Show themes

A patron of learning and learned men

His royal favour

While Moore’s collection was in essence private, as one of the most significant collections in the country it was nevertheless viewed as a public resource for study. The epitaph on his memorial in Ely Cathedral notes ‘for many years there was nothing of great mark published to which his well-stored Library … did not furnish some of the materials’, and his name is mentioned in the prefaces to many scholarly editions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, particularly in the classics.
Moore welcomed many visitors to his library, firstly in Norwich and later at Ely Place, the London residence of the Bishops of Ely. He also frequently lent out books and manuscripts to fellow churchmen and academics, recording these loans in his almanacks and notebooks. Amongst those benefiting from his generosity were his long-time ally the classical scholar Richard Bentley, historian of the Reformation Gilbert Burnet, the publisher Jacob Tonson, and Ezechiel von Spanheim, Ambassador of Frederick I of Prussia.