Some Manuscripts Relating To 17th Century
NORWOODS
In England

The following manuscript selections were gleaned from The Historical Manuscript Commission (1891) by Richard Sherman and passed along to James G. Dempsey. Commission manuscripts are organized into Reports and further identified by the names of the prominent parties, viz. House of Lords, Marquis of Salisbury, Earl of Essex, for example. Richard Sherman wrote to Jim Dempsey: "the commission...has been since about 1880 cataloging, studying, and printing the private papers of the major families of Britain as well as the House of Lords. The Library of Congress has 20 shelves of them, and it doesnt' have all." The following are transcriptions from photocopied pages of the reports and others are from handwritten abstracts. All are reproduced here with the permission of Jim Dempsey.

From Mss of the Duke of Portland, collected in the 13th Report of the Historical Mss Commission 1891, p. 59.

THOMAS NORWOOD and JOHN MALMES TO FRANCIS, LORD
DUNSMORE.

        1643, September 5. [Northampton Gaol.]—On the 27th of August last Sir John Byron's troop with two of his brother's troops marched from Leicester and marched all night and all the next day till 4 o'clock at night without any injury committed to any man by us till we came to Brackley and there we were to be quartered 4 hours, but before we could get meat for ourselves or our horses, being almost all tired out by that long march, there was of a sudden a sound To horse, and our enemies coming so fierce on us before we could get horse that after a little scrimmage being but 3 hurt of our side, [we] was forced by the command of our captains to fly every man for his safety, and the country had got such force and strength of a sudden that separated us into several parts that before 8 o'clock next morning there was 44 of us taken, our captains and officers being fled towards Oxford, and so taken prisoners, our horses swords money and all our arms and other materials taken from us and so brought prisoners pinioned as traitors to the state to this lamentable place of prison. The Committee of Norhampton allow us 6d. a day, but the gaoler is so hard that he constrains us to pay 4d. a man every night for our bed, so that we are almost starved for want of maintenance. We entreat your Lordship to make this our petition known to the King, and to our Colonel Sir John Byron hoping that we shall have some relief or order taken for our liberty out of this woeful place of prison. Seal. [N. II., 70.] This petition was annexed to the following letter.

THOMAS NORWOOD TO FRANCIS, LORD DUNSMORE.

        1642, September 5. The County Prison, Northampton.—Stating that he had been apprehended at Daventry the day Sir John Byron's troop came by, and asking as his tenant to assist him in recovering his liberty, and stating that the same day John Malme of Bilton had been imprisoned at the instance of Bartholomew Gutteridge for speaking some words in your Honour's behalf. [N. II., 62.]


[Note: Though probably coincidental, it is interesting to find the name Gutteridge associated here with a Norwood. Joshua Norwood, Jr. of Gloucester, Mass. married Sarah Goodrich, whose immigrant ancestor was William Gutteridge. RCN,JR.]

[An additional linguistic note: in the text above, where the writer has begun a clause with "was forced...," the Mss. Commission has inserted [we] as subject of the clause; however, plural we does not agree with the singular form of the verb was. Examining the clause, it is likely that the subject of was is the singular noun phrase every man: every man was forced...to fly. The word order of the original is unusual, and certainly not modern, but the repair by the 1891 commission (or whoever made this addition) introduces a grammatical error that was not present in the original. RCN,JR.]

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