Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Norman, John (1491?-1553?)
NORMAN, JOHN (1491?–1553?), Cistercian, was born soon after 1490, and graduated B.A. at Cambridge in 1514. He became abbot of the Cistercian house of Bindon in Dorset some time after 1523, in succession to John Walys. In 1536 Bindon, having a clear income of only 147l. 7s. 9½d. (Gairdner, Calendar of Letters and Papers of Henry VIIIs Reign, x. 1238), was suppressed among the lesser monasteries, but on 16 Nov. of the same year John Norman was formally reinstated abbot there by the patent of refoundation of the house (ib. xi. 1217; the patent is printed in full in Hutchins, Dorset, i. 356-8). Norman appears to have held the abbey of the king for some two years on the tenure of 'perpetual alms,' and then to have finally surrendered it to John Tregonwell, one of the clerks in chancery. The deed of surrender, preserved among the records of the court of augmentations, is dated 14 March 30 Henry VIII, 1539 (Deputy Keeper's Eighth Report, App. ii. p. 10), but the Close Roll gives the date as 10 March (Burnet, Hist. Reform. I. ii. 247, ed. 1865). To John Tregonwell, who had originally petitioned Cromwell for the farm of the abbey in 1536, Norman and his convent (1539) demised the farm of Hamburgh for the term of eighty-one years from 'Michaelmas last' (Gairdner, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, x. 388), and Norman received a pension of 50l. a year, which he enjoyed until 1553.
[In addition to the authorities mentioned above, see Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 70; Rymer's Fœdera, xiv. 630; Tanner's Notitia Monastica, p. xl, 3 (ed. 1787); Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 656, ed. 1830; Willis's Mitred Abbeys, ii. 69; Dixon's Hist. of Church of England, ii. 114-15.]