NORRIS, John

The pedigree of the Norris family of Berkshire before its sudden rise to prominence in the fifteenth century is extremely confused, and the heralds’ attempts to find links between them with the knightly Norrises of Lancashire lack conviction. What is certain is that as early as 1268 one of John’s ancestors, employed as cook to the queen, had been granted land at Ockholt in Bray, where John himself was later to build a house, and that he inherited property in the parish at some point after 1427.27 VCH Berks. iii. 103. Quite clearly, he was not born to large estates or into the ranks of the higher gentry. Nearly all of the very extensive landed holdings he left at his death were acquired by purchase, deploying the substantial profits of his long service to Henry VI, during whose reign he attained a position of considerable influence both at court and in the localities. Similarly, he owed his enhanced social status and personal association with members of the King’s Council to the trust placed in him by the young monarch.

The early part of Norris’s career remains obscure,28 Identification with John Norris ‘esquire’, the recipient of a daily wage of 1s. by grant of Ric. II in 1396, which was still being paid in 1441, is unlikely: CPR, 1422-9, p. 61; DKR, xxxvi (2), 364; xxxvii (2), 564. That John probably came from one of the numerous branches of the Norris fam. in Lancs. or Cheshire: Norris Deeds (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xciii), pp. iv-vi, 9-11, 16, 65, 66. No doubt it was he who was capt. of Conway from bef. May 1413-30 Dec. 1440, and jt. capt. with Sir Ralph Butler 30 Dec. 1440-21 Nov. 1441: E101/69/3/349; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 470, 497. but the seeds of his success seem to have been sown in the reign of Henry V, and he was possibly the John Norris ‘of Westminster’ whom the King employed to organize transport for materials needed to rebuild the nave of Westminster abbey. Such a position would establish him among the staff at the palace of Westminster at an early date, and also identify him with the namesake who crossed to France with Henry V’s retinue in 1417 and took a number of French prisoners two years later.29 DKR, xliv. 614. The whereabouts of that John Norris when the King died in France in 1422 are not recorded, and the identity of the man returned to the first Parliament of Henry VI’s reign for the borough of Lyme Regis in Dorset cannot be established for certain. As yet, John Norris, the later esquire for the body to the new King, had no known connexion with Dorset (although he did later hold offices in the county and acquired lands in the eastern part of it at Wimborne Minster and Kingston Lacy),30 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 370. but it not infrequently happened that Lyme returned outsiders in this period, royal servants among them.

We are on much firmer ground regarding Norris’s place in the Household by the time of the King’s coronation at Westminster in November 1429, for as a yeoman of the royal chamber he was then granted keeping of woodland at Hurst and the hundred of Ashridge in Berkshire, and earned a salary of 6d. per day. This he was to continue to receive while accompanying Henry across the Channel in the following spring and attending on him throughout his two-year stay in his French kingdom.31 CPR, 1429-36, p. 37; E404/46/302-3; CFR, xv. 321; Add. 17721, f. 38d; E101/409/2, f. 45v; 12 ff. 74, 82v, 96. Norris was long to remain one of the most prominent of the courtiers attached to the King, and as time passed his remuneration increased very substantially. From 1436 he received a further 6d. per day as a forester in Purbeck forest, and besides this there were the profits of temporary custodianship of property in London. When King Henry attained his majority in 1437 he was able to confirm to his favourite servants, Norris among them, that they might keep their principal grants for life.32 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 111, 494; 1436-41, pp. 66, 68, 228, 375; CFR, xvi. 303-4. Norris, promoted to be an usher of the chamber, was further singled out for favour in 1439, when, linked together with the four esquires for the body, he was excused from fines for refusing to take up knighthood,33 E159/215, recorda Trin. rot. 21d. and before too long he became one of their number. This was merely the start of a stream of gifts and offices which Henry VI showered on Norris and his other intimates with little thought of the political and financial consequences. Offices were bestowed on them with scant concern for the practical difficulties of performing the duties entailed. Norris can hardly have fulfilled his various roles in Dorset, Anglesey, Chester, Leicester and London simultaneously,34 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 39, 57, 142, 230, 253. For his family’s involvement in Welsh affairs, see R.A. Griffiths, Principality of Wales, i. 282. and between 1437 and 1458 he was appointed sheriff for no fewer than seven annual terms and in shires as far apart as Dorset and Worcestershire, even though he was still expected to attend regularly upon the monarch.

Yet there can be no doubt of the King’s personal regard for him, or that Norris was made a rich man through Henry’s munificence. On occasion the gifts proved less valuable than originally intended. In September 1437 Norris was granted for life the manors and lordships of Wadley and Wicklesham in Berkshire, worth as much as £40 p.a., but the letters patent had to be modified two months later in view of the prior claim of the widow of Sir William Porter† to have a dower portion, and in 1441 Norris and his first wife relinquished their interest in the estate to Oriel College, Oxford, presumably in response to a royal request.35 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 92, 116, 309, 396, 540; CP25(1)/13/84/11. There were other compensations for this loss, if not quite such attractive ones. In 1438 Norris had been allowed to purchase for 100 marks the wardship of his wife’s cousin, William Catesby*, and the keeping of the lands Catesby’s father had held of the duchy of Lancaster.36 DL42/18 (pt.1), f. 78v. For their kinship, see Dugdale, 786, 788. He received gifts of forfeited goods (one of 100 marks), corrodies and treasure trove, a tun of wine every year from the prise of London, and a grant for life from May 1440 of the manor of Marston Meysey in Wiltshire, for which he paid a rent of £12 p.a. In 1443 he was given the wardship of the estates late of John Abrahall*, the Herefordshire landowner, during the minority of his heir, yet in the event the grant never took effect.37 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 162, 396, 437; 1441-6, pp. 102, 166; 1446-52, pp. 46, 70; CCR, 1441-7, p. 450.

A potentially lucrative sinecure had come his way in November 1440 when he and five other courtiers were granted for term of their lives the office of packing and surveying all customable merchandise in the major ports of London, Southampton and Sandwich, which entitled them to half the forfeitures of any cargoes discovered to be un-customed. In June 1444 Norris was given further powers in the same three ports when he was commissioned to search all vessels arriving from the Mediterranean for smuggled goods, and examine merchants’ books covering the previous five years’ trading, the commissioners taking a moiety of all merchandise and money forfeited as a consequence. Needless to say, the grant of the office of packing, made entirely without precedent, met with considerable opposition, notably from the civic authorities of London, who protested that it had always belonged to the City. But the King stood firm, stating in October 1444 that only on the expiration of his life grants could the office once more be placed at the disposal of the corporation. Opposition from the men of Southampton, led by their mayor John Fleming*, eventually met with more success, and this may have led Norris to give up his share in the office four years later.38 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 490-1; 1441-6, pp. 272, 291-2; CChR, vi. 42-43; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 117, 135; E152/222, communia Trin. rot. 18. Among the most important of the grants he received in the 1440s was a life-annuity of 50 marks from the issues of Somerset and Dorset, and a grant in tail-male of the manor of Benham Lovel in Berkshire, together with certain properties in Hoe Benham and Westbrook. Also of note was his appointment with his friend John Pury to the collectorship of tunnage and poundage in London, the two of them being promised an annuity of 20 marks until they should receive an office worth £40 p.a.39 CPR, 1436-41, p. 568; 1441-6, pp. 158, 177; 1446-52, p. 206.

As a direct consequence of his position at Court in the 1430s Norris had come to the attention of the young King’s ‘governor’, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who at an unknown date before he died in April 1439 gave him for life the Berkshire manor of Broad Hinton.40 VCH Berks. iii. 254; A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp Earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1988), 278, 301, 335. But the link between them added to Norris’s burden of administrative tasks, for the widowed Countess Isabel named him among those whom she wished to have custody of the Beauchamp estates during the minority of the heir, Earl Henry, and as a feoffee of her own widespread inheritance for the performance of her will. Furthermore, on the following 1 Dec. she named him as an executor.41 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 279, 359-60, 408; CP25(1)/292/69/233, 238; Fifty Earliest English Wills (EETS lxxviii), 119; CFR, xvii. 122. Norris also became a feoffee of the estates acquired by Edward Neville, jure uxoris Lord Abergavenny, through marriage to Isabel’s da. and h. by her first husband: C67/39, m. 38; CPR, 1446-52, p. 83. Norris thus became actively engaged in the administration of the Warwick inheritance, notably in the appointment of estate officials, and together with Earl Henry he was granted in 1442 the wardship of the possessions of the Cornish landowner Sir William Bodrugan* during the minority of his heir.42 CAD, iii. A4506; CPR, 1441-6, p. 83; 1446-52, p. 268; CFR, xvii. 249. The death of Warwick (created a duke in 1445) saw Norris well placed to receive other Beauchamp perquisites by royal grant. Almost immediately, on 13 June 1446, he was granted for life the Warwick chamberlainship of the Exchequer (although in the event he was only to hold it until Richard Neville succeeded to the earldom, in right of his wife, in 1449),43 CPR, 1441-6, p. 436; 1446-52, p. 409. But he was not paid as chamberlain –Duke Henry’s appointees were: PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 16. and a day later he was made chief steward of all the former Despenser estates which the duke had inherited.44 CPR, 1441-6, p. 434. This was followed at Michaelmas with appointment as deputy sheriff of Worcestershire, where the earls of Warwick held the shrievalty in fee. There are signs that he fell out with certain other Beauchamp retainers, such as John Nanfan*, Thomas Hugford* and Nicholas Rody*; at least, he sued them in 1447 for unlawful detention of the sum of £100. However, in this regard he may have been acting in his role as a trustee of the Countess Isabel’s estates, a commitment which continued to occupy his attention until the late 1450s.45 CP40/744, rot. 193; CPR, 1476-85, p. 97. A mark of his attachment to the Beauchamps was the inclusion of their arms on stained glass in his new house at Ockwells.46 M. Wood, The English Med. House, 358-9.

Despite their importance, such concerns were always peripheral to Norris’s position in the royal household, where he long attracted the King’s attention and patronage. He spent much of his time with the court when it was at Windsor castle, conveniently near his home at Bray, and for an undetermined period he served as lieutenant to the constable of the castle, Edmund Beaufort, earl of Dorset and later duke of Somerset. Thus, in November and December 1439 he received assignments at the Exchequer on Beaufort’s behalf to pay for repairs to the fabric of the castle, and in the early 1440s he was himself allotted 100 marks p.a. for the same purpose. Presumably, he was expected to oversee the works. He was still acting for Beaufort in this regard in 1449.47 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 150-1, 445; E403/736, mm. 6, 9; 775, m. 11; 777, m. 5. The dean and canons of the college of St. George at Windsor granted him a lease of Ashcroft in Bray in September 1445, which he continued to hold until 1462 or later, even though the rent of 33s. 4d. was often in arrears.48 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV.48.23, 26, 27; 58 D 78.

Norris’s duties as keeper of the great wardrobe, an important post which he occupied for two years from October 1444, further necessitated his attendance at Court, and involved the handling of very large sums of money. His accounts reveal that in his first year in office he received from the Exchequer £5,527 in cash and assignments, but spent much more than this on purchases and the wages of members of the Household. Among the latter was his wife Alice, who was made a lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Anjou as soon as the queen arrived in England in the spring of 1445.49 CPR, 1441-6, p. 311; 1446-52, p. 4; E101/409/13; E404/61/95, 160; 62/201. Norris’s rewards were considerable, coming not only in the form of grants of lands and offices, but also as money. Most remarkable of all was the huge sum of £600, warranted to him in September 1445 and paid by assignment at the Exchequer two months later as a mark of the King’s appreciation of the agreeable service he did every day as an esquire for the body and his great labours as wardrober.50 E404/62/7; E403/759, m. 4. Norris continued to give satisfaction. Even before he ceased to supervise the finances of the great wardrobe he was appointed treasurer of the queen’s chamber and keeper of her jewels and personal effects, a post he held until June 1452. In his first year in this office he received a fee of £20, the sum of £10 as a reward, and the gift of a silver cup, while his wife continued to occupy a prominent place among the queen’s ladies even though she was the only one of the six who was not of noble birth.51 E101/409/14, 17; 410/2. Throughout this time, too, Norris continued to receive fees as a member of the King’s household.52 E101/409/9, 11, 12, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9.

Despite his many duties at Court and elsewhere, Norris found time to further his own interests and to establish himself as a landowner of consequence. Most of his acquisitions were in Berkshire. In 1442 he purchased from Edward Langford* the feudal lordship of the manor of Yattendon (itself brought to him by his first wife), and then secured from the King in 1448 a charter to crenellate the manor-house and enclose 600 acres of land to make a park.53 CCR, 1441-7, p. 59; CP25(1)/13/84/15, 22; CChR, vi. 100. He had already started building works there: the previous year he sued a local brick-maker over the manufacture of 50,000 bricks: CP40/744, rot. 192. At Bray he extended his possessions by leasing ‘John of Brayesplace’ from the duke of Gloucester for £3 9s. 2d. a year and after the duke’s death from the King for a mere 6d., before turning it into the manor of Hyndens;54 CPR, 1446-52, p. 59; VCH Berks. iii. 104-5. while the purchase of two manors in Cookham in 1445 was soon followed by that of West Lokinge.55 CP25(1)/13/85/4, 7, 8. Dealings regarding the manor of Earley ‘White Knights’ were less straightforward: Norris was party to its settlement on Thomas Beke* and Isabel his wife in 1446, then 12 years later obtained a reversionary interest in tail should Beke’s issue fail. This was confirmed in a collusive suit in the common pleas in 1463, and by a fine made shortly before Norris’s death.56 CPR, 1446-52, p. 24; CCR, 1454-61, p. 209; CP25(1)/13/86/20, 87/4; CP40/809, rot. 346d; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 474. Meanwhile, in 1447 he had purchased the manor of Frilsham, to which he added in the next two years that of Hampstead Ferrers along with a substantial acreage and rents amounting to £20 p.a. in the neighbourhood.57 CP25(1)/13/85/6, 20; CCR, 1441-7, p. 496; CPR, 1446-52, p. 277; CP40/756, cart. rot. 2. From the Inkpen family he bought another two Berkshire manors and one in Hampshire, and in 1449 he secured the manor of Sunninghill from trustees appointed by the late Sir Thomas Haseley†.58 CPR, 1446-52, p. 261; CP25(1)/85/21; CCR, 1447-54, p. 140. Two years later he received the manor of Little Purley from Drew Barantyn* as security for the payment of an annual rent of ten marks from that of Rofford in Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, and took possession for himself and his family subsequently.59 Add. Ch. 20317; VCH Berks. iii. 420. Fulscot and various properties in South Moreton acquired from Thomas Brown IV* cost him 1,005 marks,60 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 407, 423, 475-6; 1454-61, pp. 30, 48, 136; CP25(1)/13/86/10. and his purchases continued to the late 1450s.61 CP25(1)/13/86/26; VCH Berks. iv. 177. Besides the Berkshire estates he shared a lease of two houses in London, and in Oxfordshire he acquired the manor of Mapledurham ‘Chazey’ and another in Kingsey, which he leased out for 20 years for an annual rent of £4 14s. p.a. He also had some holdings at Codbarrow in Warwickshire, brought by his first marriage,62 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 126; CAD, vi. C4534; Dugdale, ii. 782; VCH Bucks. iv. 66; Hist. Mapledurham (Oxon. Rec. Soc. vii), 59, 77. and besides all this there were lands in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. A final concord of 1462 concerning nine manors, 174 messuages, 36 tofts, some 3,800 acres of land and rents of £20 p.a. nevertheless omitted to deal with many other of his landed possessions.63 CP25(1)/294/74/8.

For one thing, it did not include the estates of Norris’s second wife. Eleanor, a grand-daughter of both Richard Clitheroe† (d.1420), the onetime admiral, and the heretic-traitor John, Lord Oldcastle, stood to inherit the Clitheroe manors in Kent (Goldstone, Polders and Nelmes in Ash) and Hertfordshire (Pirton and Jenningsbury), worth at least £57 p.a.64 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 284, 442; 1441-7, p. 141; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 106, 127; iii. 918. The account in VCH Herts. iii. 48, 411, confuses our MP with his son John. The marriage took place before March 1455, when her father Roger Clitheroe referred in his will to money in the keeping of his ‘son’ John Norris, and left him two messuages in the parish of St. Mary in Sandwich, in tail. Eleanor, then aged 22, was Roger’s heir, but she may have died shortly afterwards for she was not mentioned in the will her mother made in October 1457, although Norris himself was named as executor and his son John, the testator’s grandson, received several bequests.65 Archaeologia Cantiana, xxxiv. 58-60; C139/158/29. A measure of how far Norris had risen in the ranks of the gentry is indicated by the contract he negotiated in 1454 for his daughter Margaret to marry the young son and heir of the Oxfordshire landowner Robert Rademylde*,66 Westminster Abbey muns. 9204. and later on by the marriage of his eldest son to the daughter of an earl.

The increasing size of Norris’s landed holdings in Berkshire amply qualified him for election to Parliament for the county, but it was undoubtedly his role as a courtier which prompted the electors at the county court to return him so frequently. He sat in eight Parliaments for this or the neighbouring county of Oxfordshire in the years 1439 to 1453, that is, in every Parliament summoned in that period. For the electorate the advantages of choosing someone with direct access to the King are obvious, but, conversely, his presence in the Lower House would also have been useful for the government when certain matters of policy were under review. For instance, matters affecting the estates of the duchy of Lancaster (of which Norris was made a feoffee for the purposes of Henry VI’s will), needed ratification in Parliament, and as keeper of the great wardrobe he had a close interest in the parliamentary subsidies which were assigned to his department in the sessions of 1445-6. His appointment as joint keeper of abbatial estates at Leominster in 1448 was made by the authority of Parliament – presumably the one he had attended in the previous year.67 PROME, xi. 404-10; RP, v. 165-6 (cf. PROME, xii. 69); E404/61, 160; CPR, 1446-52, p. 142; Testamenta Vetusta ed. Nicolas, 22. Norris’s return to the Parliament of February 1449 was in breach of electoral law, since he was then holding office as sheriff of Wiltshire; and he was still sheriff when elected again for Berkshire in the following autumn. Meanwhile, on 29 July, he had made the Crown a loan of 100 marks in response to the crisis in its finances, which had been made clear during the recent parliamentary session at Winchester.68 E403/775, m. 11.

The electors of Berkshire were no doubt aware that Norris enjoyed amicable relations with a number of highly influential people close to the King. Norris often called upon Sir Edmund Hungerford*, one of the King’s carvers, to assist him in his private transactions; the royal physician Master John Somerset* asked him alone to make an award in a dispute he was having with a gentleman from Buckinghamshire; and in 1442 the King’s secretary Master Thomas Bekynton, about to depart overseas on an embassy, wrote to say that he would keep Norris specially informed of events. Bekynton referred to Norris’s ‘good love, which I have ever before this tyme founde stedfast, stable and redy, to my wele and worship’, and promised to pray for him as his chaplain ‘as I am greetly bounde to do, whil I live’.69 CCR, 1441-7, p. 149; Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 78. The previous year Norris had joined William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury, and William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in the foundation of a guild at Abingdon to fund repairs to the road leading via Dorchester across the Thames to Burford, and together with Master Adam Moleyns, then dean of Salisbury cathedral, he established a chantry in Wokingham in 1443. He grew especially close to Aiscough, who assisted him in September 1446 when he obtained a royal licence for another chantry, this time in his home parish at Bray;70 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 36, 190; 1446-52, p. 2. they were linked as co-feoffees of property in London in the interest of another courtier; and, more importantly, the bishop so appreciated Norris’s qualities as to name him among his executors.71 CAD, ii. B2085, 2088-9; iv. A10355; CCR, 1447-54, p. 35; 1468-76, no. 1489; E159/231, recorda Easter rot. 27; 232, recorda Easter rot. 20. During the Parliament of 1445 Norris joined de la Pole in making a grant of property in Windsor and Clewer to the King’s new college at Eton, and the same year Suffolk (now a marquess) acted as a feoffee for the esquire’s purchase of land in Berkshire. Together they brought a suit in the court of common pleas in 1447.72 PROME, xi. 426; CP25(1)/13/85/4; CP40/744, rot. 32.

Needless to say, the circle in which Norris moved meant that he would never be retained by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the King’s uncle, despite the duke’s tenure of the lordships of Cookham and Bray where Norris owed him feudal dues. In May 1445 the duke sued him in the court of the Exchequer for unjust detinue of the sum of £30, alleging that he had failed to honour a tally issued in his name as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, by deliberately disregarding personal representations made by his servants.73 E13/143, rot. 32d. Gloucester’s death in February 1447 at Bury St. Edmunds, where Norris was attending Parliament, provided the MP with an opportunity to become even more powerful in Berkshire. He promptly secured for himself the keeping of the lordships of Cookham and Bray on a seven-year lease, together with a grant for life of the office of steward there with a handsome remuneration of £20 p.a.74 CFR, xviii. 72; CPR, 1446-52, p. 43. Furthermore, before the term was up, he reinforced his position by obtaining on 20 Mar. 1449 (during another parliamentary session), a renewal of the farm for 20 years, paying £101 p.a. By asking for this to be granted to him jointly with three of his close relatives (William and Roger Norris, who were probably his brothers, and William his eldest son), he evidently hoped to ensure the continued domination of the region by his family even after his death. All this was put at risk by the political and financial crises which beset the Crown later that year and in 1450. Although Norris successfully petitioned for exemption from the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament of 1449-50 with regard to most of his grants from the King, he lost his annuity of 50 marks and possession of Marston Meysey – in effect £40 out of his annual fees of £91 19s. The lordships of Cookham and Bray were also resumed, although these were re-granted to him and his kinsmen in July 1451, for a slightly increased rent.75 E163/8/14; CFR, xviii. 110, 229; PROME, xii. 122; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 278. At the time of the resumption, too, in May 1450 he had obtained the wardship of lands in Pembroke and Cardigan, and he and his friend John Pury were assigned £20 for costs sustained in a vexatious action for debt brought against them in the Exchequer court. He had relinquished his 6d. per day from the issues of Wiltshire, and had to renegotiate the terms of his tenure of Benham Lovell: from June 1453 it was no longer to be held in fee-tail but on a 20-year lease, and the lands at Hurst and Ashridge were to cost him more too.76 CFR, xviii. 158; xix. 69; E403/791, m. 3; CPR, 1452-61, p. 107. Even so, Norris was lucky to emerge from the events of 1450 with his life, in view of what had befallen the duke of Suffolk and Bishop Aiscough. That he did so confirms the impression that he did not share the unpopularity of these ministers, nor the condemnation expressed by Cade’s rebels. Significantly, his fellow Members of the Commons assembled in November 1450 did not include him on the list of those they wished to be permanently removed from the King’s presence for exerting a malign influence upon him.77 PROME, xii. 184-6.

Curiously, to the Parliament of 1453, in which those attached to the Court heavily predominated in the Lower House, Norris got himself returned not only for Berkshire but also for the distant Cornish borough of Truro. Although he had earlier had an interest in the Bodrugan estates near the town this had long since come to an end, and the case of external interference in Truro’s representation is compelling. The names of both of the borough’s chosen MPs were erased from the sheriff’s schedule and replaced instead with those of Norris and Roger Thorpe*, the son and heir of the man who within a few weeks would be elected Speaker. Yet why the double return of Norris had been thought necessary is impossible to discover; his seat for Berkshire must surely have been safe. Yet irregularities also attached to the return for the county. The sheriff, John Roger I*, chose to conduct the elections at his own place of residence, Lambourn, where the county court had never met before, and, furthermore, he returned as one of the shire knights his own son Thomas*, a young man completely lacking experience of local government. Perhaps it was the unpredictability of what might happen in Berkshire that prompted Norris to make sure of a place in the Commons by looking elsewhere.78 C219/16/2. At the onset of the King’s mental illness that summer he was kept on as one of the ‘squiers for the body’ – the most senior of the four currently in post – as recorded in ordinances to regulate the Household introduced in November 1454, and he appears to have remained in this privileged place at least until late in 1455.79 PPC, vi. 223. C67/41, m. 19 shows that he was still an esq. for the body in Aug. 1455.

Thereafter, Norris’s position became less secure, as power at the centre shifted to those favoured by the queen. In February 1457 he was ignominiously put in the Marshalsea prison for a breach of the peace, and pending his appearance in King’s bench in the Michaelmas term he had to offer guarantees of £100 that he would do no harm to his accuser, a tanner from Newbury called Stephen Wyard.80 KB27/783, rex rot. 8d. The cause of the quarrel has not been ascertained, but after Norris’s death Wyard was pardoned his outlawry for non-appearance in the c.p. to answer him for a debt of £40: CPR, 1467-77, p. 144. Required to accept new terms at the Exchequer for his lease of Benham Lovell, Hurst and Ashridge, on 3 Mar. he undertook with his son William to pay an increment, even though the duration of the lease was for 20 years; and on the same day his annual farm for Cookham and Bray (now held alone once more) was also increased. It must have come as a blow when despite the fact that his lease had another 19 years to run, the lordships were granted instead in March 1458 to Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Norris resisted the change, possibly by force, and a year later he was summoned to Chancery to show reason why his letters patent should not be revoked. Judgement was given against him when he failed to appear. Norris had been prevailed upon to serve as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1457, at a time when other members of the gentry refused the office, and as the King’s ‘welbeloved squire’ he had been promised indemnity so that at the end of his term in November 1458 he was excused £40 on his account. But this was his last shrievalty. During his term he had taken out two pardons, which referred to his former offices in the Household, but there is no sign that he now retained any connexion with it or with the queen, even though he remained a feoffee of the estates of the duchy of Lancaster.81 CFR, xix. 185; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 423, 485; E159/235, brevia Mich. rot. 23d; C67/42, mm. 29, 42; PROME, xii. 468-77.

The Berkshire returns to the Parliament of 1455 have not survived, so it is not known if Norris had sat in a ninth consecutive assembly. To the Parliament summoned to meet at Coventry in November 1459 the county electorate returned his son William in his place. Norris made a loan of 50 marks to the Crown in the following April,82 E101/868, m. 22. at a time when its forces were being gathered to face an expected invasion by those of the exiled Yorkist lords. His son William was knighted on the field at Northampton, presumably before fighting commenced and before the King was taken under the control of the victors. It might be expected that the change of regime would lead immediately to John Norris’s expulsion from all the offices and grants he owed to Henry VI’s patronage, and indeed a corrody he had been promised in reversion was now granted to someone else,83 In 1460-1 he brought a suit in the Exchequer chamber to try to recover it: Year Bk. 39 Hen. VI (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), 48-49. and in the Parliament assembled in October 1460 he was removed from the body of feoffees of the duchy estates. Nevertheless, he was kept on the Berkshire bench after Edward IV’s accession, and, even more surprisingly, on 20 Sept. 1461 he won back his lease of Cookham and Bray, where his eldest son had taken over from him as steward.84 PROME, xii. 534-8; CFR, xx. 43. Yet on reconsideration the new King evidently decided that it would be imprudent to trust the Norrises too far, and both father and son were removed two months later, the one as lessee the other as steward, in preference to two men more wholeheartedly committed to Yorkist rule.85 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 148-9. Their removal may have been prompted by their links with John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford, whose daughter was perhaps already Sir William’s wife: the earl was executed for his treasonous opposition to the new King in February following. John Norris prudently sued for a royal pardon.86 C67/45, m. 38.

Now detached from affairs of state, Norris devoted his last years to more private matters. In the late 1450s he had married for the third time, taking as his wife Margaret, the widow of a wealthy London alderman and onetime mayor, Nicholas Wyfold, who in his will of 1456 had left her £1,000 in cash and plate worth £100 more, together with all the contents of their house. Wyfold’s only child, Isabel, to whom he bequeathed 500 marks and plate to the same value, was placed in her mother’s care until she came of age or married, and it is not surprising that as soon as he could Norris wed her to the younger of his two sons named John – the Clitheroe heir. He offered Margaret a handsome jointure. In February 1459 he enfeoffed her kinsman, John Chedworth, bishop of Lincoln, and others of a substantial part of his landed holdings, and seven months later she received in jointure seven Berkshire manors and sizeable tracts of land. After she gave Norris a son, another William, this life interest was increased by two more manorial estates.87 PCC 8 Stokton (PROB11/4); E326/5620, 7078, 10412; CAD, ii. B2722; CP25(1)/294/74/8.

The last years of his life also saw Norris engaged in a flurry of litigation in the court of common pleas, suing his own debtors as well as those of Nicholas Wyfold for whom his wife was executrix.88 e.g. CP40/808, rots. 80, 162d, 342; CPR, 1461-7, p. 316. He alto turned his attention to spiritual matters. In the course of his career he had been a benefactor of a number of religious and charitable foundations, some of them already mentioned. In addition, he and his first wife had conveyed some of her lands in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire to the priory of Benedictine nuns at Markyate; in 1451 he and other members of his family had obtained a royal licence to establish a guild at Maidenhead, and to collect pontage for the repair and maintenance of the bridge over the Thames, which became impassable at certain times of the year owing to floods; a year later he was associated in a grant to Abingdon abbey; in 1457 he joined with the burgesses of Hungerford in founding a chantry in their parish church; and in 1459 he was licensed to grant land to Burnham abbey in Buckinghamshire. Norris had earlier obtained papal indults to have a personal confessor, and for plenary indulgences,89 CP25(1)/292/69/218; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 549, 576; 1452-61, pp. 366, 514; CPL, ix. 230, 240. and he could use his substantial wealth to purchase his soul’s salvation.

Norris took as the model for his will, made on 4 Apr. 1465, that of his wife’s former husband Wyfold, in several instances copying its provisions word for word. Perhaps Margaret took a part in drafting it. He asked to be buried in the north aisle of St. Michael’s church at Bray, where 1,000 masses were to be said for his soul ‘in as hasty time as it may goodely be doone’ and by the ‘moost devoute and vertuous preestes as well religious as seculers’ as could be found in London or elsewhere. The church bells were to be rung continually for 24 hours after his burial, and then the loudest bell was to chime for an hour before dawn and at sunset every day for a month, marking special services in his memory. Indeed, for ‘stering peiple to more devocion in praying for my soule’ he left £50 to buy a great bell for the steeple of the church. Similar services were to be conducted at Yattendon by 30 devout priests. Norris had started ‘new making and edifying’ a chantry chapel at Bray, to which he now bequeathed goods worth £100 as well as the sum of £100 for the salary of a priest to pray there for himself and his wives long into the future, and 40 marks more for ornaments and his tomb.90 PCC 19 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 147v-8v), printed in Kerry, 116-20. Having already spent large sums of money on building a manor-house at Ockwells in Bray (which yet survives), he now set aside £40 to complete works on the chapel there.91 VCH Berks. iii. 93-96; Gothic Art for Eng. ed. Marks and Williamson (Victoria and Albert Museum cat.), no. 144.

The MP left four surviving sons by his different wives. To the eldest, his heir Sir William, he left all the contents of the house at Yattendon and plate worth £40; to John ‘the elder’ 100 marks in money and plate; to John ‘the younger’ (the Clitheroe heir) £40 in money and plate; and to William ‘my youngest sonne’ (the child of his third marriage) 100 marks. In his will he also remembered two daughters: Anne, who was to received £100, and Lettice, the beneficiary of 200 marks in money and 50 marks-worth of plate. Both were apparently still unmarried.92 Anne may have been the woman of this name who married John, s. and h. of Sir Robert Harcourt*, as stated in the ped. in Vis. Berks. (Harl. lvi), 10, although there is a possibility that she has been confused with another Anne, who married first Sir Robert’s bro. Sir William Harcourt†, and then our MP’s son Sir William Norris. Another William Norris and John his brother, the testator’s ‘apprentice’, who were left 20 and ten marks respectively, were perhaps his nephews.93 William Norris of London, gentleman, alias late of Bray, junior, s. of William Norris of Winkfield, senior, was pardoned Nov. 1468 (C67/46, m. 21), and was prob. the man who made his will in 1486, leaving lands at Ash in Kent and a mansion called ‘Brokes’ to his widow, Anne, and her heirs, for she was also to have lands in Winkfield, and after the death of his mother Joan the residue of all other lands, late of his father, in Winkfield, Warfield, Hurley and Bray. After Anne’s death these were to revert to William’s younger brother, John: Archaeologia Cantiana, xxxvi. 59-60. The residue of the MP’s estate was left to his widow, provided she remained single – if she married again she was only to receive goods to the value of 1,000 marks. Besides the widow, Norris’s executors included his brother William and Richard Bulstrode* their kinsman, and he asked John Wenlock*, now Lord Wenlock, to be overseer. The two of them had been acquainted for several years, at least from the time they had both been members of Margaret of Anjou’s household.94 CPR, 1446-52, p. 228; CP25(1)/294/75/19. Norris died on 1 Sept. 1466, and his will was proved on 4 July following. Through entails registered in his final years he had made provision for his younger sons (with the exception of John, the son of Eleanor Clitheroe, who was already well endowed with his mother’s inheritance), although for the most part they would have to wait until his widow died before entering their inheritance.95 CP25(1)/294/74/8; C140/22/45; Hist. Mapledurham, 78-79.

It is an indication of the size and value of Margaret’s jointure and dower that within five months of Norris’s death, and even before his will had been proved, she attracted the attention of (Sir) John Howard*, shortly to be made Lord Howard and later duke of Norfolk, whom she married.96 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner (Lib. edn.), iv. 262; CP, ix. 612; Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, pp. xiii-xiv, xliii. She survived the duke, living on until 1494. In her will, made on 13 May 1490, she requested burial in the church at Stoke Nayland in Suffolk, where two priests were to sing for three years for her soul and those of her first two husbands, Wyfold and Norris.97 PCC 16 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 127).