Thomas Norris (fl. 1695–1732)

NORRIS (THOMAS), bookseller and bookbinder in London, (1) St. Giles without Cripplegate; (2) Looking Glass on London Bridge. 1695–1732. In the course of an action heard in the Court of Chancery Thomas Norris, bookbinder, admitted having bought about five or six hundred psalters and the same number of primers in 1695, but declared that they were printed at Oxford. Some of these he sold to a Mr. Gandy, haberdasher in Milk Street. [P.R.O. Chan. Proc. before 1714, Collins 486/100.] In 1711 Thomas Norris moved to the premises on London Bridge previously occupied by Josiah Blare. There he carried on the joint trades of bookbinder and bookseller, publishing many chapbooks and ballads as well as all kinds of nautical books. He is more than once mentioned in the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Magnus. In 1720 he was paid three shillings for a Bible, and in 1722–3, being then one of the church-wardens, he made the following entries: "paid myselfe for a large Folio Bible for the Church, very finely bound. Delivered Dec^r. 24th, 1720 £6 11s. 3d. Paid ditto for five large common prayer, 4 for the churchwardens, and 1 for the clerk, and new binding two old Bibles £3 13s. 9d." Norris retired from business soon after this and settled at Highgate, where he died in 1732, his will being proved on June 7th. He left a son William, and bequests to the following stationers of London, Daniel Mead of Snow Hill, Richard Ware and John Wilford. [P.C.C. 174, Bedford.] Gent [p. 113] says that Norris's daughter (or perhaps daughter-in-law) Elizabeth married, as her second husband, in about 1720, Edward Midwinter, the printer in Pye Corner. Gent calls Norris "a very rich bookseller on London Bridge, whose country seat was at Holloway".