Background
Moore was the son of Thomas Moore, butcher, and his wife Elizabeth. He was born in Gloucester and was baptised in Saint Michael"s Church, Gloucester, on 13 January 1729-1730.
priest Archbishop of Canterbury
Moore was the son of Thomas Moore, butcher, and his wife Elizabeth. He was born in Gloucester and was baptised in Saint Michael"s Church, Gloucester, on 13 January 1729-1730.
He was educated at the The Crypt School, Gloucester.
He was a student at Pembroke College, Oxford (matriculated 1745. Bachelor 1748; Master of Arts 1751). Having taken holy orders, he was for some years tutor to Lords Charles and Robert Spencer, younger sons of the second Duke of Marlborough. On 21 September 1761, he was preferred to the fifth prebendal stall in the church of Durham, and in April 1763, to a canonry at Christ Church, Oxford.
On 1 July 1764, he took the degrees of Bachelor of Divinity and Doctor of Divinity On 19 September 1771, he was made dean of Canterbury, and on 10 February 1775, bishop of Bangor.
On the death of Archbishop Frederick Cornwallis, he was translated to the see of Canterbury, 26 April 1783, on the joint recommendation of Bishops Robert Lowth and Richard Hurd, both of whom had declined the primacy. Though not a great ecclesiastic, Moore was an amiable and worthy prelate, a competent administrator, and a promoter of the Sunday-school movement and of missionary enterprise.
He appears to have dispensed his patronage with somewhat more than due regard to the interests of his own family. He died at Lambeth Palace on 18 January 1805, and was buried in Lambeth parish church.
Moore married twice, first, a daughter of Robert Wright, chief justice of South Carolina.
Secondly, on 23 January 1770, Catherine, daughter of Sir Robert Eden, bart., of West Auckland. He left issue.