The Norris papers Author:Thomas Heywood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: V. Charge Of Thomas Norris Of Speke Against Sequestrators, 1660. [The annexed is a summary of the losses of the Speke family during the Civil Wars. In the ... more »catalogue of those that have compounded for their estates, " Thos. Norris of Speak, Lancashire, Esquire," is set down at £508. This book was originally printed in 1655, and in the following paper it is evident Thomas Norris had the estate at the time of its heing drawn up, which was probably about 1660. There is no mention made of any possessor of Speke but of Thomas and his father, William, and yet there was an elder son, Edward. Here is a memorandum from the Sequestrators' books; " Edward Norris of Speke a Papist," (and then an enumeration of twenty-five acres of land,) " the above said estate was added to the book of surveighs, the 24th of June 1652." The father of these two died in 1651, and Edward in 1664; and whether from the circumstance of the disqualifications under which, in that persecuting age, his religion placed him, or because he had only a daughter, or for some other reason which does not appear, it is howeverclear that Edward was disinherited, and here are receipts by which it appears he received from his father an annuity through his younger brother, Thomas. There is amongst these MSS. an uncancellcd bond of Col. John More's, (he spelt his own name Moore, but the reader would hardly know him so designated,) the celebrated member for Liverpool who signed Charles's death warrant. William Norris must then have been ill enough off, and More, who was waiting for a wind to pass with his regiment into Ireland, thus occupied himself in defrauding an unfortunate Cavalier; and Martindale has shown us that More and his household were little better than freebooters.] 30 September, 1649. Mdum that I John Moor...« less