Flanders, and was professed as a Dominican on 23 Oct. 1754, at the college of Bornhem (situate between Ghent and Antwerp), which had been founded by Philip Thomas Howard [q. v.] in 1657. Norton subsequently studied at the English college of St. Thomas Aquinas in Louvain, and was designed to serve in the island of Santa Cruz in the West Indies; but this assignation was prohibited by the master-general on 2 Dec. 1758. On 29 June 1759 he left Bornhem for Aston Flamville in Leicestershire; on 9 Aug. in the same year he moved to Sketchley, and in the spring of 1765 he removed the mission to Hinckley, near Leicester. In November 1767 he was elected prior of Bornhem, and entirely rebuilt both the convent and the secular college attached to it. He revisited Hinckley in March 1771, but was re-elected prior of Bornhem in 1774, and was instituted rector of St. Thomas's College, Louvain, on 17 Feb. 1775. He was appointed vicar-provincial of Belgium, and held that office from 1774 to 1778; and he was granted the degree of D.D. by the university of Louvain in 1783. He returned to Hinckley in October 1780, built the Roman catholic chapel there in 1793, and thence served Leicester from October 1783 to August 1785. He also founded a mission at Coventry. He died at Hinckley on 7 Aug. 1800, and was buried in Aston Flamville churchyard; his epitaph is given at length by Nichols (Hist. and Antiq. of Leicestershire, iv. 453).
Norton won three medals offered by the Brussels Academy for dissertations respectively upon raising wool (Les moyens de perfectionner dans les Provinces Belgiques la Laine des Moutons, 1777, 4to), upon the using of oxen as beasts of draught (L'Emploi des Bœufs dans nos Provinces, tant pour l'agriculture que pour le transport des marchandises sur les canaux, &c. 1778, 4to), and on raising bees (Les meilleurs moyens d'élever les Abeilles dans nos Provinces, 1780, 4to). He was a strong advocate of the use of oxen by farmers in preference to horses, and purposed writing a work in English upon this subject, in expansion of the ‘Mémoire,’ which, together with the two others mentioned, was published by the Académie Impériale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles.
[Palmer's Obituary Notices of Friar Preachers of the English Province, 1884, p. 21, together with some additional notes kindly supplied by the author; Nichols's History and Antiquities of Leicestershire, iv. 473; Namur's Bibliographie Académique Belge, Liège, 1838, p. 22; Monk's General View of the Agriculture of the County of Leicester, 1794.]
NORTON, RICHARD (d. 1420), chief justice of the court of common pleas, was son of Adam Norton, whose original name was Conyers, and who adopted the name of Norton on marrying the heiress of that family (Surtees, Durham, vol. i. p. clxi). He appears as an advocate in 1399, and was probably a serjeant-at-law before 1403. On 4 June 1405 he was included in the commission appointed for the trial of all concerned in Archbishop Scrope's rebellion; his name was, however, omitted from the fresh commission appointed two days later (Wylie, Hist. Henry IV, ii. 230–1). In 1406 he appears as a justice of assize for the county palatine of Durham (Surtees, vol. i. p. lvii). In 1408 he occurs as one of the king's serjeants. Immediately after the accession of Henry V Norton appears as one of the justices of the court of common pleas, and on 26 June 1413 was appointed chief justice (Cal. Pat. Rolls, John to Edw. IV, pp. 260, 261). From November 1414 to December 1420 he appears regularly as a trier of petitions in parliament (Rolls of Parliament, iv. 35 a–123 b). He died on 20 Dec. 1420. Norton married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Tempest of Studley, by whom he had several sons, the pedigree of whose descendants is given in Surtees's ‘History of Durham,’ vol. i. p. clx–clxi.
[Proceedings of Privy Council, i. 203, iii. 33; Foss's Judges of England, iv. 207–8; other authorities quoted.]
NORTON, RICHARD (1488?–1588), rebel, known in the time of the northern rebellion of 1569 as ‘Old Norton,’ is said to have been born in 1488. He was eldest son of John Norton of Norton Conyers, by his wife Anne, daughter of William or Miles Radclyffe of Rylleston. His grandfather, Sir John Norton of Norton Conyers, was grandson of Sir Richard Norton [q. v.], chief justice of the common pleas. Richard Norton took part in the pilgrimage of grace, but was pardoned (cf. Memorials of the Rebellion, pp. 284–5). In 1545 and in 1556 he was one of the council of the north. In 1555 and 1557 he was governor of Norham Castle, but apparently lost these offices on the accession of Elizabeth. He was, however, sheriff of Yorkshire, 1568–9. On the breaking out of the rebellion of 1569 he joined the insurgents, and is described as ‘an old gentleman with a reverend grey beard.’ His estates were confiscated, and he was attainted. When all was over he fled across the border, and was seen at Cavers by the traitor Constable, but resisted his suggestions of coming to England and asking for mercy. He soon
