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clare will advance themselves) should make me appear as partial to my subject. For who is partial that says what he knows, and sincerely thinks? I would not, as some, to seem impartial, do no right to any. When actions are honourable, the honour is as much the history as the fact; and so for infamy. It is justice, as well historical as civil, to give to every one his due. And whoever engageth in such designs as these, and governs himself by other measures, may be a chronographer, but a very imperfect, or rather insipid, historian.

I must here just mention some things which concern all these three brothers in common; and that is their parentele and family relation: and then proceed to the lives, beginning with the eldest, the Lord Guilford, lord keeper of the great seal of England, then the second, Sir Dudley North, and come at last to Dr. John North, master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sir Dudley North, knight of the Bath, and Lord North, Baron of Kirtling (vulgo Catlidge) in Cambridgeshire, was their father. His father was Dudley also, and had three other children. First, a son named John, who had three wives, of whom the first best deserves to be remembered; for she left him an estate in St. John's-Court by Smithfield, upon the ground where the chief house and garden was placed; and now a set of fair

houses are built, making three sides of a square, and is called North's-Court. He survived all his wives, and died without issue. The old lord had also two daughters, of whom one died single, the other, Dorothy, married the Lord Dacres of the south, and, by that match, had a son and a daughter; the son married the Irish Lord Loftus's daughter, and had divers children. He had an estate given him on purpose to change his name from Leonard (that of the Dacres family) to Barret. His eldest son is also matched, and hath children. His seat is at Bell-House Park, near Purfleet in Essex; and they write their name Barret, alias Leonard. The Lord Dacres had issue by a former wife, of whom the now Earl of Sussex is descended. After the death of the Lord Dacres, his widow, the Lord North's daughter, married Chaloner Chute, who was once speaker to the pseudo-house of commons. She had no issue by him; but his son Chaloner (by a former wife) marrying his wife's daughter (by the Lord Dacres) had issue three sons and a daughter. Chaloner, the eldest, died single; Edmund, the second, married the widow of Mr. Tracey, a daughter of Sir Anthony Keck, and having divers children, lived at the Vine in Hampshire. The youngest, Thomas, was once clerk of the crown in Chancery, and married the daughter of Rivet of Brandeston in Suffolk, and left children,

of whom Thomas Leonard Chute, the eldest son, now lives at Pickenham in Norfolk. And here concludes all the descent from the old Lord North by his only married daughter the Lady Dacres.

That nobleman was a person full of spirit and flame; yet, after he had consumed the greatest part of his estate in the gallantries of King James's court, or rather his son Prince Henry's, retired, and lived more honourably in the country upon what was left, than ever he had done before.* He bred his eldest son Dudley, the father of these three brothers, after the best manner; for, besides the court, and choicest company at home, he was entered among the knights of the Bath, and sent to travel, and then into the army, and served as a captain under Sir Francis Vere. At length he married Anne, one of the daughters and coheirs of Sir Charles Mountagu. He served his country

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* He was the author of a volume of miscellanies in prose and verse, entitled, A Forest promiscuous of several Seasons' Productions. In four parts. fol. 1659. "The prose," says Horace Walpole, " which is affected and obscure, with many quotations and allusions to scripture and the classics, consists of letters, essays, characters, in the manner of Sir Thomas Overbury, and devout meditations on his misfortunes. The verse, though not very poetic, is more natural, and written with the genteel ease of a man of quality." (Royal and Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 232.) Copious extracts from this volume are given in the Memoirs of the Peers of

England during the Reign of James I., p. 343.

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in divers parliaments, and was misled to sit in that of forty, till he was secluded. After which he lived privately in the country, and, towards the latter end of his life, entertained himself with justice-business, books, and (as a very numerous issue required) economy. He put out a little tract of that subject, with a preface lightly touching the chief crises of his life. Afterwards he published a small piece entitled " Passages relating to the Long Parliament," with an apologetic, or rather, recantation preface.* He wrote also the history of the life of the Lord Edward North, the first baron of the family, from whose daughter the dukes of Beaufort are descended. He was a christian speculatively orthodox and good; regularly charitable and pious in his family, rigidly just in his dealing, and exquisitely virtuous and sober in his person. All which will appear in his writings, although the style is not so poignant as his father's was. But, to pursue the relation, his lady, by the mother's side, was descended of Sir George Whitmore, once lord mayor of London; which opens a large kindred towards Wales, of which it is said that above thirty came into coparcenary shares of the estate of Sir

* Printed in the Somers' Tracts, (vol. vi. p. 565. Scott's edit.) Horace Walpole has negligently ascribed this tract both to its true author and to the Lord Keeper Guilford. (See Royal and Noble Authors, vol. ii. pp. 36, 63.)

Charles Kemish.

Her father was the before

mentioned Sir Charles Mountagu, of five the youngest brother, of the Boughton family, now honoured with a dukedom. From the other brothers as many noble families are also derived, as Manchester, Sandwich, and Halifax. Sir Charles had two other daughters, one married the Lord Hatton, and had divers children, and, amongst the rest, the incomparable* Captain Charles Hatton. The other daughter married Sir Edward Bash, of Hertfordshire, who died without issue; then she married Mr. John Cary of the Falkland family, and master of the buck-hounds under King Charles II., and died also without issue.

This last Dudley Lord North and his lady had six sons and four daughters who lived to appear in the world, besides some who died in minority, viz. Frances, Edward, and Dorothy. The eldest son was Charles, who received the honour of knighthood, and married Catherine the daughter of William Lord Grey of Wark, and was, in his father's lifetime, called by writ to the house of peers, by the title of Charles Grey of Rolleston. They had two sons and two daughters who sur

* [The reason why the honourable author joins the epithet incomparable to this gentleman's name will be seen from a story which will be related in the life of Dr. John North-] Note in the first edition.

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