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NORTON, Richard, of Worcester.
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Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
Offices Held
Bailiff, Worcester 1413-14, 1415-16.
Biography
Norton was holding a tenement near the Foregate, Worcester, at the time of his single election to Parliament. As a bailiff in 1414 he presented to the chantry in the chapel of the Holy Trinity, which had been founded by a namesake of his in conjunction with other citizens in Edward III’s reign. Not long afterwards he was enfeoffed in the estates in Worcestershire and Warwickshire belonging to Ralph Arderne*, a retainer of the earl of Warwick. During his second bailiffship he provided mainprise at the elections to the Parliament of 1415 on behalf of the lawyer, John Weston, with whom he had sat in the Commons in the previous year. He is not recorded after 1417.1
Ref Volumes: 1386-1421
Author: L. S. Woodger
Notes
It is unlikely that he was the same Richard Norton as he who was MP for Worcester six times between 1368 and 1385 and bailiff in 1377-8, although certain evidence suggests that this might have been the case. At an inquest in 1412 concerning the outlawry in 1363-4 of one Richard Eliot, the jury gave evidence that Eliot had owned ‘Shirnakescroft’ in Northwick near Worcester, the profits from which Richard Norton had taken ever since the outlawry. Norton claimed in Chancery four years later that as kinsman to Eliot’s father (namely, son of Margery, ‘sister’ to William Norton† of Worcester), he was heir to the property. It would appear from this that there was only one Richard Norton of Worcester, but as the career of the MP of 1368-85 apparently ended well before the close of the century, we have assumed that the MP of 1414 was a younger kinsman. CFR, xiii. 259; CIMisc. vii. 437; CPR, 1416-22, pp. 36-37; Worcester Chs. (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1909), 192-3.
- 1. Collectanea (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1912), 19, 38; Worcester Chs. 42, 55; T.R. Nash, Worcs. ii. app. 138-9; V. Green, Hist. Worcester, i. 245; C219/11/7; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 128.