Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/229

 his life, on account of his negotiations with Queen Mary Stuart, Norton, who had already published in 1569 a ‘Discourse touching the pretended Match betwene the Duke of Norfolk and the Queene of Scottes,’ was officially appointed by the government to take notes of the trial. But he aspired to active employment in the war of persecution on the catholics which Queen Elizabeth's advisers were organising. In order to procure information against the enemy he travelled to Rome in 1579, and his diary, containing an account of his journey until his return to London on 18 March 1579–80, is still extant among Lord Calthorpe's manuscripts (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. p. 40); it has not been published. After his return from Rome he was sent to Guernsey, with Dr. John Hammond (August 1580), to investigate the islanders' complaints against the governor, Sir Thomas Leighton, and subsequently, in January 1582–3, he was member of a commission to inquire into the condition of Sark. But in January 1581 he realised his ambition of becoming an official censor of the queen's catholic subjects. He was appointed by the Bishop of London licenser of the press, and he was commissioned to draw up the interrogatories to be addressed to Henry Howard [q. v.], afterwards earl of Northampton, then a prisoner in the Tower. The earl was charged with writing a book in support of his brother, the Duke of Norfolk, who had already been executed as a traitor and a catholic. On 28 April following he conducted, under torture, the examination of Alexander Briant, seminary priest, and was credited with the cruel boast that he had stretched him on the rack a foot longer than God had made him. He complained to Walsingham (27 March 1582) that he was consequently nicknamed ‘Rackmaster-General,’ and explained, not very satisfactorily, that it was before, and not after, the rack had been applied to Briant that he had used the remark attributed to him (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90, p. 48). In July Norton subjected to like usage Thomas Myagh, an Irishman, who had already suffered the milder torments of Skevington's irons without admitting his guilt. Edmund Campion [q. v.], the jesuit, and other prisoners in the Tower were handed over to receive similar mercies at Norton's hands later in the year.

But such services did not recommend his extreme religious opinions to the favour of the authorities, and in the spring of 1582 he was confined in his own house in the Guildhall, London, for disrespectful comments on the English bishops, made in a conversation with John Hampton of Trinity College, Cambridge, afterwards archbishop of Armagh. He was soon released, and in 1583 he presided at the examination of more catholic prisoners. He seems to have been engaged in racking Francis Throgmorton. When the Earl of Arundel was examined at Whitehall by the privy council, Norton actively aided the prosecution; but the earl and his countess satisfactorily established their innocence. Norton conducted the prosecution of William Carter, who was executed 2 Jan. 1583–4 for printing the ‘Treatise of Schism.’ But his dissatisfaction with the episcopal establishment grew with his years, and at length involved him in a charge of treason and his own committal to the Tower. While in the Tower he recommended to Walsingham an increased rigour in the treatment of catholics, and his suggestions seem to have prompted the passage through parliament of the sanguinary statute which was adopted in 1584. He soon obtained his liberty by Walsingham's influence; but his health was broken, and he died at his house at Sharpenhoe on 10 March 1583–4. He was buried in the neighbouring church of Streatley. On his death-bed he made a nuncupative will, which was proved on 15 April 1584, directing his wife's brother and executor, Thomas Cranmer, to dispose of his property for the benefit of his wife and children.

After the death of his first wife, Margaret Cranmer, Norton married, before 1568, her cousin Alice, daughter of Edmund Cranmer, archdeacon of Canterbury. Always a bigoted protestant, she at length fell a victim to religious mania. In 1582 she was hopelessly insane, and at the time of her husband's death was living at Cheshunt, under the care of her eldest daughter, Ann, the wife of Sir George Coppin. Mrs. Norton never recovered her reason, and was still at Cheshunt early in 1602. It is doubtfully stated that she was afterwards removed to Bethlehem Hospital. Besides Ann, Norton left a daughter Elizabeth, married to Miles Raynsford, and three sons, Henry, Robert [q. v.], and William.

‘R. N.,’ doubtless Norton's son Robert, the translator of Camden's ‘Annals of Elizabeth,’ interpolated in the third edition of that work (1635, p. 254) a curious eulogy of his father. The panegyrist declares that ‘his surpassing wisedome, remarkable industry and dexterity, singular piety, and approved fidelity to his Prince and