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152
The Autobiography of Archbishop Thomas Seeker
for Great Bedwyn 1741-47, Oxfordshire 1755-61 and Penryn 1761-66.
At the accession of George III he supported Lord Bute, not Newcastle
(Namier and Brooke, H. C, III, pp. 569-70). The dispute concerned the
enclosure of the common fields of Merton, Oxfordshire, and its bearing
on the value of the rectory, which belonged to the college [C.W. Boase,
Registrum Collegii Exoniensis (Oxford Historical Society, 1894), p. 330].
The tithes were commuted for land under the enclosure act of 1763.
Society for the Reformation of Manners: a number of these societies
were first formed in 1692 for the purpose of suppressing immorality and
profaneness by prosecuting offenders in civil courts. One of the societies,
composed of lawyers and magistrates, had the task of putting the laws
into force and of raising subscriptions for the expenses of prosecutions.
The societies, supported by both churchmen and dissenters, had
considerable effect in the suppression of vice, but were strongly resented
for their use of informers and the enforcement of laws to promote
religion and virtue rather than moral persuasion and example. See J.H.
Overton, Life in the English Church 1660-1714 (London, 1885), pp.
213-16.
Dr Dumaresq: Daniel Dumaresq (b. 1713), who had formerly been
chaplain to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, envoy to Dresden and
Berlin, and received his D.D. by diploma from Oxford (Exeter college)
in 1752 while serving as chaplain to the English factory at St. Petersburg
(Boase, Registrum Collegii Exoniensis, p. 142). The delegates of the
University Press ordered on 5 July, 1758, that "a Present be made to
Dr. Dumaresq of One Copy of the Bodleian Catalogue, large Paper, in
Consideration of the many Books he had sent to the University from
Russia" [LG. Philip, William Blackstone and the Reform of the Oxford
University Press in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1957), p. 100]. In 1765
the archbishop was to recommend Dumaresq strongly for the deanery of
Windsor in that he "hath done both Service & Honour to the British
nation at the court of Russia for many Years ..." (B.L. Add. MS
32,970, fol. 58: Seeker to Newcastle, 25 September, 1765).
Mr Moor: John Moore or Moor (d. 1768), who was elected lecturer at
St. Sepulchre's, Holborn, in 1754, and appointed rector of St. Bartholomew
the Great, West Smithfield, in 1761. He was one of those who
believed the accusations of the Cock Lane Ghost (see following entry)
and was consequently indicted for conspiracy. A number of prominent
people attested to Moore's good character, among them Dr. Thomas
Birch, Dr. John Burton, Daniel Porter (a Surrey J.P.), and if Horace
Walpole's story is true, Seeker, whose letter Lord Mansfield as judge put
in his pocket unopened. Moore, undoubtedly a dupe rather than a