Everything about Thomas Norton totally explained
Thomas Norton (
1532 –
March 10,
1584) was an
English lawyer, politician, writer of verse — but not, as has been claimed, the chief interrogator of Queen
Elizabeth I.
Official career
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.
Literature
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 January 18,
1561.
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.
Further Information
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