baron of the exchequer previously to 20 Nov. 1274, and appears in this capacity in most years till the time of his death. He also appears as acting on various commissions of a judicial nature: thus on 11 Nov. 1280 he was appointed to inquire into the repair of Rochester bridge, on 18 Feb. 1282 he was on a commission of oyer and terminer in Middlesex, on 1 May of this year he was on a commission to inquire as to amercements in Kent, and on other commissions on 20 Aug. 1284 and 20 May 1285 (49th Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, p. 127; Cal. Pat. Rolls Edw. I, 1281–92, pp. 44, 46, 143, 206). In 1277 he was excused from service in Wales as being employed at the exchequer, and on 28 Oct. 1284 is mentioned as witnessing a writ in the exchequer (Annales Monastici, iii. 301). He died on Friday, 9 Nov. 1285 (Cal. Genealogicum, i. 359). He married, before 1248, Bona, daughter of Henry de Waltham; she is sometimes called Bona FitzBernard. His son John [q. v.] is separately noticed.
[Hasted's History of Kent; Madox's Hist. of the Exchequer, i. 726, ii. 20, 62, 112, 320–1; Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 70; Foss's Judges of England, iii. 136–7; Archæologia Cantiana, ii. 9–42; other authorities quoted.]
NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH (1808–1877), poetess, was born in London in 1808, and was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan [q. v.] and granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan [q. v.] Her mother, Caroline Henrietta, daughter of Colonel Callander, afterwards Sir James Campbell (1745–1832) [q. v.], was a highly gifted and very beautiful woman, and author of ‘Carwell’ and other novels. The father having died in the public service at the Cape of Good Hope in 1817, the widow found herself in somewhat straitened circumstances, which were, however, mitigated by the king giving her apartments in Hampton Court Palace, whence she subsequently removed to Great George Street, Westminster. Caroline and her two sisters were distinguished for extraordinary beauty, and in at least two instances for remarkable intellectual gifts. ‘You see,’ said Helen, the eldest, afterwards Lady Dufferin, to Disraeli, ‘Georgy's the beauty, and Carry's the wit, and I ought to be the good one, but I am not;’ which modest disclaimer, however, was far from expressing the fact. During the lifetime of her sisters Caroline filled much the most conspicuous position in the public eye. After numerous slight productions, published and unpublished, of which ‘The Dandies' Rout,’ written at the age of thirteen, seems to have been the most remarkable, she definitely entered upon a literary career in 1829 with ‘The Sorrows of Rosalie: a Tale, with other Poems.’ This little volume, enthusiastically praised by the Ettrick Shepherd in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ obtained considerable success, and is typical of all that the author subsequently produced, except that the imitation of Byron is more evident than in the works of her maturity. It has all Byron's literary merits, pathos, passion, eloquence, sonorous versification, and only wants what Byron's verse did not want, the nameless something which makes poetry. ‘The first expenses of my son's life,’ she says, ‘were defrayed from that first creation of my brain;’ and the celebrity it obtained made her a popular writer for, and editor of, the literary annuals of the day, which lived by a class of literature to which her powers were exactly adapted. It is stated by herself that she earned no less than 1,400l. in a single year by such contributions. Some of the most characteristic were collected and published at Boston as early as 1833; they are in general Byronic, but include two, ‘Joe Steel’ and ‘The Faded Beauty,’ full of an arch Irish humour, which prove the versatility of her gifts, and indicate what she might have accomplished in quite a different field.
Two years before her appearance as an author she had married, 30 June 1827, the Hon. George Chapple Norton, brother of Fletcher Norton, third lord Grantley, a barrister-at-law, who was just completing his twenty-seventh year. According to his own statement, Norton had been passionately in love with her for several years previously; while, according to hers, he had not exchanged six sentences with her before proposing for her by letter. If the marriage was indeed one of affection on either side, it speedily assumed a very different character; and there seems no doubt that, apart from the husband's coarse nature and violent temper, the causes which gradually converted indifference into hatred were mainly of a pecuniary nature. Norton held only a small legal appointment, a commissionership of bankruptcy, which, according to his wife, he had obtained through the interest of her mother; and, as he does not appear to have had any considerable independent means or professional practice, there seems no reason to question her statement that the family was mainly supported by her pen. Nor is there any difficulty in believing that the husband, pressed by pecuniary embarrassment, urged his wife to exert her influence with her political friends on his behalf; nor, indeed, is it credible that Lord Melbourne, then home secretary, would have bestowed
