NORTH, Henry (c.1609-71), of Mildenhall and Badmondisfield Hall, Wickhambrook, Suff.

During part of Henry North’s upbringing, his father, Sir Roger North*, was away serving as a soldier. Henry’s own brief experience of war, the disastrous La Rochelle expedition in 1627, together with his later inactivity during the 1640s, may have heightened his belief that he had failed to live up to his father’s example.32Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 178. It may not be entirely unfair to say that he preferred to fight his wars in the pages of a romance.

In late 1631 North married Sarah Rayney, whose father, John, was a successful London draper, and who brought with her a portion worth £4,000.33Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 1341/2/1.15; Acc. 1341/3/9; Gent. Mag. lxvi. 542; Vis. Notts. 1569 and 1614, 83; Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies, 437. However, there were rumours that, at some point, North took as his mistress Catherine, wife of Sir Robert Crompton of Skerne, Yorkshire, and sister of Sir John Holland*. Her son, Charles Crompton, who was brought up within the North household, was widely believed to be North’s illegitimate son. It was said of Crompton that ‘a wilder character of a man never was known’, and he grew up to be a rogue with ‘an inexhaustible vein of artificial nonsense’ who continually pestered the North family for money.34North, Lives, i. 406; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks, iii. 420-1; HMC 3rd Rep. 240. By 1639 Henry North was living at Wickhambrook, the family’s estate in south-west Suffolk and there he was assessed £1 6s 2½d towards Ship Money.35Suff. Ship-Money Returns, 34.

Prompted by his father’s ambitions, North stood for Parliament for the first time in the autumn of 1640, only to find himself at the centre of a particularly confused electoral battle. Earlier that year, Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston* and Sir Philip Parker* had been elected unopposed to the Short Parliament as the knights of the shire for Suffolk. North was put up in the October elections in an attempt to avoid a repeat of that result. Barnardiston, in particular, may have been viewed by some as too vehement in his opposition to the king, and North, if not a courtier, may have stood for a less antagonistic approach. There may also have been disquiet that the re-election of Barnardiston and Parker would have broken the long-established Suffolk practice of rotating the county seats at each election. Orchestrated by Sir Roger, the North campaign resorted to a series of dirty tricks but, in the end, the sheriff, Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, upheld the interests of the other candidates. Henry North was convincingly defeated: his 1,422 votes were 764 short of Barnardiston’s total.36T. Carlyle, ‘An election to the Long Parl.’, Critical and Misc. Essays (1888), vii. 61-74; Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v; Autobiography and Corresp. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1845), ed. J.O. Halliwell, ii. 255.

Disentangling Henry North’s activities during the civil war is difficult. There were two other Henry Norths involved in Suffolk politics at this time: his uncle, Henry North of Laxfield, and that uncle’s son, also named Henry. As early as 1640 there is mention of Henry North senior, and from about 1643 Henry North junior began to figure in local politics. Assuming that the appellation was applied consistently, it can be deduced that Henry North senior was the elder of the two Norths of Laxfield.37Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, f. 20; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; Carlyle, ‘Election’, 65. Henry North junior is obviously more likely to have been his son rather than the future MP. Perhaps during the 1640s the younger Henry North of Laxfield joined his father in playing a leading part in the parliamentarian administration of the county while his cousin, Henry North of Mildenhall, found himself largely marginalized.

Initially, Henry North of Mildenhall’s status as a justice of the peace secured his appointment to the main local commissions, including the 1641 subsidy commissions and the first of the two commissions of array issued by the king in the summer of 1642.38SR; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. Parliament probably stopped naming him to such bodies after the fighting had begun. Henry North of Laxfield is more likely to have been the person appointed in early 1643 to the Suffolk commissions for the assessment and the sequestration of delinquents and from mid-1643 onwards Henry North junior began to be included as well. Our Henry North was not included with them on the crucial Suffolk standing committee and therefore he was also kept off the other local committees.39Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; A. and O.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 87v; Suff. ed. Everitt, 27, 59-61, 72, 75, 76, 84, 137. He probably continued to serve as a justice of the peace and he may well have been a regular attender at the Bury St Edmunds sessions until January 1649.40Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, ff. 12v-119. Despite the fact that it covered Wickhambrook and was far distant from Laxfield, it would appear to have been his cousin who was named as an elder of the Presbyterian classis at Clare in November 1645.41Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 429. Claims that North fought for the king must be treated with some scepticism.42A.E. Simpson, Hist. of Mildenhall (Mildenhall, 1901), 74-5; Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 178; D. Brunton and D.H. Pennington, Members of the Long Parl. (1954), 94.

North’s father, Sir Roger, died in June 1651, leaving Henry his estates at Mildenhall and Wickhambrook.43Bodl. Tanner 54, f. 93; ‘Summary cat. of sepulchral mems.’, 391; Gent. Mag. lxvi. 542; PROB11/221/612. The lands at Great Finborough were bequeathed to Sir Roger’s widow (Henry’s stepmother) for her natural life and, on inheriting them at her death in 1656, Henry North disposed of them to William Wollaston of Shenton, Leicestershire, for £10,000.44PROB11/221/612; PROB11/264/158; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 122; Copinger, Manors of Suff. vi. 173, 176. North may well have needed this money. He paid for a portion worth £2,000 when his daughter Thomazin was married in 1651 to Thomas Holland, son of Sir John Holland* and nephew of North’s suspected mistress.45Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 18/520/1. On 27 May 1656, when his daughter Dudleia married Thomas Cullum junior, son of the seriously wealthy London draper Thomas Cullum senior, North presented the couple with lands worth £2,000. Thomas Cullum senior was at this time attempting to transform his own family into one of the great county families of Suffolk through the large-scale purchase of land in the Wickhambrook area at his own birthplace at Hawstead. Marrying his heir to a North assisted these aspirations. There was also an echo of an earlier North alliance with City wealth, for it had been under North’s father-in-law, John Rayney, that Thomas Cullum senior had served his apprenticeship. The first child of the marriage, Dudley Cullum†, was born in the Norths’ house at Wickhambrook in September 1657.46A. Simpson, ‘Thomas Cullum’, EcHR 2nd ser. xi. 19-21, 28, 32; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Thomas Cullum’, ‘Sir Dudley Cullum’.

Under normal circumstances North might have been expected to inherit his father’s electoral interest at Eye, but that borough’s two parliamentary seats were abolished in 1653. In July 1654 North stood once more for the county and he was again defeated. His 774 votes placed him eleventh in the list of 18 candidates, just 62 behind Thomas Bacon* who secured the last of the ten available seats.47Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. Two years later he made another attempt, with conspicuously greater success. The outcome of the Suffolk election held at Stowmarket on 20 August was a convincing victory for North. With 1,943 votes to his name, he came first in a field of 22 candidates.48Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. A number of factors may have aided him: a sympathetic sheriff; the proximity of the poll to his estates at Great Finborough (which he sold only three months later); and manipulation of the vote have all been suggested. Unlike Sir Thomas Barnardiston* and John Brandlinge*, North and John Sicklemor*, and, to a lesser extent, William Bloys* and William Gibbs*, all succeeded in capitalizing on the fact that the total number of votes cast in this election was far higher than in 1654. This, in itself, hints at collusion.49P. Pinckney, ‘The Suff. elections to the Protectorate Parls.’, in Politics and People in Revolutionary Eng. ed. C. Jones, M. Newitt and S. Roberts (Oxford, 1986), 205-24. This suspicion is heightened because North, Sicklemor, Bloys and Gibbs, together with two of the first-time candidates, Edmund Harvey II and Edward Wenieve*, who took the six top places, were subsequently prevented from taking their seats in the Commons by the council of state.50CJ vii. 425b. In the backlash against the major-generals, North’s previous failures had become an asset. But it would be wrong to suppose that he was an outspoken opponent of the protectorate. He had probably been retained as a justice of the peace without interruption and since late 1652 he had resumed regular attendance at quarter sessions.51C193/13/3, f. 60v; Names of the Justices of Peace (1650), 53, E.1238.4; Stowe 577, f. 49v; C193/13/4, f. 92v; CUL, MS Dd.VIII.1, f. 99; Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/3, ff. 14, 29, 37v. Yet, however manipulative his electioneering may have been, North’s triumph in 1656 must, in part, be attributed to support gained from the more moderate elements within the Suffolk electorate. North and Gibbs failed to repeat this success in the January 1659 election. The reinstatement of the old-style electoral system was, of itself, an attempt to resume normality and Barnardiston and Sir Henry Felton had become sufficiently moderate to weaken the North-Gibbs platform. The margin over North by which Barnardiston claimed the second of the two places (1,030 to 838) was comfortable.

The Restoration allowed North to gain something of the recognition within Suffolk society which he had not achieved during the previous two decades. In the months before Charles II’s return North was included on the Suffolk militia commission and was appointed the colonel of one of the local infantry companies. Assuming that he had not been appointed before then, he was also added to the assessment commission for Suffolk at the beginning of 1660.52A. and O.; Bodl. Tanner 226, pp. 187-8. The ultimate guarantee that the Mildenhall Norths ranked with the senior gentry families of the county came in the form of a baronetcy from the king in June 1660. The honour was enhanced by the waiving of the fees usually due on such an appointment.53CB iii. 41; Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 18/500/1; CTB i. 249.

North’s lack of success in the elections of the 1650s and the satisfaction which the king’s return brought him may have distorted how he remembered his own role in the late conflict. The vast prose romance, ‘Eroclea’, which he penned as a private diversion, is difficult to interpret without assuming that it was intended to echo recent events. In particular, its climax, the (unhistorical) poisoning of Alexander the Great in a military coup, allowed North to include an extended panegyric of a sort more obviously relevant to the recently deceased king-martyr, which is probably exactly how it was meant to be understood.54Add. 36755; HMC 3rd Rep. 241; Corresp. of Sir Thomas Hanmer, ed. H. Bunbury (1838), 320-33; Simpson, Hist. of Mildenhall, 76-8. Parts of this work were certainly in existence by 1668, having probably been written in 1659.55Add. 18220, ff. 25v-26v. Other verses and epigrams by North also survive.56Add. 18220, ff. 9, 24-25, 44, 68. One consequence of ‘Eroclea’ was that it helped create the erroneous family tradition that North had been a straightforward royalist. More credible is the tradition that, while attending the races at Newmarket, Charles II travelled over to Mildenhall to visit the Norths.57Simpson, Hist. of Mildenhall, 78-9; Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 178.

In the elections to the Convention in April 1660 and again in those to the Cavalier Parliament almost exactly a year later, North and Sir Henry Felton* were returned for the two Suffolk county seats. At the time of the assembling of the Convention, Philip, 4th Baron Wharton, considered the pair to be potential allies of his Presbyterian grouping.58G.F. Trevallyn Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 341. Having finally been elected and allowed to sit, North made the most of the opportunity and so played a full part in promoting an eclectic range of measures in these Parliaments. In particular, he chaired the 1661-2 committee on the Bedford Level drainage bill.59Add. 32500, f. 9; HP Commons, 1660-1690, ‘Henry North’. His regular backing of measures against all forms of religious nonconformity suggests that he had shed any Presbyterian views he had once held. The reward of a place in the prize office in 1665 probably reinforced his usual practice of voting with the court.

The Bedford Level bill continued to distract him long after it had become law. His estates lay within the Level and from 1668 he engaged in lengthy legal wrangles (in king’s bench, common pleas, exchequer and at the assizes) with his tenants over rights to common lands at Mildenhall. Both sides attempted to interpret the act to their own advantage. The dispute was never really resolved but North was successful on most points on which judgement was given.60North, Lives, i. 86; J. Vaughan, Reports and Arguments ed. E. Vaughan (1677), 251-8; E. Saunders, Les Reports (1686), pt. i, 347-53; P. Ventris, Reports (1696), i. 383-98; Add. 32519, ff. 150v-161v. His decision to mortgage his estates at Wickhambrook in September 1664 in order to raise £1,400 indicates that his financial position was still far from secure.61Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 1341/2/1.19; Acc. 1341/2/1.20; Acc. 1341/2/2.1.

In July 1670 Lady North died.62Add. 18220, ff. 63v-64; ‘Summary cat. of sepulchral mems.’, 390; Gent. Mag. lxvi. 542. Subsequently, North developed severe depression and was found dead in his bedchamber on 29 August 1671 with a self-inflicted gunshot wound ‘so big that a man’s hand might turn itself in it’.63HMC 7th Rep. 464. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, the coroner judged that North had lost his reason, thereby saving the honour of the family and preventing the confiscation of his personal estate by the crown. There were no problems in the descent of his lands, for these were already mostly in the hands of his only son, Henry†.64HMC 7th Rep. 464; Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 179, v. 302. The epitaph placed above the tomb of North and his wife in Mildenhall Church alluded to the circumstances of his death, stating (in Latin), ‘You are happy because no further life is given to you on Earth whereas I am wretched because I am not able to die’.65Simpson, Hist. of Mildenhall, 79. That monument was probably designed by the Italian artist, Diacinto Cawcy.66J. Blatchly and G. Fisher, ‘The itinerant Italian artist Diacinto Cawcy, and the genesis of the Barrow monument at Westhorpe’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. xl. 443-54; A. Bowett, ‘New light on Diacinto Cawcy and the Barrow monument’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. xlii. 424-33.

The second baronet briefly sat in Parliament in 1685. Since he never married, the male line of this branch of the North family became extinct on his death in 1695. One of the younger Sir Henry’s three sisters, Peregrina, had married William Hanmer of Bettisfield Park, Flintshire, and the North estates at Mildenhall passed to her son, Sir Thomas Hanmer†. Hanmer’s lengthy service in the Commons, made possible by the secure electoral base in Suffolk which these estates gave him, culminated in his appointment to the Speakership at the tail-end of the final Parliament of Queen Anne.