"According to tradition, Francis Norwood, the first Norwood of New England, was the son of Judge (known of by the writer) Norwood. About 1660 the judge was accused by King Charles II on his coming into power of having encouraged many persons to impression [sic, probably imprison] King Charles I and even to his being put to death, for this, king Charles II about 1660 had the estate of Judge Norwood confiscated and he not allowed to leave certain proscribed limits. Soon after this, his son Francis Norwood, come to Salem, Mass. and in a year or more married a wife in Lynn, Mass. He with his wife come to Gloucester, Cape Ann, about 1663. All of the Norwoods of Cape Ann and Maine and elsewhere in New England are his descendants."

Grandfather Pool's notes are obviously confused. He has two scenarios. One wonders whether he has forgotten how the old story goes, is weighing two versions he has heard and is trying to reconcile them, or is trying to invent a story. Apparently Francis's daughter [or granddaughter; I am not clear about this] Abigail passed along Francis Norwood's tale.

G. Marion Norwood Callam, a genealogist in England, and author of three books on the Norwood family in England and America (The Norwoods I, II, III), has claimed that Francis was the son of a Captain Thomas Norwood of the Leckhampton Court branch of the family in Goucestershire, England. To date, no records have been discovered to verify this connection. In fact, because the Leckhampton Court family were staunch royalists and family stories indicate that Francis Norwood fled England to escape the recriminations of Charles II, the connection seems unlikely. Further reference in Ebenezer Pool's notes to Essex County cast additional doubt on the Leckhampton connection. The fear that Norwood might be an assumed name, stirred up by Ebenezer Pool's additional account of three men who fled England after the restoration and changed their names in the process, might not be justified. If Francis Norwood had changed his name, then his origins might never be known, but if, as claimed in the 1923 article "Cape Ann Shore", Francis used the red, engrailed cross on a field of ermine as his coat of arms, then he was probably a Norwood. Use of the coat of arms further identifies him as a member of the gentry as do two other facts: first, that Massachusetts governor Symonds officiated at his wedding to Elizabeth Coldom (Ebenezer Pool ms.), and second, that he was in a position to set himself up and run a tavern upon his arrival in the new world--possibly when he was little more than twenty-one years old.