A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Norton, (Lady Frances)
She seems by her writings to have been educated in the knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues. She married first Sir George Norton, knt. of Abbots Leigh, in Somersetshire, by whom she had three children, George and Elizabeth, who died young; and Grace, a lady of uncommon abilities, who married Sir Richard Gethin, and died in the flower of her age (See her Life) to the inexpressible grief of her mother. To alleviate her sorrow on this occasion, lady Norton wrote two books with the following titles. The Applause of Virtue. In four parts, published in 1705. This treatise she dedicated to her cousin, madam Freke of Shroten. Also Memento Mori; Meditations of Death; which she dedicated to her cousin the hon. Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. These pious treatises are an abundant proof of her learning, and how well read she was in the primitive fathers, philosophers, &c. which she perpetually quotes to elucidate her subject; nor are they less demonstrative of her good sense, and exalted piety.
It is said, that there are still remaining at Abbots Leigh, several pieces of furniture of her own working, with many devout sentences wrought in them; many were excellent and seasonable admonitions, which she gave to her friends and acquaintance. Among others the following are remembered: "Prayer is the great duty and greatest privilege of a christian; it is his intercourse with God, a petitioning for such things as we need for our support; it is an abstract, or summary of the christian religion, and divine worship, confessing God's power and mercy; it celebrates his attributes, confesseth his glory, reveres his person, implores his aid, and gives thanks for his blessings: it is an act of charity, for it prays for others; it is an act of repentance, when it confesseth and begs pardon for our sins, and exercises our grace according to the design of the man, and the manner of the prayer. In praying we imitate the employment of angels and beatified spirits, by which we ascend to God in spirit while we remain on earth. We speak to God in prayer: when the tongue is stiffened with the approachings of death, prayer can dwell in the heart or the eye, by a thought or groan; prayer, of all actions of religion, is the last alive, and it serves God without circumstances and exercises material to the last breath." Nor were her discourses on other religious subjects less sensible and affecting. She would say, "The quintessence of all wisdom is to prepare for death; it is the business we should learn all our lives to exercise; the faults therein committed are irreparable, and the loss without recovery; we should no more confide in the prosperity of the world than to a still sea, which in a great calm oft-times presageth the approaching tempest; to declare, that in good we should live in distrust of ill; and in evil in hope of good; but in both the one and the other ever in equality." She married secondly Colonel Norton, and thirdly Mr. Jones, and was living in 1720.