Barker also possessed the handsome pictorial initial letters which had been used by John Day, and many of the ornaments and initials previously in the office of Henry Bynneman.
John Norton was the son of Richard Norton, a yeoman of Billingsley, county Shropshire; he was nephew of William Norton, and cousin of Bonham Norton, and was thus connected by marriage with the sixteenth century bookseller, William Bonham. He was three times Master of the Stationers' Company, in 1607, 1610, and 1612. On his death, in 1612, he left £1000 to the Company of Stationers, not as is generally stated as a legacy of his own, but rather as trustee of the bequest of his uncle, William Norton. The bulk of his property he left to his cousin, Bonham Norton (P. C. C. 5 Capell).
His press will always be remembered for the magnificent edition of the Works of St. Chrysostom, in eight folio volumes, printed at Eton in 1610, at the charge of Sir Henry Savile, the editor. The late T. B. Reed, in his History of the Old English Letter Foundries (p. 140), speaks of this edition as 'one of the most splendid examples of Greek printing in this country,' and further describes the types with which it was printed as 'a great primer body, very elegantly and regularly cast, with the usual numerous ligatures and abbreviations which characterised the Greek typography of that period' (p. 141).
Fig. 31.—Dedication of Savile's St. Chrysostom. Eton, 1610.
The work is said to have cost its promoter £8000.
The title-page to the first volume was handsomely engraved, and a highly ornamental series of initial letters were used in it.
Another Greek work that Norton completed at Eton in the same year was the Sancti Gregorii Nazianzeni in Julianum Invectivae duae, in quarto.
In addition to his patent for printing Greek and Latin books, Norton also acquired from Francis Rea his patent for printing grammars, and by his will he directed a sum of money to be paid out of the profits of this patent to his wife Joyce.
John Bill was the son of Walter Bill, husbandman, of Wenlock, county Salop, and on the 25th July 1592 he apprenticed himself to John Norton. In 1601 he was admitted a freeman of the Company.