NORBURY, Sir Henry

A knight of impressive connexions who probably owed his seat in the Commons to his association with Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, Norbury was a godson of Henry IV (after whom he was probably named) and a veteran of the Hundred Years War.16 CPR, 1408-13, p. 404. He had the remarkable career of his father John Norbury to thank for the privileged position into which he was born. A younger son of modest circumstances from Cheshire, John began adult life as a freebooting mercenary in France but rose to become a leading figure in early Lancastrian England. He invested substantially in real property, acquiring estates and other properties in Hertfordshire, Kent, Middlesex and Sussex, and by the end of his life his lands brought him at least £294 p.a., to which he could also add a considerable, if unquantifiable, income from grants and fees. John’s patrons included Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, upon whom Henry IV had bestowed the honour of Richmond for life, and it was probably at Henry’s request that the earl granted him the manor and advowson of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, both of which were part of the honours. Initially for Neville’s lifetime only, the grant was confirmed and extended by the King, who on 1 June 1412 awarded the property to John, his wife Elizabeth and their two infant sons, Henry and John, to hold for their lives in survivorship. On the same day the four Norburys received a royal grant of the alien priory of Lewisham and its estates, to hold for the duration of the war against France.17 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 844-6; CPR, 1408-13, pp. 404, 405. In the event, the Norburys did not keep the priory for long, since in 1415 Hen. V granted it to his foundation in Sheen: VCH Kent, iii. 238.

It was in France that Henry Norbury made his name. His decision to serve there was perhaps partly prompted by the longevity of his mother, whose dower and jointure interests in the Norbury estates meant that he never fully came into his own. Yet it is also likely that he was inspired by the examples set by his father, his stepfather Sir John Montgomery*, whom the widowed Elizabeth Norbury had married by early 1420, and his maternal uncle Sir Ralph Butler. Both Montgomery and Butler had distinguished military careers, although Butler, who became one of the King’s councillors in France and Normandy and a Knight of the Garter, and who was created Lord Sudeley in 1441, was much the more prominent figure.18 CPL, vii. 337; CP, xii (1), 420-1. The young Henry probably began his military service under Montgomery, who was captain of the Norman castle of Domfront for much of the 1420s, for he was serving as his stepfather’s lieutenant there in the summer of 1427. He soon proved his worth as a soldier, for by March 1430 he was both a knight and the commander of the garrison at Meulan to the north-west of Paris. By the following autumn, he was a member of the retinue of Thomas, Lord Scales.19 Add. Ch. 7967.

The Domfront lieutenancy suggests that Norbury enjoyed a good relationship with his stepfather. Such a hypothesis is supported by a will Montgomery made in the autumn of 1433, for in it he provided for Henry to succeed to the manor of Chalton, Hampshire, should his own sons, John*, Thomas† and Philip Montgomery, die without issue.20 E329/13. Perhaps still in France when the will was made, Norbury had certainly returned to England by the beginning of the following year, if only to prepare for a fresh campaign. St Valéry, a town on the border of north-east Normandy, had recently fallen to the French, raising fears about the safety of the towns and castles of Le Crotoy and Rue on the opposite side of the Somme estuary. The Crown reacted by entrusting Norbury with the task of ensuring that they remained in English hands. Through an indenture of 11 Feb. 1434, he undertook to serve as captain of their garrisons, initially for 12 weeks, with a retinue of 18 men-at-arms and 100 archers, and later that month his force mustered at Winchelsea prior to crossing the Channel.21 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 196-7; E403/712, mm. 8, 11; E404/50/160. Griffiths misdates the indenture 8 Feb. and refers to a retinue of 120 men.

Norbury’s duties as captain of Le Crotoy and Rue make it unlikely that he was in England at the beginning of the following May, when the government was preparing to administer an oath to keep the peace throughout the realm. He was nevertheless expected to swear the oath, as a resident of Stoke Dabernon, Surrey, where his wife’s principal manor lay.22 CPR, 1429-36, p. 380. He had married Anne, the daughter of William Crosyer, relatively recently since her previous husband, Richard Tyrell, had died in July 1431.23 Fifty Earliest English Wills, 89-90. Tyrell, who had benefited from the patronage of Norbury’s father, was not her first husband. Previously, she had been the wife of Ingram Bruyn, the short-lived son and heir apparent of her stepfather, Sir Maurice Bruyn, who had married her mother Edith after the death of William Crosyer.24 CIPM, xix. 192-6, 343; xxi. 81; VCH Essex, vii. 119; CP, ii. 357. Tyrell was buried in the Benedictine nunnery of Sopwell, near St. Albans, a religious house with which Anne maintained links in later years. As an account for the priory shows, in the mid 1440s she paid it for the commons of a daughter of hers, apparently a boarder with the nuns and almost certainly one of her eight children by Norbury.25 VCH Herts. iv. 425n. Immediately after his marriage, Norbury took up residence at Stoke Dabernon. Anne also brought him manors at Fetcham, Great Bookham and Albury in Surrey, at Pavenham in Bedfordshire and at Duxford in Cambridgeshire, although he resided at Cheshunt in his later years.26 CP25(1)/292/68/184; VCH Beds. iii. 78; VCH Cambs. vi. 205; VCH Surr. iii. 73, 286, 328, 458. By the time of his marriage, Cheshunt and the rest of the honour of Richmond was held by John, duke of Bedford, and in 1433 he, his mother, brother and stepfather, Sir John Montgomery, surrendered their rights in the advowson at Cheshunt to Bedford, so that the duke might donate it to the Hospitallers, an arrangement upheld by the Parliament of that year.27 CPR, 1429-36, p. 296; RP, iv. 460-2 (cf. PROME, xi. 154).

Having served at Le Crotoy, Norbury was soon preparing for another expedition to France. Reacting to French successes, the government sent reinforcements to Normandy and the Somme region during the winter of 1435-6. Having indented to serve for a further two years across the Channel, Norbury mustered near Portsmouth with a retinue of 29 men-at-arms and 400 archers in December 1435. A lack of shipping meant that he and a fellow captain, Richard Wastnes, were still waiting on the south coast at the beginning of the new year. They finally set sail in February 1436, probably after the 13th of that month when Norbury entrusted his personal estate to three trustees: his wife, his uncle Sir Ralph Butler and Robert Elderbek. Although a comparatively minor figure, Elderbek likewise had property interests at Cheshunt, and Norbury appears to have acted as a feoffee for him in return. Norbury crossed the Channel at a time of considerable insecurity for the English in Normandy, where the inhabitants of the Caux peninsula had recently taken up arms in revolt, and he and his men were sent to reinforce Rouen.28 Griffiths, 201; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 525, 526; E403/721, mm. 8, 10, 11, 12; E404/52/161; Wars of English, i. 508-9; Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 140-1; Add. Ch. 5831; PCC 23 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 179-81); VCH Herts. iii. 452; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 317, 336-7.

By the end of the year Norbury was lieutenant of Cherbourg under Richard, duke of York, then the King’s lieutenant-governor in France. He remained at Cherbourg after Cardinal Beaufort took over as its nominal captain in 1437, but it is unclear whether he also served under Beaufort’s nephew, John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, who succeeded the cardinal as captain there later in the decade.29 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 283-4. Between the spring of 1440 and the beginning of 1441, Norbury commanded the garrison at St-Lô, about half way between Cherbourg and Domfront, but in 1441-3 he was on the other side of Normandy, serving as the lieutenant of John, Lord Talbot, at Rouen Bridge. It is likely that Talbot, one of the most renowned English commanders in France, had chosen him as his deputy because he was an experienced and capable soldier and that their association was professional rather than personal.30 Pollard, 82. Norbury must have briefly returned to England in the mid 1440s, for he was appointed to a commission to treat for a loan in Surrey in June 1446. The loan, likewise sought from other counties, was intended to provide Henry VI with the means to travel in appropriate state to a meeting with the French king, Charles VII, in France, but in the end the proposed conference never took place.31 Griffiths, 493. Norbury cannot have remained at home for long because in the following autumn he received letters of protection as a member of the retinue of Lord Scales. By the spring of 1447, he was captain of Domfront and Vire on the duchy’s south-west march although subsequently he surrendered the captaincy of Vire to Scales, whose lieutenant he became there. He received further letters of protection as one of Scales’s men in the spring of 1448.32 DKR, xlviii. 371, 377.

Later that year Norbury went to Brittany, but he was in Normandy when the English lost that duchy. In the early spring of 1450 he and a detachment from Vire met up with a small army which had landed at Cherbourg under the command of Sir Thomas Kyriel*. Kyriel’s force retook Valognes on 27 Mar. but it was intercepted by the French at Formigny on 15 Apr., as it marched to join the duke of Somerset at Caen. The English were defeated with heavy casualties and Norbury was among those taken prisoner. Following the battle, the French began to lay siege to Vire. The depleted garrison surrendered six days later in exchange for Norbury’s release, and its members were permitted to depart for Caen, which itself fell at the beginning of July. Within a matter of weeks Cherbourg was also lost and the French had recovered the whole of Normandy.33 Archives Nationales, K68/29/8; M. Keen, Eng. in the Later Middle Ages, 404; Narratives of Expulsion of English ed. Stevenson, 160, 205, 331, 336, 338; Wars of English, ii. [630-1]; Griffiths, 520. Norbury’s release from custody came at a heavy price, since he agreed to pay his captors a large ransom, still only partly paid at his death. He was also obliged to send John, his eldest son and heir, and other relatives to France as hostages to guarantee payment. After the fall of Caen Norbury probably accompanied Somerset to Calais prior to sailing for home, although in mid April 1451 the Crown licensed him to return to France with an instalment of his ransom.34 DKR, xlviii. 386, 396, 418; Surr. Arch. Collns, x. 286. In the following summer a substantial force was raised to augment the defences of Calais. Sir Henry and others were commissioned to take the musters at Dover of the retinue of the newly-appointed treasurer of Calais, Gervase Clifton*, and of the troops which the City of London had agreed to send to the beleaguered English outpost.35 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 479-80.

For the remainder of his life Norbury was technically on parole as a prisoner of the French, but the raising of his ransom did not occupy all of his time after the loss of Normandy. In his later years he was an active follower of the unruly young duke of Exeter, Henry Holand. How he became associated with Exeter is unknown although the manor he held in the right of his wife at Pavenham neighboured Stevington, the Holands’ lordship in Bedfordshire, and it is possible that he had served with John Holand, the duke’s father and predecessor, in France. By 1452 Norbury was Exeter’s chamberlain, and it was as a Holand retainer that he became involved in the duke’s quarrel with Ralph, Lord Cromwell, over the Ampthill estate in Bedfordshire. Cromwell had bought the estate from the executors of John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, within months of Fanhope’s death in 1443, but Exeter manufactured a false claim to these lands and seized them in June 1452. Cromwell responded by taking legal action against the duke and his retainers, and Norbury was a defendant in one of the suits he brought, an action which came to pleadings in the court of common pleas in the Easter term of 1453. According to this suit, Norbury, Thomas Wychard* and six other servants of Exeter had entered the manor at Ampthill and carried away goods worth no less than £1,000. When it came to pleadings Norbury was already at Westminster as a Member of the Parliament of 1453, and he appeared in person to answer the plea. A jury was summoned but there was no immediate trial. In a petition which he presented to the same Parliament, Cromwell alleged that the jurors had dared not appear, for fear of Exeter and his servants, then present in Westminster Hall. The servants in question were not named, but it is likely that Norbury was among them, since Parliament was still in session. In reality the petition gave a one-sided account. Cromwell and his men had also come to the hall and there had been a disturbance serious enough to prompt the King briefly to imprison Exeter, Cromwell and the latter’s supporter, Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin. Cromwell’s suit against Norbury and his seven associates came to trial in June 1455, by which time he had recovered Ampthill from his opponent. The jury found four of the defendants guilty but acquitted Norbury, Wychard and two of the others.36 CP40/769, rot. 328; S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 881-907; KB27/777, rot. 90.

There is little doubt that the dispute between Exeter and Cromwell had played a central part in Norbury’s election to Parliament, for Exeter is known to have used his influence to secure the return to the Commons of men favourable to his cause. Six of his followers were elected for boroughs in Devon and Cornwall and Norbury’s fellow knight of the shire was Thomas Wychard. In spite of his wife’s manor at Pavenham, Norbury was not properly qualified to sit for Bedfordshire since he failed to meet the residential qualification demanded of knights of the shire by the well known Act of 1445. (Ironically, his brother, who lacked a connexion with Surrey, had been returned for that county to the very Parliament that had passed that Act.) Sir Henry never played a significant role in the administration of the county and his sole commission there arose from his Membership of the Parliament of 1453. The indenture recording the return of him and Wychard (also not an established member of the Bedfordshire gentry) that year lists no fewer than 113 attestors, many of them obscure men, and it is possible that an irregular election took place. As it happened, Exeter’s servants in the Commons could do nothing to help their master, because they were powerless to block Cromwell’s petition. Norbury also had his own affairs to see to while attending the Parliament, since in June 1453 the Crown granted his agents permission to raise money for his ransom by trading with France. The Ampthill dispute had important ramifications on a national level, because it prompted Cromwell to seek the support of the powerful Nevilles and Exeter to ally with their Percy rivals. It also helped to confirm Holand as an opponent of his father-in-law, Richard, duke of York, who played a crucial role in assisting the passage of Cromwell’s petition through Parliament. In May 1454, two months after York had assumed the office of Protector of England, Exeter and Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, rebelled in northern England, but it is unlikely that Norbury was involved, since he was not among those subsequently indicted for their part in the short-lived rising.37 DKR, xlviii. 396; Payling, 895 et seq.; C219/16/2; PROME, xii. 306; KB27/778, rex rot. 3d; KB9/149/4/27; 5/3; 9/8.

At the end of the same year Elizabeth, widow of William Ferrers, Lord Chartley, obtained the King’s licence to convey certain estates in Somerset and Gloucester which she held in dower to Norbury and other feoffees.38 CPR, 1452-61, p. 232. Presumably family ties led her to choose a man associated with the unruly Exeter as one of her feoffees, since she was Norbury’s cousin, the daughter of Hamon Belknap by Elizabeth Norbury’s younger sister Joan.39 VCH Glos. v. 107; C139/138/22; 144/50; 151/45; CP, v. 320, 321n, xii (1), 421n; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 458-9. By late 1454 Norbury was nearing the end of his life. Still alive in the spring of 1455, when he was considered for a commission intended to raise money in Surrey for the defence of Calais,40 PPC, vi. 239. he was dead by the following autumn. In the meantime, it is possible he accompanied Exeter to the first battle of St. Albans in May that year, but it is said that the duke, who took up arms for the Lancastrian cause in the civil wars, did not arrive at St. Albans until after the fighting was over.41 Payling, 904. Norbury died before the following 26 Oct., when the Chancery issued a writ of diem clausit extremum,42 CFR, xix. 135. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 635, wrongly asserts that the MP died in 1464. although neither an inquisition post mortem nor will for him survives. He was buried alongside his father in London, where John had possessed many important connexions and where he himself had owned property in the parish of St. Alban, Wood Street.43 Corp. London RO, hr 172/6; 180/31; 223/12, 13. An alablaster monument, the Norbury tomb was situated in the Greyfriars’ church, the most fashionable in the City.44 Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica ed. Nichols, v. 387-8.

The expensive consequences of Formigny remained with the Norburys for some time after Sir Henry’s death, and the family was obliged to engage in trading ventures to raise money towards what was still owed for his ransom. In September 1456 the Crown granted letters of protection to Le Marie de Saine, a French vessel of some 160 tons which his son and successor John was using for that purpose, and at the end of the following May the King issued representatives of the late MP with a safe conduct to trade between England and France.45 Surr. Arch. Collns. x. 286; DKR, xlviii. 418. Norbury’s widow died in the autumn of 1464 and was buried with her ancestors in the parish church at Stoke Dabernon, rather than at the Greyfriars. Her brass at Stoke Dabernon depicts the eight children, four boys and four girls, she had borne him.46 Add. 32487 D 4. It is incorrectly recorded in Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica, v. 387-8, that Anne was buried with Norbury in the Greyfriars. Given the lack of evidence relating to John Norbury’s brothers, it is possible that he was the only one of the MP’s sons to have survived infancy. Elizabeth, the eldest of John’s sisters, was the most prominent of the Norbury girls. Following the death of her first husband, William Sydney of Baynards, Surrey, in 1462, she married (Sir) Thomas Uvedale*, whom she also survived. After her own death in 1488 she was also buried in the Greyfriars, where a perpetual chantry was established in her name.47 Surr. Arch. Collns. iii. 93; x. 287; Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica, v. 388.

The MP’s mother, known as ‘Lady Say’ by reason of her first marriage, had survived her last husband, Sir John Montgomery, and she also outlived both Norbury and her daughter-in-law, Anne. Closely associated with the Lancastrian regime, she took care to secure a confirmation of her interest in the manor of Cheshunt shortly after the accession of Edward IV.48 CPR, 1461-7, p. 20. In December 1461 the new King granted its reversion to his servant (Sir) John Clay*, although after Elizabeth died in February 1465 Clay’s title was ignored and it was given to George, duke of Clarence.49 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 92, 388. Elizabeth was buried with her ancestors in Arbury priory, Warwickshire, rather than alongside any of her husbands.50 PCC 8 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 58v-59). The Norbury lands which she had held for life reverted to her grandson, John Norbury, who inherited a half share of the estates of his great-uncle, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, following Butler’s death without legitimate male issue in 1473. Butler’s other heir was the MP’s cousin, William Belknap, the brother of Elizabeth Ferrers.51 CPR, 1461-7, p. 459; 1476-85, p. 16; CP, xii (1), 421; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1058; 1485-1500, no. 1017; C67/53, m. 38; CFR, xxi. no. 189.