Samuel Norton (1548-1621) was an English country gentleman, an initiate and an alchemist.
The son of Sir George Norton of Abbots Leigh in Somerset, he was great-grandson of Thomas Norton, author of the Ordinal of Alchemy. He studied for some time at St. John's College, Cambridge, but records show no degree. On the death of his father, in 1584, he succeeded to the estates. Early in 1585 he was in the commission of the peace for the county, but apparently suffered removal; he was reappointed in October 1589, on the recommendation of Thomas Godwin, bishop of Bath and Wells. He was sheriff of Somerset in 1589, and was appointed muster master of Somerset and Wiltshire on 30 June 1604.
Norton was the author of many alchemical tracts, edited and published in Latin by Edmund Deane in Frankfurt in 1630.
Norton's works circulated earlier, from John Robson, to Richard Napier, to Elias Ashmole. Portions of the work in manuscript, brought together before Deane edited his volume under the title of Ramorum Arboris Philosophicalis Libri tres, are in the British Library (Sloane MS. 3667, ff. 17-21, 24-28, and 31-90), and the Bodleian Library (Ashmolean MS. 1478, VI. ff. 42-104). Norton was occupied on the work in 1598 and 1599. Among the Ashmolean MSS. is a work by Norton entitled The Key of Alchimie, written in 1578, when he was at St. John's College, and it is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. We propose it to our readers today.
