XIII. Further Particulars of Thomas Norton, and of State Proceedings in Matters of Religion, in the Years 1581 and 1582
Your recent communication to the Society has drawn their attention to some facts relating to Thomas Norton, which were not known to me when I wrote the Memoir for the Shakespeare Society; and, as it is clearly proved, both by your communication and by documents in the State Paper Office, that the author of the first three acts of our earliest tragedy in blank verse was also the citizen grocer and the active and zealous Member for the City of London in 1571, and again from 1572 to 1582, who was declared to be “a man wise, bold, and eloquent,” and to have addressed the Members “in his accustomed manner of natural eloquence,” it may not be uninteresting to notice some of the State transactions in which Norton was engaged in the years 1581 and 1582, when the renewed movement was made against the Catholics by the Parliament and the Government.