nation induce him, to arrange and give them to the publick." Thus far in the words of that elegant Antiquary the late Rev. Sir John Cullum, bart. The "History of Thetford" was published in 1789, by my late worthy friend Mr. Gough, whose advertisement shall be transcribed below *. EDWARD-ROWE MORES, M.A. F.S.A. descended from an antient family, which had been seated from the beginning of the sixteenth century at Great Coxwell+, in the county of Berks, and allied by his grandmother to that of Rowe, which had been set The abilities of Mr. Thomas Martin, and the opportunities he derived from the collections of Peter Le Neve, esq. Norroy King at Arms, render it unnecessary to enlarge on the History of his native town of Thetford, which Mr. Blomefield, thirty years ago, encouraged the publick to expect from his hands, The materials, being left without the last finishing at Mr. Martin's death, were purchased by John Worth, chemist, of Diss, F.S.A. who entertained thoughts of giving them to the publick, and circulated proposais, dated July 1, 1774, for printing them by subscription. Upon the encouragement he received, he had actually printed five sheets of the work, and engraved four plates. This second effort was blasted by the immature death of Mr, Worth, 1775; who dying insolvent, his library, including what he had reserved of the immense collections of Le Neve and Martin, at their dispersion on the death of the latter, being sold with his other effects for the benefit of his creditors, were purchased the same year, by Mr. Thomas Hunt, bookseller, at Harleston. Of him I bought (in conjunction with Mr. Nichols) the MS. with the undigested materials, copy-right, and plates. The first of these required a general revisal. The publick are indebted to Francis Grose, esq. for a new set of the last. The coins are arranged by that able master Mr. Benjamin Bartlett. The Rev, Sir John Cullum, bart. communicated the memoirs of the Author; and the Rev. Mr. Thomas the plate of his portrait, which had been engraved at the expence of the late Mr. Ives. Thus presuming on the favourable disposition of the publick to such works, and to this in particular, from the respectable list of subscribers to Mr. Worth's Proposals, I (as his representative so far as the history of this antient and famous town is concerned) now offer it to the public patronage. R. G." † Another branch of this family was seated at Langford, in the same county, from 1552 to 1602. Excerpta ex Registris paroch. penès E. R. Mores, among his Coxwell collections, purchased by Mr. Gough, with six plates; and afterwards published in the XIIIth Number of the "Bibliotheca Topographicą Britannica." tled tled at Higham-Bensted*, in Walthamstow, in the county of Essex, ever since the middle of the same century, was born January 13, 1730, at Tunstall in Kent, where his father was rector near thirty years. He was educated at Merchant Taylors * The seat of the Rowes from 1568, when it was purchased by Sir Thomas Rowe, lord mayor of London that year, who died 1570; and was buried in Hackney church, in a chapel built by him, as was also his son Sir Henry, lord mayor of London 1607, who died 1612, and his grandson Henry, all successively lords of the manor of Shaklewell. Susan, daughter of the last Henry, married William Haliday, alderman of London, and chairman of the East-India Company; who died 1623, and was buried in St. Lawrence Jewry, with his wife (who died 1645) and two daughters. (Strype's Survey of London, vol. I. b. 3. p. 57.) Their four monuments, and a view of Higham hall, were engraved at the expence of Mr. Mores, whose grandmother was of this family. On an oval marble monument against the South side of the North aile of Walthamstow church is this inscription: "Near this place lyeth interred the body of Mistress Anne Mores, daugh- only remains her entirely devoted & af- She died at the parsonage of Tunstall Psalm xxxv. 14. I went heavily as one Here also lyes the body of the above named Edward In a lozenge, Mores impaling Rowe." †That the Rector of Tunstall was of a litigious disposition, appears not only from the squabble with his parishioners recorded School*; and admitted a commoner of Queen's college, Oxford, June 24, 1746. While he resided at that University he assisted in correcting an edition of Calasio's Concordance, 1746, intended by Jacob Ilive, a crazy printer, who afterwards associated with the Rev. William Romaine, and published this Concordance in 4 volumes folio, 1747. Before he was 20, Mr. Mores published, in 4to, 1748, "Nomina et Insignia gentilitia Nobilium Equitumque sub Edvardo primo rege militantium;" the oldest treasure, as he styles it, of our Nobility after Domesday and the Black Book of the Exchequer. He had also printed, except notes and preface, a new edition, in 8vo, of Dionysius Halicarnassensis" de claris Rhetoribus," with vignettes engraved by Green, the few copies of which were sold after his death . in his son's history of the parish, p. 58; but from a perusal of several of his original letters to Mr. Strype, a man of a quiet, humane, and meek disposition, with whom Mr. Mores had disputes; and from his own letters his boisterous and wrangling nature may easily be discovered. He married the sister of Mr. Windsor, an eminent undertaker, in Union-court, Broad-street. His father was Edward Mores of Great Coxwell, in the county of Berks; where his grandfather Francis died, and is buried in the chancel; on the South wall of which the following epitaph is erected to his and his wife's memory: "Here lieth the body of Margaret the loveing wife of Francis Mores of Great Coxwell Gentleman. Shee wase the mother of ten children, viz. four sonns, six daughters, and the two and twenty child of Francis Moore of Clanfield in the county of Oxford, esq. and of Mary his wife. She deceased this life in hope of a better the eleventh day of September in the yeare of our Lord God 1675." * Mr. Mores had made a few collections for a history of this school, and lists of persons educated there. A view of it was engraved by Mynde, in 1756, for Maitland's edition of Stowe's Survey," 1756, inscribed, "Schola Mercatorum Scissorum Lond. facies orientalis. Negatam à Patronis D. Scholaris, Edv. Rowe Mores, arm. A. M. S. A.S." †The late Mr. Scott of Wolstan hall, near Chigwell, Essex, observes of him, in a MS memorandum, that he had a distinguished character for literature at Oxford. See his "Dissertation on Typographical Founders," p. 64. p. 309. The edition of Dionysius, which Mr. Mores had nearly finished in 1749, was published in 1781, with the fo.lowing short preface: In 1752 he printed in half a sheet 4to, some corrections made by Junius in his own copy of his edition of Cædmon's Saxon Paraphrase of Genesis, and other parts of the Old Testament, Amstelod. 1655; and in 1754 he engraved 15 of the drawings from the MS. in the Bodleian library. The title of these plates is, "Figuræ quædam antiquæ ex Cædmonis monachi paraphraseos in Genesim exemplari pervetusto in bibliothecâ Bodleianâ adservato delineata; ad Anglo-Saxonum mores, ritus, atque ædificia seculi, præcipuè decimi, illustranda in lucem editæ; anno Domini MDCCLIV." These plates were purchased by Mr. Gough; and by him have been bequeathed to the Bodleian Library... In 1752 Mr. Mores was elected a member of the Society of Antiquaries; and two years after was one of a Committee for examining the Minute-books of that Society, with a view to select from thence papers proper for publication *. preface: "Quæ sequitur Dionysii Commentariorum Editio est à manu viri doctissimi Edvardi-Rowe Mores, armigeri, nuper defuncti. Eam typis jam olim mandatam fuisse, ex paginâ 161 perspicies. Quo minùs in publicum tunc prodiret, in causâ erat annotationum desiderium, quas in animo habebat vir eruditus conficere: modo per negotia inopinata licuisset. Annotationibus tamen assiduè meditabatur hanc suain editionem cumulare; quod consilium per mortem tandem irritum factum est. Etenim, cum ex hæredibus statim quæsitum esset, utrùm ejusmodi quidquam inter scripta ejus extaret,' re solicitè exploratà verè nimis compertum est, nihil omnino superesse; nisi fortasse suo editionis Hudsonianæ exemplari ab editore nostro notæ quædam adscriptae fuerint: quod exemplar, cujus in manus jam inciderit, non liquet. Cum itaque frustra expectarent bibliopolæ, si quis illius messi falcem suam vellet inserere; maluerunt libellum inchoatum in lucem emittere, quàm juventutis academicæ, hanc editionem jam diu efflagitantis, votis æquissimis non obsequi.” "I bought at Mr. Mores's sale the very set of Hudson's Dionysius Halicarnassensis from whence the leaves had been cut to compose by; and there are no other notes in them than have been inserted, with much new translation, in the new edition; so that it may be doubted after all if Mr. Mores wrote any other notes. This folio copy is dated by him May 5, 1749." R. G. * "A more numerous Committee was appointed for the same purpose in 1762. But still the publication lingered till 1770, when the first volume of the Archæologia appeared. Many valuable Dissertations and Communications still remain unselected from the early Minute-books." R. G. Being intended for orders * by his father, he took the degrees of B. A. May 12, 1750; and M. A. Jan. 15, 1753; before which time he had formed considerable collections relative to the Antiquities, &c. of Oxford, and particularly to those of his own College, whose archives he arranged, and made large extracts from, with a view to its history. He had three plates of the Black Prince's apartments there, since pulled down, drawn and engraved by that very ingenious artist B. Green. Twenty-eight drawings at his expence, by the same hand, of antient gates, halls, &c. since ruined or taken down, were purchased by Mr. Gough; as also some collections for a history of Godstow Nunnery, by Mr. Mores, for which a plate of its ruins was engraved, and another of Iffley church. His MSS. relative to his College, with his collections about All Souls College, fell after his death into the hands of Mr. Astle, who presented the former to Mr. Price of the Bodleian. Mr. Mores appears to have assisted Mr. Bilson in his burlesque on the latter Society, published in a folio sheet, intituled, "Proposals for printing by * He was at one time in treaty for the advowson of the rectory of Bradwell juxta Mare in Essex, which he intended for his son; who being then very young, Mr. Mores talked to his friends of going into orders himself, that he might be able to hold it. It was held till the year 1770, by Dr. Roger Long, master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. The advowson of it, with immediate resignation, was sold in 1781 (when the annual profits. were supposed to exceed 7001.) for 1500l. to the celebrated Mr. Bate-Dudley; who, by gaining land from the sea, and causing the roads to be made passable, wonderfully improved the whole parish, and the neighbourhood for many miles. + Other plates engraved at Mr. Mores's expence were four of antique seals, two silver coins of Richard and John, found in digging the foundation of the new Town-hall at Oxford. These coins are inscribed 10HAES Rev. ONETA MERIIARI ---- -- - - - ICI --- Rev. MONETA MERTVN; and were published by the late Sir William Burrell. A seal found near Canterbury, in the possession of Edward Jacob, mayor of Feversham, 1750; another of Dunscroft, cell to Roche Abbey, in the county of York, in the hands of Mr. Warburton; another of William Bate, master of St. John Baptist's hospital, near the old castle at Carlisle, in those of Dr. Ducarel, sub |