,' the initial letter to the Psalms
containing the arms of Whittingham and Cecil.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--From the Bible of 1611.]

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 L1000
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).

[Illustration: FIG. 31.--Dedication of Savile's _St. Chrysostom_. Eton,
1610.]

The work is said to have cost its promoter L8000.

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.

He appears to have been a man of shrewd business ability and some
scholarship, as we find him writing