While it is still unclear whether Francis came from Gloucestershire or some other English county, nothing should be ruled out. Heyrman points out that Gloucester, unlike most of New England, was settled by as many west country people as East Anglians, so it is not impossible that Francis would have migrated there from Gloucestershire.

There has been some doubt about the Leckhampton connection because of the apparent staunch loyalty to the Crown of this branch of Norwoods, but if they were supporters of the Crown, why did William Norwood, putative great grandfather of Francis, refuse to accept a knighthood from Charles I in 1625 and pay a fine? If as has also been claimed, the Leckhampton Norwoods were Church of England adherents, why was the same William Norwood named by the bishop of Gloucester as a recusant in 1577 (he may have been either a Roman Catholic or a Puritan)? If Francis came from Leckhampton, Gloucestershire, he came from an adventurous, outspoken Norwood clan that included religious and political dissidents as well as adventurers on the high seas. It is this line of Norwoods who produced the greatest number of Norwood emigrants to North America in the early colonial period. We think of William and Richard (Leckhampton line) of Virginia, John (Tyringham line) of Maryland, Richard (also Tyringham line), the brilliant mathematician of Bermuda, and Henry (Leckhampton line) who left a diary of his adventures in the New World. The task, however, remains to find Francis in local English records in order to establish his place in the Norwood genealogy.

From sometime before 1679 until 1692, Francis Norwood, Sr. seems to have been the object of considerable conjecture on the part the people of Gloucester, and even became embroiled, if only peripherally, in the witch hysteria that swept Massachusetts Bay, but particularly the North Shore and Cape Ann, in the latter year. The Congregationalists who had come to Massachusetts Bay to establish a new society according to their Calivinist world view, were under pressure of their charter to practise religious tolerance, but they could not endure dissent in their midst, which they viewed as a serious threat to their goals. The underlying issue of the grassroots outbreak of fear and accusation that broke out in 1692 was probably sectarian exclusivity. (Although other factors have to be considered as well.)

The dissenting group that aroused the greatest animosity was the Quakers. According to Fisher (194), "Quakers...were punished with special ferocity[,...sometimes] branded in the face...with H. for heresie." In the minds of the Congregationalists, religious heresy was linked to sexual license and witchcraft, both of which were punishable crimes in the colony. Because they believed that people's beliefs and practices were inherited and passed down through their families, any heresy was considered to be genetic or familial, and the Congregationalists therefore viewed intermarriage between sects to be illicit. In addition, heresy was often viewed as a form of witchcraft, and particularly in the case of the Quakers whose emphasis on each believer's "inner light" was an idea alien to the Congregationalists' understanding of spiritual things. So, while the authorities in the Bay Colony could not prosecute dissenters directly for their beliefs, they could prosecute them for fornication, or adultery, and witchcraft--the latter two being capital crimes--and it appears that this is precisely what happened in the years leading up to that fateful year of 1692. According to Christine Heyrman in her book, Commerce and Culture in the Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, in every accusation of witchcraft in 1692, the accused was related in some way to the Quakers.