Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/More, Edward
MORE, EDWARD (1479–1541), divine, described as of Havant, was born in 1479, and was elected a scholar of Winchester College in 1492. He seems to have afterwards proceeded to New College, Oxford, and supplicated for the degree of B.D. in 1518. From 1498 to 1502 he held a fellowship at Winchester, and was head-master from 1508 to 1517. He was at a later date appointed canon of Chichester, was instituted vicar of Isleworth on 3 March 1514-15, and on resigning that living in August 1521 became rector of Cranford (Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 595, 675). On 29 Oct. 1526 he was admitted the eighth warden of Winchester College, and held that office, together with the rectory of Cranford, till his death. From 1528 to 1531 he was also archdeacon of Lewes (Le Neve, i. 263). As a schoolmaster he was reckoned a stern disciplinarian. In the Latin poem descriptive of the wardens of Winchester (in Willes's 'Poemata,' 1573), Christopher Johnson [q. v.], the author, writes:
Qui legit hic Morum, qui non et sensit eundem,
Gaudeat, et secum molliter esse putet.
More died in 1541, and was buried in the choir of Winchester College Chapel.
Another Edward More (1537?–1620), born about 1537, was third son (by his wife Anne Cresacre) of John More, the only son of Sir Thomas More [q. v.] He wrote a poem in rhyming ballad metre, entitled 'A lytle and bryefe treatyse called the Defence of Women, and especially of Englyshe women, made agaynst "The Schole House" [i.e. a published denunciation of women by Edward Gosynhyll, q. v.],' London, by John Kynge, 1560, 4to. More's book was licensed for publication in 1557-8. Copies are in the Bodleian and British Museum libraries. The dedication, dated 20 July 1557, from Hambledon, Buckinghamshire, is addressed to Sir Philip Hoby [q. v.] Hambledon was the seat of John Scrope, whose daughter married Edward More's eldest brother, Thomas. More describes himself at the time as twenty years old. Wood states that he wrote 'several little things ' besides (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 249-52). More's work was again licensed for publication to John Tisdale in 1563. Cresacre More, a nephew of Edward More, wrote of his uncle about 1600 that he was 'endowed with excellent gifts of nature, has a ready wit, tongue at will, and his pen glib, yet God knows he hath drowned all his talents in self-conceit in no worthy qualities.' He was buried at Barnborough, Yorkshire, on 2 May 1620. His sons Henry and Thomas, the jesuits, are noticed under Henry More, 1586-1661.
[Kirby's Winchester Scholars; Wood's Fasti Oxon.; H. C. Adams's Wykehamica, p. 75; Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections; Ritson's Bibl.Poetica; Cresacre More's Life of Sir Thomas More, ed. Hunter, p. xlviii; cf. Foley's Records of Jesuits, xii. 702 sq.]