Urbana, I am indebted to many friends. Librarians and their assistants at Yale University, at the Bodleian Library, at the British Museum, at Columbia University, at the University of Chicago, at the University of Michigan, and at the University of Illinois, have helped in details too numerous for mention. The Rev. J. P. Morris, of Abingdon, Berkshire, has assisted me in a search for information concerning the Moore family. Mr. R. G. Appel of the Boston Public Library and Mr. R. B. Adam of Buffalo have furnished transcripts which were much needed, for which further acknowledgment is made in the notes.

My wife has aided me continually in the preparation of the manuscript, and the verification of details. Professor Ernest Bernbaum is doing me the great favor to read this work in proof. Professor D. Nichol Smith and the late Professor Thomas Seccombe of Oxford University were most helpful there. My deepest obligation is to Professor George H. Nettleton, who suggested this study, guided my research, read the completed manuscript, and saved me from numerous pitfalls.

The University of Illinois,

January 17, 1927.

J. H. C.

CHAPTER I

BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS

The history of English letters in the eighteenth century is full of stories of men of humble origin who rose to literary eminence. Particularly significant is the fact that the authors of The London Merchant and The Gamester came from families as unpretentious as those of Barnwell and Beverley.

So numerous were families of Moores in Devon and adjoining counties in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and so few are the records of their interrelationships, that it has been impossible to trace the ancestry of Edward Moore for any considerable number of generations. There is no lack of knowledge, however, of the members of his immediate family. His grandfather, uncle, and father were so prominent in the growth of Protestant dissent in the southwest counties of England that historians of nonconformity preserved what historians of literature might have sought too late.1

1The most important account of the Moore family was furnished to Robert Anderson, about 1793, by Joshua Toulmin, the continuator of Neal's History of the Puritans. It was based upon information supplied by Edward Moore's sister Elizabeth. then living at Taunton, and was embodied in Anderson's life of Moore in The Poets of Great Britain, 1794, 10. 275-282. Unacknowledged statements of fact with regard to the life of Edward Moore are, almost without exception, from this source.

Very important as a source of information concerning his grandfather, father, and uncle, is Edmund Calamy's The Nonconformist's Memorial, ed. Samuel Palmer, 1802, 2. 130-2. From it and from an article on John Moore (1642-1717) in D. N. B. I have also drawn without further citation. For information in regard to the place and date of John Moore's baptism I am indebted to Mr. W. T. Whitley of Droitwich, Worcestershire, and the Rev. Henry G. Cockerton, Rector of St. Michael's, Musbury, Devonshire.

Edward Moore's grandfather, 'John, ye sonne of John Moore,' was baptized (according to an entry in the parish register) 'ye 5 day of August 1643,' in the Church of St. Michael's, Musbury, near Colyton, Devon. Unfortunately his friends and biographers seem to have known nothing further of his ancestry.2 He attended the grammar school at Colyton, and was matriculated on 13 July, 1660, in Brasenose College, Oxford. At Brasenose he was the friend and fellow-student of John Prince, the author of the Worthies of Devon. Calamy says that Prince mentioned him with respect. In 1662 Moore received Episcopal ordination, and became curate of Long Burton, Dorset, and of the chapelry of Holnest. Although he was still conforming sufficiently on August 2, 1667, to baptize his daughter Margaret, he soon after became convinced that he could no longer continue in the Church of England. Calamy says that he had met with much trouble on account of not practicing total conformity before he left the Established Church.

Slow as he had been to make his final decision, no one was a more zealous dissenter thereafter. He retired to a small paternal estate at Ottery St. Mary, and preached to the people near by at the risk of his life and property. Once he fled very shortly before his persecutors entered the house and ran their swords through all the beds. His goods were once seized and publicly cried for sale, but so great was the sympathy of the neighbors that no one would buy them. They were restored to him, but, in the end, notwithstanding

'Perhaps his nonconformity alienated him from his kinsmen. It seems probable that his family was a branch of the Moores of Moorehayes, Cullompton, Devon, some fifteen miles away. The names John and Thomas were favored in at least one branch of that family, as in the family to which Edward Moore belonged. The Johns and Thomases, moreover, were Oxonians and divines. See the accounts in D. N. B. of John Moore (1646-1714), who became Bishop of Ely, and of John Moore (d. 1619). See also Notes and Queries, Series VI, 5. 391-2.