MARK OF PAUL STORR, LONDON, 1813

John Toler, Baron Norbury of Ballyorenode, Co. Tipperary, and later Earl of Norbury, was a lawyer, judge and politician of renowned wit and zeal. He began his career as an MP in the Irish House of Commons in 1776, and rapidly rose in the judicial hierarchy, with appointments as solicitor-general in 1789 and attorney-general in 1798. Norbury was noted for his fiery prosecutions, and brought his tempestuousness to the bench in 1800, when he became chief justice of the court of common pleas. One contemporary source said of his comments that Norbury’s “performances `were greatly preferred, in the decline of the Dublin stage, to any theatrical exhibition’” (cited in R. Keane’s entry on Toler in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004). Upon his retirement from public life, Norbury was elevated in the peerage as Viscount Glandine and Earl of Norbury, and presented with a handsome pension. Outside of chambers, Norbury was known for his thorough knowledge of poetry, music and Shakespeare. A pair of wine coolers with the same arms and by the same maker as the present tureens, and formerly in the collection of Florence Gould, sold Christie’s, London, 19 November 2002, lot 84.