Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/52

 wardenship of the stannaries, whereupon Sir Francis Basset, M.P. for Penryn (subsequently Lord de Dunstanville), who was related to Morice by marriage, wrote an indignant letter of protest to the Duke of Portland, the nominal prime minister, declaring it impossible for him to support the dministration any longer.

Morice in his last years was a confirmed valetudinarian, visiting various health resorts. He was lying ill in 1782 at Bath, when he was cheered, according to Walpole, by the bequest of an estate for life of 1,500l. a year from 'old Lady Brown,' the widow of Sir Robert Brown, who had been a merchant at Venice. On 24 July 1782, just before leaving England for the last time, and while at his favourite residence, The Grove, Chiswick, he made his will. Three months later, when arrived at Nice, he executed a codicil giving to his trustees 600l. yearly from the estates he still possessed in Devonshire and Cornwall, 'to pay for the maintenance of the horses and dogs I leave behind me, and for the expense of servants to look after them,' such portion as was not required as the animals died off to be paid to the lady Mrs. Levina Luther whom he had made his heiress. He was always a lover of animals. According to George Colman the younger, 'all the stray animals which happened to follow him in London he sent down to this villa [The Grove, Chiswick]. . . . The honours shown by Mr. Morrice to his beasts of burthen were only inferior to those which Caligula lavished on his charger.' A year later Horace Walpole wrote of Morice to Lady Ossory that, whether he was better in health or worse, he was always in good spirits. But he was steadily preparing for death. A second codicil, executed at Naples on 14 March 1784, was characteristic. 'I desire,' he wrote, 'to be buried at Naples if I die there, and in a leaden coffin, if such a thing is to be had. Just before it is soldered I request the surgeon in Lord Tylney's house, or some other surgeon, to take out my heart, or to perform some other operation, to ascertain my being really dead.' He died at Naples on 18 Oct. 1785. A portrait at Hartwell shows him 'in an easy, reclining attitude, resting from field sports, with his dogs and gun, in a fine landscape scene.'  MORICE, RALPH (fl. 1523–1570), secretary to Archbishop Cranmer, born about 1500, was presumably younger son of James Morice, clerk of the kitchen and master of the works to Margaret, countess of Richmond. His father, who was living in 1537, amassed a considerable estate and lived at Chipping Ongar, Essex. His principal duty consisted in supervising the buildings of the countess at Cambridge ( and, Arch. Hist. of the Univ. of Cambridge, ii. 192, &c.) The eldest son, (fl. 1547), was gentleman-usher, first to Richard Pace [q. v.], and afterwards to Henry VIII, and towards the end of Henry's reign was in gaol and in peril of his life from a charge of heresy, through, the envy which his estate excited in some of the courtiers. John Southe saw him when kept in Southwell's house near the Charterhouse. He had added to the family estates by judicious investments in confiscated lands (cf. Trevelyan Papers, Camd. Soc., ii. 4). On his release from prison at Henry's death, and his election as member of parliament, he procured an act to be passed uniting the parishes of Ongar and Greenstead, he being the patron. This was repealed by an act of 1 Mary, Morice's labour being declared to be 'sinister,' and he to have been 'inordinately seeking his private lucre and profitt.' He died some time in Edward VI's reign. 