John Norton, 5th Baron Grantley

Who was John Norton, 5th Baron Grantley?

John Richard Brinsley Norton, 5th Baron Grantley, FSA, FRNS was a British peer and numismatist.

Norton was born in Florence, Italy, the son of Thomas Norton, 4th Baron Grantley and his wife, Maria, née Federigo, and a grandson of Caroline Norton, the writer, and was educated at Harrow School and the University of Dresden. He inherited his father's title in 1877 and was sometime a captain in the Middlesex Yeomanry.

Grantley was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Numismatic Society and the British Numismatic Society. He assembled a large collection of coins and also grew orchids. His country seats were Weeke Manor in Winchester and Markenfield Hall in Ripon. He also owned Elton Manor in Nottinghamshire for a time, but seems hardly to have lived there. He purchased the Red Rice estate in 1913.

In 1879, Grantley married Katharine Buckner Norton, née McVickar, the former wife of his cousin, Charles Grantley Campbell Norton. She was the daughter of Commodore William Henry McVickar, US Navy, of New York, USA. He married secondly, in 1899, Alice Jones, the illegitimate daughter of Thomas Heron Jones, 7th Viscount Ranelagh. By his first wife, he had six children.