Attorney-General who drew the Act vesting the sovereignty of the Isle of Man in the Crown, and afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Revesting Act was his drafting, and the speed of it became the standing Manx complaint. The letter which set the terms is dated 27 February 1765 and the revestment followed on 5 March. A witness before the Commissioners of Inquiry in 1792 traced every internal mischief he complained of to the shortness of that interval, and reported having heard Norton declare that he knew nothing about the Isle of Man beyond the government's full intention to prevent future injury to the revenue. A quarter of a century later the Commons was still trying to recover what had been meant. In the debate of 1791 on the Duke of Atholl's claims, a member observed that Norton, as the Attorney-General who drew the bill, could best have told the House what government had in contemplation at the time, and that his opinion could not be discovered.

His English career is the better documented. He was already prominent enough in 1764 for Charles Yorke to spend four hours with him arguing that in accepting office Yorke would be doing him an essential service, a conversation in which Norton said little but enough to lead the other on. He was afterwards Speaker. As Speaker he signed the warrant against the printer Miller in 1771, and the Lord Mayor discharged the prisoner on the ground, among others, that it did not appear that the Fletcher Norton who signed was the Sir Fletcher Norton who was Speaker of the House of Commons. He was still in the chair, and still intervening in debate on his own account, through the closing years of the American war.