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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.