Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/404

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vn. APRIL 27, 1907.

of Sir Thomas Norton, of Coventry, Bt., and had issue Col. Thomas Norton (b. 1684), of Ixworth Abbey, Suffolk ; Capt. Richard Norton ; and Betty, the wife of Julius Hutchinson, of Owthorpe, Notts. Col. Wil- liam Norton was buried at Wellow on 9 Jan., 1695/6. (The Lady Anne Norton who was buried there on 2 Dec., 1693, was probably his mother-in-law, Anne, daughter of John Jenny, of Hutton Hall, Suffolk, and widow of Sir Thomas Norton, Bt., of Coventry, who died in 1691.) Elizabeth, widow of Col. William Norton, died 30 Oct., 1713, aged forty-five, and was buried at Owthorpe, Notts. The inscription on her tomb re- cords that her husband's father " Colonel Richard Norton lived to have the Honour to entertain four Kings of England in His House at Southwick " (Genealogist, ii. 308).

3. Charles Norton, born 1666. A com- mission was granted to him in March, 1691/2, to administer the goods of his late father, who had died intestate. He was elected a burgess of Portsmouth in 1701, and from a note in the corporation records appears to have been knighted, and to have died in, or before, 1722. He may have been the Charles Norton, Esq., who was one of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners in the reign of William III.

The two daughters of Col. Richard Norton were Elizabeth, the second wife of Sir John Carew, of Anthony, Cornwall, Bt. (by whom she had one son, who died young) ; and Honor (b. 1659, m. 1682, d.s.p. 1710), wife of Sir John St. Barbe, of Broadlands, Hants, Bt.

Richard Norton, son of Daniel, succeeded to the Southwick estates on the death of his grandfather Col. Richard Norton. He was born in 1666 ; educated at Christ Church College, Oxford ; M.P. for Hants from 1693 to 1705 ; married the Lady Elizabeth Noel, younger daughter of Ed- ward, Earl of Gainsborough, Governor of Portsmouth (she died 24 Feb., 1704/5, and was buried at Hampstead, Middlesex) ; and died without issue on 10 Dec., 1732. Henry Slight, a local historian, says :

"As a member for the county, he represented the Dissenting interest, and seems to have entered fully into all the political and religious cabals of the period. He was a man of much taste, and the author of a tragedy called 'Pausanias,' published by Mr. Southern, and acted in London with much applause. He also produced at Southwick, in the

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severely censured by a clergyman of Havant, in a sermon entitled * The Cabinet of Hell unlocked.' "

By an extraordinary will, dated 2 June, 1714, eighteen years prior to his decease, he bequeathed the revenues of his estates, then amounting to 6,000. a year, together with 60,000?. in ready money, to be formed into a fund for the use of " the poor, hungry, thirsty, naked strangers, sick, wounded, and prisoners, to the end of the world." He appointed the Parliament of Great Britain to be his executors and trustees, and in case of their declining the trust, he directed that it should devolve upon the archbishops and bishops. His orders with respect to his funeral and several of his legacies were equally extraordinary. A casket in Southwick Priory, containing some of the hair and blood of Charles I., was to be carefully preserved there until the end of time ; he bequeathed his pictures and plate to the King ; and his grand- father's gold chain and medal (specially voted by Parliament to Admiral Lawson in 1653 for his eminent services) he left to his stepbrother Richard Chicheley.

The will was set aside on the ground of insanity, and the Southwick estates eventu- ally devolved on the Thistle thwaites.

MRS. SUCKLING refers to a statement that " Col. Richard Norton was a relative of Sir Gregory Norton, one of the judges of Charles I." I can find no proof of this, and am rather inclined to the opinion that Sir Gregory belonged to the Nortons of Kent. Sir Dudley Norton, Secretary of State for Ireland, 1612-34, son of John Norton, of Boughton Monchelsea, Kent, is said to have had a brother Gregory, holding a commission in the Irish army (see Herald and Gen., iv. 288). This Gregory may have been the " regicide," or his father.

Sir Gregory Norton was created a baronet of Ireland in 1624 ; married Martha,, daughter of Bradshaw Drew, of Chichester,, and widow of John Gunter, of Racton, Sussex ; and died in 1652, leaving a son Henry, who succeeded to the baronetcy, and married Mabel! , daughter of Sir Richard Norton, Bt., of Rotherfield. It is possible this marriage gave rise to the idea that Sir Gregory Norton was related to the Nortons of Hampshire.

ALFRED T. EVERITT. High Street, Portsmouth.

EARL'S ELDEST SON AND SUPPORTERS (10 S. v. 408, 456). B. M.'s opinion that an earl's eldest son is not entitled to use on his own account his father's supporters is not altogether, I think, borne out by the some- what scanty heraldic authorities which I