MORICE (MORRIS), Thomas (c.1577-?aft.1650), of King Street West, Westminster

Five infants named Thomas Morris were baptized at St. Margaret’s, Westminster between 1579 and 1587, of whom at least one died young. Memorials of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, 38, 48-49, 70, 74, 436. However, this Member, identified as a Grocer by the newsletter writer Joseph Mead, T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 327. must have been born in about 1577 in order to have qualified for the freedom of his Company in 1598.

In 1604 Morice borrowed £50 from the Grocers, perhaps with the help of his uncle, Cuthbert Lynde, who served as upper warden in 1608 and whose will Morice witnessed that same year. GL, ms 11588/2, pp. 290, 366, 291; PROB 11/112, f. 81v. He was probably resident in St. Margaret’s, Westminster by 1610, when a Thomas Morris served as overseer of the poor. Moreover, in 1611 St. Margaret’s churchwardens received 4s. ‘from Mistress Morris, wife of Thomas, for her part in the north side of the middle aisle’. H.F. Westlake, St. Margaret’s, Westminster, 222. In 1616 a Thomas Morris leased a tenement in the almonry from the former abbey, the first of several Westminster properties let to a man of this name over the next 18 years. WAM, Chapter Act bk. ii. ff. 18v, 22r-v; mss 18155, 35881-2, 36464-5, 35572-3, 35896-7, 36491-6, 36516. In June 1620 Morice, identified as the Grocer, obtained a lease of a house in Tothill Street from Christ’s Hospital. GL, ms 12806/3, f. 282v. He was evidently fairly prosperous, for in 1625 a Thomas ‘Morris’ of Westminster was rated at £6 in goods. E115/270/46. It is not known whether this Member was the Thomas Morris who owned shares worth £87 10s. in the Virginia Company. Virg. Co. Recs. ed. S.M. Kingsbury, iii. 86, 329, 593-4.

Morice was returned to Parliament for Westminster in 1628 after a contested election which saw the defeat of Buckingham’s nominee, Sir Robert Pye*, due to discontent over the Forced Loan. There is no record that he ever spoke in the House, but along with his fellow Westminster Member, Joseph Bradshaw, he was required to consider petitions regarding John Peck’s patent as register of sales and pawns (17 June) and the custom house (20 June). He was also twice appointed to help collect money from his fellow Members, some of which he was instructed to distribute, as was usual, among the poor parishioners of St. Margaret’s. CD 1628, ii. 275; iii. 60; Westlake, 100.

In 1630 Morice stood for the junior wardenship of the Grocer’s Company, but he was not elected until the following year. GL, ms 11588, iii. 432. Around the same time he donated £5 to the parish of St. Margaret’s ‘at the death of his aunt Mrs. Markins’. WCA, E153 unfol. (1630-1 acct.). He became upper warden in 1637, having unsuccessfully sought the post the previous year, GL, ms 11588, iii. 566. and visited the Company’s school and almshouses at Oundle. Responding to a complaint concerning some of the almsmen ‘for their contentious spirits and uncleanliness in their houses’, Morice gave them all ‘a godly and charitable exhortation’, threatening them with removal if they did not amend their behaviour. Ibid. 601. He continued to play an active role in Company affairs after leaving office. In September 1638, for instance, he was among those who were dispatched to Studley, in Warwickshire, after one Fulke Knutteforde had offered to sell the parish’s impropriation to the Company. Ibid. 615. In April 1640 he was nominated to help choose a committee with power to petition Parliament for regaining the Company’s ‘free trade in the sale of tobacco and other commodities’. GL, ms 11588, iv. 1. Morice continued to attend Company meetings sporadically until 28 July 1642, but thereafter his name disappears suddenly, suggesting death, infirmity or royalism. Ibid. 55. A Thomas Morris was nevertheless named to the Westminster militia committee in 1648 and continued to rent property in the almonry. A. and O. ii. 265. The Thomas Morris of Westminster who became an excise farmer for Kent, Sussex and Ireland in 1657-8 is unlikely to have been this Member, CSP Ire. 1660-2, p.156; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 113, 287; 1661-2, pp. 530, 549, 563; CJ, vii. 549a, 784a, 793a. who would then have been over 80.