Thomas Norton was an English lawyer, politician, writer of verse.
Background
Norton was born in London and was educated at Cambridge, and early became a secretary to the Protector Somerset. In 1555 he was admitted a student at the Inner Temple, and married Margery Cranmer, the daughter of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. In 1568, Thomas was married to Alice, the daughter of Archdeacon Edmund Cranmer, who was the brother of the Archbishop.
Career
Margery died before 1568 with no issue. In 1562 Norton, who had served in an earlier parliament as the representative of Gatton, became Member of Parliament for Berwick, and entered active into politics. In religion he was inspired by the sentiments of his father-in-law, and was in possession of Cranmer"s manuscript code of ecclesiastical law.
This he permitted John Foxe to publish in 1571.
He went to Rome on legal business, in 1579, and from 1580 to 1583 he frequently visited the Channel Islands as a commissioner to inquire into the status of these possessions. Norton was the first Remembrancer of the City of London, holding the office from 1570 until his death in 1584.
Norton held several interrogation sessions in the Tower of London using torture instruments such as the rack. His punishment of the Catholics, as their official censor from 1581 onwards, led to his being nicknamed "Rackmaster-General" and "Rackmaster Norton." Norton"s puritanism made him objectionable to the English bishops.
He was deprived of his office and thrown into the Tower.
Francis Walsingham presently released him, but Norton"s health was undermined, and in March 1584 he died in his house at Sharpenhoe, Bedfordshire.
Membership
He became the unofficial leader of a group of about fifty members of the House of Commons, which G. R. Elton saw as the first semi-official opposition in Parliament.