persuasion’. According to one account, ‘Though he gave his son the university education, yet he never intended him for the episcopate order and when he saw he would comply ... he angrily ... made him account for a refund which he cost at Cambridge and the bishop paid him’.10 This early setback had little impact on Moore’s economic wellbeing, and he apparently lived and died a wealthy man. As early as 1679, the year of his installation as a prebend of Ely (through Finch’s patronage) his diary noted payment of the wages of more than 20 servants, including six footmen and two butlers. The increased household may have been as a result of his marriage to Rose Butler that year. On 19 Apr. a month before his marriage, he had written to the rector of Barnwell of his desire ‘to consummate my love affair which has been so long depending’ and his wish that the minister might ‘perform that act of kindness’. When Moore’s wife died in August 1689 she was buried in the chancel of St-Giles-in-the-Fields, reflecting Moore’s base in the ecclesiastical circles of the capital at that time.11

As part of the Finch family’s circle of clerical adherents, Moore was associated with future colleagues such as John Tillotson, later archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, later archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sharp, later archbishop of York. He was a popular preacher in the capital, and on 31 Dec. 1687 was presented to the rectory of St Augustine’s in the City. At this point Moore was at the forefront of formulating proposals for the comprehension of nonconformists which, it was hoped, would be introduced to the Parliament that James promised to summon for November 1688.12 His career flourished after the Revolution when his patron, the 2nd earl of Nottingham (son of his original patron, the lord chancellor), was appointed secretary of state and became in effect William III’s chief adviser on ecclesiastical appointments. In 1689, he was appointed to the prestigious living of St Andrew’s Holborn by the crown commissioners, with the tacit approval of the patron, Ralph Montagu, 3rd Baron (later duke of) Montagu. He was also appointed a chaplain to the new monarchs.13 In this latter role, he often preached before the queen and a sermon preached before William and Mary in July 1689, which appeared to accuse Protestant Dissenters of schism, prompted a stinging reply from that quarter.14

After the consistent refusal of William Lloyd, bishop of Norwich, to take the oaths to the new monarchs, in the spring of 1691 the king issued a warrant for Moore to replace the non-juror in that diocese.15 Without doubt he owed his promotion to Nottingham, but even so he appears to have been third choice for the see after both Sharp and the much younger William Wake, later archbishop of Canterbury, refused to take it on. Sharp had been mooted for the bishopric of Norwich as early as December 1689. Moore was consecrated at St Mary-le-Bow on 5 July. The Norwich prebendary Humphrey Prideaux dismissed the new bishop as ‘a close designing man that will regard little but what tends to his own or relations’ interests… Whatever the Church may be advantaged by others of the new promotion, I expect it will be very little by him’. Certainly, Moore was far more committed to the life and networks he had cultivated in London and over the succeeding years he irritated Prideaux by his absenteeism.16 Moore continued to invest time and attention on his extra-ecclesiastical hobbies, such as gathering medicinal recipes from his brother and other correspondents, treatments which were often sought from a wide circle of contacts.17 His principal claim to fame, though, was as a collector of books. He amassed one of the greatest libraries of his period – ‘one of the best and amplest collections of all sorts of good books in England’ - consisting of nearly 29,000 books and 1,790 manuscripts, which later formed, through the gift of its eventual purchaser George I, the ‘Royal Collection’ at the heart of Cambridge University Library.18

Moore took his seat in the House on 22 Oct. 1691, the first day of the 1691-2 session. He attended 86 per cent of sittings of this, his first session in the House, and although he was present at every single remaining session in his lifetime under William III and Anne, he never again matched the attendance level of over 80 per cent he attained in his first two sessions. In this first session he was named to 28 committees on legislation, 19 of them on private bills. The other nominations included the committees for some bills in which he may have had a particular interest as a churchman in East Anglia: for setting the tithes on hemp and flax (established on 10 Dec. 1691); for confirming the charters and liberties of the University of Cambridge (13 Jan. 1692); and for regulating the militia (28 Jan.). He may also have taken interest in the small tithes bill, to which committee he was named on 14 Jan. 1692. On 22 Feb. only two days before the end of the session, he was appointed a reporter for a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill. A letter from Sharp (dating from a subsequent session when the act was due to expire) requested that he might remind Tillotson to have the act continued.19 On 3 Jan. 1692 Sir William Rawlinson wrote to him to request that he would attend the House ‘a little sooner than ordinary’ the next day, to make enquiries of one of the Lords’ messengers and then to join with some other lords on Rawlinson’s behalf (presumably relating to the case Bromhall v. Manlove which was considered in the House on the 4th). On 3 Feb. he received the proxy of Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, and on 8 Feb. that of Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury; he held both until the end of the session on 24 February. After the end of the session, on 11 Apr. Moore attended a meeting convened by Tillotson to discuss a circular letter for ecclesiastical reform, which the bishops present discussed ‘very calmly and without the least clashing’. Soon after, Moore travelled to Norwich where he undertook his visitation. He had completed his work by the end of June. Prideaux noted that it had been ‘little more than pro forma, for the truth is, in our present case of unsettlement the times will not bear doing more’. Moore may also have decided to conduct a relatively cursory inspection as he was eager to return to London to be with his recently-married second wife, ‘who had a big belly to lay down’, their first child. According to Prideaux Moore intended to return to Norwich with his family towards the end of July.20

Moore was in London by the middle of July when he received Sharp’s congratulation on his wife’s successful delivery. Sharp also warned him that his residence in London would ‘be at your cost for I shall be ever and anon giving you trouble about some affair or other’. In September Moore was asked to secure the archbishop of Canterbury’s support for the nomination of another Finch associate, Mr Wootton, to a prebend of Worcester. Nottingham’s brother, William Finch^‡ was confident that Stillingfleet would be glad to have him, ‘being already personally known to him’.21

Moore attended the House on 4 Nov. 1692, the first day of the new session of 1692-3. As in the previous session, he attended 86 per cent of the sittings and was named to 31 committees on a wide range of private and public bills. His recorded activity in the House was most noticeable in the weeks surrounding the turn of the year. On 23 Dec. he joined a small number of Whigs in subscribing to the protest against the reversal of the judgment against Sir Simon Leach^‡. Four days later he received Sharp’s proxy, which he held until the end of the session. The focus of the first months of the session, though, was the inquiry into the summer’s naval miscarriages, which increasingly centred on Moore’s patron, Nottingham. In the Commons the attack on Nottingham was at first pursued obliquely by assaulting those associated with him, one of those to fall being Edmund Bohun, licenser of the press, who had been appointed to the post on Moore’s recommendation. Bohun later complained that Moore assured him of his help in getting the post back but that the bishop recommended Major Herne as his replacement instead.22 In the Lords, a series of committees was nominated in December to examine the various shortcomings of the campaign, with Moore named to a number of them. On 29 Dec. he was placed on the committee to examine the propriety of the proceedings at the conference at which the Commons had read their unsolicited vote approving the conduct of Admiral Edward Russell, later earl of Orford, during the campaign. Later, on 11 Feb. 1693, with Burnet, Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Exeter, Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, and Henry Compton, bishop of London, from the bishops’ bench, he was named to the committee to draw up an address of advice to the king concerning the military and naval setbacks of the previous summer.

In other matters, on 2 Jan. 1693, he voted to give the divorce bill of the lord lieutenant of Norfolk, Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, a second reading, as Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, forecast he would. The following day Moore followed the wishes of the king and court in voting against the passage of the place bill. After the close of the session, Moore had some involvement with members of the nascent Junto. He was thought to be willing to accept the recommendation of Charles Montagu, later earl of Halifax, for one Laughton (a fellow of Trinity) to a prebendal stall at Norwich, but appears to have queried the suitability of a candidate for the living of Marlingford being proposed by John Somers, Baron Somers.23

Moore was present on 7 Nov. 1693, the first day of the 1693-4 session. He attended 59 per cent of the sittings and was named to 14 committees on legislation, ten of them on private bills, as well as the committees on the bills for creating a new parish in Wapping (established on 11 Apr. 1694) and for building good and defensible ships (19 April). On 23 Nov. he subscribed to the protest against the resolution that the House would reject any petition for protecting servants of the crown. On 15 Jan. 1694 Moore was named a manager of the conference to be held the following day on the loss of the Smyrna fleet the previous summer, and particularly the miscommunications between the ministry and the admirals over the intelligence surrounding the sailing of the French fleet from Brest.

In early January 1694 Moore was informed that he was the subject of complaint over his perceived kindness to John Jeffreys, archdeacon of Norwich, a kinsman of James II’s lord chancellor, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys. The chancellor of Norwich, Robert Pepper, warned Moore it was ‘the admiration of all sober and good men that a King William’s bishop should be so kind to a professed enemy to the government’.24 Moore spent the first part of the summer in East Anglia, where he was offered the use of Brome Hall, seat of the absent Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, as his base during his visitation of Suffolk.25 On 24 July he was appointed one of the commissioners to examine the charges laid against Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, which led to Watson’s suspension from episcopal office in August.26

Moore was back in the capital for the prorogation on 25 Oct. when he and Tillotson were the only bishops present. He received Sharp’s proxy two days in advance of the new session that assembled on 12 Nov. and maintained it throughout the proceedings. Present for 58 per cent of sittings, Moore was named to 17 committees on legislation, ten of them on private bills. The session was overshadowed by the death of Queen Mary towards the end of December and, according to a later account of Gilbert Burnet’s wife Elizabeth, upon hearing of her death both Moore and the new archbishop of Canterbury, Tenison, sought to effect a reconciliation between William III and Princess Anne.27 On 17 Apr. 1695 he was placed on the committee for the bill to declare the date on which the Act for prohibiting trade with France and encouraging privateers was to start. He appears to have had some degree of involvement in this bill for on 29 Apr. he was one of 11 members assigned to draw up reasons to be presented in conference why the House could not agree with the Commons’ proviso to the bill. He was also appointed on 1 May a manager for the conference held that day at which these reasons were presented. The matter was halted with the prorogation on 3 May. Also on 29 Apr. Moore was placed on the large committee to consider the precedents for the impeachment of Thomas Osborne, duke of Leeds, but this business was also lost with the prorogation.

Moore may have ‘interposed’ on behalf of John Isham at Cambridge University in the elections that October, but if he did so, it was without success as Isham came third in the poll.28 Moore was present in the House on 22 Nov. for the first day of the new Parliament. He came to 62 per cent of the sittings of the session of 1695-6 during which he was named to 17 committees on legislation, of which 13 were private bills. Regular proceedings in the House were interrupted by news of the Assassination Plot and on 27 Feb. 1696 Moore signed the Association pledging support to William III and asserting that he was ‘rightful and lawful’ monarch. On 10 Apr. he subscribed the episcopal ‘repugnance’ at the public absolution by two non-jurors of Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend^‡, who had been executed for their part in the Assassination Plot. On the thanksgiving day he preached before the king.29 Throughout May Moore procured subscriptions from the diocesan clergy to the Association but remained in London, which prompted Prideaux to complain that Moore was taking ‘as little notice of his diocese as if he were not concerned in it at all’. ‘He will be sure to take care of himself, and that is all he minds’. Prideaux also reported that Moore had swapped with Sharp, who was originally to have preached the thanksgiving sermon, so that he could render himself more visible at court with a view to securing translation to Ely.30 As well as promoting his prospects in the church, Moore was engaged with developing his financial investments, and corresponding with Charles Montagu both about Mr Lamb, who was to be a prebend of Lichfield, and about possible solutions to the problems of clipped coinage. Montagu, though, seems to have rejected a scheme for establishing a branch of the Bank at Norwich ‘because it would be a disadvantage to the receiver, by destroying all profit that is made in making returns to London’.31

The session of 1696-7 saw a break in the pattern of Moore’s attendance at the House. The new session had assembled on 20 Oct. 1696, but Moore did not arrive for the first six weeks. It is possible that he felt uncomfortable with the growing partisan tensions between the ministry and an opposition centred on Nottingham over the controversial attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡, 3rd bt. Certainly he was not eager to attend despite increasingly severe promptings of the House. On 14 Nov. the House fixed days for the attendance of absent lords and Moore was summoned for the last day of the month. When he did not appear on 30 Nov. he was issued a further warning that if he did not attend by 4 Dec. he would be taken into custody. When he still failed to appear on that day as well, the House ordered that he be taken into custody by the sergeant at arms and forcibly brought to the House. He was back on the episcopal bench by 7 December. The following day, William spoke personally to Moore and Sharp at Kensington, pressing them both to support the Fenwick attainder bill. In the subsequent vote of 23 Dec. Moore obeyed the king by voting in favour of the bill, thereby standing against Nottingham and Sharp.32 As a result of his late arrival in the session, Moore came to only 38 per cent of the sittings, during which he was named to nine committees on legislation, as well as the committee established on 10 Feb. to consider the state of trade. On 13 Mar. he received the proxy of his friend William Lloyd, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, which he held until the prorogation of 16 April. He and Lloyd had previously attended dinners at Lambeth Palace during the session of 1695-6 and corresponded in the summer of 1696 over a matter of church preferment for Lloyd’s nephew.33

Over the summer Moore was involved with efforts to secure the deanery of York for Henry Finch, though in the event Finch was made to wait until 1702 for the place.34 Moore attended the first day of the session of 1697-8 on 3 Dec. 1697. He came to just over half of the sittings and was named to 21 committees on legislation, including the one on the bill for the benefit of his episcopal colleague Simon Patrick, bishop of Ely. From 20 Dec. he held Lloyd’s proxy again, which he retained until the prorogation. Ordered by the House to preach in Westminster Abbey for the commemoration of Charles I’s martyrdom on 31 Jan. 1698, he was awarded formal thanks from the House on 7 Feb. and an order was given for the sermon to be printed.35 On 15 Mar. he voted with the Whigs to commit the bill for the punishment of the Tory exchequer official Charles Duncombe^‡, an issue which split the episcopal bench, or at least the 14 who were present for the vote, into two almost equal partisan camps.36 On 6 Apr. Lloyd wrote to Moore asking him to be sure to be present when a particular cause came into the House and ‘to give your vote for me as you think I would do if I were in the House’.37 Moore added Sharp’s proxy to Lloyd’s from 27 Apr. which he also held until the end of the session on 5 July.

Parliament was dissolved two days later and by the beginning of August Moore was back in Norwich.38 In the subsequent elections for Cambridgeshire one of the Whig candidates, John Cutts, Baron Cutts^‡ [I], earnestly solicited Moore’s interest; it is not known, though, to what extent Moore complied with this request.39 Moore himself took the oaths and signed the declaration for the new Parliament on 22 Dec. 1698, about two weeks into its first session, and attended the session for 54 per cent of its total sittings. He was named to nine committees on legislation, including that established on 14 Mar. 1699 to encourage the woollen manufacture in England, which was of considerable importance to the economic welfare of his own diocese. He was also placed on the committee assigned on 24 Mar. to consider the dispute between the Ulster Society of London and William King, bishop of Derry [I]. On 7 Mar. he was named to the committee to inspect the Journal for precedents in the trials of peers in criminal cases, established in order to bring Edward Rich, 6th earl of Warwick, to a speedy trial. Three weeks after this appointment, along with all the other bishops present, he withdrew from the chamber after prayers in order to avoid giving judgment in Warwick’s potentially capital trial. The session was prorogued on 4 May. Shortly afterwards, Moore kissed hands as one of the commissioners for ecclesiastical preferments, though the commission seems not to have passed the great seal until the end of October.40

Moore arrived back in Norwich on 19 May. By the end of July he appears to have been angling to leave as his ultimate successor at Norwich, Charles Trimnell, conceded in a letter that he could not ‘press your lordship’s staying’.41 He was still at Norwich in August when he wrote to Tenison querying his membership of the ecclesiastical commission and also raising issues relating to deprivation of Thomas Watson. Moore was subsequently a member of the court of delegates which confirmed Watson’s deprivation.42

Moore was present on 16 Nov. 1699, the first day of the 1699-1700 session, of which he again attended just over half of the sittings. He was named to eight committees on legislation, including two with ecclesiastical and diocesan importance – that established on 26 Feb. 1700 for the bill to establish a conformist French Church in St Martins Ongar and the one set up on 19 Mar. for the bill on street-lighting in Norwich. He was also, on 13 Feb., placed on the committee to draft a bill to authorize commissioners to negotiate a union with Scotland. By the end of May he was back in Norwich.43 In July 1700, a reckoning of political allegiances listed Moore as a Whig who would nevertheless be inclined to support the new ‘mixed’ ministry then being formed under Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester. Certainly, Moore’s political views are hard to gauge at this time. In a letter to Arthur Charlett recounting the removal of Somers, he noted that even Somers’ enemies were ‘forced to own that no man ever behaved himself better in Westminster Hall or in the Parliament House, so that his fall seems to have been occasioned by his making himself so much a party in the affairs at the council table.’44 Besides, Moore was plainly disappointed by the king’s actions in appointing a ‘Mr Stappylton’, a chaplain of Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, to a prebend of Worcester, over the heads of the commission for ecclesiastical preferments. On 27 May he wrote to Tenison that he was ‘sorry his Majesty should be moved to anything which may tend to weaken if not break his commission’, as his commissioners ‘have only recommended persons ... who have been best qualified in respect of their piety, wisdom and learning’. He hoped Tenison would represent to the king the continuing usefulness, and validity of the commission, but despite being irked by the king’s peremptory action, Moore agreed to continue to serve on it. 45

Moore’s correspondence of this period reveals his acquaintance with a wide circle of friends and contacts from across the growing partisan divide, although most wrote to him for medical advice rather than to sound out his political views. Among his episcopal correspondents were the two archbishops, Tenison, and Sharp.46 He was also in contact with his old patron Nottingham and members of the wider Finch ‘circle’, largely Tories, such as Nottingham’s son-in-law William Savile, 2nd marquess of Halifax, and his cousin Charles Finch, 4th earl of Winchilsea.47 Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, referred to him as ‘my good friend’. He also wrote, on both business and medical matters, to both members of Anne’s future ‘duumvirate’ John Churchill, earl (later duke) of Marlborough, and Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin.48 Other correspondents included fellow scholars, most of them Whigs, such as Sir Hans Sloane, with whom he would exchange books and medical information throughout the following decade, as well as his own chaplain and librarian Thomas Tanner^†, later bishop of St Asaph.49 In 1701 Moore married off his ‘short, fat, plump’ daughter Rose, ‘remarkable for drinking brandy’ (as the Tory Thomas Hearne described her) to Tanner. He then rapidly promoted his new son-in-law up the Norwich diocesan hierarchy before Rose’s death in March 1707. 50

Moore took his seat in the new Parliament on 10 Feb. 1701, its fourth day, and two days later was placed on the large committee to draft an address on the king’s speech. He came to 57 per cent of the Parliament’s sitting days, during which he and was named to 23 committees on legislation. On 27 May he was named to the committees on three bills and was present to hear the first reading of the bill to establish a court of conscience, a court for the recovery of small debts under 40s., in Norwich. He obviously had some interest in this bill and, having already agreed with the Norwich chapter that the bill should not extend to the cathedral close, he was named to the bill’s committee the following day.51 On 4 June he was named to the committee on another bill with local import: that for the appointment of assay-masters for wrought plate in Norwich and other towns. Six days after this he was placed on the large committee to consider the trials of the impeached Junto peers. He voted, with the majority of the House, for the acquittal of both Somers and Orford on 17 and 23 June respectively. The day following the second acquittal, Parliament was prorogued. The king then continued to postpone its next meeting through a series of prorogations. Moore, Tenison and Patrick were the only bishops present for the prorogation of 6 November. Parliament was eventually dissolved on 11 November.

Moore was again present on the first day of the new Parliament on 30 December. He attended 43 per cent of its sittings and was named to 14 committees on legislation. On 1 Jan. 1702, he signed the address condemning Louis XIV’s acknowledgement of the Pretender as king of England. The following day he was named to the committee to draw up an address to the king to assure him of Parliament’s support for the impending war against France and its ‘exorbitant power’. Following the king’s death, Moore, along with all other members then present, was assigned a reporter for the conference on 8 Mar. to discuss the accession of Queen Anne. Three days later he was involved in the court of delegates in the case of John Annesley, 4th earl of Anglesey, against John Thompson, Baron Haversham.52

Bishop of Norwich under Anne, 1702-7

William III’s last Parliament was dissolved on 2 July 1702. During the summer months, Moore, in Norwich recovering from a brief illness, approached Nottingham, newly appointed secretary of state, asking for the earl’s recommendation of his brother-in-law for the office of postmaster in Norwich.53 Moore revealed a shifting attitude towards Nottingham and the Tories as early as the first session of Anne’s first Parliament. He was present on its first day, 21 Oct. 1702, and attended just over half of its sittings. On 3 Dec. at the second reading of the occasional conformity bill, Moore, after ‘many long and warm debates’ in the House, sided with bishops Sharp, Compton, Crew and the Tories, against Tenison, Lloyd, Burnet and the Whigs, in voting against the motion put forward by Somers, that the bill be restricted to those persons covered by the Test Act. The amendment would have exempted from the bill’s provisions corporation officials, the principal target of Tory anger. During the succeeding weeks while the bill was in the Commons, Moore signed the resolution against ‘tacking’ irrelevant and extraneous clauses to supply legislation on 9 Dec. and eight days later he was placed on the committee to examine the journal of James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, on the military expedition at Vigo and Cadiz Bay. He attended the annual St Stephen’s day dinner hosted by the archbishop of Canterbury for all the bishops in the capital. In the new year, on 9 Jan. 1703, he was named to the committee to draw an address to the queen urging her to agree with the States General on an appropriate ‘augmentation’ of land forces on the continent and to prohibit all communication from England with both France and Spain. A week later, on 16 Jan. with the occasional conformity bill back before the House, Moore voted for the Whig ‘wrecking’ amendment to the penalty clause, as his old patron Nottingham had forecast he would.

From this period Moore seems to have developed a close friendship with William Nicolson, recently consecrated bishop of Carlisle. Moore first appeared in Nicolson’s London diaries on 27 Nov. 1702. By January 1703 Moore, by now a seasoned parliamentarian, advised the novice Nicolson ‘never to give a forward voice for or against an adjournment’ since the temporal lords ‘do not love to see a bishop offer to interpose in that matter’. On 6 Feb. three weeks before the prorogation, Moore accompanied Nicolson and a number of other bishops to court for the queen’s birthday. On the way, Moore gave his fellow bibliophile Nicolson advice on removing stains from books.54

Moore returned to the House on 9 Nov. 1703, the first day of the 1703-4 session, during which he attended 57 per cent of sittings. In the weeks before the occasional conformity bill was brought up to the House again Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, consistently forecast Moore as a likely opponent of the bill. This prediction was borne out on 14 Dec. when Moore voted to reject the bill on its second reading; it was thrown out by 71 votes to 59. Weeks later, on 21 Mar. 1704, Moore joined a diverse group—including the Whigs Somers, Sunderland, Orford and Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, and the Tories Nottingham, Rochester, and Henry Compton of London—in signing the dissent from the rejection of a rider to the bill for raising recruits for the armed forces, which would have provided that no person would be obliged to serve in the army without the prior permission of the parish churchwardens and overseers of the poor.

The session was prorogued on 3 April. Moore then missed the first ten weeks of the session of 1704-5. Despite his absence from affairs, he maintained a high reputation among the episcopal bench, or at least among the followers of Tenison, and in the late autumn and early winter of 1704 Nicolson recorded the unfounded rumour that Moore would be translated to either the see of London or Ely. In the event he remained at Norwich for another three years. On 14 Dec. almost two months into the session, Moore registered his proxy with William Lloyd of Worcester, although Nicolson’s London diary suggests that Moore was in the capital from early November.55 This was vacated when Moore finally attended the House on 10 Jan. 1705. Owing to his late arrival, he was present in the House at only slightly less than a third of the session’s sitting days. On 27 Feb. he was assigned to the committee to prepare an explanation for the six resolutions of the House in defence of the right of the ‘Aylesbury men’ to seek redress in their dispute with the Commons in a court of law; however he was not named a manager for the ensuing conference held the following day. Throughout the session Convocation had become increasingly fractious, reflecting the partisan divisions in Parliament. On 15 Mar. Moore was a signatory along with four other bishops (Burnet of Salisbury, John Williams, bishop of Chichester, John Hough, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough) to a written statement desiring that the rebellious high church clergy in the lower house of Convocation would ‘govern themselves by the constitution as it is, and not as they would desire it might be’.56 It had little effect and over the following months the ‘highflyers’ promoted concerns that the Church was in danger under the administration of the duumvirs.

Anne’s first Parliament was dissolved on 5 Apr. 1705. Over the following months Moore appears to have drawn closer to Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, the Whig lord lieutenant of the bitterly divided county of Norfolk, using his influence with Godolphin to assist the viscount in his legal affairs.57 Moore himself was back in the capital by October and assisted on 21 Oct. at the consecration at Lambeth Palace of William Wake as bishop of Lincoln.58 He was then present at the opening of Parliament on 25 October. He attended the 1705-6 session for 55 per cent of sittings and on 29 Nov. received William Lloyd’s proxy, which was vacated by Lloyd’s presence the following day. Lloyd had held Moore’s for much of the previous session. Moore was closely involved in the turbulent proceedings of the session on the Tory motions calling for the electress of Hanover to be invited to reside in England during the queen’s lifetime, and that the Church was in danger under the current administration. Moore appears to have been privy to Tory policy for he informed Nicolson on 13 Nov., as the Tories were preparing to introduce the ‘Hanover motion’, that Rochester had been planning such a strategy since the previous summer, although Moore thought that the ‘addressing lords’ would call for the electress’s grandson Prince George Augustus, the future duke of Cambridge and George II, to be called over to reside in the country instead. In the ‘Church in danger’ debate of 6 Dec. Moore underscored the harmonious state of his own diocese, part of a campaign concerted by Tenison and the Whig bishops at Lambeth three days previously to defeat the claims of the Church’s peril. According to a summary of his speech, he claimed that in Norwich diocese the church was ‘in as flourishing a condition as our divisions will permit. Many Dissenting teachers come over to us, are ordained and beneficed among us. The foreign churches [independent Protestant churches] come nearer to us in liturgy and even in episcopacy’. The Tory resolution that the Church was in danger under the present administration was defeated and the Whigs, in committee of the whole House, modified the motion, substituting their own contention that the Church was in fact ‘flourishing’ under the queen. Not surprisingly, Moore voted in favour of this revised Whig motion. He did, however, second Sharp’s motion calling on the judges to give their expert opinion on the legal status of dissenting academies, but the question was not put since Godolphin argued that it was incidental to the main question. At the end of the year Moore confided to Nicolson that he knew nothing of the letter from the electress to Archbishop Tenison, in which she purportedly agreed to her proposed removal to England, ‘but thinks the report groundless’. This spurious letter later, accompanied by an open letter of Sir Rowland Gwynne^‡ to the Whig Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, formed part of a printed pamphlet which caused consternation in Parliament by reviving the controversy which was thought to have been settled by the Regency Act. On 11 Mar. 1706, Moore, with the rest of the House present, was appointed a reporter for the two conferences held that day which quickly devised an address condemning this publication. Earlier, on 17 Feb. he had preached before the queen ‘an argumentative discourse on the nature of divine providence and the necessity of prayer’.59 Moore last sat in the House for this session on 19 Mar. and then absented himself for the final two months of business.

Moore was back in the capital by the end of October and on 23 Nov. met with Nicolson, Burnet and Tenison at Lambeth to draft a prayer of thanksgiving for a service at St Paul’s in recognition of a year of military triumphs for that Allies. He was in the House for the first day of the session beginning 3 Dec. and attended 62 per cent of all sittings. Around the turn of the year he was requested by Sharp (in Yorkshire) to remind Tenison to have the act for recovering small tithes continued, which was due to expire. The focus of the session, though, was the passage of the Act of Union, in which Moore was also heavily involved. He was in close contact with the Junto peers who worked to push through the Union and on 3 Jan. 1707 he and Nicolson paid separate visits to Somers, Wharton and Sunderland. Charles Trimnell, Sunderland’s former tutor, was also present at the latter meeting.60 Between 23 and 27 Jan. there was a series of meetings between Moore, Nicolson, Tenison, Wake and Edmund Gibson^† later bishop of London, both at Lambeth Palace and at Moore’s London residence, to draft a bill, with Somers’s legal advice, for the security of the Church of England in the light of the Union with Scotland and its Presbyterian Kirk. On 29 Jan. the draft bill was amended at Sunderland’s house with Moore, Wake, Godolphin, Marlborough, Orford, Halifax, Townshend and Wharton in attendance. It was first read in the House two days later.61 In preparation for the debates on this bill, which began in earnest on 3 Feb., Moore held from 6 Feb. the proxy of William Lloyd of Worcester, which he kept until Lloyd’s return to the House on 6 Mar. and from 13 Feb. that of William Wake, which he maintained for the remainder of the session. The Act for the better security of the Church of England received the royal assent on 13 February. In the debates on the Union bill itself, which was brought up to the House on 1 Mar. Burnet later singled Moore out as one of the bill’s principal advocates, along with Burnet himself, William Talbot, bishop of Oxford, Godolphin, Sunderland, Wharton, Halifax, Townshend, and especially Somers. In May 1707, Moore organized a formal diocesan address to the queen approving of the Union. At the same time as the Union was being debated Moore promised Wake that, with his proxy, he would manage in the House the bill to rebuild the parish church of Humberstone in the diocese of Lincoln, first read on 4 Mar. and committed three days later.62 On 28 Mar. Moore chaired and reported from the committee of the whole House on the bill to discharge holders of small ecclesiastical livings from paying their first fruits and tenths, a measure that dovetailed with his interest and involvement in Queen Anne’s bounty. The bill was passed without amendment that day. He remained in attendance until the last day of the session on 8 April. Moore attended the ten-day-long session between 14 and 24 Apr. for one day only, its first day, and was not involved in any business in the House.

Bishop of Ely, 1707-14

Moore’s translation to Ely occurred in the midst of the bishoprics’ crisis, precipitated by divisions over the nominations to several sees vacant since the winter of the previous year. Although Godolphin protested to Marlborough at yet another instance where he had been unable to influence the choice of candidate, Moore’s nomination to Ely, vacant by the death of Simon Patrick on 31 May, was relatively uncontroversial. He was acceptable to a wide range of opinion and Anne herself declared that she ‘had a kindness’ towards him. He kissed hands for his new bishopric within hours of Patrick’s death and the warrant for his translation was signed and the appointment gazetted within the first week of June 1707. Moore was formally translated to the see of Ely on 31 July.63 If his own translation proved relatively straightforward, though, Moore’s departure from Norwich provided a new focus for division with the Junto eager to secure Trimnell’s nomination to Moore’s former bishopric. Tenison reported to Somers that although he had ‘pressed’ Moore ‘to drop a word about a successor’ Moore was yet to declare his hand. Tenison also wanted Moore to succeed as governor of the Charterhouse, for which he sought Somer’s opinion. Moore’s appointment to Ely certainly met with Somers’ approval: he congratulated Tenison on ‘the making one good bishop without importunity and tearing.’64

Moore was in Norwich in June but intended to be back in London for the beginning of July. In early August he approached Sunderland about a place for a relative of one of those in the employment of Tenison’s wife. The man’s father, an Essex clergyman, he assured Sunderland, had ‘always voted according to your lordship’s judgment of things’. The same month, before the convening of the first Parliament of Great Britain, he attended a conference at Sunderland’s residence to discuss various matters, including the war in Spain and relations with Scotland.65 Now one of the most senior members of the House, Moore was again present on the first day of the new session, 23 Oct. 1707. Yet following his promotion, his parliamentary attendance fell away – he attended only one third of the sittings of the session. Part of this reason may have been his increasing absorption in the refurbishment of Ely House in London to accommodate his massive library, ‘the best in any private library in Europe’ according to one contemporary, in rooms round the old cloister of the house.66 On 19 Nov. and then again on 22 Dec. he was placed on some of the large committees entrusted to investigate the state of the Navy – the lack of merchant convoys, the encouragement of privateers in the West Indies, the state of shipbuilding and victualling, and the exemption from military service of sailors working in the coal trade – which were largely part of the Whig campaign to expose corruption and incompetence in the Tory-led Admiralty commission. On 26 Dec. he attended the annual dinner hosted by the archbishop at Lambeth, joined by the two archbishops and 13 other bishops.67

Throughout 1708 his political activity was largely found outside of the House in such social gatherings, particularly with his growing number of Whig colleagues. On 5 Jan. 1708, he visited Sunderland and five days later took Nicolson to visit Somers to discuss the cathedrals and collegiate churches bill, which was almost Nicolson’s personal project. On the 29th Moore dined at Halifax’s residence with Sunderland, Somers, Nicolson, Hough of Lichfield and Coventry and Richard Bentley. On 18 Feb. Nicolson visited Moore in order to solicit his support for his cathedral bill, which was to be heard the next day. He found Moore ‘very obliging, but so pained in his cheek that I fear his confinement’ from the House. This illness may explain Moore’s absence from 14 Feb. to 2 March.68 On 7 May, about three weeks after the dissolution of Parliament on 15 Apr. Moore, Trimnell (his successor at Norwich) and Wake met Tenison at the Cockpit, where they agreed ‘several matters’ on Convocation business.69 Later that summer, Moore and the Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, Charles Roderick, were said to have made such a blunder of the latter’s institution to the deanery of Ely (vacant by the death of John Lamb in August) that the place had fallen void and back into the queen’s hands. Godolphin’s younger brother, Henry, sought the lord treasurer’s assistance in persuading the queen to make out a new grant for the place. Moore’s attention may have been on other things. In October he hosted a ‘key’ conference at his episcopal residence in Ely, conveniently close to Newmarket, at which Godolphin and members of the Junto negotiated the conditions under which the Whigs would continue to provide parliamentary support to the lord treasurer in the forthcoming Parliament. According to Arthur Maynwaring^‡, Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, was ‘highly displeased’ at not having been included.70 In the week of 11-18 Nov. Moore was busy with Wake and a number of other bishops, including Trimnell, in preparing for the imminent meeting of both Parliament and Convocation and attending the funeral of the prince consort, George of Denmark, duke of Cumberland.71

Moore was, as usual, present for the first day of the new Parliament, 16 Nov. 1708, but he only attended 39 per cent of the first session. Nottingham, from his seat at Burley, hoped that Moore might be encouraged to join with Rochester and others to try to prevent the progress of the Whig bills to repeal the sacramental test and to offer a general naturalization to foreign Protestant immigrants by making representations against them to the queen.72 Moore’s actions in the session quickly proved Nottingham misguided in his calculations. On 21 Jan. 1709 Moore joined with the Junto and the Scottish ‘Squadrone’ by voting against the right of James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S] (duke of Dover in the British peerage), to vote in the elections of the Scottish representative peers. In the debate of 15 Mar. 1709 on the general naturalization bill Moore voted with the Whig bishops Tenison, Burnet, Hough, Cumberland, Williams, and Trimnell, against Sharp and his coterie of bishops (which on this occasion included Nicolson) to retain the words ‘some Protestant Reformed Congregation’ in the bill, thereby preserving the right of immigrants to worship and communicate in the many autonomous Protestant ‘stranger churches’ in England. On 6 Apr. Moore spoke in the debate on whether the clause to exempt certificates of Quaker marriages from taxation should form part of the stamp bill. He and all the other eight bishops present, including Nicolson, later voted with the minority against the clause. Tenison’s latest illness in late April appears to have revealed the extent of Moore’s family’s ambitions for him as it was reported that they hoped that they might soon be settled at Lambeth. The archbishop’s swift recovery, though, kept them in the Fens.73

Denied promotion to Canterbury, Moore tried to advance his family in other ways. In September 1709 he married off one of his daughters, ‘a young sanguine girl of about 24’, to the elderly and infirm canon of Ely Robert Cannon. Cannon was a favourite of Godolphin, ‘exceedingly troubled with the falling of the gut, which usually takes him up all the morning to get it up’. According to Prideaux, it was ‘hard to say which is the greatest fool of the two in this matter … a folly on both sides which is not to be accounted for, and must end ill on both sides’.74

Moore took his place once more at the opening of the new session on 15 Nov. ten days after the notorious sermon preached by Dr Henry Sacheverell. He came to half of the meetings of this session, which was dominated by Sacheverell’s impeachment. On 24 Jan. 1710, Moore attended a meeting at Sunderland’s residence with Wharton, Somers, Orford, William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Devonshire, and bishops Wake, Hough, and Trimnell to discuss the following day’s business in Parliament, when Sacheverell was scheduled to submit his answer to the articles of impeachment. He was due to visit Sunderland again on 18 Feb. possibly for further discussions relating to the Sacheverell affair.75 On that same day he was named to the committee to determine the number of tickets each peer should be allowed for the trial in Westminster Hall. Moore attended the House throughout the proceedings on Sacheverell’s impeachment and on 28 Feb. was placed on the committee to consider the public disorder arising from the trial. A week later, on 20 Mar. he voted Sacheverell guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours.

Parliament was prorogued on 5 April. The subsequent fall of the duumvirs and development of Harley’s new scheme, prompted Moore to shore up Whig influence, particularly in Cambridgeshire. He was concerned that there would be a change in the lieutenancy of the Isle of Ely and sought, with Orford, to ensure a Whig victory in the county elections following the dissolution of 21 Sept., though with little effect as two Tories, John Bromley^‡ and John Jenyns^‡, were returned.76 In the weeks before the convening of the new Parliament on 25 Nov. Harley correctly reckoned that Moore would oppose his new ministry. Moore attended 42 per cent of sittings of the first session of 1710-11, which was dominated by Tory recriminations against the former Whig ministry’s handling of the unsuccessful Allied campaign in Spain. Throughout January and February 1711, Moore was part of the Whig battle against the Tories’ censure of the previous ministry’s conduct of the war, and particularly the attack on the generals who had led the Peninsular campaign: Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I] and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I]. The debates were most intense in the period 9-11 January. On 9 Jan. Moore joined a large number of Whig bishops in voting against the resolution that Peterborough had ‘given a just, faithful and honourable account’ of the council of war that had decided on the strategy prior to the defeat at Almanza.77 On 11 Jan. he subscribed the two protests against the resolutions to reject the petitions of Galway and Tyrawley and to blame them single-handedly for the defeat at Almanza. The following day Moore was the only bishop to speak in debate, maintaining that it had not appeared to him ‘that there was any premeditated ill design in the ministry, when they gave their opinion for an offensive war’ in Spain and consequently he signed the protest that day against the resolution condemning the Whig ministry for approving the plans for an offensive war.78 He protested again on 3 Feb. against the two resolutions of that day which further condemned the previous ministers for inadequately supplying the Allied troops in Spain with men and materiel, which was proclaimed a ‘neglect of service’. Five days later he further signed the two protests which sought to halt the presentation to the queen of an address condemning the recent conduct of the war in Spain.79 On 1 and 12 May he received the proxies of, respectively, Tenison and Burnet, both of which he held until the prorogation of 12 June. During this session, Moore was also involved in meetings of the commissioners for the rebuilding of St Paul’s, and for Queen Anne’s bounty.80

Moore was again entrusted with the ailing Tenison’s proxy from 6 Dec. 1711, the day before the first meeting of the subsequent session of 1711-12, of whose sittings Moore attended 43 per cent. The principal business of this session focused on the controversial peace negotiations with France. On its first day Moore was named to the committee to prepare an address to the queen asserting that there could be ‘no peace without Spain’. He was forecast as a certain opponent of the ministry in the division on whether to include this Whig motion in the address. On 17 Dec. Moore chaired a committee of the whole House considering the bill ‘for preserving the Protestant religion, by better securing the Church of England’. He reported the bill with some amendments, which were quickly passed. He was forecast as a probable opponent of the ministry in the case of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], and on 20 Dec. voted against Hamilton’s right to sit in the House under his British title of duke of Brandon. On 2 Jan. 1712 Moore attended the debate on Oxford’s (as Harley had since become) motion to adjourn the House immediately after the creation of 12 new Tory peers and he was one of 11 out of 15 bishops who followed the Whig line in denouncing the motion as an infringement of parliamentary privilege and in voting against the adjournment.81 In the early months of 1712 he continued his work on Queen Anne’s bounty and met frequently with Wake and Trimnell.82 Moore was also very active in Convocation on behalf of Tenison and against the claims of the highflying lower clergy. Moore’s partisan conduct, and apparent dishonesty, dismayed the Rev. Ralph Bridges, who reported that:

old Ely has made the most remarkable halt lately, which the lower house have detected and resent very much. He told them that he and the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield [Hough] had been to deliver a message [to] the queen by order of the upper house about whether the Convocation should proceed de novo or not and that the queen had taken time to consider of it. When, in truth, it appears, as the dean of Christ Church [Francis Atterbury, later bishop of Rochester] tells me, that the said bishop never went to the queen at all, at least the queen protests she remembers nothing of it. But what makes the lie very complete, it happened that the bishop of Lichfield had been and is still absent from town and above an hundred miles off.83

Moore was involved in a flurry of proxy exchanges. Unwell with an ‘ague’, on 19 Mar. he registered his proxy with Trimnell, which was vacated upon his return to the House on 14 April.84 On 9 May Moore in turn received the proxy of Jonathan Trelawny, now bishop of Winchester. This proxy was vacated by 21 May when Moore himself entrusted his own proxy, once again, to Cumberland of Peterborough. Cumberland almost certainly used this proxy to vote in favour of the motion of 28 May to address the queen against the ‘restraining orders’ that had been issued to Ormond against undertaking offensive actions against the French in the coming campaign, though Cumberland’s own name does not appear on the division list for the vote.85 The Whigs’ defeat may have prompted Moore to resume his place in time for another series of important votes. Probably in a concerted move among the Whig bishops, and perhaps acting as the ailing Tenison’s deputy, Moore returned to the House on 6 June. That day he received the proxy of the long-absent Edward Fowler, bishop of Gloucester, and the following day he reached his full complement of two proxies when that of his old friend William Lloyd of Worcester, who had only left the House for the session the previous day, was also registered in his name. These additional votes were most likely given to him in anticipation of the debate on the queen’s speech concerning the peace the next day. The Whig attempt to amend the address of thanks to the queen, to insist that measures should be taken with the allies to ‘guarantee’ the Hanoverian Succession in any peace settlement, was comprehensively defeated by the ministry by 81 to 36. Moore, with his two proxies, was among the minority, as he put his name to the protest against the rejection of this motion. After this defeat Moore continued to hold the proxies of both of his colleagues until the prorogation of 8 July.

By this point Moore appears to have been closely associated with Wake. In a letter of October 1712, Wake wished that ‘God preserve your lordship and all your good family, that we may disappoint the hopes of our enemies, and not give them the double satisfaction of getting rid of us, and coming themselves into our places, especially since I have the vanity to think the Church would not get by it’.86 Jonathan Swift had the same opinion and in the weeks preceding the long-postponed session of spring 1713, at which the terms of the peace negotiated at Utrecht were to be presented, he reckoned that Moore would almost certainly be in opposition to the ministry. Moore was present on the first day of the session, 9 Apr. 1713, and proceeded to attend just a little over a third of its sittings. Swift’s assessment was accurate and in early June Oxford calculated too that Moore would oppose the ministry’s treaty of commerce with France. However, Moore was not always the most effective or consistent ally of the Junto in their opposition to the Oxford ministry. On 1 June, at the crucial vote on the question whether to vote straight away – rather than postpone discussion to a further date, as the Whigs and the Scots preferred – on the bill for dissolving the Union, sponsored by James Ogilvy, 4th earl of Findlater [S], Moore and Fleetwood left the chamber before the division at 6 p.m. thereby helping to prevent the ministry’s defeat. Contemporary accounts also suggested that Moore abandoned the chamber before the crucial moment entrusted with valuable proxies which could have helped sway the vote to the Whigs even further. The Whig Edmund Gibson was disappointed and lamented to Nicolson, ‘had they [Moore and Fleetwood] stayed it had come to what our friends desired, namely the appointment of a day to hear the proposition on the part of Scotland with regard to the succession’.87 The session was prorogued some weeks later, on 16 July, and Parliament was dissolved on 8 August.

Moore was, as usual, in his place on the first day of the new Parliament, 16 Feb. 1714, after which he attended 44 per cent of what was to be his last session. On 5 Apr. he was named to a committee to prepare an address requesting the queen to enter into a mutual guarantee with the allies to ensure the Hanoverian succession. Eleven days later he registered his proxy with Hough, but Hough himself left the House on 11 May and in turn registered his proxy with Moore on 17 May. To this proxy Moore, still absent from the House, added that of Burnet on 29 May (vacated on 25 June). This may have been a concerted action among the Whig bishops, for Moore, with his full allotment of two proxies, returned to the House on 2 June, two days before the first reading of the schism bill. Nottingham forecasted correctly that Moore opposed this measure of the ‘highflying’ Tories and on 10 and 11 June Moore and his Whig allies commenced their efforts to wreck the bill in stages. On 11 June, Moore, with the proxies of Hough and Burnet, voted against the committee of the whole House receiving a clause which would extend the bill to Ireland. The motion for the clause passed by a single vote, with the episcopal bench evenly divided, Moore heading the list of episcopal ‘not contents’ drawn up by Nicolson (who voted the same way).88 On 15 June Moore voted against the bill and, with a large body of Whigs, registered his protest against its passage. Nine days later he was named to the committee to prepare an address to encourage the queen to offer a reward for the apprehension of the Pretender if he set foot on British soil and to enter into a mutual guarantee for the Hanoverian succession. The following month, on 7 July, Moore chaired a committee of the whole House considering the bill to offer a reward for the discovery of a means to determine longitude at sea, which he reported as fit to pass without amendment. His attendance the next day, 8 July, was his last in the House. The session was prorogued the following day.

Moore predeceased Queen Anne by one day. He caught a chill while presiding in his capacity as visitor of Trinity College, Cambridge, over the lengthy trial of Richard Bentley, whom he had previously supported as episcopal candidate for Chichester. He died on 31 July and was buried on 5 Aug. at Ely. By his will of 27 July he bequeathed to his second wife the property in Darlington that she had brought to the marriage. She, with whom (according to one observer) he had ‘lived miserably snarling together, always quarrelling’, thereafter styled herself by her former married name of Lady Browne. His eldest son Daniel was to have the property in reversion, which was then to be passed on in order to his other surviving six children. In addition, Moore bequeathed to his third son Charles government securities worth £60 a year for a term of 99 years and his remaining six offspring were each to receive the equivalent of those shares’ market value.89

Moore’s greatest legacy was his library which contained, according to one astonished observer, ‘the greatest number of books that I believe is to be seen in any private library in Europe’.90 Amassing the collection had been a great drain on his finances, so that during his time at Norwich in particular he almost consistently used up all, or more, of his annual net revenue from the diocese – usually around £1,941 p.a. – on purchasing books, in addition to his usual clerical expenses. In 1714 he had offered the collection of 30,756 titles to the earl of Oxford for £8,000. Oxford refused when Moore wanted the cash in advance but wished to retain the library for his own use during his lifetime. Shortly after Moore’s death, Townshend persuaded George I to buy the collection for £6,450 and to present it to Cambridge University, ‘to furnish you [the university] with those materials of learning which … would become so many weapons in your hands to guard and maintain the faith of the Church, the rights of the crown and the liberties of the British constitution’. The donation, which more than doubled the size of the university library, may well have been a political gesture against Tory Oxford. It sparked the publication of satirical verse in which Moore’s library became the subject of political and academic antagonism between Oxford and Cambridge.91

B.A./C.G.D.L.

1 Mems of St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, ed. Burke, 198.
2 CUL, Adv.e.38, 7; HMC 2nd Rep. 114.
3 C. Moore, ‘The father of black-letter collectors’, Mem. of John Moore bishop of Ely, (1885), 10-11, 19, 36.
4 TNA, PROB 11/541.
5 Bodl. Ballard 4, f. 51; CSP Dom. 1699-1700, p. 276.
6 Bodl. Tanner 305, f. 13.
7 Davies, Charterhouse in London, app. D.
8 Camb. RO, 17/C1; Tanner 137, f. 184; E. Hatton, A New View of London, ii. 623-39.
9 CUL, Adv.e.38, 10 (note facing the month of June in Moore’s almanac).
10 CUL, Add. 2, no. 148.
11 CUL, Adv.e.38, 7; HMC 2nd Rep. 114; Moore, Memoir, 10-11.
12 Essays in Mod. Eng. Church Hist. ed. Bennet and Walsh, 110-11.
13 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 242-43; Moore, Memoir, 10.
14 J. Moore, Of the Wisdom and Goodness of Providence. (1690); Of Religious Melancholy (1692); [Anon] The Charity and Loyalty of some of our Clergy in a Short View of Dr Moore’s Sermon before their Majesties at Hampton Court, July the 14th, 1689 (1689).
15 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 342.
16 Essays in Mod. Eng. Church Hist. 120-21; Prideaux Letters, 148-49; Norf. RO, DCN 115/1 (Prideaux diary), p. 41; CUL, Dd.3.63, f. 63; Dd.3.64, f. 31 (p. 62).
17 CUL, Adv.e.38, 8 and 9; Dd.3.64, ff. 53, 65; Tanner 20, f. 9, Tanner 22, ff. 61-62, Tanner 25, ff. 355-56; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Capel of Tewkesbury to Moore, 1 June 1693, Halifax to Moore, 18 June 1700, Newcastle to Moore, 24 June 1707, J. Smith to Moore, 2 Sept. 1709.
18 Evelyn Diary, v. 325; Cambridge University Library: The Great Collections ed. P. Fox, 78-89.
19 CUL, Dd.3.64, f. 63 (p.142).
20 Tanner 26, ff. 29-30, Tanner 25, f. 342; Add. 4236, f. 253; Prideaux Letters, 154-55.
21 Tanner 25, ff. 355-56, 399.
22 Diary and autobiog. of Edmund Bohun ed. S. Wilton Rix, 93-94, 107-8, 118.
23 Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers 371/14/D/1; Camb. RO, 17/C1.
24 Tanner 137, f. 182.
25 Cambs. RO, 17/C1, F. Hutchinson to Moore, 16 June 1694, Cornwallis to Moore, 20 June 1694.
26 Ballard 23, f. 98.
27 Add. 61458, ff. 29-30.
28 Tanner 22, f. 107.
29 State Trials, xiii. 413; Add. 70081, newsletter of 18 Apr. 1696.
30 Prideaux Letters, 175.
31 Tanner 24, f. 118; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, C. Montagu to Moore, 30 June 1696.
32 Cobbett, Parl. Hist. v. 1154; Essays in Mod. Eng. Church Hist. 126.
33 Evelyn Diary, v. 224, 238; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Lloyd to Moore, 15 July 1696.
34 Tanner 23, f. 13.
35 J. Moore, A Sermon preached before the House of Lords (1697).
36 Conflict in Stuart England ed. A.W. Aitken and B.D. Henning, 236.
37 Tanner 22, ff. 61-2.
38 Tanner 22, f. 197.
39 Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Baron Cutts to Moore, n.d. (spring/summer 1698).
40 Ballard 4, f. 51; CSP Dom. 1699-1700, p. 276.
41 Tanner 21, ff. 61, 124-25.
42 CSP Dom. 1699-1700, p. 27; Carpenter, Tenison, 171; Add. 4274, f. 197; TNA, DEL 2/74; Bodl. Rawl. B 380, f. 211.
43 Camb. RO, 17/C1.
44 Ballard 10, f. 40.
45 Carpenter, Tenison, 172-76; Add. 4292, f. 35b; LPL, ms 930, f. 110.
46 Tanner 21, ff. 93, 97, Tanner 22, ff. 83, 93; Add. 4274, f. 197; Add. 4292, f. 35; Cambs. RO, 17/ C1, Sharp to Moore, 24 May 1700; Carpenter, Tenison, 29.
47 Tanner 305, f. 33; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Winchilsea to Moore, 27 Sept. 1698, Halifax, to Moore, 18 June 1700, Nottingham, to Moore, 25 Aug. 1702; Add. 75368, Nottingham to Halifax, 9 Sept. 1699; Add. 29584, f. 97.
48 Tanner 21, ff. 85, 102, 124-25; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Godolphin to Moore, 26 July 1700, Sunderland, to Moore, 23 Nov. 1700; Add. 29584, f. 97.
49 Sloane 4038, ff. 101, 126; Sloane 4040, f. 126; Sloane 1983B, f. 37; Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Hans Sloane to Moore, 2 Jan. 1701; Ballard 10, f. 40.
50 Hearne, Remarks and Collections, i. 200, ii. 9; CUL, Dd.3.64, f. 42 (p. 97); Ballard 4, f. 84.
51 Norf. RO, DCN 115/1, pp. 147-50.
52 TNA, DEL 2/3.
53 Add. 29584, f. 97.
54 Nicolson, London Diaries, 18, 135, 137, 152-53, 163, 198.
55 Nicolson, London Diaries, 215, 219, 258.
56 LPL, ms 934, f. 37.
57 CUL, Add. 4251 (b), 977-78.
58 Carpenter, Tenison, 179.
59 Nicolson, London Diaries, 90, 286-87, 303, 323-24, 342, 379; C. Jones, ‘Debates in the House of Lords’, HJ, xix. 766, 768; C. Littleton, ‘Three (More) Division Lists’, PH, xxxii. 262.
60 Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 17, f. 154; Nicolson, London Diaries, 397, 406.
61 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D/12, 13; Nicolson, London Diaries, 392, 413; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 34-35; G. Bennett, ‘Robert Harley, the earl of Godolphin and the Bishoprics Crisis’, EHR, lxxxii. 736.
62 Burnet, History, v. 295; Tanner 137, f. 22; LPL, ms 1770, f. 36.
63 Add. 61124, f. 201; Add. 72494, ff. 33-34; Gregg, Queen Anne, 241.
64 Carpenter, Tenison, 180-82; Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D/17; Wake ms 7, ff. 346-47; EHR, lxxxii. 737-8.
65 Ballard 4, f. 84; Add. 61596, f. 34; C. Jones, ‘The Bishops and the Extra-Parliamentary Organization of the Whig Junto’, PH, xxii. 183-86.
66 HMC Downshire, i. 886; Cambridge University Library. ed. Fox, 82.
67 Nicolson, London Diaries, 436-37; LPL, ms 1770, f. 54.
68 Nicolson, London Diaries, 439, 441, 446, 454, 455.
69 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 61, 65, 124.
70 Add. 61612, f. 57; Pols. in Age of Anne, 290; Add. 61459, ff. 116-17; Add, 4163, f. 243.
71 LPL, ms 1770, ff. 68-69.
72 Horwitz, Rev. Pols. 216-17; Leics. RO, Finch mss (G7), box 4950, bdle 23, f. 77.
73 Nicolson, London Diaries, 471-72, 485-86, 494; Wake mss 17, f. 207.
74 Prideaux Letters, 202; Cambs. RO, AH26/235/38; 17/C1, H. James to Moore, 16 Sept. 1709.
75 LPL, ms 1770, f. 91; Add. 61500, f.106.
76 Cambs. RO, 17/C1, H. Boyle to Moore, 20 Sept. 1710.
77 Nicolson, London Diaries, 531.
78 Timberland, ii. 328.
79 Bodl. Clarendon 90, ff. 158-59.
80 HMC Portland x. 101, 114; Nicolson, London Diaries, 526.
81 Pols. in Age of Anne, 399-400, 517n.62.
82 Nicolson, London Diaries, 586; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 117, 118, 120, 123, 124, 127.
83 Add. 72495, ff. 128-29; Carpenter, Tenison, 308.
84 Nicolson, London Diaries, 595.
85 C. Jones, ‘The Vote in the House of Lords’, PH, xxvi. 181.
86 Cambs. RO, 17/C1, Wake to Moore, 9 Oct. 1712; LPL, ms 1770, ff. 100-147.
87 Holmes, Pols. Relig. and Soc. , 123-24; Bodl. Carte 211, ff. 135-36; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 156.
88 Nicolson, London Diaries, 612-13.
89 Moore, Memoir, 18-20, 28; PROB 11/541.
90 Add. 72491, ff. 2-3.
91 Hirschberg, ‘Episcopal Incomes’, 220-21; Cambridge University Library ed. Fox, 87-89; Moore, Memoir, 27, 32; Hearne, Remarks and Collections, ii. 90.