Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/109

 bold, and shameless, but well equipped with learning and eloquence.’ His uncle Arnulf accuses him of greed and ingratitude, a charge which is to some extent justified by his relations with Longchamp. On the other hand he served Henry II faithfully, and Giraldus Cambrensis says that, ‘whatever he may have appeared in his public career, he was in private acceptable to God both in heart and deed.’ His reputation for eloquence is justified by the graphic report which Giraldus gives of his speech to the bishops in November 1189. He was witty, and had a bitter tongue, never losing an opportunity to carp at monks. He told Richard: ‘If I had my way there would not be a monk left in England. To the devil with all monks!’ On another occasion, when Hubert Walter corrected Richard for saying ‘coram nobis’ instead of ‘coram nos,’ Hugh showed his scholarship by saying: ‘Stick to your own grammar, sire, for it is the better’ ( i. 394; iii. 30, iv. 67, 71, 397.

On the strength of his unimportant letter to the Bishop of London in 1190, and his longer account of Longchamp's fall, Hugh is included by Bale among his English writers. The latter letter is given in the ‘Gesta Ricardi,’ ii. 215–20, and Hoveden, iii. 141–7. It frequently occurs by itself in manuscripts, e.g. Bodleian Add. A 44, where it is accompanied by a metrical version of contemporary date, which has been printed in the ‘English Historical Review,’ v. 317–19. Arnulf, in his ‘Carmen ad Nepotem suum cum esset adolescens,’ speaks of Hugh as the rising poet of Normandy; but no poetry of Hugh's appears to have survived, unless indeed the metrical version referred to above is by him. Some constitutions originally published by Hugh are given in Wilkins's ‘Concilia,’ i. 496–501, and a letter from him to Herbert of Salisbury is in the ‘Register of St. Osmund,’ i. 266–7.

 NOORTHOUCK, JOHN (1746?–1816), author, born in London about 1746, was the son of Herman Noorthouck, a bookseller of some repute, who had a shop, the Cicero's Head, Great Piazza, Covent Garden, and whose stock was sold off in 1730 (, Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 619, 649). Early in life John Noorthouck was patronised by Owen Ruffhead and William Strahan the printer (ib. iii. 395). He gained his livelihood as an index-maker and corrector of the press. He was for almost fifty years a liveryman of the Company of Stationers, and spent nearly all his life in London, living in 1773 in Barnard's Inn, Holborn. His principal work was ‘A New History of London, including Westminster and Southwark,’ London, 1773, 4to, with copperplates. This book gives a history of London at all periods and a survey of the existing buildings. Noorthouck also published ‘An Historical and Classical Dictionary,’ 2 vols. London, 1776, 8vo, consisting of biographies of persons of all periods and countries. In 1814 Noorthouck was living at Oundle, Northamptonshire (ib. viii. 455), where he died about July 1816, aged about 70.

In a bookseller's catalogue, issued by John Russell Smith in London, April 1852, ‘the original autograph manuscript of the life of John Noorthouck, author of the “History of the Man after God's own Heart,” “History of London,” &c.,’ was offered for sale, and was there described as an unprinted autobiography containing many curious literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xii. 204). In the ‘Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors’ (1816, p. 253) is attributed to John Noorthouck ‘Constitutions of the Free and Accepted Masons,’ new edit. 1784, 4to.

 NORBURY, first. [See, 1740–1831.]

NORCOME, DANIEL (1576–1647?), musician, probably the son of Nurcombe or Norcome, lay clerk of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, between 1564 and 1587, was born at Windsor in 1576. Like his father, Norcome is said to have been singing-man at Windsor in the reign of James I, but the name does not appear in the rolls of that period, and there is evidence to show that he was an exile on account of his faith in 1602, that he was admitted as instrumentalist to the arch-ducal chapel at Brussels, and that he was still there in 1647. 