NORTON, FRANCES, Lady (1640–1731), authoress, born in 1640, was the third daughter of Ralph Freke of Hannington, Wiltshire, by Cecilia, daughter of Sir Thomas Colepepper or Culpepper, of Hollingbourne, Kent. About 1672 she married Sir George Norton, knight, of Abbots Leigh, Somerset. He had concealed Charles I in his house after the battle of Worcester. There were three children of the marriage, George and Elizabeth, who died young, and Grace, afterwards Lady Gethin [q. v.], a girl of uncommon accomplishments. Lady Norton soon ceased to live with her husband, who died on 26 April 1715. On 23 April 1718 she married, at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, Colonel Ambrose Norton, cousin german of her first husband. She was his third wife. He died on 10 Sept. 1723. On 24 Sept. 1724 she married at Somerset House Chapel, William Jones, esq. According to the ‘Funeral Book of Westminster Abbey,’ she died on 20 Feb. 1730–1 at the advanced age of 90. On 9 March she was buried in the abbey in the family tomb in the south aisle of the choir.
In 1705 appeared two works by Lady Norton, bound together in a small quarto volume, entitled respectively ‘The Applause of Virtue, in four parts,’ and ‘Memento Mori, or Meditations on Death.’ The book was evidently inspired by the death of her daughter Grace in 1697. It mainly consists of quotations on ethical subjects from ancient and modern writers. In the preface Lady Norton declares that she intended the essays for her ‘melancholy divertisement,’ without any idea of publication. The volume contains three title-pages and several quaint engravings.
[Chester's Registers of Westminster Abbey, p. 331; Collinson's Somerset, iii. 153; Crisp's Somersetshire Wills, 5th ser. p. 76; Hutchins's Dorset, iv. 86.]
NORTON, HUMPHREY (fl. 1655–1660), quaker, was one of the earliest members of the Society of Friends. From September 1655 to May 1656 he was living in London, acting as the society's accredited agent for the assistance of friends travelling about and preaching. In March 1654–5 he was imprisoned at Durham (Crisp and his Correspondents, 1892, p. 43). He went to Ireland in June 1656, and preached in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. In Galway he was taken violently from a meeting by a guard of soldiers, and driven from the city. At Wexford he was again seized while conducting a peaceable meeting, and committed to gaol until the next assizes. Here he wrote ‘To all People that speakes of an outward Baptisme, Dippers, Sprinklers, and others. Also the Errors answered holden forth by Thomas Larkham … at Wexford he was then,’ &c., no place or date, 4to. George Keith [q. v.] says that he saw in manuscript many papers which Norton had dispersed against baptism. Early in 1657 he returned from Ireland, and on 1 June embarked with ten other Friends for Boston, whence six of them had been expelled the previous year. They sailed in the Woodhouse, owned and commanded by Robert Fowler, a quaker of Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire, who wrote ‘A True Relation of the Voyage’ (Bowden, Hist. of Friends in America, i. 63–7). Norton landed about 12 Aug. 1657 at Rhode Island, and at once proceeded to the colony of Plymouth. He was arrested on a vague charge of being an extravagant person, ‘guilty of divers horred errors,’ and detained some time without examination. Upon presenting a paper setting forth his purpose in coming, and requiring that he be ‘quickly punished or cleared,’ he was brought before the magistrates, and the governor, Thomas Prince, commenced an attack on what he alleged to be quaker doctrines, which Norton answered. Unable to convict him of any breach of the law, the court on 6 Oct. 1657 sentenced him to banishment, and he was conveyed by the under-marshal fifty miles towards Rhode Island (Plymouth Colony Records, iii. 123).
Towards the close of the year he passed over to Long Island, and, arriving in February at Southold, he was arrested and taken to Newhaven, Connecticut, where he was imprisoned for twenty-one days, heavily ironed, and denied fire or candle. On 10 March 1658 he was brought before the court at Newhaven and examined (Newhaven Records, 1653–65, p. 233). John Davenport, minister of the puritan church there, undertook to prove him guilty of heresy. On his attempting to reply, a large iron key was bound over his mouth. The trial lasted two days. Norton was then recommitted, and, after ten days, was sentenced to be whipped, branded with the letter H (for heretic) in his right hand, fined 10l., and banished from Newhaven.
Norton then returned to Rhode Island, where the local authorities wisely considered
