Family and Education

b. 1663, 5th s. of Thomas Norris, M.P. Liverpool 1688-95, of Speke, Lancs. by Catherine, da. of Sir Henry Garraway, ld. mayor of London 1640. educ. B.N.C. Oxf. 1683, M.B. 1691, M.D. 1695. m. 12 July 1705, Anne, da. and h. of Peter Gerard of Crewood, Cheshire, 1s. 2da. (da. Susannah m. Hugh Williams).1

Offices Held

F.R.S. 1698; F.R.C.P. 1716.

Biography

Norris was descended from a distinguished family, who had represented Liverpool almost continuously since the Revolution. He practised medicine at Chester until 1698, when he was chosen by the new East India Company as secretary to the embassy of his brother, Sir William Norris, M.P., to the Mogul emperor. On 28 Apr. 1701, he entered the Mogul’s camp at Parnella ‘in a rich palanquin, bearing his Majesty’s letters to the Emperor’. He sailed for England in September 1702 with a cargo valued at 147,000 rupees, 60,000 rupees of which belonged to the Company and 87,000 to Sir William Norris. After an illness caused by the hardships of the journey, he resumed the profession of medicine at Utkinton, near Chester.2 Returned unopposed as a Whig for Liverpool in 1715, he voted with the Government on the septennial bill, but against them on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts and the peerage bill. He did not stand in 1722, and died 22 July 1726.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. The Moore Rental (Chetham Soc. xii), 142-3.
• 2. Norris Pprs. (Chetham Soc. ix), pp. xix-xx.