Thomas Norton

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Thomas Norton Biography

Thomas Norton (1532 – 10 March 1584) was an English lawyer, politician, writer of verse — but not, as has been claimed, the chief interrogator of Queen Elizabeth I. Norton was born in London and was educated at Cambridge, and early became a secretary to the Protector Somerset. In 1555 he was admitted a student at the Inner Temple, and married Margery Cranmer, the daughter of the archbishop. In 1562 Norton, who had served in an earlier parliament as the representative of Gatton, became M.P. for Berwick, and entered with great activity into politics. In religion he was inspired by the sentiments of his father-in-law, and was in possession of Cranmer's manuscript code of ecclesiastical law; this he permitted John Foxe to publish in 1571. He went to Rome on legal business, in 1579, and from 1580 to 1583, he frequently visited the Channel Islands as a commissioner to inquire into the status of these possessions. Norton's Calvinism grew with years, and towards the end of his career he became a rabid fanatic. Norton held several interrogation sessions in the Tower of London using torture instruments such as the rack. The rack stretched the body apart, until the joints were dislocated and then separated from the rest of the body. His punishment of the Catholics, as their official censor from 1581 onwards, led to his being nicknamed "Rackmaster-General" and "Rackmaster Norton." At last his turbulent puritanism made him an object of fear even to the English bishops; he was deprived of his office and thrown into the Tower. Walsingham presently released him, but Norton's health was undermined, and in March 1584 he died in his house at Sharpenhoe, Bedfordshire. From his eighteenth year Norton had begun to compose verse. We find him connected with Jasper Heywood; as a writer of "sonnets" he contributed to Tottel's Miscellany, and in 1560 he composed, in company with Sackville, the earliest English tragedy, Gorboduc, which was performed before Elizabeth I in the Inner Temple on 18 January 1562. Gorboduc was revised into a superior form, as The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, in 1570. Norton's early lyrics have in the main disappeared. The most interesting of his numerous anti-Catholic pamphlets are those on the rebellion of Northumberland and on the projected marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Duke of Norfolk. Norton also translated Calvin's Institutes (1561) and Alexander Nowell's Catechism (1570). Gorboduc appears in various dramatic collections, and was separately edited by W.D. Cooper (Shakespeare Society, 1847), and by Miss Toulmin Smith in Volkmoller's Englische Sprache-und Literatur-denkmale (1883). The best account of Norton, and his place in literary history, is that of Sidney Lee in his Dictionary of National Biography.)

The Best Poem Of Thomas Norton

Thomas Norton To The Reder

Wee may wyte, if wee wyll, by holy writ
The lore of the lorde, that ledeth to lyfe:
Wee may see, if wee seche, and fynde in it
The fall of falshed, the stenching of strife:
The tryall of trewth: the guide of our gate:
Calbemesse of hart: what to loue, or to hate.
Yea and so may wee see, that it alone
Should be sought, to finde that wee ought to seche:
No mynde of man to bee buylded on:
No counsell, no custome can bee our leche,
To purge the poyson: gyue salue for the sore:
Or hathe helth for the harmed hart in store.
They more the mischief: they prolong the payne:
Ad more force to the fier, for the want
Of water of the word: and worke in vayne
Let vs hye to hym: whoes skill is not scant:
Whoes will dothe not, to better our bale:
To lesse our losse. Yea to quit vs of all.
A pestilent plage, a poysonons ill
Hath sowen sores in certaigne now of late:
A wood sprited hart: with a wayward wyll:
A stubborne stomache, to nourishe debate:
Blered, yea blynded eyes: a brasen brest:
A leden brayne: I recken not the rest.
Agaynst these euell ayres thou mayst haue here
(Take it, and taste it, yea let none be left)
A tryed triacle, to kepe the clere.
Lechecraft not only restoreth the reft,
But also preserueth vnharmed helth.
This physike is free and esy God welth.
And euen as lerned leches do oftentymes
(Triall techeth dayly tofore our eyes)
Put in poyson, to make for medicines:
So make their bale thy boote: their losse lykewyse
Thy gaine, to warne the how thou ought to wyrche
To glory of God, and help of the Churche.
A watcherime to the magistrates, for the
Catabaptistes, and their patriarches.
Commune tryall techeth them, that be wyse,
Off thynges forepast to fynde, what will befall.
Wee haue seen, herof what end dothe aryse:
CConfounding of kyngdomes, decay of all.
Heede taken to warning saueth from fall.

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