A biosketch reports [1]:
"Sir Anthony Fitzherbert (1470-1538), judge, sixth son of Ralph Fitzherbert of Norbury, Derbyshire, by Elizabeth, daughter of John Marshall of Upton, Leicestershire, was a member of Gray's Inn. Wood states that he 'laid a foundation of learning' in Oxford, but gives no authority. The date of his entering Gray's Inn and of his call to the har are unknown. His shield, however, was emblazoned on the bay window of the hall not later than 1580, where it was still to be seen in 1671, but from which it has since disappeared; and he is included in a list of Gray's Inn readers compiled in the seventeenth century from authentic materials by Sir William Segar, Garter king of arms, and keeper of Graj's Inn library [2]. On 18 Nov. 1510 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and on 24 Nov. 1516 he was appointed king's serjeant. About 1521-2 he was raised to the bench as a justice of the court of common pleas and knighted [3]. In April 1524 he was commissioned to go to Ireland with Sir Ralph Egerton, and Dr. James Denton, dean of Lichfield, to attempt the pacification of the country. The commissioners arrived about midsummer, and arranged a treaty between the deputy, the Earl of Ormonde, and the Earl of Kildare (concluded 28 July 1524), whereby, after making many professions of amity, they agreed to refer all future differences to arbitration, the final decision, in the event of the arbitrators disagreeing, to rest with the lord chancellor of England and the privy council, Kildare in the meantime making various substantial concessions. The commissioners left Ireland in September. On their return they received the hearty thanks of the king. During the next few years Fitzherbert's history is all but a blank. There is, however, extant a letter from him to Wolsey dated at Carlisle, 30 March 1525, describing the state of the country as very disturbed, and hinting that it was the 'sinister policy' of Lord Dacre to make and keep it so [4]
On 11 June 1529 Fitzherbert was one of the commissioners appointed to hear causes in chancery in place of the chancellor, Wolsey [5]. On 1 Dec. following he signed the articles of impeachment exhibited against Wolsey, one of them being to the effect that' certain bills for extortion of ordinaries' having been found before Fitzherbert, Wolsey had the indictments removed into the chancery by certiorari,' and rebuked the same Fitzherbert for the same cause.' On 1 June 1533 he was present at the coronation of AnneBoleyn. In 1534 he was with the council at Ludlow [6]. He was one of the commission that (29 April 1535) tried the Carthusians, Robert Feron, John Hale, and others, for high treason under the statute 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22, the offence consisting in having met and conversed too freely about the king's marriage. He was also a member of the tribunals that tried Fisher and More in the following June and July. He appears as one of the witnesses to the deed dated 5 April 1537, by which the abbot of Furness surrendered his monastery to the king [7]. He died on 27 May 1538, and was buried in the parish church of Norbury.
Fitzherbert married twice: first, Dorothy, daughter of Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire; second, Matilda, daughter and heir of Richard Cotton of Hamstall Ridware, Staffordshire. He had no children by his first wife, but several by his second [cf. Fitzherbert, Nicholas and Thomas]. The manor of Norbury is still in the possession of his posterity. The family has been settled at Norbury since 1125, when William, prior of Tutbury, granted the manor to William Fitzherbert.
"Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, son of Ralph Fitzherbert, esq. was born at Norbury, co. Derby. He was the King's Sergeant at Law, and 14 Hen. VIII. one of the Justices of the Common Pleas." [8]
A biosketch reported [9]:
Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, who succeeded his brother, as thirteenth lord of Norbury, was born in 1470. In 1511 was called to the bar as serjeant-at-law; in 1516 he was knighted; and in 1522 he was made one of the Justices of the Common Pleas. He was considered the greatest lawyer of his day, and was pre-eminently distinguished for his probity. He published various standard legal works, and other smaller ones on husbandry. He is said to have been the only man who dared to rebuke, not only Cardinal Wolsey, but even the King himself, on the subject of the alienation of church lands. He died in 1538, and on his death-bed solemnly enjoined his children under no pretext to accept grants or become purchasers of monastic property.* Sir Anthony was possessed of an ample professional income, and during the seven years that he held the Manor House, is said to have spent much money on the fabric.
A monument for Sir Anthony Fitzherbert is at Norbury Church. [10]
[1] Leslie Stephen, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, Finch-Forman, Vol. 19 (London: Smith Elder & Co, 1889), 168-170, [HathiTrust].
[2] Footnote in original text: Douthwaite, Gray's Inn, p. 46.
[3] Footnote in original text: Dugdale, Chron. Ser. pp. 79, 80, 81; Letters and Papers, For. and Dom. of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 889.
[4] Footnote in original text: State Papers, ii. 104-8; Letters and Papers, For. and Dom. of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 244, 352, 534; Hall, Chron. 1809, p. 685.
[5] Footnote in original text: Rymer, Fcedera, xiv. 299.
[6] Footnote in original text: Cobbett, State Trials, i. 377; Letters and Papers, For. and Dom. of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. iv.pt. iii. p. 272, vi. 263, vii. 545, 581.
[7] Footnote in original text: Letters relating to the Suppression of Monasteries, Camd. Soc.p. 154.
[8] Thomas Harwood, Erdeswick's Survey of Staffordshire (London: 1844), 109-110, footnote, [HathiTrust].
[9] J Charles Cox, "Norbury Manor House and the Troubles of the Fitzherberts," Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 7 (1885), 221-259, at 239-240, [GoogleBooks], [HathiTrust].
[10] Bede Camm, Forgotten shrines; an account of some old Catholic halls and families in England (London : Macdonald & Evans; 1910), xviii, Photograph of the Chancel of Norbury Church with the brass of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, [HathiTrust].