Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/232

 a patent for printing common-law books with Thomas Wright, and became the king's printer. He published a great number of books, was an alderman of London, and subsequently retired to live on his property at Church Stretton in Shropshire. He served as sheriff of Shropshire in 1611 (in which year he received a grant of arms), and married Jane, daughter of Thomas Owen of Condover, Shropshire, one of the judges of the court of common pleas. He died on 5 April 1635 and was buried in St. Faith's, near his father. His widow erected a monument to their memory there, and another to her husband in Condover Church. He left a son, Roger Norton (d. 1661), also a printer and freeman of the Stationers' Company.

(d. 1612), William Norton's nephew, was son of Richard Norton, a yeoman of Billingsley, Shropshire, and served an apprenticeship as a printer to his uncle William. He published many books from 1590 to 1612, taking over in 1593 the shop known as the Queen's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard, which had been in the occupation of his cousin Bonham; but, although his business as a bookseller and publisher was large, he often employed other printers to print for him. One of his chief undertakings was Gerard's ‘Herbal’ in 1597. He became printer in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to the queen, and in 1607 Sir Henry Savile commissioned him to print Greek books at Eton. Savile's edition of the Greek text of Chrysostom's works he printed and published at Eton in eight volumes between 1610 and 1612. He was master of the Stationers' Company in 1607, 1610, and 1612, and an alderman of London. He died in 1612, being buried in St. Faith's Chapel. He left 1000l. to the Stationers' Company to be invested in land, the income to be lent to poor members of the company. Lands were accordingly purchased in Wood Street, and the heavy rental is now largely applied to the maintenance of the Stationers' School.

John Norton, junior, who carried on a publishing business from 1621 to 1640, seems to have been a son of Bonham Norton.

 NORWELL, WILLIAM (d. 1363). [See .]

NORWICH,. [See, 1583?1663.]

NORWICH, JOHN, (d. 1362), was the eldest of three sons of Walter de Norwich [q. v.] by his wife Catherine. Inheriting considerable estates acquired by his father in Norfolk and Suffolk, he obtained a royal license in 1334 for a weekly market and annual fair at Great Massingham in the former county (, v. 522;, Baronage, ii. 90). After taking part in the English invasion of Scotland in the following year, he was appointed in April 1336, when the French were expected upon the coast, admiral of the fleet from the Thames northwards (Rot. Scot. i. 442; Fœdera, ii. 943). By the beginning of 1338 he was serving abroad with his Norfolk neighbour, Oliver de Ingham [q. v.], the seneschal of Gascony, who, during a visit to England in March, obtained Norwich's appointment as his lieutenant (Fœdera, pp. 1012, 1023). His youngest brother, Roger, was also employed in Guienne (ib. ii. 1022). Two years later, if the second text of Froissart (ed. Luce, ii. 216) may be trusted, Norwich was assisting in the defence of Thun l'Evêque, a French outpost which had been captured by the English and Hainaulters. Though his pay seems sometimes to have been in arrears, his services did not go without reward. A pension of fifty marks was granted to him in 1339, he was summoned to parliament as a baron in 1342, and next year received permission to make castles of his houses at Metingham, near Bungay in Suffolk, and Blackworth, near Norwich, and Lyng, near East Dereham in Norfolk.

In 1344 he was once more serving in France, and, returning to England, he went out again in the summer of the next year in the train of Henry, earl of Derby (who in a few weeks became Earl of Lancaster), the newly appointed lieutenant of Aquitaine (ib.; Fœdera, iii. 39). In Froissart's account of Lancaster's campaign of 1346 Norwich figures prominently in an episode which M. Luce has shown to be unhistorical. The Duke of Normandy, the son of the French king, brought a large army against Lancaster in the early months of this year, and Froissart (iii. 111) says that, after taking a couple of towns near the Garonne, he laid siege to Angoulême, which was defended by ‘un escuyer qui s'appelloit Jehan de Noruwich, appert homme durement’ (ib. p. 328). On Candlemas eve (1 Feb.) Norwich, finding further resistance impossible, is said to have obtained a day's truce from the duke in honour of the Virgin's festival, and seized the opportunity to get away with the garrison and throw himself