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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Fr Thomas More—the last descendant in the direct male line of St.Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England—died on 20 May 1795 in Bath. He had been the Jesuit provincial superior at the time of the suppression of the Society in 1773.
Thomas More was the eldest of the five children of Thomas and Catherine (née Giffard) of Barnborough or Bamburg Hall in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Born on 19 September 1722, he was followed by Christopher, Bridget, Catherine and Mary. Both sons became Jesuits. Bridget married twice—Peter Metcalfe and Robert Dalton and had descendants; she died in 1797. Catherine died unmarried in 1786. Mary became Sister Mary Augustine of the Austin Canonesses at Bruges and died in 1807. Their home, Barnborough Hall, had been in the family since John, the only son of St. Thomas, had acquired it by his marriage to Anne Cresacre and it remained so until the nineteenth century.
1 D.N.B. 38, 448; there are many descendants on the distaff side.
2 Gillow, , Bibliographical Dictionary, 5 Google Scholar, 94 states that there was another son, Basil, who died in 1730.
3 According to B. Basset, The English Jesuits from Campion to Martindale, at least seven descendants of St. Thomas More became Jesuits—among them the brothers Henry More (c. 1587ℰ1661) and Thomas More (c. 1586–1623).
4 Gillow, 5, 94.
5 C.R.S. 70, 169. His grave is in Bath Abbey—C.R.S. 66 p.46n.
6 Records of the Scots Colleges (Aberdeen 1906) 83.
7 C.R.S. Monograph 2, 389. It is most likely that the More mentioned there as being with the Daltons in York in 1765 was Christopher. The province catalogue for 1767 puts him in Yorkshire; the catalogues of 1765 and 1767 do not provide sufficient information about his place. See C.R.S. 65, 73.
8 C.R.S. 70, 169.
9 More to John Thorpe in Rome, 11 May 1763 in English Province Correspondence, 1746–1854, f.56. (Jesuit Province Archives—JPA)
10 In the register of the Sardinian embassy chapel (CRS. 19, 277) a baptism by Thomas More on 26 April 1765 is entered but it may have been by Thomas Moore, an Irish Dominican who may have been working in London at the time. See Bellenger, D. A., English and Welsh Priests, 1558–1800 (1984), 89.Google Scholar
11 London Recusant, 3, 9.
12 For this and what follows see the present writer’s The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason (1993) 150 ff.
13 Quoted from The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason, 153. Henry Corbie was the provincial superior from 1756–1762. Alexander Cruikshanks acted as agent for the English province in Paris at that time.
14 Letter to John Couche, October 1800. AE/6 in JPA.
15 The author’s William Strickland and the Suppressed Jesuits (1988) 157, note 20.
16 Galloway Letters (JPA) n. 37.7 November 1767.
17 English Province Correspondence f. 78A. 2 January 1768.
18 Galloway Letters n. 45.25 April 1768.
19 Examples of some of these are in Papers of the College of St. Aloysius, R–W, f 162 and College of St. Aloysius District Accounts 1700–1849, f. 96. (both in JPA)
20 Galloway Letters n. 57. More made the last entry in the accounts on 1 October. His successor as province treasurer was Thomas Talbot.
21 Letters of non-Jesuits 1766–1857 (JPA) ff 3–6. A fuller account of this is in Archivum Historicum 38 (1969) 477. The later history of Alexander Cruikshanks has not been found.
22 College of St. Aloysius District Accounts, 1700–1840, f. 98. To Mr. Conyers at Eccleston 28 October 1766. The Society had been destroyed in France in 1762 but not yet in Lorraine, which became French territory only in February 1766.
23 More to Galloway 23 November 1769, (Galloway Letters n. 73).
24 On one occasion contrary winds held up the packet for some days at Dover. So John Tichborne (More’s socius or assistant) wrote to Galloway in April 1770 (Galloway Letters nn. 94, 96).
25 Galloway Letters n. 73, 23 November 1769.
26 Galloway Letters n. 86, 3 March 1770.
27 Galloway Letters n. 91, 4 April 1770. William Neale went to work at Rixton near Warrington. He was in Lancashire for the rest of his life. He died in 1799.
28 Papers of the College of St. Aloysius—West Leigh Tithes (JPA) f. 322, 4 December, 1770.
29 Austin Jenison returned to the Church later.
30 He died in Guiana in 1779.
31 English Province Correspondence f. 96, 7 September, 1772.
32 Burton, , Life and Times of Bishop Challoner (1909) II, 168 Google Scholar; Letters of Bishops and Cardinals 17531853, f. 36. (JPA) Bishop Walmesley to Thomas More, 31 October 1773.
33 Papers of the College of St. Francis Xavier III, 132. (JPA) 18 September 1773.
34 For a fuller account of these events in Bruges see St. Omers to Stonyhurst by H. Chadwick (1962), chapter 13.
35 Colleges in Belgium papers (JPA), f. 77v.
36 Many in fact did so. Colleges in Belgium papers f. 81 5 October, 1773.
37 Thomas West papers (Lancashire Record Office) n. 52, 14 December, 1773. For very many years the boys’ dress at St. Omers College had included a cassock; secular dress presumably means that this was abandoned. See Chadwick pp. 233–8.
38 Galloway Letters nn. 110, 112, 21 and 26 March, 1774.
39 The minutes of the congress are in Miscellaneous Papers 1771–1820 (JPA), ff. 15–19.
40 College of St. Thomas of Canterbury papers 1613–1839 (JPA), f. 45, More to John Panting 20 October 1781. See article on Southend in South Western Catholic History vol. 5, (1981).
41 Restoration papers (JPA), ff. 24–34.
42 Restoration papers, f. 7.
43 Only one reply survives—that of the Lincolnshire district. Richard Knight wrote that the majority of members (there were only three) said ‘Nay’. Knight to More 2 January, 1782 in College of St. Hugh papers 1713–1869 (JPA), f. 144.
44 Records of the congress are in Miscellaneous Papers 1771–1820, ff. 32 ff.
45 The views of William Strickland and Thomas More on these matters are given more fully in the present author’s William Strickland and the Suppressed Jesuits (1988), pp. 138 seq. Acting for layfolk in financial matters had been an element in the La Valette crisis.
46 Letter to James Porter 14 May 1786. In Letters 1773–1804 (JPA), ff. 100–101.
47 Letter to Porter 10 June 1786. In Letters 1773–1804, f. 102.
48 CRS. Mon. 2 pp. 278, 283, 389; CRS. 65 p. 73.
49 The inscription is given in Foley, Records 5, p. 704. The whereabouts of the tablet and of the grave are not now known. There has been much rebuilding on the site of the chapel.
50 A summary of the will is in H.M.C. 10th Report App. 4, p. 191.
51 Letters in Papers of the College of St. Francis Xavier III, ff. 110–111, 19 September 1818; Letters 1773–1804 ff. 272–3, 6 February 1802; Papers of the College of St. Francis Xavier I, (JPA) ff. 104, 11 IV, 20 March 1812 and 1835.
52 See an article in The Stonyhurst Magazine 40, no. 464 (1977), reproduced with permission from The Connoisseur.
53 Gillow, 5, pp. 100, 94; Edward Peacock in A List of Roman Catholics in the County of York published in 1872 says, p. 47n, ‘it was sold but a few years back’.
54 Miscellaneous Papers 1771–1820, f. 7; Plowden Letters (JPA), f. 116.
55 MW/5 (JPA), an undated copy.
56 Thorpe-Plowden Letters II, (JPA) f. 243, 5 October 1791.
57 Restoration Papers, f. 9v.
58 Biographies of English Catholics in the Eighteenth Century, p. 169.