The Morice Town neighbourhood near Stoke in Plymouth is named after Sir William Morice (1602 – 1676) who owned the manor of Stoke Damerel from the mid 1600s onwards1. He inherited Churston Manor near Holsworthy in Devon (through marriage), and bought Werrington House (Devon/Cornwall border) which became the family home2.
As a wealthy landowner, and supporter of Charles II (and relative of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle)3, he was rewarded with important government roles including:
- appointed High Sheriff of Devon in 1651
- MP for Devon in 1654, in the First Protectorate Parliament
- made a Privy Counsellor
- appointed Secretary of State for the Northern Department (equivalent to the Foreign Secretary)
He married Elizabeth Prideaux (a long-standing Devon family with many branches4), and later Honor Fortescue.
Family links to slavery
One of of Sir William Morice & Elizabeth Prideaux’s sons, Humphrey Morice (1638-89) became a London trader. This Humphrey had a son, also named Humphrey (1679-1731), who was deeply and actively involved in slave-trading, and exerted a strong influence on British government policy towards the transatlantic slave-trading and slave plantation system5.
Read more about this history in Gillian Allen’s research The Morice Family and their connections to slavery, Devon houses and other families
- Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 / Morice, William – https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Morice,_William ↩︎
- Werrington, Cornwall – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werrington,_Cornwall ↩︎
- William Morice (Secretary of State) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morice_%28Secretary_of_State%29 ↩︎
- The Prideaux family of Devon – https://www.globalcentredevon.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Prideaux_for_DDE.pdf ↩︎
- Gillian Allen (2022) The Morice Family and their connections to slavery, Devon houses and other families ↩︎