Sir Thomas More and North MimmsAuthor(s): Charles SissonSource: The Review of English Studies, Vol. 5, No. 17 (Jan., 1929), pp. 54-55Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/508862 .

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NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

SIR THOMAS MORE AND NORTH MIMMS

IT is known that the More family owned property at Mimms in Hertfordshire, but no description of it is to be found in the references in various Lives of Sir Thomas More.

In I608 Cresacre More sued Sir Ralph Coningsbie in the Court of Chancery, the suit turning upon this property. The Interroga- tories and evidence given on behalf of Cresacre More by two Mimms men are preserved in Town Depositions, Bundle 348, file 136, in the Record Office, and in these documents a description of the property is given from which it may perhaps be identified or at any rate localised precisely.

The two witnesses are John Mosse, husbandman, aged fifty- eight, and resident at South Mimms, and Thomas James, yeoman, aged seventy, and then resident at Chalfont St. Giles. Mosse can only claim to go back forty years in memory, but James has known the district for sixty years, and was the nearest householding neigh- bour to the More family there. From their evidence it appears that the property was situated in Swanley Street in North Mimms. There were four houses in this street, but one of them, called Milke- soppes, at the end of the street adjoining the common wood of North Mimms and near a great elm tree, had been burned down about 1568. Of the remaining houses, one belonged to Thomas James and was called Spincotes. The other two were property of the More family, and were occupied or leased by Mr. Wilford of Enfield and John Burnett of North Mimms. None of the houses is known to be called Langborrowes, as is suggested in one of the questions put to the witnesses.

There is, moreover, a croft and a wood adjoining it, which also were More property. The croft, occupied by Widow Lowen, is called Annatt Fryers, and the wood Shilbornes Grove. Within

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NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

the wood, which is leased by William Heyes, is a meadow full of bushes called Shilbomes Mead. The underwood from this wood had formerly been bought by Thomas James from Mr. Higgins, then Bailiff to Sir John Puckering, about i592 or 593. But there was no house built on this land. It is not known whether either of these two properties, Burnett's house or the croft and wood, were freehold or copyhold, but both were " comffonly reputed & taken to be thin- heritance and land of the Mores."

It will be observed that the witnesses do not agree with the view suggested in the Interrogatory that the properties have " bin allwaies comionlie reputed and taken to haue bin sometyme the frehold Lande of Sr Thomas More knight and his heires." It was, of course, the fact that Sir Thomas never came into possession of them, by inherit- ance from his mother, and that they therefore were not confiscated but remained the property of the family.

Of the three properties mentioned, two are clearly identified. No clue is given to one of the More houses in Swanley Street. But the other, in the occupation of Burnett, has a close belonging to it and adjoining it called Freynes. And the croft, close or wood called Annatt Fryers, with the adjacent Shilbornes Grove, lies on the east side of London Lane, near the field called Blackelands.

CHARLES SISSON.

A NOTE ON RICHARD EDWARDS

THE Huntington Library owns what is thought to be the only complete copy of The Arbor of amorous Deuises, a poetical miscellany entered in the Stationers' Register by Richard Jones on January 7, 1594, and impudently published by him in 1597 under the name of Nicholas Breton. I have recently had an opportunity to examine this book, and among numerous other interesting matters have observed that it contains (sigs. B I-B IV) " A Ladies complaint for the losse of her Loue," a poem of eight four-line stanzas identical with " An Elegie on the Death of a Sweetheart," by Richard Edwards, that I printed from a manuscript in The Review of English Studies for April i928. Variations between the two copies are slight, but where they do occur the printed version is superior. Thus the third

the wood, which is leased by William Heyes, is a meadow full of bushes called Shilbomes Mead. The underwood from this wood had formerly been bought by Thomas James from Mr. Higgins, then Bailiff to Sir John Puckering, about i592 or 593. But there was no house built on this land. It is not known whether either of these two properties, Burnett's house or the croft and wood, were freehold or copyhold, but both were " comffonly reputed & taken to be thin- heritance and land of the Mores."

It will be observed that the witnesses do not agree with the view suggested in the Interrogatory that the properties have " bin allwaies comionlie reputed and taken to haue bin sometyme the frehold Lande of Sr Thomas More knight and his heires." It was, of course, the fact that Sir Thomas never came into possession of them, by inherit- ance from his mother, and that they therefore were not confiscated but remained the property of the family.

Of the three properties mentioned, two are clearly identified. No clue is given to one of the More houses in Swanley Street. But the other, in the occupation of Burnett, has a close belonging to it and adjoining it called Freynes. And the croft, close or wood called Annatt Fryers, with the adjacent Shilbornes Grove, lies on the east side of London Lane, near the field called Blackelands.

CHARLES SISSON.

A NOTE ON RICHARD EDWARDS

THE Huntington Library owns what is thought to be the only complete copy of The Arbor of amorous Deuises, a poetical miscellany entered in the Stationers' Register by Richard Jones on January 7, 1594, and impudently published by him in 1597 under the name of Nicholas Breton. I have recently had an opportunity to examine this book, and among numerous other interesting matters have observed that it contains (sigs. B I-B IV) " A Ladies complaint for the losse of her Loue," a poem of eight four-line stanzas identical with " An Elegie on the Death of a Sweetheart," by Richard Edwards, that I printed from a manuscript in The Review of English Studies for April i928. Variations between the two copies are slight, but where they do occur the printed version is superior. Thus the third

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