NORTH, Sir Roger (1588-1651), of Mildenhall, Suff.

The Norths of Mildenhall were cousins of the Norths of Kirtling, the senior and more distinguished line.41Baker, Northants. i. 526-7; F. Haslewood, ‘The ancient families of Suff.’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. viii. 185. In 1600 Sir Roger’s father, Sir Henry North† was left lands at Wickhambrooke in Suffolk by his father, Roger†, 2nd Baron North. Acquired only several years earlier from the Somerset family, these lands were just across the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border from Kirtling. In 1614 Sir Henry bought the manor of Mildenhall, over ten miles to the north, in the only town in the north-west corner of the county. He rebuilt (or possibly only extended) the manor house there to serve as the family seat.42Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 177-8, v. 302; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 247.

In 1574 Henry North had married a daughter of one of the more obscure members of the Knyvett family; but it was not until 14 years later that the marriage was blessed with a male heir.43‘Summary cat. of sepulchral mems.’, 391-2; Gent. Mag. lxvi. 542. This son was baptized Roger, a name often used by the family in honour of his great-great-grandfather, whose son, Edward†, 1st Baron North, had established their fortunes. Details of the future MP’s education remain puzzling. He was not admitted to Gray’s Inn until 1624, when he was already aged 35.44GI Admiss. (His son, Henry*, was admitted to the same inn only nine months later.) North’s brief marriage to Elizabeth Gilbert between 1607 and 1612 left him with a young family and estates at Great Finborough.45Vis. Notts. 1569 and 1614, 83; Stow, Survey, i. bk. iii. 258; J.G.N, ‘Extracts’, 203; RCHM London, iv. 133 and plate 21; Copinger, Manors of Suff. vi. 173. The existence of his children, Henry, Dudley and Mary, apparently did not prevent his pursuing a military career. It is said that he served in Ireland during the years when Oliver St John, 1st Viscount Grandison, was lord deputy (1616-22) and North’s knighting by the king in June 1618 may well have taken place on his return to England. He later took part in the 1620 expedition to the Palatinate, headed by the 18th earl of Oxford and the 3rd earl of Essex.46Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 178; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 168. It seems likely that he was still absent abroad when he inherited most of the family estates on the death of his father in November 1620.47PROB11/136/512; PROB11/137/163; Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 18/530/1; Acc. 1341/2/1.13; Acc. 18/570/1.

Soon after returning from the continent Sir Roger was elected to Parliament for the first time. His connection with the north Suffolk borough of Eye, which would return him as its MP to six Parliaments, is not immediately obvious. He hardly counted as a local landowner: his nearest estates, at Harleston and Great Finborough, were over ten miles away. Even so, the only break in his service as its MP over the next three decades was in 1624 when he sat for the more junior of the two county seats. By sitting in all the Parliaments of the 1620s, he gradually built up the experience which would endow him with a certain authority in the Parliaments of the 1640s. The impression given by his conduct in his first five Parliaments is of a steadfast Protestant whose loyalty, as expressed in his comment in 1628 that he ‘would wish no other law than the king’s word’, usually outweighed his occasional doubts about the actions of the king.48Commons Debates 1628, iii. 275; HP Commons 1604-1629, v. 523-5.

His election as a knight of the shire for the 1624 Parliament underlined that the Norths were one of the leading families in the county. With his military career behind him, he accepted the responsibilities of local office, becoming an active player in county affairs. As early as 1617 he had been a member of the Suffolk commission of the peace and from 1623 he was regularly included on the other commissions.49C231/4, f. 50; C181/2, f. 349v; C181/3, ff. 201v, 244; C181/5, ff. 31v-232v; Add. 39245, ff. 51v, 119v; Foedera, viii. pt. 2, p. 144; APC 1627, p. 91; C181/4, ff. 69-196v; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 1. He exercised the duties of at least one of these, that for knighthood fines in 1630.50E178/7356; E178/7198; Suckling, Suff. ii. 116. His most significant contributions – as befitting a former soldier – were as a deputy lieutenant and as a captain of a foot company in the Suffolk militia.51Add. 39245, ff. 72, 92, 103, 116, 119v, 157v, 174, 178v, 179, 185, 196; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 93; 1631-3, p. 165; Add. 15084, f. 9; Bodl. Tanner 69, ff. 9, 126, 154; Tanner 67, ff. 48v, 112v.

The one troublesome distraction North faced was his dispute between 1635 and 1638 with Henry Lambe, one of the queen’s servants, over the scheme to make the River Lark navigable between Bury St. Edmunds and the Little Ouse. North’s ostensible objection was that the work would affect a mill on his estates at Mildenhall, but, in campaigning against Lambe, he was able to exploit the considerable local opposition to the project. When the commission appointed by the privy council reported in April 1636, it determined in North’s favour by five to three, with Sir Edward Moundeford* finding for North and Sir Charles Le Gros* against. Two of the commissioners, including Thomas Jermyn*, signed neither report. Unsatisfied with the narrowness of this majority, the privy council removed the two abstainers, added Sir Robert Crane* and Sir William Spring, and called for a new report. That report did not end the matter. At the third attempt the commissioners ruled in August 1637 that North and the other mill owners should be compensated for any losses, but the dispute was still unresolved in early 1638.52CSP Dom. 1635, p. 524; 1635-6, pp. 255, 270, 386, 435; 1636-7, pp. 119, 323; 1637-8, p. 186; C205/14/10; Coventry Docquets, 307; Bodl. North c.4, f. 28; C205/14/16.

North’s conduct during the 1640s might be better understood if the exact nature of his religious outlook was known. He was closely associated with several clergymen sympathetic to Laudian altar policies, and those Suffolk parishes where North was the major landowner appear to have had a disproportionate number of clerics ejected in the 1640s. One of them, Richard Watts, had been chaplain to Thomas Wentworth†, the future 1st earl of Strafford, before becoming the non-resident vicar of Mildenhall in 1631. Watts had previously been vicar of Bottisham, the Cambridgeshire village where North’s brother, Henry, had inherited lands from their father, suggesting that his connection with the Norths was long-standing.53Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Minsters ed. Holmes, 34-6; Al. Cant. ‘Richard Watts’; Walker Revised, 87; PROB11/136/512. Also among those clergymen ejected by the Suffolk committee for scandalous ministers in 1644 and 1645 were Philip Parsons, vicar of Great Finborough, who apparently served in the royalist army, and John Brown, the rector of Moulton.54Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 91-4; Al. Cant. ‘Philip Parsons’; Walker Revised, 329-30, 340. James Conyers, curate of St Mary, Stratford le Bow, looked to North as a patron, dedicating to him and his family the published version of the pro-Laudian sermon he had preached at St Paul’s Cross on 23 August 1635.55J. Conyers, Christ’s Love and Saints Sacrifice (1635); N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists (Oxford, 1990), 218.

Plausibly, therefore, North was prepared to endorse the king’s ecclesiastical innovations, and supported other aspects of royal policy. As late as the mobilizations for the campaigns against the Scots in 1639 and 1640, North was still playing his full part as a deputy lieutenant.56Add. 39245, ff. 174-197; Add. 15084, ff. 1-17. A reputation as a strong supporter of the king could only have assisted his re-election to Parliament in April 1640, for the other major interests at Eye were those of the queen and Sir Frederick Cornwallis*, a dependable courtier and friend of the king, who succeeded in asserting his claim to the other seat.57HMC 4th Rep. 24. It would also appear that the Norths were regarded as aligned with the pro-court side when, in the autumn, Sir Roger’s eldest son, Henry, stood for the county seats in the second round of parliamentary elections. In comparison to the other candidates, Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston* and Sir Philip Parker*, perhaps they were. North probably had the support of his cousin, Lord North, with whom he had dined several times in the weeks leading up to the election.58Cambs. RO, L.95.12, unfol.

In Parliament, however, North found a forum in which to express his doubts. His first such intervention was during the final days of the Short Parliament. On 2 May 1640 North was to the fore among those who successfully argued that the Commons should debate their principal grievance, Ship Money, before responding to the king’s request for money – thereby hastening the Parliament’s dissolution.59Aston’s Diary, 122; Procs. Short Parl. 189, 207. Otherwise, he was probably preoccupied with the attempt to regulate fashions in clothes. He was first-named when the apparel bill was referred to committee (21 Apr.) and later ordered to take charge of its passage (30 Apr.).60CJ ii. 8a, 17a; Aston’s Diary, 23, 99. The dependence of the Suffolk economy on the clothing industry is likely to explain why North favoured the proposed restrictions. His interest in the clothing industry would also be apparent in the next Parliament.61PJ i. 450; CJ iv. 722a.

The elections at Eye on 26 October 1640 were a re-run of those earlier that year, with North and Cornwallis again being returned. North’s main concern was rather the fortunes of his eldest son, Henry, who, on his father’s orders, was put forward unsuccessfully for one of the county seats.62Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 124. When the county poll at Ipswich opened on 19 October, Sir Roger attempted to manipulate its location and timing, and it concluded the following day with him threatening the sheriff, Sir Simonds D'Ewes*. Fearful that D'Ewes would prosecute him, Sir Roger subsequently apologized.63T. Carlyle, ‘An election to the Long Parl.’, Critical and Misc. Essays (1888), vii. 61-74; Autobiography And Corresp. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell (1845), ii. 255. This may have been the ‘great occasions of his own’ which prompted the grant to North of leave of absence from the Commons, on the motion of the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) on 7 December 1640.64CJ ii. 47a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 89; Procs. LP, i. 510, 518.

In the first two years of the Long Parliament North adopted a stance more in keeping with the doubts he had expressed in May 1640 than with any support for the royal policies of the previous decade. Most striking is the evidence for his strong opposition to idolatry: he seconded Sir Henry Mildmay* on 22 January 1641 in his call for a commission to remove idolatrous images. A month later he was included on the committee for the bill against superstition (13 Feb.).65Procs. LP, ii. 247; CJ ii. 84b. A number of his other committee appointments, such as that to the committee to proceed against the bishop of Norwich, Richard Montague (23 Feb. 1641), confirm that he was working with those eager to roll back the ecclesiastical innovations of the 1630s. The soundness of his religious views, together with his local standing, was no doubt why he was appointed as a commissioner for disarming recusants in August 1641.66CJ ii. 44b, 91a, 119a, 139a; LJ iv. 385b. That he was also named to the committees for the impeachment proceedings against the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 30 Nov. 1640) and the investigation into the events in the 1628 Parliament (23 Feb. 1641) reveals that his colleagues in the Commons shared the perception that he had become one of the king’s critics.67CJ ii. 39b, 91a. In late May 1641 he tried without success to persuade the House to consider the case of Robert Metcalfe, the regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, who wanted to be promoted to a senior fellowship at Trinity College.68Procs. LP, ii. 579, iv. 630.

On 11 May 1641 North was for the first time dispatched to the Lords. The purpose was to arrange a conference (to be managed for the Commons by John Pym* and Sir Henry Vane I*) to discuss ‘the safety of the kingdom’; in other words, to decide how best to control the disorder in the wake of the army plot revelations and the passage of the bill to attaint Strafford. One measure already passed to meet the emergency, the bill to levy sailors, was delivered to the Lords by North at the same time.69CJ ii. 142b; LJ iv. 244b; Procs. LP, iv. 318, 319, 322, 323, 325. Several weeks later he evidently suffered a brief period of ill health.70CJ ii. 173b.

Already concerns about who controlled any military forces raised were evident and there may be a link here with North’s later role in the Militia Ordinance controversy. Given his evident interest in the subject, it is likely to have been Sir Roger, rather than Sir Dudley North, who was named to the July 1641 committee to prepare the trained bands bill.71CJ ii. 212b. Sir Roger was certainly involved when Parliament decided to ignore the king and assert unilaterally its control over the militia by ordinance. When on 21 February 1642, Parliament approved a robust response (overseen by Denzil Holles*) to the king’s proposals for compromise, North and Sir John Corbet* were deputed to deliver it to Charles. However, both asked to be replaced as soon as they discovered that they were expected to make the journey to Dover (where the king was saying his farewells to the queen on her departure to the continent) on horseback post haste. More able horsemen, in the form of Sir Thomas Hele* and Sir William Savile*, were quickly found.72CJ ii. 446b-447b; PJ i. 426-8, 433-6. Eight days later (1 Mar.), North was assigned the task of delivering the Commons’ last message to the king on the subject of the militia, advising him against travelling to York, although on that occasion there were 11 others on the Commons’ delegation and they had only to go as far as Theobalds.73CJ ii. 462a. This meeting provided final confirmation that Charles would not give ground and made certain that Parliament would pass the Militia Ordinance. North’s stance on who had authority over the militia doubtless stemmed partly from his position as a Suffolk deputy lieutenant. In view of the real danger that, in the event of a civil war, one of the two men who jointly held the Suffolk lieutenancy, Sir Thomas Jermyn*, would try to use the county's militia against Parliament, the Militia Ordinance named only the other, the 3rd earl of Suffolk.

There is little doubt that North sided with Parliament during the first civil war. Like most of the other 39 individuals named in the king’s second Suffolk commission of array in August 1642, North ignored it. Charles duly (on paper) removed him from the Suffolk commission of the peace the following year.74Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 93. In reality, North was being named to the larger local commissions created by Parliament, including the Suffolk standing committee, the assessment commissions and the sequestrations committee.75SP28/243, unfol.; Suff. ed. Everitt, 137; A. and O.; C181/5, ff. 232v-233v, 257. In June 1642 he promised to donate plate worth £100 and he later co-operated with the collection of money for the parliamentarian armies.76PJ iii. 469; SP 28/176, accounts of Samuel Moody, 1643-4, f. 3v.

North only rarely attended the meetings of the county committee and he stopped attending the quarter sessions after October 1641 but, until about late 1645, that reflected the fact that he was usually away in London.77SP28/243, unfol.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, f. 37. Occasionally, however, Parliament sent him back home to act on its behalf. He was sufficiently trusted by the Commons in August 1642 to be ordered, along with Sir William Spring*, to join with the sheriff of Suffolk in seizing control of the ammunition store at Bury St Edmunds.78CJ ii. 726b. Six months later, in February 1643, he was also one of the deputy lieutenants whom the Commons ordered to return to Suffolk.79CJ ii. 956b. He took the Covenant on 22 December 1643.80CJ iii. 349b; Harl. 165, f. 254.

Clear differences of attitude opened up between North and his son-in-law Thomas Blagge of Horningsheath, Suffolk, who had married Mary North in 1641. As governor of Wallingford, a royalist conspirator and a groom of the bedchamber to Charles II in exile, Blagge was to become one of the Stuarts’ most committed supporters.81Westminster Abbey Regs. ed. J. L. Chester (1878), 152n; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 40-1. While North’s support for Parliament was possibly relatively lukewarm, Blagge was unable to weaken his father-in-law’s pro-parliamentarian stance in any obvious way. If anything, his links with the Norths may have fuelled the rumours of the mid-1640s that Blagge was about to change sides.82P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in Eng. And Wales (New York and London, 1981), 31.

North’s support for the war was strong enough to ensure his continued attendance at Parliament and, from time to time, his nomination to committees concerned with its prosecution and with the taxation needed to pay for it.83CJ iii. 132a, 139a, 181a, 309a, 457a, 552b. In the spring of 1645 he joined the consortium, headed by Valentine Wauton*, of eight MPs (all of whom represented seats within the Eastern Association) who agreed to raise £1,000 on their combined personal credit.84CJ iv. 120a. Regarding religious questions, it is significant that North was acting in concert with certain Suffolk Presbyterian clergymen during 1644 and 1645. On 25 December 1644 he and John Rolle* were appointed by the Commons to ask John Ward and George Walker to preach for them at St Margaret’s, Westminster, on the next fast day. While they were at it, the Commons agreed to the Lords’ proposal that Ward be admitted to the Westminster Assembly. Presumably North was expected to contact Ward, a Suffolk man, being rector of St Clement’s, Ipswich. Ward delivered his sermon on 26 March 1645 and the Commons then asked North and William Cage*, one of the Ipswich MPs, to thank Ward and the other preacher, William Good (also of the Westminster Assembly).85CJ iv. 1a, 90a. In the meantime, North and Sir Robert Harley* had probably helped organize a petition from some of the Suffolk clergymen which had called for settled government in the church so that all the breakaway sects could be suppressed.86CJ iv. 27b. A desire to protect the unity of the national church would explain his interest in the Directory of Public Worship and the 1645 bill against blasphemy and assorted sins.87CJ iii. 705b, iv. 35b. In November 1645 he duly became an elder (with Francis Bacon*) of the classis for that part of Suffolk in which Great Finborough was located.88Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 426.

In North’s case, support for a Presbyterian church settlement translated into sympathy towards the Presbyterian group at Westminster. This can be seen in June 1645, when the Fiennes faction wanted to have Gabriel Becke* appointed clerk of the court of wards. In his first appearance in the role, on 10 June North was a teller with Sir Walter Erle* for commitment, and thus delay, of the bill for that purpose sent down from the Lords with a recommendation for its urgent passage. Erle and North lost the division by 47 votes to 38 and the House passed the bill without any further fuss.89CJ iv. 169b.

There is an unexplained gap in North’s known activity at Westminster during 1645 and 1646. He was given leave to go into the country on 14 July 1645 and that order was confirmed the following day.90CJ iv. 206b, 208a. He was next recorded at Westminster nine months later when he was named to the committee for the bill for draining the Great Level, a matter in which, as his dispute with Lambe showed, he had a personal interest.91CJ iv. 525a. He was named to another committee in June 1646 but at the end of that month he was again granted leave of absence.92CJ iv. 587a, 590b. He was back in London by 14 November, when he was named to another committee in which he probably had a personal interest: that to consider the clothiers’ petition.93CJ iv. 722a.

The committee to which North had been named in June 1646 was that sent to hear the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*) attempt to woo the English Presbyterians by announcing that the Scottish commissioners were willing to accept the Commons’ peace proposals.94CJ iv. 587a. That North had backed the pro-Presbyterian alliance with the Scots promoted by those around Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton* becomes clearest on that alliance’s collapse. On 24 December, after the news of the planned departure of the Scottish commissioners had broken, the Commons debated on how they should frame their vote of thanks to the Scots. The commissioners had left open an opportunity for one final English appeal for them to remain by asking if Parliament had any messages to be relayed to the Scottish Parliament. The Commons agreed to thank the commissioners for this courtesy but then divided on the question of whether to make use of it. North and Stapilton were tellers for those who, saw this as their only hope. Their opponents, counted in by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, carried the day. The Commons offered the Scots thanks and nothing more.95CJ v. 27b.

In the months following the departure of the Scots, North backed moves for negotiations with the king and for the disbandment of the army. To these ends, he was named both to the committee on the bill to explain the ordinance for the sale of the episcopal estates (27 Feb. 1647) and to the committee to prepare instructions for those commissioners to be sent to seek an answer from the king to the Newcastle propositions (14 Apr.).96CJ v. 100a, 142b. There may have been more than a wish for conciliation which caused him and Sir Henry Mildmay to act as tellers for the losing side (against Nathaniel Stephens* and Edmund Ludlowe II*) in the vote on the delinquency fine for Francis Newport*. Presumably, North, Mildmay and their supporters objected to the proposed figure because they felt it was too high, therefore opening them to the charge that they were soft on royalist delinquents.97CJ v. 179a. Newport was married to the sister of another royalist, William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford, and there may well have been some private interest connecting North with the Russells: in July 1641 North had been named to the committee examining the bill to settle the Bedford estates.98CJ ii. 215a.

Understandably, North found the advance of the army on London in the summer of 1647 as threatening as did the leaders of the Presbyterian party, and on 28 June, two days after the Eleven Members, he sought and was granted leave to depart from the capital.99CJ v. 225b. He may not have returned to Parliament until as late as January 1648, having gained exemption from the order commanding the attendance of all MPs on 3 November.100CJ v. 347a, 417a, 447b. In May 1648 leave was again granted him and he possibly spent the entire period until October or November of that year away from Westminster. He was probably back in the Commons, however, in time for the climactic debates in early December on the Newport negotiations and on a dissolution, and thus for the army’s expulsion on 6 December of those, like North, who still hoped for a compromised settlement.101CJ v. 570a, vi. 34b, 87a; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

But North was not entirely out of sympathy with the new regime. Once the king was dead and a settlement with him impossible, North felt able to seek readmittance to the Commons, obtained on 23 July 1649.102CJ vi. 268a. But he is not known to have attended the House thereafter and he died before Cromwell brought the Long Parliament to its first dissolution.

North’s death on 17 June 1651 at Great Finborough was not preceded by a period of marked ill-health.103‘Summary cat. of sepulchral mems.’, 391; Gent. Mag. lxvi. 542. A family friend, Henry Laman, told of how Sir Roger,

went to bed overnight pretty well, and meant to rise early in the morning, but venturing to rise found his strength had left him, and immediately after his senses too. And, in half of an hour almost, he died, without any strife or resistance of nature.104Bodl. Tanner 54, f. 93.

North had made a will five months earlier, ensuring that appropriate bequests were left to his widow, children and grandchildren. In accordance with his instructions, he was buried in the church at Mildenhall.105PROB11/221/612; Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 18/530/2; ‘Summary cat. of sepulchral mems.’, 391; Gent. Mag. lxvi. 542. Several of North’s descendants through his eldest son, (Sir) Henry*, became MPs, but none were quite as noteworthy as Sidney Godolphin†, later the lord treasurer and 1st Earl Godolphin, who, in 1675, married North’s granddaughter, Margaret Blagge.