NORBORNE, Walter (1595-1659), of Studley, Wilts., and the Inner Temple.

The Norborne family had been resident in the parish of Calne from the middle of the sixteenth century, and a century later their holdings in the area included the manor of Hillmarton as well as land in East and West Coulston and Melksham.11VCH Wilts. viii. 237; ix. 53, 56, 59; PROB11/303/103. The family seat was at Studley, about a mile outside Calne. Walter Norborne trained as a lawyer, becoming a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1622, and by the mid-1630s he was practising with such prominent figures as Edward Hyde* and Thomas Gardiner*, and was involved in the settlement of lands by the earl of Danby on his brother, Sir John Danvers*.12Masters of the Bench, 32; Coventry Docquets, 655, 668, 681. Norborne increased his standing in Wiltshire with his marriage to the daughter of another prominent local man, Henry Chivers, who dominated Calne’s staple cloth industry at that time.13Marsh, History of Calne, 119. The dowry, settled in September 1638, included messuages in Calne and other lands in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.14Coventry Docquets, 727. Undoubtedly it was his local standing which led to Norborne’s return for the borough at the spring election in 1640, though he no doubt also benefited from his close association with the Duckett family, who owned the manor of Calne and who wielded considerable influence in parliamentary elections. William Duckett, MP for Calne in 1659, was later appointed as one of the overseers of Norborne’s will.15PROB11/303/103.

Norborne left no trace on the records of the Short Parliament, either as a committeeman or as a speaker in debate, but there is little doubt that he supported the king at this time, as he had been among the members of the Inner Temple who contributed to the king’s northern expedition the year before.16CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 604-5. Norborne appears to have had continued in support of the king during the civil wars, though he was not forced to compound for his delinquency until 1649.17CCC 2079. Even then, he compounded upon his own discovery, under the terms of a parliamentary resolution of 21 March 1649, which allowed certain delinquents – including those who had been members of Parliament – to compound at the rate of one year’s value of their real estate, and a twentieth part of their personal estate, on the condition that they had not already been sequestered or discovered.18CJ vi. 169a-b. In his petition to the Compounding Committee, Norborne claimed he had played no part in the second civil war of 1648, but desired to compound, fearing sequestration for things said or done by him during the first civil war.19SP23/214 ff. 229, 231. Undoubtedly, Norborne had in mind evidence, in the hands of the Committee for Advance of Money since January 1646, that he and fellow royalist Sir William Button had executed either a commission of the peace, or a commission of oyer and terminer to examine witnesses against Sir Edward Bayntun* and other Wiltshire parliamentarians.20SP19/105, f. 33. Norborne had attended the Committee for Advance of Money during 1646-7, although the outcome of their deliberations at that time is not clear. In July 1649 this committee received further information that Norborne had in fact been sequestered by the Wiltshire county committee in 1644, but there is no record of this information being passed to the Compounding Committee, and Norborne was eventually fined £380 on the basis of the parliamentary resolution of March 1649.21SP23/214 ff. 229, 233.

Norborne also found himself at the centre of a local dispute when he and his brother, Humphrey Norborne, took action against Benedict Brown, one of the churchwardens of Calne, on 8 June 1648. Norborne claimed that money collected to repair the church after the collapse of the steeple in 1638 had been embezzled by Brown, and further alleged that Brown had destroyed a seat ‘convenient for four persons to sit’ which had been erected in the church for the use of the Norbornes on a space previously belonging to Norborne’s father-in-law, Henry Chivers. Brown denied the charges and claimed that the space in the church in fact belonged to his own family.22C7/250/51; C6/8/143. Whether this incident can be linked to the events surrounding Norborne’s funeral some ten years later, is not clear, but so unpopular was he at that time, that local people turned out to insult his corpse and disrupt the obsequies. Norborne was buried in Calne church and a monument was erected in his memory

A man dear to Heaven, hateful to Satan, a constant worshipper of God, who thought humbly of himself, an altogether irreproachable councillor, of quick apprehension, of clear judgement, yet of powerful speech ... He both did and suffered much for his king and country during the space of 17 years. And being buried together into the death of Christ, he suffered so great martyrdom, even after his own death, Satan pouring forth his rage upon the funeral rites, as to seem to have obtained a double victory, both over Nature and over Fortune. ‘To the truly great men the whole earth is a tomb.’ And at length this veteran soldier of Christ after watching 64 years before the Lord Jesus, calmly fell asleep in him on the 4th day before the kalends of April 1659.23Translation of MI in Marsh, History of Calne, 188.

Under his will, drafted in 1657 and amended shortly before his death, Norborne settled the jointure lands on his wife for life, and made provision for his younger son, John, and the sons of his brothers, John and Humphrey.24PROB11/303/103. His eldest son Walter†, who served as a burgess and guild steward in Calne, would represent the borough in Parliament in 1679 and 1681.