IN June 1791, a notice appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine as postscript to a contribution by the Anglican clergyman and antiquarian John Elderton:

While it was far from unusual for Montagu's acts of patronage to attract such publicity, this gift and the correspondence surrounding it are particularly revealing. The report was published just a few days after the urn's initial installation in the garden at Cowslip Green, More's home at Wrington, before Montagu had sent payment to the sculptor commissioned for the work. In a subsequent letter, Montagu lightly chides More for allowing news of the gift to spread prematurely: ‘I fear’, she writes, ‘you have made me incur the blame of the artificer, who must think me forgetful of the debts I owe, and the honour and pleasure I receive.’ As Montagu's choice of words suggests, the transaction combined elements of commodity exchange and gift exchange; Montagu's articulation of the ‘honour and pleasure’ she receives in return for her expense highlights the commerciality of her patronage, as well as its affective aspects. The urn's meaning is thus partially determined by its role in solidifying socio-economic ties, but its gifting was also a cultural and political statement. By giving this object, Montagu asserts her authority as a participant in the conservative appropriation of Enlightenment philosophy More was increasingly looking to effect. I argue in this chapter that the project of reforming Locke was central to More's written, embodied and material practices from the early 1790s onwards. The urn marks the start of the struggle of (and increasingly between) women seeking to wrest possession of the liberal Locke from republican hands.