– 3 July 1597), frequently referred to as John Norris, is an English soldier of a Berkshire family of court gentry, son of Henry Norris, 1st Baron Norreys a lifelong friend of Queen Elizabeth.
He participates in every Elizabethan theater of war: in the Wars of Religion in France, in Flanders during the Eighty Years' War of Dutch liberation from Spain, in the Anglo-Spanish War, and above all in the Tudor reconquest of Ireland, where he is infamous for the massacre of women and children on the island of Rathlin in 1575.
He is the most acclaimed English soldier of his day.
