writers, that hunt counter to that good, is a sufficient call to this undertaking; whereby I hope to rescue the memories of these distinguished persons from a malevolent intent to oppress them, and, for that end, bring their names and characters above-board, that all people may judge of them as they shall appear to deserve. I have reason to be concerned, lest my tenuity of style and language, not meeting with candid interpretation, may, in some sort, diminish the worth that belongs to them. But

I have no means of improvement in that affair; and must lay aside that scruple; for it is an office devolved upon me, which I cannot decline. There is no person, now living, who can, or at least will, do any thing towards it. Therefore, hoping for indulgence, I march on, and endeavour to rectify want of art by copia of matter, and that, upon honour, punctually true. But I am not at all concerned lest frequent eulogies (which, by way of avant propos, I must here declare 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.

2. 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.

3. 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'sCourt by Smithfield, upon the ground where the chief

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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 Lennard (that of the Dacres family) to Barret. His eldest son is also matched, and hath children. His seat is at BellHouse Park, near Purfleet in Essex; and they write their name Barret, alias Lennard. 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 [Elizabeth], the daughter of [Nicholas] Rivet of Brandeston in Suffolk, and left children, of whom Thomas Lennard 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.

1

4. 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."

1 16 Nov., 1685. (Chaloner W. Chute's History of The Vyne, 1888.) 2 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

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 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 daughter2 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 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

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.

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.)

2 Christian North, wife of William, third Earl of Worcester.

1

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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.

5. This last Dudley 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 survived. The eldest son, William, is the present Lord North and Grey, who is matched with Maria Margareta, one of the daughters of Mr. C. de jonge van Ellemete, late receiver of the United Netherlands.2 The second son, Charles, a major in the late wars in Flanders, died there of a calenture. The eldest sister, Catherine, died at sea, coming from Barbadoes: and the youngest, named Dudleya, having emaciated herself with study, whereby she had made familiar to her, not only the Greek and Latin, but the Oriental languages, under the infliction of a sedentary distemper, died also; and both without issue. Her library, consisting of a choice collection of Oriental books, by the present Lord North and Grey, her only surviving brother, was given to the parochial library of Rougham, in Norfolk, where it remains. The Lord North's second son, Francis, the third son, Dudley, and the fourth, John, are the subject of the three life treatises intended to follow, where will be remembered the state of their families. The fifth son was Mountagu, a Levant merchant, who died without issue. The youngest,

1

[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.

2 William Lord North and Grey died without issue, 31st. Oct., 1734; and on his death, the title of Lord North descended to Francis Lord Guilford, the grandson of the lord keeper.

Roger, married Mary, the daughter of Sir Robert Gayer, of Stoke Poges, near Windsor, and having had two sons, Roger and Mountagu, and five daughters, Elizabeth, Ann, Mary, Catherine, and Christian, lives (out of the way) at Rougham, in Norfolk.1

6. Of the four daughters of Dudley Lord North, the eldest, Mary, was married to Sir William Spring of Pakenham, by Bury, in Suffolk. She had issue a son, but lived not to have any more, and the son died in his infancy. The second daughter, Ann, married Mr. Robert Foley, a younger branch of the (now) Lord Foley's family; and their eldest son, North Foley, having married a daughter of Sir Charles Holt, of Warwickshire, lives now at Stourbridge, in Worcestershire. The third daughter, Elizabeth, married Sir Robert Wiseman, a younger son of the Rivenhall family, in Essex, dean of the arches, who, dying without issue, she is since married to the Earl of Yarmouth. The fourth and youngest daughter, Christian, married Sir George Wenieve of Brettenham, in Suffolk. And they have left divers children; of whom the eldest, John, married a daughter of Sir Christopher Musgrave, and now resides in the place of his father at Brettenham.

7. This is the family relation of these three brothers, whose lives are upon the carpet before me. So much of particularity concerning them (although a just pedigree ought to have taken in much more) may perhaps be thought superfluous, as not being of any general concern. Yet really the case is memorable for the happy circumstance of a flock, so numerous and diffused as this of the last Dudley Lord North's was, and no one scabby sheep in it, and considering what temptations and snares have lain in their way, is not of every day's notice. It was their good fortune to be surrounded with kindred of the greatest estimation and value, which are a sort of obligation to a good behaviour. It is very unfortunate for any one to stray from the paths of virtue, who hath such precautions, and sonorous mementoes, on all sides of him and it is almost enough to be educated in a family wherein was no instance of irre

:

This passage shows that Roger North only set himself to write the life of his brother after the birth of all his children, and when he was advanced in life.