Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/127

 city he endeavoured to collect ship-money amid much opposition. He was elected M.P. for the county in 1656, and was returned for the same constituency to Richard Cromwell's parliament in December 1658; but in February 1658–9 the house resolved that the return was invalid, and declared Henry Carey, viscount Falkland, duly elected in his place (, Sheriffs of Oxfordshire, p. 46). By his wife Jane (d. 1713), daughter of Sir John Rouse, he was father of Sir Edward Norris of Weston-on-the-Green, who was knighted on 22 Nov. 1662, and was M.P. for Oxfordshire in six parliaments (1675–1679, 1700–8), and for Oxford in four; while his son Francis (d. 1706) was M.P. for Oxford in three parliaments (1700–5). 

NORRIS, HENRY (d. 1536), courtier, was second son of Sir Edward Norris or Norreys who took part in the battle of Stoke in 1487, and was then knighted, by his wife Frideswide, daughter of Francis, viscount Lovel. The eldest son, John Norris, was an esquire of the body to Henry VIII, and was afterwards usher of the outer chamber both to Henry VIII and Edward VI. He was afterwards promoted as ‘a rank papist’ to be chief usher of the privy chamber to Queen Mary (, Memorials, i. 100–1, and Annals,  i. 8). He married Elizabeth, sister of Edmund, lord Braye; but dying, according to Dugdale, on 21 Oct. 1564, left no legitimate issue, and his property descended to his brother's son.

The family was connected with the Norrises of Speke, Lancashire, a member of which, Richard de Norreys, cook to Eleanor, queen of Henry III, had been granted in 1267 the manor of Ockholt in the parish of Bray, Berkshire, at a fee-farm rent of 40s. More than a century later this property at Bray fell to John, the second son by a second marriage of Sir Henry Norris of Speke. This John Norris must be regarded as the founder of the chief Berkshire family of Norris. (His half-brother William was great-great-grandfather of another John Norris who founded in the sixteenth century another family of Norris at Fyfield, also in Berkshire.) The great-grandson of John, founder of the Bray line, also named John, was first usher to the chamber in Henry VI's reign, squire of the body, master of the wardrobe, sheriff of Oxford and Berkshire in 1442 and 1457, and squire of the body to Edward IV. He built at Bray the ancient mansion at Ockholt known as Ockwells, and through his marriage with Alice Merbrooke, his first wife, added to his estates the manor of Yattendon, Berkshire. He died on 1 Sept. 1467, and was buried at Bray in an aisle of the church which he had himself erected. His will is printed in Charles Kerry's ‘History of Bray,’ 1861 (pp. 116 seq.). By his second wife, Millicent, daughter and heiress of Ravenscroft of Cotton-End, Hardingstone, Northamptonshire, he had several children. One son, John of Ockholt, was sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1479. Another son, Sir William, inherited the manor of Yattendon, was knighted in early youth at the battle of Northampton on 9 July 1458 (, Knights, p. 2), and was afterwards knight of the body to Edward IV. He was sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1468–9, 1482–3, and 1486. In October 1483 he joined in the rebellion of the Duke of Buckingham [see ], and was attainted of high treason (Rot. Parl. vi. 245 b). But he escaped to Brittany, where he joined Henry of Richmond, and returned in 1485, when Henry became king. In 1487 he commanded at the battle of Stoke. Dugdale assumed that he was ‘learned in the laws’ because in 1487 John, duke of Suffolk, granted him ‘pro bono consilio impenso et impendendo’ an annuity of twenty marks out of the manor of Swerford, Oxfordshire, while Henry VII, in 1502, ‘for the like consideration of his counsel,’ made him custodian of the manor of Langley, and steward of the manors of Burford, Shipton, Spellesbury, and the Hundred of Chadlington, all in Oxfordshire, and the property of Edward, the infant heir of George, duke of Clarence. A manor adjoining Yattendon, of which Sir William became possessed about 1500, was thenceforth known as Hampstead Norris. (It had been previously called successively Hampstead Cifrewast and Hampstead Ferrars (cf. , Berkshire, p. 287).) Sir William married twice. By his first wife, Isabel, daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Ingoldesthorpe of Borough Green, near Newmarket, and widow of John Neville, marquis of Montagu [q. v.], he was father of William (knighted in 1487), Lionel (knighted in 1529), and Richard (all of whom died young), and of three daughters. By his second wife, Jane, daughter of John Vere, twelfth earl of Oxford, he had a son Edward, who alone of his sons lived to middle age and was father of the subject of this notice (cf., Sheriffs of Oxfordshire; , Hist. of Bray).

Henry Norris came to court in youth, was appointed gentleman of the king's chamber,