The Mores of Loseley: 1508-1632 Eliza Emily Wheaton Royal Holloway, University of London Submitted for examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Eliza Emily Wheaton, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented within it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 2 The Mores of Loseley 1508-1632: Thesis Abstract The thesis is a study of the Mores of Loseley Park near Guildford, from the time of Christopher More's purchase of a moiety of Loseley in 1508 until the death of his grandson Sir George More in 1632. By the late sixteenth century the Mores were the leading gentry family in Surrey, and this is reflected in the extraordinary archive. The first chapter covers the building of the Elizabethan house at Loseley in the 1560s by William More, and its extension by his son Sir George; both projects demonstrated the family's success. The survival of both William More's building accounts and the house itself provide a rare opportunity to compare the process and the finished building. This is followed by a chapter on the national and local offices held by the Mores, which both helped finance their works at Loseley, and also confirmed their position as members of the gentry elite. These two chapters cover arguably the most important areas of gentry life in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, namely the possession of land, which was seen as a mark of gentility, and the accumulation of offices, which brought power and influence to support that status. The third chapter covers the religious life of the Mores, both their personal piety and their role in the Reformation, in which the gentry were crucial. The Mores' friendship with the Catholic Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague, despite their own loyalty to the established Church, suggests caution over accepting religious rhetoric at face value. The final section discusses the women of the family, whose experiences argue against the stereotype of the ideal gentlewoman of the time. This is the case not just for Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Sir William More, who became a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth I and represented her family's interests at Court, but also others such as her niece Frances Oglander. The conclusion stresses the Mores' achievements, which enabled them to become the leading gentry family in Surrey. 3 Table of Contents Abbreviations & notes on style 6 Acknowledgements 9 1. The Mores of Loseley 1508-1632: Introduction 10 2. "what fewe small romes and howe un mete yo[u]r howes": The house at Loseley 29 3. "[He] took more pains for the service of his country than any man living...": The Mores, patronage and office holding 68 4."I was by Godes goodnes cauled to the trew knowledge of his ghospell": The Mores and their religion 113 5. "myne owne sweete joy": Elizabeth More Polsted Wolley Egerton and the More women 162 6. Conclusion 193 Appendix one: Family trees 199 Appendix two: Autobiographical statement of Sir William More c. 1587 203 Bibliography 209 4 List of Illustrations Sir William More 11 Sir George More 13 The north front of Loseley 29 Burghley House 33 Danny 35 Parham House 35 Wiston House 35 Sutton Place 37 Cowdray House 37 Coat of arms at Loseley 52 Arms in the window at Loseley 53 Sir George More's wing 56 West view of Loseley 56 John Thorpe's plan 59 The garden wall at Loseley 59 Denny monument 127 More monument 128 Effigies from the More monument 130 Effigies of Sir George and Anne More 130 Wall plaques in the Loseley chapel 132 Map of the Loseley area 137 5 Abbreviations The following are the principal abbreviations used in the thesis. Airs, Tudor & Jacobean Country House Malcolm Airs, The Tudor & Jacobean Country House: A Building History (Stroud: Sutton, 1995; repr. Godalming: Bramley Books, 1998) Bindoff, Commons 1509-1558 S.T. Bindoff, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509-1558, 3 vols (London: Boydell & Brewer, 1982) www.historyofparliamentonline.org Cliffe, Puritan Gentry J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul plc, 1984) Evans, 'Extracts' John Evans, 'Extracts from the Private Account Book of Sir William More, of Loseley, in Surrey, in the time of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth', Archaeologia, 36 (1855), 284-310 Finch, Five Northamptonshire Families Mary E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956) Folger Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture Mark Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540-1640 (London: Yale University Press, 2009) Hasler, Commons 1558-1603 W. Hasler, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 1982) www.historyofparliamentonline.org Hassell Smith, County and Court A. Hassell Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558-1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) Heal & Holmes, Gentry Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500-1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994; repr. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) 6 McCutcheon, 'Playing the Waiting Game' Elizabeth McCutcheon, 'Playing the Waiting Game: The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Wolley', Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 20 (1999), 31-53 Moody, Margaret Hoby Joanna Moody, ed., The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599-1605 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998) Oglander, Royalist's Notebook Sir John Oglander, A Royalist's Notebook: The Commonplace Book of Sir John Oglander Kt. of Nunwell 1622-1652, ed. and transcribed by Francis Bamford (London: Constable & Co., 1936) Questier, Catholicism and Community Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; repr. 2008) SHC Surrey History Centre, Woking TNA The National Archives, Kew VCH Victoria County History Notes on style The notes and Bibliography follow the MHRA style guide. However, there are some exceptions to this. For journal articles, on second and subsequent references the author, short title and page number only are given. The same applies to articles in books. All Victoria County History titles are referred to in footnotes as VCH followed by the name of the county and volume number, with the full details in the Bibliography. Volume numbers for the VCH are placed before the publication details. The full citations of all the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles which are referenced can also be found in the Bibliography. Dates are given in the new style, taking the beginning of the year to be 1st January rather than 25th March. That is to say, what to contemporaries would have been 1st January 1559 is here written as 1st January 1560. 7 Transcriptions are given with the original spelling and punctuation (or lack thereof). However, names and titles have been capitalised even if this is not the case in the original. Abbreviations have been expanded in square brackets. People are referred to by the title they had at the time in question. William More, for example, is only called Sir William after he was knighted in May 1576, and before that is just William More. 8 Acknowledgements Over the six and a half years on which I have been working on this thesis I have been helped by many people. I must thank first of all my supervisor Nigel Saul, who has encouraged me and kept me on course whenever I have been uncertain about how to proceed. The staff at the Surrey History Centre have been unfailingly kind and helpful to me, and borne with my ordering up vast quantities of either volumes of documents or loose letters and manuscripts (or indeed both) with great patience, for which I am very grateful. I would also like to thank Michael More Molyneux for permission to reproduce the portraits of Sir William and Sir George More and the painting of Loseley on p.53, and for his interest in my work. Dr Catherine Ferguson very kindly showed me round the Loseley Chapel at St Nicolas', Guildford, and generously shared her thoughts on the history of the building. I am very grateful to her for that, and for the church's permission to include the photographs I took of the chapel. Thanks are also due to the Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum who gave permission for me to include John Thorpe's plan for Loseley (p. 56); to the Isle of Wight Record Office, who sent me copies of letters between Sir John and Lady Oglander, and to the staff of the Bodleian Library, without whom I would probably still be trying to work out how to operate the microfilm reader. My main debt however is to my husband and children. Chris has cheerfully covered innumerable school runs, and at least one Sports Day, for me, and has been constantly supportive. Ollie, Josie and Georgie have been immensely patient both as we have dragged them round Tudor houses from The Vyne to Hardwick Hall and back again, and also with me whenever I seem to be in the sixteenth century rather than in the present. This is for all four of them, with the utmost gratitude. 9 The Mores of Loseley 1508-1632: Introduction Loseley Park Loseley Park near Guildford is a mellowing Elizabethan house of the 1560s, faced in stone from the Cistercian abbey at Waverley, which had been dissolved in 1536. It is still lived in by the descendants of the man who built it, Sir William More, although the family name is now More- Molyneux.