NORTH, William (1678-1734)

Early Career

North came to his two titles while still a minor. He was left an orphan when his mother died four years later, while travelling from Barbados, where her second husband, Colonel Francis Russell, was governor. North and his siblings were then taken in hand by their uncle Roger North^‡. North and his younger brother, Charles, both entered Magdalene College, Cambridge on the same day in 1691, but while Charles graduated in 1695, the young Baron North left in 1694 without a degree in order to follow a military career. In the spring of 1696, when North was involved in marriage negotiations, his uncle and guardian Roger calculated that by the estate settled on him the young peer was worth £1,500 a year, but that he was also in line to inherit the entailed estates of the Greys of Warke, worth £8,000 a year, if Ford Grey, earl of Tankerville (3rd Baron Grey of Warke), and his younger brothers died without male issue. This is precisely what happened at the death of the childless Ralph Grey, 4th Baron Grey of Warke in June 1706, and from that point North was able to enjoy the much more comfortable estate of Epping in Essex. North, Lives, iii. 237-8, 249-51; Add. 61873, ff. 104-5.

Until that windfall Roger North was clearly worried about the young man’s extravagances in the capital. He convinced him to travel abroad for a time, reasoning to his sister that ‘being a young hero and fierce, [he] will run great hazards in England and will accomplish himself in travel’. Add. 32500, f. 161. North set out in February 1697 and thus began his long career of shuttling back and forth between England and the continent, first as a young English peer on tour and then as a long-serving officer in the war of 1702-13. He signed the register at Padua at the close of April 1697 and the following summer (still in Italy) he was accused by fellow tourist and student at Padua, Wriothesley Russell, the future 2nd duke of Bedford, known then as the marquess of Tavistock, of impugning him and spreading (false) rumours of Tavistock’s imminent conversion to Catholicism. CSP Dom. 1697, p. 41; North, Lives, iii. 240-44; Chatsworth, letters ser. 1, 73.13, Tavistock to Lady Russell, 30 Aug. 1698.

The Last Years of William III

North returned from his travels late in 1698 and, although still underage, received a writ of summons to the House dated 13 Jan. 1699. He took his seat for the first time three days later after which he was present for 57 per cent of all sittings. HMC Lords, n.s. iii. 277. On 8 Feb. he opposed the attempt to exempt William’s Dutch Guards from the provisions of the Disbandment Act, even entering a formal protest – his first of many – when the division went against him. From the beginning of his parliamentary career he took a keen interest in all of the Lords’ proceedings. Among his papers there are records of the points made in debates on the bill to enlarge the Russia Company in February and some hastily scrawled notes for a speech in defence of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun and Edward Rich, 6th earl of Warwick, during their trials for murder at the close of March. Bodl. North b.1, ff. 319, 331-3.

North returned to the House at the opening of the following session of November 1699, of which he attended 58 per cent of all sittings. On 6 Dec. he took notes on the proceedings on the right of Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury to deprive Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids. Bodl. North b.1, ff. 320-1. In February 1700 he was forecast as a supporter of the continuation of the old East India Company, and on the 23rd he voted for the House to adjourn, so that it could proceed with the bill in a committee of the whole. He opposed the passage of the divorce bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk in March 1700, as is made clear by his recorded dissents on 8 and 12 Mar. and notes for a speech in this case. Bodl. North a.3, f. 11. In his papers notes also survive for a speech opposed to the bill to further prevent the growth of popery, against which North argued that ‘I was from the beginning brought up with an abhorrence to persecution for the sake of religion … That not to spend too much time I am entirely against this bill’. Bodl. North b.1, ff. 305-6. He signed the dissent from the passage of this bill on 18 March. On 2 Apr. he was named to manage a conference on the bill taking off duties from woolen manufactures and other exports. He entered his protest on 10 Apr. when the Lords backed down and decided not to amend a money bill sent up from the Commons which had a provision for the resumption of William III’s Irish land grants ‘tacked’ on to it, an example of his concern to protect the privileges of the Lords. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 636.. He appears also to have been opposed to an oath of Abjuration. He argued that such an oath was unheard of in English history and that it provided ‘no further security to the present government than the oath of Allegiance’, in what appears to have been notes for a speech relating to the bill for the better securing the present government and the Protestant line (the Act of Settlement). It is possible, thought, that they refer to later attempts to bring in such an oath. Bodl. North a.3, f. 112.

North was in Spain when Carlos II died on 21 Oct. 1700 [OS], and in December visited Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury in Pont St Esprit, in France. Bodl. North a.3, f. 254; HMC Buccleuch, ii. 748. His travels may account for the fact that he did not take his seat in the new Parliament until 21 Feb. 1701, a fortnight into the new session. Present on over three quarters of all sittings, in the course of the session he acted as a teller on three occasions: on a motion to adjourn the debate on Norfolk’s petition (24 Mar.); on the committal of Perkins’ estate bill (26 May); and on whether to read the public accounts’ bill for a second time (21 June). Interestingly, North made notes for a speech on ‘Box’s bill’, a divorce bill which passed the Lords on 11 Apr., but to which North was opposed. Bodl. North a.3, ff. 9-10. Perhaps, it was related to his chairing on 17, 23 and 24 Apr. the committee of the whole on the bill separating James Annesley, 3rd earl of Anglesey and his countess, from which he reported on the 26th. On 2 and 10 Apr. he was named to manage two conferences on the partition treaties. He made copious notes on the bill for confirming the grants of Brookfield Market and Newport Market, in Middlesex, which seems to have raised the ire of the traders at Smithfield, and which saw the bill rejected at third reading on 15 April. Bodl. North, b.1, f. 299. On 9 June he presided over and reported from the committee for Nodes’s estate bill. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/6, p. 180. That month he actively, almost belligerently, challenged the Commons’ right to impeach John Somers, Baron Somers and the other Whig lords. He took copious notes on the debates, arguments and precedents in the case, and a speech he prepared, which begins ‘the motive of my speaking is the honour of the House of Lords’ nicely summarizes his stance on this matter. In other notes he admonished the Commons for their pretended ‘arbitrary’ power. On 6 and 10 June he was named to manage conferences on the impeachments. Four days after voting for the acquittal of Somers on 17 June, he was the only peer to enter a protest against the resolution that the Commons be required to prosecute their charge against John Thompson, Baron Haversham, for his conduct at a conference, before the end of the current session. In the reasons given for his protest he argued that as the Lords had in the case of Somers successfully asserted their right peremptorily to name a specific date for the hearing of the case, by thus allowing the lower House such a flexible deadline in their new motion, the peers were in effect diminishing those very powers which they had just successfully insisted upon. Bodl. North b.2, ff. 115-16, 273-5. On 23 June he voted for the acquittal of Edward Russell, earl of Orford.

In October 1701 North transcribed (or perhaps even drafted), a loyal address from Cambridgeshire officials pledging their lives to defend William III from the pretensions of Louis XIV and the Pretender. Bodl. North a.3, f. 12. North took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 30 Dec., after which he was present on 62 per cent of all sittings. On 1 Jan. 1702 he signed the address against France owning the Pretender. On 2 Jan. he chaired and reported from a committee of the whole House considering the King’s Speech that a committee be appointed to draw up an address relating to the dangers presented by France to the liberties of Europe. On 7 Feb. 1702 he acted as one of the tellers in the divisions over whether to recommit the bill for attainting the Pretender. On 20 Feb. he signed a protest against the passage of the bill attainting Mary of Modena of high treason. On 25 Feb. he acted as a teller in a division held in the committee of the whole on the Quakers’ affirmation bill. He also presided over sessions of select committees on 25 Mar. and on 2 April. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/6, pp. 222, 228.

The Early Years of Queen Anne

According to his later accounts, North decided on a military career, ‘thinking at that time of nothing less than being a soldier, imagining that my country would be engaged in war, I came back to offer my service to the late King William... but upon the raising of the new regiments, I found that the Whig party’s interest was too strong for me, and they were all given from me’. Bodl. North a.3, f. 254. In March 1702 the king commissioned North a captain and lieutenant-colonel in the Foot Guards (the commission itself is dated 14 Mar. a week after William died), thus starting him off on his long military career in the war of Spanish Succession which began only a few months later. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 149; Dalton, Army Lists, iv. 268.

North missed the opening of the session in October 1702, first sitting on 30 Nov., following which he was present on just under half of all sittings. When the Commons brought up the bill against occasional conformity to the Lords on 2 Dec. 1702, it was North, who was the first to answer, ‘somewhat pleasantly’, the objections made to it by Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron Wharton. Nicolson, London Diaries, 137, 139. On 17 Dec. he was appointed to manage a conference on the bill, as he was again on 9 Jan. 1703. Not surprisingly, then, in January North was forecast by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham as likely to support the bill and on the 16th he was listed as an opponent of adhering to the Lords’ (wrecking) amendment to the penalties cause of the bill. Meanwhile, on 11 Jan. in the committee of the whole on the bill enabling the queen to settle a revenue for supporting the dignity of Prince George, North thought that the clause allowing him to sit in the Lords ‘could not be called a tack’ (the Lords having recently declared against tacking) as it was not ‘foreign to the title, which was to support the Prince’s honour’. After the relevant clause from the Act of Settlement was read North ‘a little too forwardly, as was thought by his friends’, declared that by this the Prince would be excluded from the House, if no provision was made for him. Nicolson, London Diaries, 165. He was again employed on occasion as a committee chairman, presiding over four sessions of the committee considering the price of coal in January 1703. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/6, pp. 339-44. On 17, 22 and 25 Feb. he was named to manage conferences with the Commons on the jurisdictional claims arising out of the commission of public accounts. He last attended 27 Feb. 1703 and shortly afterwards his regiment was one of the units listed as being in Holland. Daily Courant, 6 Mar. 1703.

Although still at The Hague on 20 Oct. 1703, North was on hand for the prorogation of 4 Nov. and was present when the session began on the 9th. Add. 61288, f. 161. In two forecasts made by Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland in November and again at the end of November or beginning of December 1703, he was expected to support the renewed attempt to pass a bill against occasional conformity. However, he was absent from the House between 6-17 Dec., and so did not vote in the divisions of 14 Dec. which saw the bill denied a second reading and rejected. BIHR, xli. 191. In the debates surrounding the ‘Scotch Plot’ and the Whig attack on Nottingham, on 25 Mar. 1704 North protested against two resolutions relating that the failure of the House to censure Robert Ferguson was an encouragement to the enemies of the crown. He last attended on 3 Apr. 1704. Among his papers are also notes he took, perhaps for a speech he was preparing in this session, against the Commons’ claims to have the sole right of judicature in disputed elections to their chamber, probably for debates surrounding the cases of Ashby v. White. Bodl. North b.1, ff. 297-8.

During the ensuing campaign, North was at the heart of the fray at Blenheim, and lost his right hand in the fighting. Bodl. North c.8, f. 56; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 498. In about November 1704 North’s name appeared on a printed list, which probably indicated a willingness to support a tack of the occasional conformity bill. At this point, he was absent from Parliament and still in Holland (possibly recuperating from his wounds). He embarked for England in December, arriving at Whitehall with John Churchill, duke of Marlborough on 14 Dec., and taking his seat on the following day. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 497-8. This happened to be the day on which the occasional conformity bill received its second reading in the Lords. He spoke in favour of the bill and signed two protests, one against refusing the bill a second reading and the other against the bill’s rejection. Nicolson, London Diaries, 253. Thereafter, he was present on 24 sittings (just under a quarter of the whole). On 22 Jan. 1705 he protested against the rejection of the petition of Bishop Watson, related to his application for a writ of error and part of his campaign to contest his deprivation in 1699. North last attended on 3 Feb. 1705, and on that day he nominated his commanding officer, Marlborough, as his proxy for the remainder of the session.

Following his arrival in England in December 1704, North had received several letters from The Hague relating to a prospective bride, Maria Margareta, daughter of the Receiver-General of the States of Holland. Bodl. North c.8, ff. 50-51, 79-80. The match appears to have had the blessing of Marlborough, who in April 1705 reported that he had been entrusted by the lady’s relations to ensure that the marriage settlement was drawn up correctly and ready for September. To that end he enlisted the services of the attorney-general Sir Edward Northey^‡ and his own solicitor, Anthony Guidott to draw up its settlement. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 427. By the end of September matters were almost complete, and the marriage was reported in mid-October to have taken place at The Hague. Bodl. North c.8, f. 69-70 Marlborough Letters and Dispatches, ii. 282-3; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 602. Indeed, on 5 Oct. 1705 Marlborough asked his brother, Admiral George Churchill^‡ to facilitate the provision of a yacht, ‘my Lord North being desirous to pass over to England with his bride, as soon as may be’. Add. 61384, ff. 137-8. Letters of denization followed in November 1705, and a private naturalization bill was passed in the following session, receiving the royal assent on 21 Dec. 1706. Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization, 1701-1800 (Pub. Huguenot Soc. xxvii), 47, 55. In October 1706 part of the recently acquired Epping estate was settled on his wife in augmentation of her jointure, one of the trustees being Marlborough. Holmes, ‘Epping Place’, 334.

Marlborough had promised North that he would be promoted to the rank of brigadier general for his services at Blenheim, but had then persuaded him ‘that it would be for her Majesty’s service to surrender it’. Marlborough promised to have the queen recompense him for the loss of rank, and promised him first the lieutenancy of the Tower and then the reversion of the governorship of Guernsey, both of which posts were then bestowed on others. Bodl. North a.3, f. 254. Further reports that he had attained the rank of brigadier occurred in 1705. The same information was carried in the Daily Courant and Lord Mohun, was even said to have resigned his own command in disgust at not being similarly rewarded. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 498, 524, 533; Daily Courant, 27 Feb. 1705; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 163, box 1, Biscoe to Maunsell, 24 Mar. 1705. Yet, despite these reports, North does not appear to have risen to the rank of brigadier general until June 1706, due, so he later claimed, to Marlborough’s influence. A report of May 1705 that he was to be made governor of Sheerness seems to have been similarly mistaken. Bodl. North c.8, f. 89; Dalton, Army Lists, v. 17; Flying Post, 1-3 May 1705. North was also frustrated by Marlborough in his attempts at this time to gain the lieutenancy of the Tower of London, for which post he, supported by his father-in-law, petitioned in the autumn of 1706. In spite of several promises made to both North and the elder van Ellemeet, the post was given to Marlborough’s favourite, William Cadogan^†, later Earl Cadogan. Bodl. North c.8, ff. 85-86, 89-94. A letter of October 1706 from Marlborough to Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, makes clear the reasons for North’s disappointment: ‘it is very true that I did formerly promise to serve him’, Marlborough writes about North, ‘but he had not then behaved himself so as he did last winter’, presumably a reference to his conduct in the 1705-6 session. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 703.

North had first attended the 1705 Parliament on 31 Oct. 1705, when he took the oaths. He attended approximately 63 per cent of all sittings. He joined the Tories in protesting on 30 Nov. 1705 that no further instruction should be given to the committee of the whole on the bill the better security of the queen’s person and government and for the succession to the crown in the Protestant line, better known as the regency bill. On 3 Dec. he protested four times: against the riders added to the bill at third reading stage, which prevented the regents from consenting to legislation repealing laws against papists; repealing the laws dealing with the succession; and repealing laws dealing with such matters as treason and habeas corpus; and against the passage of the bill itself. On 6 Dec. North spoke in against the resolution that the Church was not in danger, and particularly against the second part of the resolution that ‘whoever goes about to suggest and insinuate, that the Church is in danger under her Majesty’s administration, is an enemy to the queen, the Church, and the kingdom’, ‘saying that if any single Lord gave him such a character he knew how to resent it; but was at a loss how to deal with the whole House.’ He duly voted against the resolution and signed the resultant protest. On 7, 11, 19 Feb. he was named to manage three conferences on the regency bill. On 23 Feb. North spoke in the committee of the whole in favour of the archbishop of Dublin’s bill. Nicolson, London Diaries, 324, 384. As he was present on 11 Mar. he may have been named to manage two conferences on Sir Rowland Gwynne’s^‡ Letter to Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford. He attended until the end of the session on 19 Mar. 1706. North does not appear to have joined the campaign in 1706, but sent a letter to Marlborough congratulating him on his victory in May at Ramilles. Add. 61385, f. 182.

North took his place at the opening of the second session on 3 Dec. 1706, after which he was present on just under half of all sittings. His opposition to the Union with Scotland again reflected his concern for the safety of the Church of England, as one of his fears was that the Union would erode the privileged place of the episcopate in the national church. He protested on 3 Feb. when the House decided not to instruct a committee discussing a bill for the security of the Church of England to insert a clause making the Test Act of 1673 a fundamental condition for the proposed Union. When the debate on the articles of Union resumed on 19 Feb. in committee of the whole, North noted that ‘the small and unequal proportion Scotland was to pay to the land tax’, as to say Wales, meant that it would be over-represented in the Union Parliament and so he could not agree to the ninth article, and he duly acted as a teller against agreeing to it. On 24 Feb. he joined Nottingham and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester in opposing the 22nd article. Timberland, ii. 173, 175. On 27 Feb. he signed four protests against articles 9, 15, 22, and 25. So concerned was he by the proposed Union’s possible effect on the Church, that when the bill came up for a third reading on 4 Mar., North proposed a last-minute rider stating that nothing in the act was to imply an ‘approbation or acknowledgment of the truth of the Presbyterian way of worship’ or to agree with the Presbyterian Church’s designation of itself as ‘the true Protestant religion’, and duly voted in its favour. The rider was thrown out 55-19 without even a second reading, North and 16 other peers protesting. Yet when the Act of Union itself was passed by the Lords that same day, North was not one of the 13 peers who dissented from it. Besides his activities relating to the Union bill, North also continued to feature in other aspects of the House’s business during the session. On 12 and 18 Feb. he chaired sessions of the committee considering a naturalization bill and on 14 Mar. he acted as one of the tellers for the division held in a committee of the whole on the game bill. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/7, pp. 205, 209. He last attended on 15 Mar., and two days later received confirmation from Adam Cardonnel^‡ that a yacht was available to convey both him and his wife to Holland. Add. 61398, f. 143; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 151. Consequently, he was absent from the remainder of the session, and the short session of April 1707.

North returned to the House just over a fortnight into the new Parliament on 10 Nov. 1707, although he only attended on four days of November, and was absent between 19 Nov. and 17 Jan. 1708. In all, he was present on just under 43 per cent of all sittings and last attended on 27 Mar 1708. He was listed as a Tory in a printed list of the members of Parliament published in about May 1708. During the 1708 campaign he fought at Oudenarde, and was promoted to major-general in the spring of 1709 for his services. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 425. He returned to sit in the House on 3 Feb. 1709, but immediately launched himself into opposing the Whig ministry’s measures, such as the bill for the general naturalization of foreign Protestants. He delivered a speech (or at least drafted notes for a speech) against the bill, probably at its second reading on 15 Mar., arguing that as individual naturalization bills were almost never rejected, least of all by him, there was no need to bring in a general naturalization. He then added that ‘this gives suspicion that something indirect is designed since the same end may be obtained by the usual means.’ Bodl. North b.2, ff. 271-2. He then signed the protest against the commitment of the bill on 15 Mar. 1709. That was the last day he attended, having sat on 19 days of the session, just over 20 per cent of the sittings.

In November 1709 North wrote to his younger brother Charles informing him that yet again his attempts to procure military preferment for him had been futile:

it is a folly to think that the duke will do anything for our behalf, it is what I have tried several years for you with ill success, and this year as you know I got the favour of a flat denial at last … He would rather perhaps have you out of the army than in, to be freed from the importunities of our interest; he neither values it nor makes use of it. Bodl. North d.1, f. 126.

North took his seat just under a week after the opening of the new session on 21 Nov. 1709. Having attended just three days in November and failed to sit at all in December or for the opening days of January 1710, North returned to his place on 17 January. On 9 Feb. he spoke against the place bill, which was rejected after its first reading. Boyer, Hist. Anne, 447. On 25 Feb., the Rev. Ralph Bridges reported that North had ‘last week proposed the receiving Greenshields’ petition into the House, which was agreed to, after a manner’. This refers either to 13 or 16 Feb., although on the latter date when the House made the decision and Rochester ‘made a motion to send for all the records and matters relating to his prosecution at Edinburgh from thence hither, in order to judge of the merits of the cause’, North was not listed as present. However, he did sign the protest on that day against the decision not to send for Greenshields and the magistrates of Edinburgh to be present at the hearing. Add. 72494, ff. 157-8. On 17 Mar. ‘the House opened with the desire of Lord North to have the messenger come with the original papers of Greenshields’, and they were duly presented. Clavering Corresp. ed. Dickinson (Surtees Soc. clxxxviii), 71.

North’s concern for the safety of the Church now came to the fore and he was an energetic defender of Sacheverell throughout the proceedings against him, taking notes of debates and making written observations on the speeches delivered by the Commons’ managers. On 14 Mar. 1710 he signed two protests, first against the decision not to adjourn the House and then against the resolution that in impeachments the particular words supposed to be criminal need not be expressly stated in the articles. On 16 Mar. during the debate on the first article of the impeachment, he delivered a speech attacking the right of resistance, which he dismissed as ‘a doctrine introduced with transubstantiation by the papists’. Bodl. North a.3, ff. 135-44; G. Holmes, Trial of Dr Sacheverell, 218; PH, xxxi. 123-7; State Trial of Sacheverell, ed. Cowan, 202, 266. He then acted as a teller on the question of whether to put the resolution that the Commons had made good the first article, duly voting against and signing a protest. He then signed a protest against the passage of the resolution itself. Rather strangely, although present, he did not sign the protest of the 17th against the resolution that the Commons had made good the remainder of their articles. On the 18th, when the House debated the terms of the question to be asked of peers on Sacheverell, North objected to having the question put in Westminster Hall before the Lords delivered their verdict, pointing out, ‘how can any peer that thinks him not guilty and allow at the same time that the Commons have made good their articles of impeachment’. State Trial of Sacheverell, 92. He then acted as a teller against the resolution that the peers be asked to give a verdict of guilty or not guilty, and signed the protest against the decision. Unsurprisingly, he brought in a verdict of not guilty against Sacheverell on 20 Mar., and then again dissented from the majority guilty verdict. On the 21st he signed a protest against the censure imposed upon him. He last attended on 22 Mar. 1710, and thereby missed the further proceedings on Greenshields’ appeal, which was ordered on 25 Mar. to be considered at the start of the following session.

The Last Four Years of Queen Anne

On 24 Apr. 1710 Marlborough wrote to Robert Walpole^†, later earl of Orford, that North and Grey should be added to those promoted to be lieutenant generals ‘his rank as well as services deserving that encouragement’. Add. 61133, f. 198. During the campaign, North was heartened by the appointment of William Legge, 2nd Baron (later earl of) Dartmouth, to the secretaryship in June 1710. As he wrote to Nottingham: ‘we expect with impatience greater changes yet, and if your Lordship will take the pains of governing, may you have what post you please’. Further, he hoped that Nottingham would ‘stand my friend, and represent it to them in power’, ‘now an occasion offers’ to serve the queen in ‘any employment’. In September he carried the sword of state before the queen in her procession to the chapel royal. Post Boy, 23-26 Sept. 1710. On 3 Oct. the head of the new ministry, Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, grouped North among those he thought likely to support his new ministry. By 9 Oct. North was at Epping expressing his surprise at Nottingham’s absence from London,

the changes advancing so very well on the honest side, and your Lordship so much wondered for in town. however you may be surfeited with state employments, or love your ease, you must give them leave to wish you wear near the queen who are sensible that this change is gone farther than they that laid the plan of it ever intended and that your Lordship’s help may be necessary to keep things steady. Leics. RO, DG7 box 4950, bundle 23, letter E17, E27.

North took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710 after which he proceeded to attend just under half of all sittings. On 28 Nov. he was able to show his animosity towards Marlborough, the man whom he thought had impeded his progress in the army, by speaking out against delivering to him the customary vote of thanks from the House for that summer’s campaign. Wentworth Pprs. 159; Haddington mss at Mellerstain, 4, Baillie to wife, 28 Nov. 1710. Similarly, he joined in the attack on the conduct of the war in Spain by Henri Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I] and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], itself a veiled attack on the Whigs’ conduct of the peninsular war. On 9 Jan. 1711 North suggested that Galway and Tyrawley ‘having been possessed with an opinion that they were accused, they ought to be let know they were not’. On 11 Jan. he suggested that Galway and Tyrawley should have responded to the paper presented by Charles Mordaunt, 3rd earl of Peterborough ‘instead of presenting petitions for time, which looked like a delay’. And he later supported a motion that their petition be laid on the table and taken no notice of. He even suggested at one point addressing the queen for Peterborough’s instructions about the operations around Toulon. Timberland, ii. 301, 308, 312, 315. On 16 Jan. Lady Clavering identified North as one of the ‘managers’ of the proceedings against Galway, Tyrawley and James Stanhope^†, the future Earl Stanhope. Clavering Corresp. (Surtees Soc. clxxviii), 108. On 22 Jan. North seconded John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] in a further attack on Galway’s failure to protect the honour of the army ‘by suffering the Portuguese army to take the right of us’. Wentworth Pprs.176, 178.

On 5 Feb. 1711 North spoke and told in favour of the second reading of the bill repealing the act of general naturalization, and entered his protest when this was rejected. On 19 Feb. he re-introduced into the House the appeal of James Greenshields, which was ordered to be heard on 1 Mar., and was thereupon reversed. Nicolson, London Diaries, 542, 548. A second motion proposed by North and seconded by Montagu Venables Bertie*, 2nd earl of Abingdon that the sentence of the presbytery against Greenshields was illegal was opposed by John Sheffield^* [776], duke of Buckingham and others and so the matter dropped. NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto. V, ff. 144, 148, 153-4. John Elphinstone, 4th Baron Balmerinoch [S], later wrote to North that the ‘sense of the justice and favour which has been done’ to the Scots Episcopalian clergy was ‘more owing to your Lordship then to any one man in Britain.’ Bodl. North c.8, f. 149. When North left the House early on 9 Mar. to join the campaign, he entrusted his proxy for the remainder of the session to his cousin and fellow Tory, Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford. Not surprisingly, North featured on a printed list of ‘Tory patriots’ in the 1710-11 session of Parliament.

North now sought professional advancement from the more politically sympathetic Harley. Thus, on 18 June 1711 he was at pains to welcome Harley’s promotion to the Lords as earl of Oxford, noting that ‘all good men (who remember what a ’scape the Church and constitution had last Parliament) think themselves happy in your advancement’, and making him ‘long for the winter’ and a new session of Parliament ‘before its time’. He then made a pitch for the newly vacant lieutenancy of Cambridgeshire. Add. 70027, f. 256. A memorandum by Oxford, dated 4 June, suggests that he had already been lined up for the post. At least two newspapers reported his appointment in July, and it was also announced in newsletters early the same month. Add. 70332; British Mercury, 6-9 July 1711; Evening Courant, 21-26 July 1711; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 126; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 267-8. Certainly, Orford felt that month that if John Holles, duke of Newcastle, did not take on the role then ‘it must fall to that worthless creature, Lord North, for we have no other peer in the county.’ Add. 70242, Orford to Newcastle, 12 June 1711. North appears to have left the encampment at Bouchain in mid-September owing to an illness to his father-in-law because he was at The Hague before the end of the month. Add. 61393, ff. 216-7.

Interestingly, his appointment as lord lieutenant was dated 6 Dec., the day before the parliamentary session, and it may have been pushed through to ensure that his friendship with Nottingham did not affect his political judgment, given the latter’s campaign against the peace. Bodl. North a.3, ff. 189-91; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 126. At the opening of the new session on the 7th North, however, quickly demonstrated his gratitude to Oxford by answering Nottingham’s speech insisting on the continuance of the war. He argued that as ‘it was the indisputable prerogative of the crown to make peace’, the House ought to be content with returning thanks to the queen ‘and leave it to her great wisdom to make peace, when she should think it proper for the good of her people’, before voting with Oxford’s ministry against the clause inserted into the Address asserting that there could be no peace without the exclusion of Bourbon rule in Spain. Boyer, Hist. Anne, 527; BLJ, xix. 156. On 8 Dec. North opened the debate on the address that emerged from committee, in an attempt to reverse the Lords’ vote of the previous day. In this he proved unsuccessful, although his name was recorded as favouring that course in the abortive division of that day, and he signed the protest against the resolution to present the Address complete with the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause. Wentworth Pprs. 222. For this Oxford included him on 10 Dec. on his list of peers who had remained loyal to the ministry and who deserved reward, in his case with appointment to the Privy Council. He was duly sworn in on 13 Dec. and took the oaths for his lieutenancy on the 19th. Bodl. North a.3., ff. 187-91. On 19 Dec. he was forecast as likely to support the right of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit in the House as duke of Brandon, but the following day he was noted as having voted against the ministry by supporting the motion that ‘no patent of honour granted to any peer of Great Britain, who was a peer of Scotland at the time of the Union, can entitle such peer to sit and vote in Parliament’. Despite this, when he opened the debate in the committee of the whole on the queen’s message to the Lords on 18 Jan. 1712, which mentioned redressing the grievances of Scotland, North asserted that he had voted in Hamilton’s favour, so it appears that the compiler of the division list erred. Further, he added that since Parliament ‘had determined the contrary’, there was nothing the House could do to redress the grievance felt by the Scottish peers. Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto VI, f. 94; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 716.

On 29 Dec. North’s name appeared on Oxford’s list of those peers to be contacted during the Christmas recess. On 31 Jan. 1712, North rose to his feet to condemn the sermon preached the previous day by Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, to mark the anniversary of Charles I’s execution, though he had to admit that he had not been present himself to hear the bishop’s remarks. Wentworth Pprs. 261; BLJ, xix. 161. Later that day he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to repeal the general naturalization act. On 8 Feb. North gave his proxy to Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, retiring to Epping and returning to the House on 26 Feb. to participate in the crucial debates over the Scottish episcopal toleration bill, where he spoke in favour of the Commons’ amendment relating to the abjuration oath. Add. 70294, North to Oxford, 20 Feb. 1711/12; 22908, ff. 89-90. On 6 Apr. North wrote to Oxford in order to take his leave the following day, ‘being commandered for Flanders with’ James Butler^*[541], 2nd duke of Ormond. Add. 70250, North to Oxford, ‘Sunday night’ [6 Apr. 1712]. On 7 Apr. he attended the House for the last time and deposited his proxy with Arthur Annesley, 5th earl of Anglesey.

North certainly felt able to ask Oxford for other posts while on campaign. In June 1712 North begged him for the governorship of Dunkirk, or failing that, of Portsmouth. Add. 70250, North to Oxford, 10 June 1712; HMC Portland, v. 185. He called on the assistance of Weymouth and other Tory friends to further his suit while insisting in his correspondence with Weymouth that Dunkirk ought to be retained as part of the peace settlement as a way of terrifying the Dutch and the other allies.Bodl. North c.8, ff. 193-4; Pols. in Age of Anne, 67. In June or July North’s name appeared on a list of 22 Lords compiled by Oxford, possibly of doubtful Court supporters who needed lobbying. The death of Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers in August prompted an immediate request from North for his posts, North noting specifically that ‘as to the regiment of Horse Guards I have this to say for myself, besides my having had reason to hope a troop of guards the last year that I am the only lieutenant general almost that from the beginning of the war have stuck to same corps.’ Add. 70250, North to Oxford, 23 Aug. 1712. In the event North was rewarded with the garrison of the important naval station of Portsmouth. On 1 Sept. he wrote from London about his commission, and on 4 Sept. he wrote from Epping to thank Oxford for obtaining him the post, assuring him ‘that you have made me ever yours’, and putting down a marker by noting that ‘if either the Royal Horse or Dragoons could be mine in exchange for my regiment, it would complete my happiness.’ SP 34/19/70; Add. 70250, North to Oxford, 4 Sept. 1712. In October he followed this request up with a further one for Rivers’ cavalry regiment, which was still without a colonel. Add. 70294, North to Oxford, 2 Oct. 1712.

Alongside of his quest for office North also submitted a petition in June 1712 to be granted the earldom of Tankerville, which had been held until his death in June 1701 by North’s cousin. North’s petition was countered with a claim from Charles Bennet, 2nd Baron Ossulston (later successful in securing his promotion to the earldom of Tankerville), to which North responded in a missive to Oxford of 12 Nov. setting out his own right to the title. Bodl. North a.3, f. 147; b.2, ff. 84-85; Add. 70030, f. 81. In January 1713 North sent a long memorial to Oxford in which he set out his military services to the queen and made clear his disgruntlement that he had not been more amply rewarded by the previous Whig ministry: thus your Lordship sees how I have served, how I have been used, for which no reason can be given, but my still opposing a very inveterate party.’ This time he asked Oxford to give him a troop of Guards, preferably one free from debt. Bodl. North a.3, f. 254. North did not get everything he asked for, but received enough that he could be considered a loyal supporter of the ministry and indeed one of its leading members. He was on hand for seven of the prorogations between 6 Nov. 1712 and 26 Mar. 1713 prior to the new session. In March or April he was listed by Swift (in an assessment amended by Oxford) as likely to support the ministry in the forthcoming session. In the spring of 1713 he also appears to have been in the midst of Tory conclaves preparing for the forthcoming session. Dartmouth summoned him on 7 Mar. to a meeting at his house on the 9th (the eve of the expected session), where he promised North ‘will be met there by several of your friends’. Bodl. North b.2, ff. 5-6.

North was present when the session opened on 9 Apr. 1713. It was no doubt in part a result of such careful cultivation that North usually voted with the ministry during this session. One exception was when he joined with a handful of other Tories in crying out against the passage of the commissioners’ of accounts bill on 8 May. BLJ, xix. 166. At the end of May he was listed among 28 peers to be contacted, probably over the bill confirming the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty. On 1 June, he was one of those to speak against the motion proposed by the Scottish peers and supported by their Whig allies to dissolve the Union. This was despite his opposition to the measure in 1707, but he was unable to restrain himself from making some adverse reflections on the poverty of the Scots. Timberland, ii. 394-5; BLJ, xix. 167; Bodl. North a.3, ff. 199-200; Bodl. Carte 211, f. 128; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. XII, p. 155. On 8 June he was again prominent among those participating in the committee of the whole considering the extension of the malt tax to Scotland. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. XII, p. 160. He was predicted on about 13 June as being likely to vote with the government on the French Commerce bill, before it was lost in the Commons. On learning of the defeat of this bill, North’s agent in London wrote to him: ‘I believe the occasion of this division was to let the Treasurer [Oxford] see that they would not be put off with a trimming management, or longer endure the mingling of parties, for God or for Baal is the word, and your Lordship knows we high Churchmen are on God’s side’. Bodl. North c.9, ff. 5-6; Jones, Party and Management, 157. On 18 June he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to enable disbanded officers and soldiers to exercise trades and for officers to account with their soldiers. He was absent from 19-29 June, enjoying a sojourn at Epping. Bodl. North c.9, ff. 5-6. On 27 June he wrote to Oxford from Epping that

I would not take a step out of distance to Cambridgeshire without acquainting your Lordship. The business of Parliament seems pretty well over, but if there or anywhere else I can be serviceable to my queen or you, with pleasure I will postpone my own affairs, otherwise by the middle of next week I shall go down to Catlidg near Newmarket, where I will attend the honour of your commands. Add. 70283, North to Oxford, 27 June 1713.

This missive occasioned a brief reply from Oxford in which he noted that ‘tomorrow an attack being designed directly against the queen’s message for the payment of her debts, I hope it will not be uneasy to your Lordship to be in town tomorrow’. Bodl. North b.2, f. 17. In response North wrote at 10 p.m.: ‘I esteem myself very happy that I am no farther in country. I will certainly be in town tomorrow to resist all manner of ways such an ill attempt as you are pleased to mention.’ Add. 70283, North to Oxford, Monday 10 p.m. In the event, Oxford’s intelligence of the nature of the Whig attack was wrong, for on the 30th, Wharton moved for an address to the queen requesting her to ask the duke of Lorraine and other European princes not to shelter the Pretender. North was the only peer to speak against it, suggesting that such an address would imply a distrust of the queen and that ‘all possible care had been taken in that matter already’. Timberland, ii. 400; Wentworth Pprs. 340, 342; Burnet, ii. 629; Boyer, Anne Hist. 640. By such interventions, North gained a reputation for sympathy towards the Jacobite court. On 2 July he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to enable disbanded officers and soldiers to exercise trades. On 3 July he addressed another missive to Oxford:

finding the opposition to her Majesty’s pleasure about the £500,000 not to apprehended, and that the precedents as to manner of demanding it are all against the complainants, I doubt not but the right will prevail without my weak succour. I therefore leave my proxy, and your Lordship will be pleased to transfer Lord Crew’s.

The letter ended with a reminder about his regimental ambitions, and whether ‘I have either leave to purchase or leave to dispose’. Add. 70283, North to Oxford, 3 July 1713. He last attended on 7 July, have been present for 55 per cent of all sittings.

As lord lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and governor of Portsmouth, North was able to wield considerable influence for the Tories in the 1713 elections. He oversaw the revival of the Tories in Cambridgeshire, leading the county’s gentry and clergy in presenting an address thanking the queen for the recent peace that was highly partisan in tone and content. He was instrumental in having the Tories John Jenyns^‡ and John Bromley^‡ returned as knights of the shire. London Gazette, 16-29 June 1713; HP Commons, 1690-1715 ii. 46. In the Portsmouth election, one of the previous Tory incumbents, Sir James Wishart^‡, had his place assured, but North, as governor, took the opportunity of presenting to the corporation for the other seat the Tory, Sir Thomas Mackworth^‡, 4th bt, who had been ‘always true to his country’s interest, in short a perfect man’. Bodl. North d.1, f. 132. This caused factional in-fighting within the corporation, when the sitting mayor, William Smith, was ousted by the former mayor, Charles Bissell, and replaced by Robert Reynolds as the new pro-North mayor. The lord lieutenant of Hampshire, Henry Somerset, 2nd duke of Beaufort, objected to this coup and gave Bissell a dressing down at the county sessions at Winchester, but North defied the duke by refusing to reinstate Smith, and warned him, in almost threatening terms, not to interfere in his election. In the event, the North faction in Portsmouth had to strike a bargain with the local Whigs, who agreed to support Mackworth at the election in exchange for two aldermanic places, and after a poll (presided over by Smith), Mackworth won the seat, albeit by only five votes. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 245; Bodl. North c.9, ff. 9-34, 48-49; Add. 70250, North to Oxford, 22 July 1713. Generally North enjoyed a good relationship with Beaufort and any animosity over jurisdictional matters seems not to have been of long duration. Indeed, North was admitted to the Tory drinking club, the Board of Brothers, over which Beaufort presided, during the closing years of Anne’s reign. The date of his admission is uncertain but he was not among the original group when the club was established in the summer of 1709. Bodl. North c.9, ff. 100-1; Add. 49360, ff. 2-10.

On 1 Dec. 1713 North wrote from Epping to solicit the governorship of the Isle of Wight, assuring Oxford that the incumbent Lieutenant-General John Richmond Webb^‡was ‘either dying or dead’, and that it was an ‘easy transition from one wounded soldier and man of service to another, therefore, if Mr Webb was fit for that employment I hope I am.’ Alas Webb survived until 1724. Add. 70283, North to Oxford, 1 Dec. 1713. Having attended the prorogation of 12 Jan. 1714, on the 21st he wrote to Oxford concerning ‘the payment of past services, the longer tis delayed, the worse the claim where one has a title to favour, one may expect justice.’ North claimed £1,000 ‘which lies so heavy on the subsistence of my regiment’, plus £1,000 ‘upon account of the money due to me as general officer which amounts to near £3,000.’ Ibid. North to Oxford, 21 Jan. 1713/14, n.d. ‘Tuesday’.

North continued to be a leading, and aggressive, spokesman for the Jacobite Tories in Parliament. He took his place at the opening of the new Parliament on 16 Feb. 1714 after which he was present on 80 per cent of all sittings. Following the Easter adjournment on 19 Mar., North took his leave of Oxford by letter on 23 Mar., informing the lord treasurer that ‘I go no further than Epping, and shall there be ready to receive your orders’, and asking to know the queen’s pleasure ‘with relation to my affairs which you have pleased to take under your protection.’ Ibid. North to Oxford, 23 Mar. 1714. In the debates of 5 Apr. on the state of the nation following the Queen’s Speech, North first insisted, over opposition from Wharton, that strangers to the House remove themselves from the galleries, before the House debated whether the succession was in danger, a prohibition still in force on 13 Apr. when Peter Wentworth noted that ‘Lord North still insists that none of us shall come in to hear them’. Timberland, ii. 413; Wentworth Pprs. 367. One consequence of this debate was a resolution for an address setting a price on the Pretender’s head should he land in Britain. When this address was reported on 8 Apr., the Court move to ‘mitigate’ the same with North making a long speech showing the ‘barbarity of setting a reward upon anybody’s head, and citing amongst others Grotius and Puffendorf, and duly succeeded by the narrow margin of two votes. Timberland, ii. 414; Wentworth Pprs. 373; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 365. On 9 Apr., after Oxford had successfully defended his policy of making remittances to the Scottish highlanders, North moved for a vote of thanks to the lord treasurer for his good service, although this was allowed to drop. Timberland, ii. 415. Further, North also said that having removed ‘all fears and jealousies about popery and the Pretender, he hoped the enemies of the ministry would now speedily produce all the objections they had against their conduct’, and moved for taking into consideration the treaties of peace and commerce. Boyer, Anne Hist. 686; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 366-7. On 13 Apr. he seconded Peregrine Osborne, 2nd duke of Leeds, in insisting on changing the wording of an address to the queen so that it would read that ‘fears and jealousies’ concerning the Protestant Succession had ‘been so universally and industriously spread throughout the kingdom’. Wentworth Pprs. 369. On 16 Apr., when the House considered the peace treaties and the treaty of commerce, North challenged the Whigs to make any objection to the Spanish treaty and he would answer them, which led to an address of thanks for the treaties, but not before William Cowper*, Baron (later Earl) Cowper, had likened his speech to ‘acting like a soldier would by skirmishing have drawn out a general engagement’, a trap into which the Whigs were unwilling to fall. Timberland, ii. 420; Boyer, Anne Hist. 689-90. North held the proxy of Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham (also 3rd Baron Crew) from 17 to 27 Apr. and then again from 14 June to the prorogation. On 17 Apr. North chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the place bill.

After attending on 4 May, North left his proxy on the 5th with his cousin Guilford. He was present on 13 May, when the House adjourned to the 26th. Intending to leave for the country on the following day, on 17 May he tackled Oxford (his ‘patron’) about ‘my little affairs’, suggesting that ‘if I am not encouraged as I ask, pray get me leave [from the queen] to retire’. Add. 70032, f. 245. Three days later he wrote from Epping soliciting the posts of Marlborough’s younger brother, General Charles Churchill^‡, whom he assumed (falsely) had died, which he suggested ‘would make me entirely happy’. Confident that on Oxford’s recommendation the queen would be willing to grant them to him he queried only whether he should come to town to collect his expected reward or await her pleasure: ‘I should think it would give a greater éclat to her majesty’s generosity to remember her faithful servant at a distance’. Add. 70283, North to Oxford, 20 May 1714. At the end of May or beginning of June 1714 Nottingham forecast North as likely to support the schism bill. North was back in the House to argue in favour of the schism bill on 4 June, when he ‘maintained the general assertion of his Party, viz. that the Church was in danger from the growth of schismatics’. Timberland, ii. 425. He appears to have ‘spoke with a great deal of heat’ for the bill’s committal on the 7th. Wentworth Pprs. 385. On 14 June he reported from the committee on the Prendergast estate bill. On 22 June he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the Royston to Wandsford road bill, which covered in part Huntingdonshire. On 7 July he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole on the punishment of vagrants.

An undated snippet in North’s handwriting consisting of arguments against the bill for appointing a commission of accounts may date from this session; he argued that such a bill should not be passed ‘as customary though of a long continuance because the war is now at an end therefore neither the same necessity’, because it encroached on the prerogative, encroached on the privileges of the Lords and Commons, and also ‘on every Englishman by secret inquisition, making people swear against themselves’. Bodl. North b.2, f. 32-33. Certainly, on 30 June he served as one of the tellers in the division over whether to appoint a date for the second reading of the bill for examining public accounts and on 7 July he acted as a teller for the subsequent division whether to commit the measure. He last attended on the day Parliament was prorogued, 9 July, and quickly left London. Bodl. North c.9, ff. 80-81.

North returned to the House on 2 Aug. for the brief session that met in the wake of the queen’s death, but after attending on the following day, he registered his proxy with Guilford again on 4 Aug., having been ordered to his post at Portsmouth. HMC Portland, v. 484. He also attended the prorogation of 23 September. With the accession of George I, North’s political position slowly crumbled. He was dismissed from both the Privy Council and from the governorship of Plymouth in the autumn of 1714. In June 1715 North was deprived of all his military offices and in November he lost his lieutenancy of Cambridgeshire, but he remained an influential power among the Tories of that county. Despite his Jacobite sympathies, North took the oaths to the new monarch, and continued to attend Parliament, where he opposed the Whig ministries of George I. Suspected involvement in the ‘Atterbury Plot’ saw him sent to the Tower, but he was released. In 1724 he left England, eventually settling in Spain, and converted to Catholicism in 1727. In April 1728 he was commissioned lieutenant-general in Philip IV’s Spanish army. Bodl. North b.3, ff. 3-5. He died in Madrid on the last day of October 1734. His will provided for a bequest of £1,000 to a young William Greyson, probably an illegitimate son. To his wife he bequeathed his English estate for life. Francis North^†, 3rd Baron Guilford inherited the barony of North (but not that of Grey of Rolleston, which became extinct) upon his death.