NORTH, Hon. Francis (1704-90), of Wroxton Abbey, Oxon.

North’s family acquired Wroxton, three miles from Banbury, in the reign of Charles II, by the marriage of Lord Keeper Guilford to Lady Frances Pope, the daughter and heir of Thomas, 3rd Earl of Downe. His father, a Tory, was dismissed from office on the accession of George I, but went over to ‘the court interest for some trifling pension’ in 1725.1Stuart mss 80/84. After coming of age, he was returned for Banbury as a Whig on his family’s interest, succeeding to the peerage two years later. He then entered the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales, eventually becoming for a short time governor to the future George III, whose resemblance to his own son, the future prime minister, was so striking that Frederick is said to have remarked that ‘one of their wives had played her husband false’.2Wraxall, Mems. i. 310. George II called him ‘a very good poor creature, but a very weak man’,3Hervey, Mems. 817. and Horace Walpole ‘an amiable worthy man, of no great genius’.4Mems. Geo. II, i. 86. He died 4 Aug. 1790, only two years before the death of his son, the great Lord North.