Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/13

 9 th 8. 1. JAN. 1, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

I

births because they cover the period hitherto attributed to that of the second child, Thomas, and to show there was no other son of that Christian name born therein.

As no name is given by biographers to Sir John's second wife, may we not assume, from the evidence of the before-named MS., that as "Agnes, daughter of Thomas (Jraunger," and that probably she was the first wife of the judge, and the daughter of Handcombe the second wife 1 ? But whether she was first or second, she clearly was the mother of the Chancellor.

MR. W. A. WRIGHT also suggested in 1 868 that "if any heraldic reader of *N. & Q.' could find what are the arms quartered with those of More upon the Chancellor's tomb at Chelsea, they would probably throw some light upon the question."

That, of course, is as to the ancestry of the family. The quartering in question is Argent, on a chevron between three uni- corns' heads erased sable, as many bezants. Whose arms are these, and how and when acquired by the More family 1 It is written by More's biographer that Sir John "bare arms from his birth, having his coat quartered, which doth argue that he came to his inherit- ance by descent," and "must needs be a gentleman." As they were not the arms of the Leycesters, Sir John's mother being of that name, they must have been acquired in some earlier time. The only arms I can find similar are those of the Killingbecks of Yorkshire; but how and when they were connected with the Mores there has been no evidence to show, unless we venture to imagine the later circumstance of Ann Cresacre, the heiress of Barnborough Hall, "Yorkshire, living in the Chancellor's family as a child, and subsequently marrying John More, as responsible for an earlier associa- tion with that county, through such a con- nexion as the Killingbecks.

However, the fact of Sir John More bearing quartered arms from his birth is evidence of ancestry now lost record of, and this is per- haps to be accounted for from the fact of the Chancellor's execution taking place when his family was comparatively young, and, as his great-grandson writes,

" by reason of King Henry's seizure of all our evi- dences we cannot certainly tell who were Sir John's ancestors, yet must they needs be gentlemen."

This uncertainty, and the fact of the quar- tered arms not being identified satisfactorily, incline me to think there may be more truth in the curious work in the British Museum written in 1640 by Thomas de Eschallers de la More, in which he gives a sketch of a pedigree from, inter alia,

"Sir Thomas de la More, Knight, who was a courtier in the reigns of Edward the First, Edward the Second, and Edward the Third, and was a servant (and wrote the life) of King Edward the Second."

This work I have never seen. It possibly may throw some light upon its author. Can any reader of *N. & Q.' inform me about it 1 ? Dibdin and modern publishers cast doubts upon this work, which was dedicated to Charles I., because Cresacre More and other biographers of the Chancellor do not allude to the pedigrees therein given; but as the same biographers express their own ignorance about the wives of Sir John More and of the quartered arms he bore from his birth, and state that King Henry seized all the family evidences, it is not unreasonable to imagine there may be truth in this hitherto discre- dited pedigree. If the quartered arms can be identified, that will help much. What were the arms of the De Eschallers ?

Possibly a scrutiny of some of the More wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury may

@'ve information upon Sir John's ancestry, itherto I have only proved he was son of John More, a Reader in Lincoln's Inn, of whose wife I have no record, although I have of his mother, Johanna, daughter of John Leycester.

Any elucidation of the foregoing queries will be acceptable.

C. T. J. MOORE, F.S.A. (Col. and C.B.). Frampton Hall, near Boston.

SULPICIUS SEVERUS AND THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. It is well known that this early Christian writer (the intimate friend of St. Martin of Tours) places the Nativity of Christ in the consulship of Sabinus and Rufinus, or Rufus (' Hist. Sacr.,' ii. 39), which would be B.C. 4 of our ordinary chronology. But he states that Herod the Great did not die until four years afterwards. Although he agrees in this with Epiphanius, it has been clearly proved that it is erroneous, and that Herod died in the spring of B.C. 4, a few months after the birth of Christ. But the most remarkable error in Sulpicius is that which follows. He tells us that the tetrarch Archelaus succeeded Herod, and ruled nine years, and Herod (meaning Antipas, the eldest son of Herod the Great) twenty-four years. Then he adds, "Hoc regnante, anno regni octavo et decimo, Dominus crucifixus est, Fufio Gemino et Rubellio Gemino con- sulibus." Their consulship corresponded to A.D. 29 ; but a more confused statement than the above could hardly be. We know, by the evidence of coins, that Herod Antipas ruled as