Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/148

Norris submission and the ringleaders punished, by Sir William Fitzwilliam.

The plantation of Munster, from which so much had been hoped, not progressing according to Elizabeth's expectations, Norris, who was 'well acquainted with all the accidents and services of Munster,' was, in the winter of 1592-3, sent over to England to give a detailed report of all the proceedings of the commissioners of plantation. He returned apparently about May 1593. With the exception of some slight disturbances, caused during that summer by Donnogh MacCarthy, the Earl of Clancar's bastard son, nothing occurred for some time to break the peace of the province, and the work of the plantation accordingly proceeded apace. On 10 Aug. 1594 Norris went to Dublin to meet the new lord-deputy, Sir William Russell [q. v.], whom he attended in his progress through Ulster. In the following year he served under his brother, Sir John Norris, against the Earl of Tyrone, and was wounded in the thigh in the engagement that took place halfway between Newry and Armagh on 4 Sept. He was naturally involved in the quarrel between his brother and Sir William Russell, and was charged by the latter with neglecting the duties of his office at a time of great danger. He assisted Sir John Norris as commissioner for the pacification of Connaught in June 1596; but in August he was engaged in repelling an incursion of the MacSheehys and O'Briens into Munster. He hanged ninety of them within ten days; but it was only after repeated exertions that he managed to rid the province of them. He again in September accompanied Sir John Norris into Connaught, and, Sir Richard Bingham's disgrace having temporarily deprived that province of its governor, he was appointed by his brother provisional president of Connaught: 'more,' I protest Sir John wrote, 'to follow Sir Geoffrey Fenton's advice than my own, fearing lest his remove hereafter should be a disgrace unto us both.' The arrival shortly afterwards of the new president, Sir Conyers Clifford [q. v.], enabled him to return to his own province, and in June 1597 it was reported that he had reduced Munster to tolerable quietness, and had 'happily cut off, both by prosecution and justice, many of the most dangerous rebels of that province.' On the death of Sir John Norris in that year he succeeded him on 20 Sept. as president of Munster, and in consequence shortly afterwards of the sudden death of the lord-deputy, Lord Borough, he was on 29 Oct. elected by the council, as being 'in their conceits a person tempered both for martial affairs and civil government,' lord justice of Ireland. The election was not confirmed by Elizabeth, on the ground that his presence was specially required in Munster. Accordingly, Loftus and Gardiner having been appointed lords justices, Norris returned to Munster on 29 Nov. On the general insurrection of the Irish after the battle of the Yellow Ford, on 14 Aug. 1598, and the irruption into Munster of the Leinster Irish, under Owny MacRory O'More, Norris concentrated his forces in the neighbourhood of Mallow; but, not feeling sufficiently strong to encounter Owny MacRory, he withdrew to Cork. He was much blamed for his precipitate retreat. 'Sir Thomas Norris,' wrote John Chamberlain on 22 Nov. 1598, 'hath his part with the rest, and is thought to have taken the alarm too soon, and left his station before there was need, whereby the enemy was too much encouraged, and those that were well affected or stood indifferent forced to follow the tide.' Things went rapidly from bad to worse. Norris himself suffered severely: his English sheep were stolen, his park wall broken down, and his deer let loose. Towards the end of December, however, he managed, though fiercely attacked by William Burke, to relieve Kilmallock. But a second expedition on 27 March 1599 merely resulted in the capture of Carriglea Castle, and on 4 April he returned to Cork, skirmishing with the Irish to the very walls of the city. The arrival of the Earl of Essex afforded him a slight breathing space. He went to Kilkenny to meet the lord-lieutenant, and, returning to Munster, was on his way from Buttevant to Limerick on 30 May, when, at a place conjectured to be Kilteely, near Hospital, co. Limerick, he encountered a body of Irish under Thomas Burke. In the skirmish 'he received a violent and venomous thrust of a pike where the jaw-bone joins the upper part of the neck.' The Burkes were completely routed,' which service,' wrote Chamberlain, 'is much magnified by her majesty herself to the old Lord and Lady Norris, with so many good and gracious words to them in particular as were able to revive them if they were in swoune or half dead.' Norris's wound was not at first thought likely to prove fatal. He reached Limerick apparently on 4 June, and, having revictualled Askeaton, he joined Essex at Kilmallock, and attended him in his progress through the province till his departure on 20 June. But with the exertion his wound became rapidly worse. He was taken to his house at Mallow, and, after lingering for some time in great pain, he died there on 20 Aug. 1599. Norris was apparently a man of literary tastes, and is mentioned by Lodowick 