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wished than hoped for. And not only to supply history, which (after the partial gree of the late authors) has been, to all good purposes, silent of him, but also to refel calumny, whether spread abroad in his life, to supplant his interests, and to enervate his authority, or late, published after his death, to depreciate his memory; of which several species of malice we had, and have yet, some extant, but little, and even that little very impotent and inconsiderable yet I cannot but think it in me a sort of duty to puff away such slight dust, because calumny which riseth after a man's death (the most unworthy and degenerous of all) needs most a friend to retund it; because, as a man's authority and power ceaseth, impudence gets ground, and thinks to ramp it without check; but, of these affairs, the particularities are referred to their proper situation. And here I must not omit one of the chief impulses upon my spirits to undertake this work; I mean gratitude for as, on the one side, no man is obliged to serve a friend or benefactor by any gross immoralities, for that must be termed conspiracy, not friendship; so, on the other side, no man ought to be wantiug to a friend, in any manner of justice, for no better reason than that some folks will misconstrue it, as being done for partiality. I own that all my portion of knowledge and fortunes are owing to him; which makes me a debtor in account of justice and

honour due to his memory; and for clearing myself as well as I may, (protesting in the mean while to say nothing false or disguised,) shall I not say what is just and true of him? I defy all calumny on that account, and I hope to acquit myself accordingly. And, whereinsoever I may fail or come short of the fulness or ornament such a subject requires, I design securely to set down nothing but what either personally I know and can attest, find declared in his writings, received from his own mouth, or have from indubitable report of others nearly enough informed to be esteemed punctually true. I have another reason yet, which, for true value, may surmount all these; and that is a tendency to public good: a charm that all writers anoint their front with. Therefore I say only this, that if, in the character of a person of honour, I show an example of industry, ingenuity, probity, virtue, justice, and, in the course of all these, deservedly successful, without one minute retrograde, but concluding all at once by a natural death, and that in the height of his honour, I shall commit no act of disservice to mankind in general, and least of all to those of the nobility, whose descendants, embarking in the profession of the law, may find the greatest encouragement from it. It may be thought I have touched here too much upon the panegyric, and forget how hard it is to make good such promises.

disposition.

I must trust to that; and do but allege here, that the nature of this work, and my reasons for undertaking it, required no less; which being the proper introduction, I have not formalised upon what I am fully possessed is most true.

Method or It will be hard to lead a thread, in good order of time, through his lordship's whole life; for there are many and various incidents to be remembered, which will interfere, and make it necessary to step back sometimes, and then again forwards; and to say truth, I have not the punctualities of truth at my command, and may err in some points of chronography. I shall therefore, for distinction sake, break the course of his lordship's life into four stages; whereof the first shall be from his lordship's infancy to his being qualified to practise in the law, and called to the bar: the second shall be from the time of his first practice until he was advanced to the post of a judge, and made Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas the third, while he acted as judge of the Common Law, until he was preferred to be Lord Keeper of the Great Seal: and the fourth and last stage, while he sat as judge of Equity in the Chancery, and attended the affairs of state at court, until the time of his death, which happened at Wroxton, on the 5th of September, 1685. And, in this method, I hope to evacuate my mind of every matter and thing I know and can remember

materially concerning his lordship. And if some things are set down which many may think too trivial, let it be considered, that the smaller incidents in the life of a busy man are often as useful to be known, though not so diverting as the greater; and profit must always share with entertainment and let this be the apology for some light passages that will be found related in the course of this work.

how dis

His lordship left many papers wrote with his Writings own hand, some more perfect than others, and posed. very few entirely so; and those which are finished, or nearly completed according as he intended them, I have put together in collections; but as for those which are short and imperfect, consisting of some sketches of designs, hints, consultations, collections, inquiries, and the like, which commonly were the result of his thoughts and researches upon affairs then in agitation abroad, and are like painters' first scratches, which commonly have more spirit than their more finished pieces, I shall insert the most material of them in the text of the relations to which they belong; for these will represent his lordship's way of reasoning with himself and others, and how close his thoughts were applied to the substance and truth of things, more perhaps than (as was hinted of painters) his fuller tracts will appear to do; and by this means I hope to give a clear account of all

I know or can gather of his lordship's life, interior and exterior, whereby, in one place or other, there may be found a great man's life and entire character; and besides what will serve to entertain any one who hath a mind to drone away a few minutes that sleep will not consume, and also improve (perhaps) some whom the love of truth, reason, and rectitude of will, shall dispose to be more attentive.

Family and His lordship was the third son of the second parentele. Dudley Lord North, Baron of Kirtling, &c. as is to be found in the preface before this work, and therefore shall not reiterate it here. We have little to say of him during his minor years, but shall make amends afterwards; for from the first to the last of his manhood, he walked the public stage of business, ever erect and rising, and made no retreat or exit but one, and that (as I said before) was from the top of his preferment, and the world together.

School edu

His lordship was very young when he was first cation and put out to school, and then had but indifferent praying by the spirit. tutorage, for his first master was one Mr. Willis, that kept a school at Isleworth. That man was a rigid presbyterian, and his wife a furious independent. Those two sects, at that time, contended for pre-eminence in tyranny, and reaping the fruits of too successful rebellion, which conjured up a spirit of opposition betwixt them, so that

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