NORTH, Dudley (1582-1667)

The seventeenth-century antiquarian, William Dugdale, began his account of the North barony by stating that, ‘of this family I have not seen anything, till 22 H[enry]. 8’ [i.e. 1530-1], when Edward North^† (the future 1st Lord North), son of Roger North of Walkeringham in Nottinghamshire, was appointed joint clerk of the parliaments.29 Dugdale, iii. 394. The Norths seem to have made no attempt to concoct a distinguished lineage for themselves. Although Dudley North^†, 4th Lord North, claimed that the Walkeringham Norths were ‘a family of ancient gentry’, he admitted that they had merely ‘a small fortune’ and that ‘even that moderate lustre … was somewhat abated’ because the 1st Lord’s father, a younger son, had been a modestly prosperous London tradesman.30 D. North, Some Notes Concerning the Life of Edward Lord North ([1682]), 3-4.

The future 1st Lord North married a wealthy widow and purchased the manor of Kirtling in Cambridgeshire, which became the family’s country seat. He came to national prominence in the administration of the former monastic properties. A privy councillor in the reign of Edward VI, he was not reappointed to the board at the accession of Mary I, although he was made a baron in 1554. Of conservative religious views, he opposed the Elizabethan settlement in the 1559 Parliament, but subsequently conformed. At his death in 1565 he owned property in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Surrey and Middlesex, as well as the Charterhouse on the outskirts of the city of London. In accordance with his instructions the main site of the Charterhouse was subsequently sold, but his heir, Roger North^†, 2nd Lord North, retained a substantial house on the north side of Charterhouse Yard which served as his London residence. The 2nd Lord North was a significant figure, both in Cambridgeshire, where he was lord lieutenant, and at court, where he became treasurer of the household and a privy councillor.31 HP Commons, 1509-1558, iii. 21-3, 24-5; PROB 11/48, f. 49; Temple, 42, 177; Collins, iv. 460. His eldest son, Sir John North^‡, died in his lifetime, and therefore it was Sir John’s eldest son, the subject of this biography, christened Dudley after his godfather, Robert Dudley^†, earl of Leicester, who inherited the title on the 2nd Lord’s death in 1600.32 HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 141-2; North, Lives, ii. 1.

Dudley North was described by his grandson, Roger North^‡, as ‘a person full of spirit and flame’ who ‘consumed the greatest part of his estate in the gallantries’ of the Jacobean court before selling ‘the flower of the estate’ and retiring to his Cambridge seat at Kirtling.33 North, Lives, i. 5; Add. 32523, f. 5. North himself went to considerable lengths in his own writings to defend his conduct although his claim that his spending had been an attempt to distract himself from ‘a super-induced melancholy’ would appear to confirm the charge of extravagance.34 [D. North], Forest of Varieties (1645), 118-19, 124-5, 127-30, 137, 140, 153, 214. However, there is more to his career than his ability to waste his patrimony. He played a significant role in the parliaments of the 1620s, and his writings give an insight into the thinking of an early seventeenth century peer, albeit not an entirely typical member of that group.

Early adult life, 1600-3

In November 1600, shortly after he turned 18, North married Frances Brocket, the daughter of a wealthy Hertfordshire gentleman. The match was arranged by his grandfather who, suffering from ‘a long and desperate sickness’, was worried that, if he died before his heir came of age, control of North’s marriage would pass to the crown.35 Ibid. 131. North’s mother complained that the marriage had taken place ‘without my consent or almost privity’ and that the bride’s portion of £2,000 had been taken by the 2nd lord. However the latter’s executors claimed that the 2nd lord received only a third of the dowry, the remainder going to North.36 Hatfield House, CP Petitions, 756, 1906, 2320.

North succeeded to his grandfather’s peerage shortly after his marriage. However, being aged only 18, he was still a minor, and therefore subject to wardship. His mother petitioned the master of the Court of Wards, Sir Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury) for a lease of the North estates during her son’s minority, but North himself wanted his lands to be let to his grandfather’s executors, in trust for himself. North’s request was granted but, soon thereafter, he came into conflict with his grandfather’s executors over the 2nd Lord North’s personal estate, which they kept in their hands to secure themselves against the latter’s creditors. Some kind of settlement seems to have been reached in October 1603, but it was not until 1612 that North received ‘those Parliament robes, books, pictures, coffers, chests, one watch and two silver salts’ which had belonged to the 2nd Lord.37 Hatfield House, CP Petitions 756, 1906, 2320, 1903; Add. 61873, ff. 4-45v; PROB 11/97, ff. 43-5; HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 530-1; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 402-3; Bodl., ms North c.29/16.

The wrangling over his grandfather’s personal estate ensured that North inherited little cash. Moreover, because of ‘long leases and jointures’, his lands yielded a clear annual profit of only £600.38 [North], Forest of Varieties, 120-1. To make matters worse, he not only had to undertake the expenses of married life, but was also ‘young entered at court’; in August 1601, aged nearly 19, he was summoned to attend the reception of an extraordinary ambassador from France and, later that year, he participated in the accession day tilts.39 Ibid. 122; APC, 1601-4, pp. 189-90; HMC Hatfield, xi. 540. North subsequently lamented that he had been forced to take ‘an inordinate care for the ordering of my fortune in my beginnings’, and wished he had stayed single until he was 30, to avoid the charges of maintaining the household of a married nobleman.40 [North], Forest of Varieties, 118, 128, 131. He also complained that his union with Frances ‘abated the edge and alacrity of my spirits’,41 Ibid. 125, 131, 141. having had trouble consummating the marriage: ‘I have taken myself blushing at the appearing or name of a woman, who, had she been Eve and I Adam, the human race would have been in great danger of failing’. However, ‘at length’ he managed to do his duty, for in late 1602 his wife gave birth to a son.42 Ibid. 174; Chamberlain Letters, i. 169-70.

Obliged to find ways to economize, North largely abandoned his enormous Cambridgeshire residence of Kirtling Hall, but at the cost of diminishing his influence in Cambridgeshire, where he was unable to assume the dominant position his grandfather had held under Elizabeth. Consequently, not until after he returned to Kirtling in the 1630s did he play a significant part in Cambridgeshire politics.43 [North], Forest of Varieties, 120, 122; VCH Cambs. iv. 60-1; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 29. He also divided his house in Charterhouse Yard, keeping only the smaller part for himself. Despite complaining that the building works had cost him ‘many thousands’, this enabled him, from about 1602, to rent the larger part of the house to Roger Manners^*, 5th earl of Rutland, for £100 a year.44 [North], Forest of Varieties, 118, 121; Temple, 177; HMC Rutland, iv. 458.

Despite his lack of money, North evidently regarded a period of travel as essential for his education. In the summer of 1602 he went to the Netherlands ‘to see this summer’s service’ with the Dutch army, and also travelled in France. It may have been on this occasion that he went to Italy where, according to his grandson, he developed a love of music. He was probably still abroad when Elizabeth died in March 1603, as he failed to sign the proclamation announcing the accession of James I. On his homecoming later that year, North found ‘the course and conversation of the court by accident [had been] made unfit and unfavourable to me’.45 [North], Forest of Varieties, 125, 131.

North’s return to London coincided with the plague epidemic of 1603. To guard against the infection, which claimed the life of his travelling companion, Mr Saunders, North doused himself with ‘treacle’, or theriac, a common remedy used to guard against the plague, which included ingredients such as vipers’ flesh and opium. North subsequently claimed that the melancholy which afflicted him throughout his life ‘was much, if not originally occasioned’ by over use of theriac. It also resulted in ‘retiredness, over-reading, and over thinking’.46 Ibid. 122, 130, 173; P. Slack, Impact of the Plague in Tudor and Stuart Eng. 30-1; J.G.M. Fuller, ‘Chalybeate Springs at Tunbridge Wells’, Two Hundred Years of British Hydrogeology ed. J.D. Mather, 201-2.

Attitudes towards the court, and the first two Jacobean parliaments, 1603-20

North came of age in September 1603 and was therefore summoned to the first Jacobean Parliament, which convened the following March. His melancholy evidently did not obstruct his attendance of the upper House, as he was marked as present at 50 of the 71 sittings of the 1604 session, 70 per cent of the total. As a young peer sitting in his first Parliament, he was appointed to just ten of the session’s 70 committees and made no recorded speeches. Two of the measures he was asked to consider – a bill to relieve plague victims and another to confirm an exchange of property between Sir Thomas Monson^‡ and his alma mater, Trinity College Cambridge, - may have been of particular interest to him, although he was not recorded as attending the House on 18 Apr., when the latter bill was committed. His appointments also included conferences with the Commons about the Union and wardship.47 LJ, ii. 278a, 281a, 303a, 325b.

After the Parliament was prorogued on 7 July 1604, North prepared to resume his foreign travels, arriving at Portsmouth on the 30th. However, he was detained by the lieutenant governor because he could not produce a formal passport, having apparently only received the king’s permission by word of mouth. North immediately wrote to Cecil, but with what result is unknown.48 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 191-2. If North did go abroad he had evidently returned to England by April 1605, when he accompanied Edward Seymour^*, 1st earl of Hertford on the latter’s embassy to the Spanish Netherlands to witness the ratification of the treaty of London. Having received permission to remain abroad after the embassy was concluded, North subsequently travelled through the southern Netherlands and northern France, reaching Paris in July, where he saw the sights, gambled mildly and played tennis. He left Paris in early November and, after a leisurely journey, arrived back in London on the 20th.49 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 293; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 696-7; Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 69; Bodl., ms North, b.12, f. 121.

North returned too late for the opening of the second session of Parliament and the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot on 5 Nov., but took his seat when Parliament reconvened on 21 Jan. 1606. In all, he is recorded as having attended 44 of the 85 sittings of the session, 52 per cent of the total, and once again made no known speeches. He was appointed to only 12 of the session’s 72 committees. On one occasion (31 Mar.), he was instructed, in his absence, to consider a private bill, having previously been named to consider an earlier version of the same measure. His remaining appointments included bills concerning purveyance and the attainder of the Gunpowder Plotters.50 LJ, iii. 367a, 380b, 401a, 404b, 407b.

According to a history of Tunbridge Wells published in the eighteenth century, which apparently drew on earlier manuscript accounts, North fell into ‘a lingering consumptive disorder’ in the spring of 1606, and went to Eridge house, a hunting lodge on the border between Sussex and Kent belonging to his friend Edward Neville^*, 8th or 1st Lord Abergavenny, to recover. He allegedly stayed there more than six weeks without benefit. However, on his journey back to London he discovered the waters of Tunbridge Wells, which subsequently cured his complaint.51 T.B. Burr, Hist. of Tunbridge-Wells (1766), 5-14, 311. This story cannot be entirely accurate, though, despite the fact that North later claimed that he had ‘first made known’ the ‘use of Tunbridge and Epsom waters for health and cure’.52 [North], Forest of Varieties, 134. In the spring of 1606 he was sitting in the Lords, as his attendance record attests, and so cannot have been absent from London during this time. One possibility is that North actually discovered the Tunbridge waters in the spring of 1607, as he evidently attended only 17 sittings of the Lords between 10 Feb. and 2 May 1607. However, it is more likely that North discovered the waters in either 1615 or 1616, as another account suggests. It is certainly striking that John Chamberlain reported in 1619 that these waters had only become popular within the last three or four years.53 ‘Pprs. Relating to Procs. in the County of Kent’ ed. R. Almack, Cam. Misc. iii (Cam. Soc. lxi), p. v; Fuller, 202; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 261.

North is recorded as having attended only 24 of the 106 sittings of the 1606-7 session, just 23 per cent of the total. During this time he was appointed to three of the 41 committees established that session. The first, on 24 Nov., was to attend a conference with the Commons about the Union while the second, on 1 Dec., was to consider a private measure to enable his second cousin, Sir Robert Rich^* (subsequently 2nd earl of Warwick) to sell lands formerly belonging to his deceased father-in-law, Sir Francis Gawdy^‡. North attached considerable importance to his relationship with the Rich family ‘whereof by interest of blood I have the honour to make a part’. However, he probably failed to attend the committee as, by the time it was scheduled to meet (on the 4th) he was apparently no longer attending the upper House. On 8 June 1607 North was appointed in his absence to the committee for the bill to abolish the hostile laws between England and Scotland.54 LJ, ii. 453a, 456b, 462b, 520a; [North], Forest of Varieties, 58.

If it was illness that prevented North from sitting in 1607, he was well again by 12 July, when (the session having been prorogued) he was at Brocket Hall, his wife’s childhood home in Hertfordshire. The following month he paid 18d. for the printed acts of Parliament of the 1606-7 session and journeyed to Sussex, where he viewed the house of the lord treasurer, Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset at Lewes.55 Bodl., ms North, B12, ff. 122-3v. A passport was granted to North on 13 Aug. but it is not clear when, if ever, he made use of it.56 SO3/3, unfol. (13 Aug. 1613).

According to his later account, North abandoned his former frugality in about September 1607, aged 25. In order to take ‘refuge’ from his melancholy, he decided to pursue ‘strong diversions, such as building, court, company, travel [although he had travelled before], and the like’. The impetus for this change of heart, he claimed, was the favour accorded to him by the king’s eldest son, Prince Henry, who had now attained the age of 13.57 [North], Forest of Varieties, 118, 132. However, there is no evidence that North renewed his participation in court life until January 1610, when he took part in Prince Henry’s ‘barriers’ tilt.58 M. Wiggins and C. Richardson, British Drama, 1533-1642, vi. 35.

North was not present when Parliament recommenced on 9 Feb. 1610. However, his attendance during this session was considerably higher than in previous sessions, as he is recorded as having attended 71 of the 95 sittings, three quarters of the total. Perhaps as a result, he was appointed to 16 of the 58 committees established that session. The chief item of business before Parliament was the Great Contract, which proposed, inter alia, to abolish wardship in return for an annual composition. It seems likely that North, who had himself suffered from the exercise of the crown’s feudal rights, warmly approved of this scheme. He certainly later condemned the practice of selling the control of the estates and marriages of minors, on the grounds that it ‘occasions precipitate, unsuitable, and immature marriages, and proves the ruin of infinite good families’. However, North was not added to the committee to confer with the Commons about this subject until 14 July, less than ten days before the prorogation. He had, though, been named, on 18 Apr. to attend the king concerning the inclusion of feudal tenures in the Contract.59 LJ, ii. 551a, 570b; [North], Forest of Varieties, 141.

Two of North’s remaining committee appointments suggest an interest in religious reform. The first was to a subcommittee to consider how to reduce non-residence and pluralism, while the second was on two puritan measures, one against the enforcement of Canons which had not been confirmed by Parliament and the other against scandalous ministers.60 LJ, ii. 587a, 629a, 641b. North’s grandfather had been a puritan, but his father had been educated by John Whitgift^† (subsequently archbishop of Canterbury).61 VCH Cambs. x. 61; HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 141-2. In later life North admitted that, ‘before the term of Arminianism came abroad’, he had believed in free will. He had eventually come round to Calvinist predestinarianism. Despite his conversion, he disliked debate on the question of predestination, which he thought led to ‘over-prying into, and censoring’ God’s ‘secret counsels’. For North ‘the mysteries of religion’ were ‘rather matter for faith, than to be controverted and disputed, especially among the vulgar, who in no sort ought to be taught or acquainted to subject the transcendency of their religion to the grossness of their reason’.62 [D. North], Forest Promiscuous of Several Seasons Productions (1659), sig. †v ; Idem Forest of Varieties, 62, 97, 161, 164-5. This aversion to puritan questioning meant that North remained satisfied with the established Church until the rise of Laudianism. Thus, while he agreed with many puritans that preaching was the primary function of a clergyman, North regarded the ideal minister as being ‘an obedient child unto his mother Church’, one who ‘value[d] the peace of the Church, before any particular conceited fancy of his own or others’. He described himself as being in ‘no ways a precisian’ [i.e. puritan], and was connected with Calvinist episcopalians, such as his close friend John Gauden^†, subsequently bishop of Worcester, and John Davenant^*, bishop of Salisbury, whose writings his praised.63 [North], Forest of Varieties, 66, 96-7, 188, 228, 236; D. Mitchell, “‘Or Rather a Wyldernesse”: The Changing Works of Dudley, Third Baron North’, Studies in Philology, cxiv. 372.

The only occasion when North was recorded as speaking in the Lords during this session was on 8 June, when he took the oath of allegiance. Two days earlier, he distinguished himself in the tilts held to celebrate Prince Henry’s creation as prince of Wales. Later that year, a ‘Mr North’, almost certainly one of North’s younger brothers, was appointed to the prince’s privy chamber. By this date North was sufficiently closely connected with the prince for a friend of Ben Jonson to seek to recruit the peer’s support in securing Henry’s patronage for the poet.64 HMC Var. iii. 262; R. Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance, 30; G. Heaton, ‘“His Acts Transmit to After Days”: Two Unpublished Poems by Arurelian Townshend’, New Texts and Discoveries in Early Modern Eng. Mss ed. P. Beal (Eng. Ms Studs. 1100-1700, xiii), 175, 185n.14.

North’s attendance seems to have declined in the fifth session of the first Jacobean Parliament, held in late 1610, although he was still marked as attending 12 of the 21 sittings, 57 per cent of the total. He was named to six out of the seven committees established by the House, including those for a renewed conference with the Commons on the Great Contract and a bill to enable Prince Henry to administer the duchy of Cornwall estates. He again made no recorded speeches.65 LJ, ii. 671a, 677a.

In March 1612 North was seriously injured practising for the accession day tilts with Philip Herbert^*, earl of Montgomery (subsequently also 4th earl of Pembroke). It was reported that splinters ‘ran into his arm’, tearing his flesh ‘very dangerously’. However, he seems not to have suffered any lasting damage.66 Chamberlain Letters, i. 342. North himself never referred to this incident in his writings and seems to have attached far more importance to the death of Prince Henry later that year. He formed part of the funeral procession and subsequently wrote verses lamenting his patron’s death. His depression also returned, so that ‘I became unable to make use either of my natural parts or time and expense bestowed at court’.67 J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, ii. 497; [North], Forest of Varieties, 71-3, 118-19, 132. Nevertheless, he participated in the accession day tilt in 1613 and continued to perform in masques, including one held to celebrate the marriage of the king’s favourite, Robert Carr^*, earl of Somerset. He also tilted on New Year’s Day in 1614.68 Chamberlain Letters, i. 440, 446, 496, 498.

North claimed that Prince Henry’s death caused him to abandon the idea of becoming a courtier, but this was clearly not the case. Perhaps the real reason North eventually withdrew from court life was not the death of Henry but renewed financial difficulties. Certainly he sold a considerable amount of land in 1612-13.69 W.A. Copinger, Manors of Suff. vii. 172; VCH Mdx. iv. 26; VCH Herts. ii. 434. One factor behind this deterioration in his finances was that, in late 1613, Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland, who had succeeded his brother Roger the year before, ceased renting the larger house in Charterhouse Yard. North subsequently let this property to Sir Christopher Neville^‡, the younger son of his friend, Lord Abergavenny, but he may have done so below its market value, as he later complained of ‘one vow made by me which cost me a great part of my estate’.70 Temple, 177; HMC Rutland, iv. 499; [North], Forest of Varieties, 121.

Another reason North withdrew from court life was that he was disillusioned. He subsequently complained that, on seeking advancement, he had been ‘most strangely and causelessly put by’. It is possible, though, that North himself was at fault for failing to secure office, as his grandson blamed him for not purchasing reversions. In later life North explained that he had been in such poor health that he thought he would die before any reversion fell in. In fact, as his grandson observed, he lived longer than most of his contemporaries.71 [North], Forest of Varieties, 124; Add. 32523, f. 5.

North is recorded as having attended 21 of the 29 sittings of the 1614 Parliament. On 14 Apr. he was excused by the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley) ‘in respect of great business’, but he returned on 2 May, having missed five sittings.72 HMC Hastings, iv. 242. North was named to four of the session’s nine committees, including those to consider the bill to enforce observance of the Sabbath and to confer with the Commons about the same measure. His views on the Sabbath seem to have been less strict than those held by puritans.73 LJ, ii. 708b, 713b; [North], Forest of Varieties, 228.

North made his first recorded speech on 24 May, in the debate on whether the Lords should confer with the Commons on the question of impositions. After dismissing his abilities as a speaker, he explained that he had been prompted to voice his opinions by ‘a great silence’ in the House. Nevertheless, he had clearly come prepared, as he asked to be allowed to consult ‘somethings for the help of my memory ... which I had before digested and thought of’, arguing that second thoughts were better than spontaneous speaking. He then proceeded to defend the lower House, which he described as their ‘brother’. It was, he said, the Commons ‘who bear upon their shoulders’ the public good and the Lords should hear what they had to say. Were the upper House to refuse to co-operate with them, the Commons would petition on their own, leading to a damaging confrontation with the crown. Rather than allow this to happen, the Lords, who ‘are at the king’s command owing him more service’, should act ‘like piles’ and ‘break the violence of the stream’ between the king and the Commons. In other words, North was saying that the proper role of the upper House was to mediate between the king and his people. This support for the Commons suggests that, by now, North was out of sympathy with the Jacobean court.74 HMC Hastings, iv. 257-8.

North paid £50 toward the benevolence levied by James I in the aftermath of the 1614 Parliament and received a licence to travel on 7 July.75 E351/1950; SO3/6, unfol. (7 July 1614). Thereafter he perhaps visited the waters at Spa, in the bishopric of Liège. He had evidently returned to London by the end of May 1615, when he was visited by Sir John Holles^* (subsequently 1st earl of Clare).76 Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxi), 70. In 1616 he was summoned to try Somerset and his countess for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, but he was evidently excused before the trial began as he was not listed as a member of the final commission.77 APC, 1615-16, p. 505; 5th DKR, app. ii. 146. As has been suggested, it may have been at around this time that he went to Eridge to improve his health and discovered the Tunbridge waters, which he believed to be beneficial because they tasted like those of Spa.78 ‘Pprs. Relating to Procs. in the County of Kent’, p. v.

North obtained another licence to travel in May 1618, but appears to have made no use of it.79 SO3/6, unfol. (31 May 1618). The following year he invested £200 in the company established on the initiative of his brother, Capt. Roger North, and headed by their cousin, Sir Robert Rich, by now 2nd earl of Warwick, to establish an English settlement on the Amazon.80 Eng. and Irish Settlement on River Amazon, 60, 195, 204. North gave strong support to this project. In February 1620 it was reported that he had argued at court about it with John Digby^*, Lord Digby (subsequently 1st earl of Bristol), who had previously served as ambassador to Madrid. Digby claimed that the intended expedition would prejudice the interests of the king of Spain at a time when James I was exploring the possibility of a Spanish bride for his remaining son, Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales). He also foresaw that Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador who was then returning to London, would do his best to hinder it. North responded by accusing Digby of acting as the king of Spain’s ambassador in England.81 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 291-2. Digby, though, correctly predicted Gondomar’s opposition, for on 4 Apr., with North and other members of the Amazon Company waiting outside, the Spanish ambassador appeared before the Council and laid claim to the Amazon on his master’s behalf. He also demanded that Capt. North be prevented from sailing until he could substantiate Spain’s claims to the territory.82 APC, 1619-21, pp. 169-70; Eng. and Irish Settlement on River Amazon, 206.

Despite orders to the contrary, Capt. North subsequently sailed from Plymouth, to the indignation of James, who feared the captain’s departure would be interpreted either as a lack of good faith or a sign of weakness.83 CSP Ven. 1619-21, p. 239; APC 1619-21, pp. 185-6; HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 100. Examined on 14 May, Lord North stated that ‘upon all occasions he dissuaded’ his brother from departing, despite claiming he ‘knew of no restraint of his brother’s journey’ and ‘never discerned a purpose in his brother to go’, a response which provoked the king’s wrath.84 SP14/115/33; Add. 72253, f. 118; CSP Ven. 1619-21, p. 263. The following day a proclamation was issued dissolving the Amazon Company and ordering Capt. North’s return. Moreover, on the 19th, Lord North’s house was searched and his papers seized. Among these was a copy of a letter in which Lord North advised his brother ‘not to write to him, until he had landed’. This suggested that the former had not only known of the captain’s intention all along but had also ‘animated him to be gone’. On 21 May the Council ordered that Lord North be incarcerated in the Fleet. He spent less than a week there, during which time he received numerous noble visitors, ‘sometimes six earls there at once’, indicating that the incident, far from bringing him into disrepute, had served to enhance his reputation among fellow Protestant peers.85 Stuart Royal Proclamations I: Jas. I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 476-8; Eng. and Irish Settlement on River Amazon, 211; SP14/115/50; Chamberlain Letters ii. 306; APC 1619-21, pp. 201, 207; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 78; Add. 72253, f. 122v. Whether it also exacerbated his alienation from the Jacobean regime is uncertain. However, North made no mention of this episode in his writings, which were not printed until the 1640s and 1650s, by which time it would no longer have been dangerous to criticize James I.

The parliaments of 1621-5

Capt. North returned to England in late December 1620. On 6 Jan. 1621 he was committed to the Tower and his cargo seized.86 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 203; APC, 1619-21, p. 232; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 335. After lobbying by Lord North and the other backers of the expedition, he was released at the end of February, though his cargo remained under restraint. He was returned to prison in April after petitioning the Commons, now assembled in the third Jacobean Parliament, and blaming Gondomar for the seizure of his property and the collapse of the Amazon Company.87 Eng. and Irish Settlement on River Amazon, 218; APC, 1619-21, p. 354; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, i. 249-50.

The 1621 assembly saw a marked increase in Lord North’s parliamentary activity. He was recorded as attending 41 of the 44 sittings before the Easter recess, and only slightly less often between Easter and the summer adjournment, 38 out of 42 sittings. However, the official record may under-estimate his attendance as North was twice recorded as speaking on the afternoon of 2 June, when he was not recorded as present.88 LJ, iii. 155a-b. In all he made 48 recorded speeches before the summer and was appointed to 37 out of about 75 committees.

On 5 Feb., following the proposal of Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, to establish a committee for privileges, North was appointed to the new committee and drew the attention of his colleagues to discrepancies in the wording of some of the writs of summons issued to peers. The ‘ancient manner’ was to address barons as predilecto et fideli nostro [beloved and faithful] in both the address and at the start of the writ, but in some cases these words had been omitted entirely and in others included in only one place. North, who did not claim that his own writ was one of those affected, was evidently acting as spokesman for several of his colleagues, who were clearly irritated by the discourtesy implicit in the omission, and perhaps anxious to establish that there was no discretion involved in the issuing of these writs. North himself, however, was careful to say that the blame went no higher than ‘the party that made the writs’. On his motion, Richard Cammell, an under-clerk in the petty bag office, was summoned before the Lords and briefly imprisoned in the Fleet. The committee for privileges was also ordered to establish how peers should be styled in their writs of summons. Although the committee never reported on that subject, the Standing Orders, drafted by the committee that same year, prohibited ‘any difference in the form or style of the writs’.89 LJ, iii. 10a-b, 12b, 14a-b; ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 7; HMC Lords, n.s. x. 5.

North’s protest over the wording of barons’ writs may have reflected a wider concern to protect the privileges of the peerage in 1621. Although he did not sign the extra-parliamentary petition of the English nobility against the precedence allowed to the purchasers of Irish and Scottish viscountcies over English barons, possibly because he did not want to antagonize the king while his brother was in the Tower, he certainly supported reading the petition in the upper House.90 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 10. Later that month North reportedly rebuked the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon^*, Viscount St Alban, because he ‘did no reverence’ when he came into the chamber, contrary to custom. Consequently, it may have been North who ensured that the instruction to ‘make an obeisance to the cloth of estate’ when peers entered the House was incorporated in the standing orders.91 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 232; HMC Lords, n.s. x. 3.

On 14 Feb. North was appointed to the subcommittee for privileges. This was initially established to examine records concerning the privileges of the lords, but it quickly acquired further duties, including checking the Journal.92 LJ, iii. 17b, 21a. North seems to have been an active member of the subcommittee, signing an order on 22 Feb. requiring the keepers of official records to co-operate with one of the subcommittee’s researchers, and attending meetings on 29 Mar. - during the Easter adjournment - and on 13 April. He also helped peruse the scribbled book, the rough record kept by the clerk of the House’s proceedings.93 Bodl., Carte 78, f. 501; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 53; HMC Hastings, iv. 289; Add. 40085, ff. 20v, 79.

During the early stages of the Parliament, North began negotiating with the Venetian ambassador to enter the republic’s military service. Articles were agreed in mid March for North to raise a regiment of 2,000 foot, for which he would be personally paid £60 a month as colonel. However, the Venetians eventually decided that they did not need his services.94 CSP Ven. 1619-21, pp. 552, 619-21; 1621-3, p. 43. North’s desire for military employment suggests that his financial difficulties remained acute. Poverty may have been the reason why North had not been asked to contribute to the benevolence levied from the nobility in late 1620 for the defence of the Palatinate, although he probably contributed to the costs of his eldest son, Sir Dudley North^† (subsequently 4th Lord North), who served in the expeditionary force there under Sir Horace Vere^* (subsequently Lord Vere of Tilbury). It is also striking that on 2 June, shortly before the session adjourned for the summer, North moved for protection to be afforded to peers’ servants over the recess. If his finances were indeed deteriorating, it is likely that he had entangled his servants in his affairs.95 APC, 1619-21, pp. 292-3; A.N. McClenaghan, ‘Two Unusual Early Medals’, Jnl. of the Orders and Medals Research Soc. xxxiii. 355-6; D.B.J. Randall, Gentle Flame, 35; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 47; LJ, iii. 155a.

During the course of the Parliament, North spoke frequently about monopoly patents. Many of his contributions admittedly related to procedural matters, but they nevertheless reflected the importance he attached to combating monopolies. On 12 Mar. he reminded his colleagues that there was a widespread expectation that the upper House would act. He moved that the patents and the evidence of abuses should be received from the Commons, that the judges be consulted, and a committee established. His willingness to investigate the role of the referees, the crown lawyers who had approved the patents, suggests that he had no wish to minimize the political fallout from the attack on monopolies, particularly as some of the referees, such as Bacon and Henry Montagu^*, Viscount Mandeville (later 1st earl of Manchester), had gone on to become senior officeholders and members of the upper House. Moreover, he argued that if it transpired that the referees had been subject to ‘violence’, meaning political pressure, then those responsible should be punished; anyone who could intimidate a crown lawyer would have to be very powerful indeed.96 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 19. Two days later North was nominated to the committee to investigate the patents for gold and silver thread, at which time he also moved for the committee to be empowered to select witnesses and that the latter’s testimony should be taken under oath.97 LJ, iii. 47a; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 25. Following the condemnation of the patentee, Sir Giles Mompesson^‡, on 26 Mar., North moved that the Lords commemorate that date every year, if it coincided with a Parliament, by sitting in their Parliament robes.98 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 49.

When the question of investigating the role of Sir Edward Villiers^‡, the half-brother of the favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, arose on 17 Apr., North ostensibly supported Arundel, who argued that the Lords could not proceed against Villiers because they had received no charges against him from the lower House. However, he moved instead that the Lords should begin with those who had enforced the monopolies. This, he argued, would lead them back to ‘those that set them on work’, among whom he may have believed Villiers to be one.99 LD 1621, p. 2. Nine days later, North delivered to the House a deposition from one Francis Broade about the gold and silver thread patent. The following day he announced that, while attending the upper House about his deposition, Broade had been arrested, whereupon he moved (successfully) for Broade to be granted parliamentary privilege.100 Ibid. 27; LJ, iii. 94a.

Despite the importance that he evidently attached to combating monopolies, North took a moderate line when the House debated what sentence to pass on the patentee, Sir Francis Michell, arguing, on 4 May, that Michell’s offence could not be compared with that of Mompesson. He therefore opposed fining him. Nevertheless, he thought that Michell should be imprisoned and disabled from holding public office.101 LD 1621, p. 65.

During the Parliament the Commons charged Bacon with corruption. North played an active part in the subsequent proceedings. On 23 Mar. he moved for witnesses to be sworn. Later that day, he asserted that it had already been resolved, in the case of the bishop of Llandaff (Theophilus Field^*), that any witness who testified that they had offered Bacon a bribe would not be pursued for the offence.102PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/1, p. 5; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 38. When, on 27 Mar., Prince Charles moved that Bacon should have a note of the charges against him, North objected that the upper House had not yet resolved whether to proceed with the case. However, the real reason for his objection may have been that he did not want Bacon to be forewarned of the precise charges against him.103 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 52. On 25 Apr. he supported William Fiennes^*, 2nd or 8th Lord (later 1st Viscount) Saye and Sele, who moved to inform the king that there was cause to sequester the great seal and bring Bacon to the bar of the House.104 LD 1621, p. 21. North was probably referring to Bacon when he later wrote of ‘the disgrace grown to one of our greatest, most learned, and witty judges for corruption’ whose case showed the futility of ‘all erudition and ability of writing and discourse’ against ‘nature’s torrent’.105 [North], Forest of Varieties, 222.

It was presumably his concern with the pressure which had been brought to bear on the referees to approve patents that made North sympathetic to the disgraced attorney general, Sir Henry Yelverton^‡, whom James had referred to the jurisdiction of the Lords. On being brought before the upper House on 30 Apr., Yelverton caused a sensation by comparing Buckingham to Hugh, Lord Le Despenser^†, the notorious favourite of Edward II. After Yelverton had spoken, North initially tried to employ delaying tactics, arguing that there was no time to proceed further and that a ‘collection’ should be made of the allegations against him. When Buckingham accused Yelverton of criticizing the king by implicitly comparing him to Edward II, North argued that a ‘charitable construction’ should be made of Yelverton’s words.106 LD 1621, p. 52.

On 2 May, after the king had controversially taken Yelverton’s case back into his own hands, North opposed Arundel’s motion for the House to go into committee, ostensibly because he feared that if members had the opportunity to speak more than once they would be ‘driven into a heat’. However, he may have been more afraid that in a grand committee Buckingham and Arundel would be able to answer multiple objections to the king’s action. He acknowledged that James was entitled to take the matter into his own hands. Nevertheless, he moved to send a committee to the king to request that Yelverton’s case be returned to their jurisdiction. Despite his opposition, the House subsequently debated the matter in a committee of the whole House, during the course of which North protested that ‘we are a little interdicted’. He wished the king to ‘suspend his opinion of Y[elverton]’ until he was ‘better informed’.107 Ibid. 56, 58, 60. On 7 May, after James referred the case back to the Lords, North moved for a rapid resolution of the issue of the king’s honour but was opposed by Arundel, and further debate was deferred.108 Ibid. 68.

North’s attitude to the case of Edward Floyd, the Catholic lawyer accused of having insulted Princess Elizabeth, suggests that he was eager to preserve good relations with the lower House in 1621. On 5 May William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, informed the Lords that the Commons had condemned Floyd, thereby encroaching on the upper House’s judicial powers. However, North asked ‘how come we to the notice of it?’ since the Commons had not themselves notified the Lords. His question suggests that he was hoping to prevent the Lords from taking action. Two days later he objected after the lord chief justice delivered the judges’ opinion on the case, claiming that the latter had been instructed to report only on the precedents. He wanted a conciliatory message to be sent to the Commons, and supported the proposal of Henry Wriothesley^*, 3rd and 1st earl of Southampton, for a small committee of both Houses to be appointed to resolve the issue. When James Hamilton^*, 2nd marquess of Hamilton [S] (1st earl of Cambridge in the English peerage), argued that they should not ‘beg’ for the establishment of a joint committee, North retorted that there was a ‘difference between begging and propounding’. The Lords thereupon agreed to propose a committee, to which North himself was subsequently appointed.109 Ibid. 66, 68, 70-1; LJ, iii. 116b.

Capt. Roger North was released from the Tower in late July, having undertaken to make no further voyages to the Amazon.110 APC, 1621-3, p. 20. Possibly in gratitude, North appears to have maintained a lower profile in the upper House after the session was resumed in November, although he remained an assiduous attender. He was marked as present on 22 of the 24 sittings, made three recorded speeches and received four (out of a possible 11) committee appointments. He was also added to the committee for petitions, which had been established before the recess. On 26 Nov. he informed the upper House that his signature had been counterfeited in a letter of protection by one Brian Griffith, who was promptly summoned before the Lords. The following day the Lords sentenced one John Blount, found guilty of forging protections from Edward Stafford^*, 4th Lord Stafford, to stand in the pillory with a paper detailing his offence. North proposed that this paper should also state that Blount had previously been found guilty of forgery in the Star Chamber, but this motion was rejected. On the 28th North informed his colleagues that servants of Gilbert Gerard^*, 2nd Lord Gerard, had been arrested contrary to privilege.111 LJ, iii. 170a, 174a; LD 1621, p. 97; Add. 40086, f. 27v. North continued to be active on the subcommittee for privileges, attending the meeting on 6 Dec. at which the committee took delivery of the collection made by John Selden^‡ concerning the privileges of the peerage.112 Stowe 354, f. 62v.

Following the dissolution of the 1621 Parliament, North resumed his former participation in court life, for in June 1622 he accompanied the outgoing Venetian ambassador to his farewell audience. However, his finances were still straitened. In September of that year he was obliged to sell £9,000 worth of his property in Cambridgeshire to the treasurer of the Navy, Sir William Russell^‡.113 Finetti Philoxenis, (1656), 113; Randall, 17. The following January he was trying to cut down and sell timber in Harrow, despite the opposition of the local inhabitants who held common rights.114 Mdx. County Recs. ed. J.C. Jeaffreson, ii. 174.

A new Parliament was summoned to meet in February 1624. North is recorded as having attended the prorogation day meeting on 16 Feb., and 58 of the 93 sittings of the session, 62 per cent of the total. On 6 Mar. he was excused ‘for a few days’ and was subsequently absent until the 15th of that month, missing eight sittings, during which time he was reappointed to the committee for petitions. He was again excused on 1 Apr., by Oliver St John^*, 4th Lord St John of Bletso (subsequently 1st earl of Bolingbroke), but missed only two sittings, returning on 3 April. His longest absence occurred between 8 May and the afternoon of 22 May inclusive. During this time he missed 17 sittings, but there is no evidence that he was ever excused.115 Add. 40087, f. 55; LJ, iii. 253a; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 2.

North was named to 26 of the session’s 105 committees, but made only one recorded speech, on 23 Feb., when he moved to appoint both the committee and subcommittee for privileges, to which bodies he himself was duly named.116 Add. 40087, f. 17v; LJ, iii. 215a-b. North’s relative silence in the 1624 Parliament is perhaps surprising, as the main business of the session was to pave the way for war with Spain by breaking off the treaty negotiations with that country. He certainly sympathized with the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years’ War: his eldest son had served in the Palatinate; he went on to dedicate his A Forest of Varieties of 1645 to Princess Elizabeth; and, in the early 1630s, he lambasted the poets of his native country for not celebrating the achievements of the recently deceased king of Sweden and Protestant hero, Gustavus Adolphus.117 [North], Forest of Varieties, sig. [A1], p. 75. The dedication is missing from many copies of Forest of Varieties, but is reprinted in [North], Forest Promiscuous, 191-2. Nevertheless, he was appointed to both the munitions committee and the committee to confer with the Commons and draft a justification of Parliament’s advice to the king to discontinue the treaties.118 LJ, iii. 237b, 242b. North’s prolonged absence in May coincided with the impeachment of the lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, but whether this was accidental or deliberate is unclear.

North appears to have remained entirely silent in the Parliament of 1625. He attended the prorogation meeting on 17 May, but missed the first eight sittings of the session, being excused ‘for want of health’ when the House was called on 23 June.119 Procs. 1625, p. 45. Nevertheless, he apparently attended regularly after 30 June, when he took his seat, and, in all, was marked as present at 21 of the 31 sittings, 68 per cent of the total. He was also named to 14 committees (out of 24), of which half were for legislation, on subjects such as enforcing the Sabbath and fishing in American waters. His other appointments included a committee to take account of the collections initiated by the upper House in 1624 for redeeming captives in Algiers, on which subject North had been summoned by the Council the previous September to confer.120 Ibid. 72, 139, 179; APC, 1623-5, pp. 335-6.

Political writing, 1625

Sometime during 1625, North penned ‘Sudden Touches in the Nature of Characters’. Published some 20 years later, as part of his miscellany of verse and prose entitled A Forest of Varieties, this document affords some insight into his political thinking. One of his characters was ‘a good courtier’, who ‘maintains his master’s supremacy in his heart above all earthly affections’. (North advocated ‘honest dissimulation’ and ‘dissembling cheerful patience’ in a courtier, as these traits were ‘virtues necessary to his fortune and course’.)121 [North], Forest of Varieties, 85, 88. It has been suggested that he ‘reflected on the counselling role of peers’, but he did not include a pen portrait of the ideal nobleman, nor is there any indication that his ideal ‘good counsellor’ was a peer. He advised the monarch to choose counsellors who were ‘untainted in their wisdom and integrity’ but not specifically well born. Indeed, the ‘good counsellor’ might very well be one who had ‘been raised by his master’s favour’ rather than born into that role. This belief, that there was nothing intrinsically remarkable about noblemen, also informed North’s view of what made ‘a good Parliament man’. The latter, North observed, ‘must esteem himself an epitome of the three estates’, for ‘in respect of common duty all the members of a Parliament [i.e. Lords and Commons] are homogeneal’. North evidently concurred with his great-great-grandfather, the founder of his peerage, who apparently believed ‘that they were only truly noble whose own virtue rendered them so’.122 R. Cust, Chas. I and the Aristocracy, 52 n.39; [North], Forest of Varieties, 85-8; North, Some Notes Concerning the Life of Edward Lord North, 3.

In his character of a king, North emphasized the importance to the monarch of maintaining the love of his people and ruling in accordance with the law, rather than by brute force. A monarch, he argued, should ‘be better content in a small revenue with love, than in a great one with hate and groans’, and should ‘by all means avoid to supply a present want, by giving way to a perpetual mischief’. These observations may explain his sympathy with the Commons over impositions in 1614, and his hostility to monopolies in 1621. North also thought that, while a monarch should maintain his ‘just power and prerogative’, he should also use it ‘according to the constitution of the state’. To be a king who ruled in accordance with the law was in itself ‘no small prerogative’, a statement which implies that North placed little importance on a monarch’s extra-judicial powers.123 [North], Forest of Varieties, 86.

It has been suggested that North had the upper House in mind when he wrote that ‘a choice and great assembly … can hardly be corrupt’, and was likely to give the king ‘as good, honest, safe, and wise counsel as any three or four heads in his cabinet’. However, it is perhaps more likely that North meant Parliament in general rather than the Lords in particular. He almost certainly had Parliament in mind when he wrote that the king should ‘supply’ any ‘defect of ordinary power for government … by assent of the state’ rather than by ‘acts of Council’.124 Ibid. 85-7[a]; Cust, 52 n.39. North thought ‘a good Parliament man’ should disregard both ‘popular and courtly applause’ and aim to satisfy both the king and the country. Nevertheless, he should ‘never doubt that things tending to the public good can be unwelcome to the king’ and should ‘not fear any dissolution; no, not of the world itself’.125 [North], Forest of Varieties, 87[b]-8.

In his ‘character’ of a king, North accepted that ‘as every shepherd hath his dog’ a king may ‘assist himself with some person of personal confidence’. However, the king should be ‘exceeding careful’ in his choice of ‘his favourite’. He elaborated on this subject in his character of ‘a favourite’. For North, a favourite was someone who had been ‘called to the relish of a kingly power’ neither by ‘birth nor industry’ but by chance. North thought that a favourite should seek access to ‘wealth, greatness of title, and the chief honours of the kingdom’ only slowly, and that he should ‘exercise the uttermost of his endeavours in making himself a blessed instrument of all welfare to the State’. However, he distinguished a favourite from ‘a minion’, a ‘creature of fancy’ whose sole purpose was to please the eye of the king and ‘whose proper sphere is that of pleasure and not of business (especially of the state)’. A favourite, by contrast, was someone chosen by the king ‘to have the secrets of his bosom and the most important affairs communicated unto him for his counsel and guidance therein’. It is possible that for North a favourite was someone like Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury, rather than Buckingham, whom he may have regarded as an upstart minion, operating dangerously beyond his sphere.126 Ibid. 85, 94-5.

The parliaments of 1626 and 1628-9

North attended the coronation of Charles I on 2 Feb. 1626, and 77 of the 81 sittings of the second Caroline Parliament, 95 per cent of the total.127 Manner of the Coronation of King Charles the First ed. C. Wordsworth (Henry Bradshaw Soc. ii), p. l. He was appointed to 32 of the 49 committees of the session and, in contrast to the previous two parliaments, made 29 recorded speeches. In an annotated list of members of the upper House, North was marked by William Laud^*, bishop of St Davids (later archbishop of Canterbury), as one of Buckingham’s opponents. According to an anonymous diary of public events, he ‘spoke very courageously against the duke’, who ‘told him if it were in another place he would offer him the stab’. The same source also claims that North was ‘pulled by the shoulder’, presumably by one of Buckingham’s supporters, and told that ‘he should stand at the bar’.128 E. Cope, ‘Groups in the House of Lords, May 1626’, PH, xii. 166, 169; Procs. 1626, iv. 342.

North seems to have enjoyed a higher standing in the House than in previous parliaments in which he had sat. He certainly helped introduce three new barons during the Parliament, namely Horace Vere, Lord Vere of Tilbury (with whom his son had served in the Palatinate), Henry Ley^*, Lord Ley (subsequently 2nd earl of Marlborough) and Dudley Carleton^*, Lord Carleton (later Viscount Dorchester).129 Procs. 1626, i. 65, 92, 540. One reason for this increase in his status, perhaps, was that he enjoyed greater voting power, as he now possessed two proxies, those of his son-in-law, Richard Lennard^*, 13th Lord Dacre (who was excused attendance after the Easter recess) and William Petre^*, 2nd Lord Petre.130 Ibid. iv. 11. The latter initially gave his proxy to Arundel, but Arundel was imprisoned in the Tower on 5 Mar., ostensibly because his heir had married the king’s cousin without Charles’s consent but, in reality, because by now he was, like Petre himself, an enemy of Buckingham. North’s willingness to act as Petre’s replacement proxy is, perhaps, surprising, as Petre was Catholic, a faith North regarded with suspicion. However, North’s enmity was chiefly reserved for the priesthood and, in particular, the papacy; he seems to have had some sympathy for the ‘better and devoutest sort’ of lay Catholics.131 [North], Forest of Varieties, 84, 185-7, 236-7.

North’s increased loquacity was not restricted to proceedings concerning Buckingham. On 23 Feb. he moved that the committee for petitions, to which he had been appointed, should only receive petitions which could not be dealt with by other courts. His motion was rejected, but he seems to have had more success with a proposal to empower the committee to send for any of the House’s legal assistants at their discretion.132 Procs. 1626, i. 48, 66. On 8 Mar. he was appointed to the committee for the bill to confirm the foundation of Sutton’s hospital, which occupied the main Charterhouse site, and 12 days later he moved for the committee to meet.133 Ibid. 128. 187. On 1 Apr. North, a member of the committee for safety, moved for warships to be deployed to defend the west coast. This was probably intended as an attack on Buckingham for failing in his official duties as lord admiral.134 Ibid. 242.

On 5 Apr. William Seymour^*, 2nd earl of Hertford (later 2nd duke of Somerset), reported from the committee for privileges that the proxies granted to Arundel had, in effect, been nullified by the latter’s imprisonment. Edward Montagu^*, 1st Lord Montagu, thereupon objected that the upper House had agreed to suspend proceedings concerning Arundel’s arrest on 15 March. However, North denied that any such order had been made because ‘he himself [i.e. North], cried, no suspension’. Although this interpretation of proceedings on 15 Mar. was not accepted, the question was successfully reopened and the subcommittee for privileges, with North added to it, was ordered to search for precedents concerning the imprisonment of a peer during Parliament.135 Ibid. 257, 260. On 9 May North was appointed to a committee to visit the king regarding Arundel’s detention. On his motion, this committee first drafted a message to be presented to Charles. After Arundel was allowed to return to the chamber, on 8 June, North moved for an entry to be made in the records of the Lords to prevent the earl’s imprisonment becoming a precedent, a suggestion referred to the privileges committee.136 Ibid. 587.

Opposition to Buckingham brought North into alliance with his old foe, Digby, by now earl of Bristol, who accused the duke of treasonous conduct in Spain in 1623. Charles in turn brought charges of treason against Bristol, who was initially denied a writ of summons. On 21 Apr. the king announced that Bristol would be charged before the Lords, whereupon North was appointed to the committee sent to present Charles with the thanks of the upper House for allowing them to decide the matter. Eight days later, after Bristol had arrived in Westminster, North moved that the earl should be brought to the bar of the House and ‘commanded’ to take his place as a lord of Parliament. However, while Bristol was certainly brought before the House, he was not permitted to take his seat. North supported Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex, who moved on 1 May for both the charges against Bristol and Bristol’s charges against Buckingham to be read. North conceded that the king’s charges should be read first ‘but yet so as the earl’s testimony against the duke be not prevented, prejudiced nor impeached’. On the last day of the session (15 June), North moved that Bristol should be formally released by the upper House, but was answered that this was unnecessary as his restraint would be ended by the dissolution.137 Ibid. 296, 322-3, 338, 341, 636.

In the debate which followed the presentation of the lower House’s impeachment articles against Buckingham, North objected after the duke claimed that Sir Dudley Digges^‡ (one of the Commons’ spokesmen) had criticized the king. North argued that Digges’ ‘had not meant so’, and moved for ‘every man to deliver his sense’. He was subsequently one of those peers who swore that Digges had not said anything ‘which did or might trench on the king’s honour’. The following day (16 May), when the question of whether Buckingham should be placed in custody was debated, North stated that it was ‘agreed, none to sit here while his own matter is in debate’. However, he did not go so far as to call for the duke’s imprisonment, and agreed that the ‘aggravations’ against Buckingham should not be put on record, but instead kept in the custody of the clerk so that the Lords could consult them.138 Ibid. 482, 489, 497.

On 12 June North opposed a motion by Buckingham’s adherent, Edward Sackville^*, 4th earl of Dorset, to urge the Commons to proceed with the subsidy. North apparently argued that such a message was unnecessary as the king had already written to the Commons to the same effect, and that it would infringe the lower House’s privileges if the Lords took the initiative in matters of supply.139 HMC 4th Rep. 289b. Three days later the Parliament was dissolved without granting any taxes and Charles responded by levying a Forced Loan, to which North paid £100 on 20 Dec. 1626.140 E401/1386, rot. 42.

When the third Caroline Parliament was called, North’s eldest son, Sir Dudley North^†, subsequently 4th Lord North, was elected for Horsham, a Sussex borough which belonged to Arundel, who presumably wished to express his gratitude for North’s support in 1626.141 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 412. North was recorded as attending 68 of the 94 sittings of the 1628 session, 72 per cent of the total, and was excused six times. His longest absence, from 28 Mar to 2 Apr. inclusive, only covered five sittings. At the start of the Parliament he was appointed by the crown a trier of petitions for England, Scotland and Ireland. This was the first time that North had received this, largely honorific, appointment, and it appears to have been part of an attempt to conciliate Buckingham’s enemies, as other critics of the duke, such as John Holles^*, 1st earl of Clare, and William Fiennes^*, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, were also included among the triers. North subsequently assisted in the introduction of four peers, John Poulett^*, 1st Lord Poulett, Henry Clifford^*, Lord Clifford (later 5th earl of Cumberland), the lord keeper, Thomas Coventry^*, 1st Lord Coventry, and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Richard Weston^*, Lord Weston (later 1st earl of Portland).142 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 62. 74, 106, 216, 222. North made 12 recorded speeches and received 17, out of a possible 52, committee appointments.

At the start of the session North was reappointed to the committee and subcommittee for privileges. As a member of the latter body, he helped to check the draft Journal, while as a member of the former he voted against allowing privilege to Viscountess Purbeck, the wife of Buckingham’s brother, John Villiers^*, Viscount Purbeck, accused of adultery with Sir Robert Howard^‡. This may indicate that North had moderated his hostility to Buckingham. On 22 May North moved for granting privilege to the chaplain of Henry Danvers^*, earl of Danby, and, four days later, either North or William Compton^*, 1st earl of Northampton, did the same for a servant of Theophilus Clinton alias Fiennes^*, 4th earl of Lincoln.143 Ibid. 73, 79, 503, 553; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/33 (31 Mar. 1628), no. 12.

North sympathized with the attempts of the lower House to secure the liberties of the subject in 1628. When the propositions formulated by the Commons were debated on 21 Apr., North argued that they should not be put to the vote until they had all been debated, probably fearing that, taken separately, they would be watered down. The Commons subsequently drew up the Petition of Right, which prompted the king to write to the Lords, on 12 May, insisting that his power to imprison without showing cause should be preserved. The Lords agreed to ask the lower House to comply with the king’s letter, but, when the Commons refused, North evidently saw no reason to cease consideration of the Petition, arguing that they had never agreed to ‘persuade’ the lower House, and that, in moving the Commons, they had done their duty, despite having ‘in some measure gone against our own right’. On 21 May North spoke against a proposal to add a saving clause to the Petition designed to protect the king’s prerogative, arguing that it would only cause the judges to fail to uphold the liberties of the subject.144 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 314, 429, 435, 491, 493.

North was a harsh critic of Roger Manwaring^† (subsequently bishop of St Davids) charged by the Commons for having defended the Forced Loan in absolutist terms. North moved that Manwaring be degraded from the clergy, arguing that he was ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing that has sought to devour us all’, who had ‘struck at the very root and sacked the whole liberties of the Parliament and kingdom’. However, the Lords agreed only to suspend Manwaring from the ministry for three years.145 Ibid. 637. On 16 May, after the Commons complained about a commission drawn up shortly before Parliament met to consider ways of raising non-parliamentary taxes, North urged both Houses to move the king to rescind this document. He was willing to hear the king’s counsel, but only in ‘excuse of it ... not in justification’.146 Ibid. 649.

On 3 Apr. North spoke on the proposition presented by Buckingham for increasing trade, arguing that ‘it is of great consequence and a new matter makes much disturbance’. Although evidently wary of the innovatory nature of the duke’s proposals, he does not appear to have opposed them outright as he was appointed to the ensuing committee.147 Ibid. 146, 148. The private measures he was named to consider included bills concerning Arundel and Henry Neville^*, who had succeeded North’s friend as 9th or 2nd earl of Abergavenny.148 Ibid. 256, 682.

North was excused at the first sitting of the 1629 session (20 Jan.), although this did not prevent him from being reappointed to the committee and subcommittee for privileges, as well as the committee for petitions. The attendance records suggest that he missed the first three sittings and that he was also absent from 29 Jan. to 7 Feb. inclusive. However, he was not excused again until 3 February. During this latter period of absence he was appointed to help consider a bill to naturalize the wife of James Stanley^*, Lord Strange (later 7th earl of Derby). In all, North was recorded as attending eight of the session’s 23 sittings, and was named to ten of the 19 committees, including two concerning the precedence over English barons enjoyed by the holders of Irish and Scottish viscountcies, and the committee for munitions. He made no recorded speeches.149 LJ, iv. 6a-b, 15b, 19a, 25b, 27b, 37b, 39b.

Later life, 1629-67

In January 1631 North sold both parts of his house in Charterhouse Yard to the 6th earl of Rutland, as well as his properties in Middlesex, raising over £25,000 in the process, and moved to Kirtling.150 Randall, 19. By 1639 it was claimed that North owned the smallest amount of land of any peer in England.151 HMC Buccleuch, i. 279. He was evidently sensitive to the accusation that he had depleted the family estates, arguing speciously that most of the properties he had alienated had been only acquired ‘by the way of mart, never intended to be kept’. In fact, the most valuable property he sold, the manor of Harrow, had been acquired by the 1st Lord North in 1545.152 [North], Forest of Varieties, 121; VCH Mdx. iv. 203-4. The money raised by these sales enabled North not only to pay his debts but also to provide for his children, including his eldest son, Sir Dudley, who received £4,000.153 Add. 32523, f. 5; [North], Forest of Varieties, 121, 166.

Writing in the late 1630s, North claimed that the windfall thereby bestowed upon his heir was intended to enable his son to start repairing the family estates by purchasing land. He also maintained that he had ‘wholly committed’ his ‘little fortune’ to his heir and ‘made myself his pensioner’. In reality, however, he kept control over his remaining property. Moreover, the ‘pension’ took on a different complexion in the memory of the 4th Lord North’s wife, who recalled that her father-in-law compelled her and her husband to rent unfurnished accommodation at Kirtling Hall, initially for £200 a year, but raised three or four years later to £300.154 [North], Forest of Varieties, 121, 157-8; North, Lives, iii. 311-13. According to his grandson, North lived in the country ‘more splendidly and more honourably than ever before in the greatest profusion, and, if the tradition of it be true, in more grandeur than any other family in that part of England’. The result may well have led to a rise in North’s status in Cambridgeshire but restricted his ability to repair his fortune.155 Add. 32523, f. 5.

North did not entirely abandon London and the court. In April 1631 he was obliged to serve on the jury for the trial of Mervyn Tuchet^*, 2nd earl of Castlehaven [I] (12th Lord Audley in the English peerage) for sodomy and rape, when he was the only peer who voted to acquit the accused of both charges.156 C.B. Herrup, House in Gross Disorder, 87. In November 1633 he helped carry the canopy at the christening of the king’s youngest son, James Stuart^†, duke of York (the future James II). He evidently also made several other trips to London later in the decade.157 Ceremonies of Chas. I ed. A.J. Loomie, 144-5. In September 1637 North’s brother, Sir John North, one of the gentlemen ushers of the privy chamber, informed him that he had got ‘a great good opinion with the king’ concerning his conduct at a recent meeting concerning the drainage of the fens at Wisbech. It had been reported that North had intended to ‘defend, and maintain the country’ against the drainers but ‘upon hearing the reasons alleged for the work … his lordship showed … judgement and moderation’. When North’s conduct was reported to Charles, his cousin, Henry Rich^*, 1st earl of Holland (brother of the earl of Warwick) reportedly added ‘that he knew no man less swayed with passion, and sooner carried with reason and justice’ than North.158 Bodl., ms North, C4, f. 34; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 361. Holland was among those who, in 1638 and 1639, nominated North for membership of the order of the Garter.159 Bodl., Ashmole 1108, ff. 130v, 140, 143v.

North’s expensive lifestyle probably led him into debt and made it difficult for him to maintain his connections with the court. On the arrival of the Elector Palatine in England in 1635, North announced his intention of attending the visitor in London. However, Sir John North informed him that Charles intended to bring the Elector to Newmarket, which lay dangerously close to Kirtling, raising the alarming prospect that North would be expected to entertain the royal party at home. This would undoubtedly prove far more costly to North than merely paying his respects in London. Sir John therefore advised his kinsman to be in London while the court was in Suffolk.160 Bodl., ms North, C4, ff. 6, 9. In February 1637 Sir John also warned Sir Dudley North that the officers of the Jewel House intended to report Lord North for failing to deliver his New Years’ gift to the king. Sir John appears to have supplied the necessary gift on his brother’s behalf, but the following December he complained to Sir Dudley that he had received no instructions for the forthcoming January.161 Ibid. ff. 24, 40.

Although the court was not inimical to him, North may have become ideologically alienated from the Caroline regime. Writing in February 1638 he lamented that ‘I am … too rigid, too straight for such ship timber’, possibly an allusion to Ship Money, which was unparliamentary. He believed the body politic had been depraved by the ‘licentious luxury of strangers, intoxicate wantonness of favourites, dissolution of our… universities and inns of court; prevarication, and corrupt example of ecclesiastics, and sinister affections, and illusions of magistrates’. The following September he praised the Spanish for their ‘several bodies of councils, for several kingdoms and affairs’. At the same time he also expressed his approval of ‘selected persons and juntos’, and ‘our late practised peculiarity of delegations and committees’. This appears to have been a coded reference to Parliament, as ‘selected persons’ probably refers to the elected Members of the Commons, while ‘delegations’, ‘committees’ and ‘juntos’ presumably alludes to the procedures of Parliament, which included conferences between delegations from both Houses and the deliberations of committees.162 [North], Forest of Varieties, 64, 166.

In the late 1630s North became increasingly alarmed at the rise of Laudianism in the Church. By April 1636 he and his brother, Sir Dudley, were sufficiently worried about the intentions of Matthew Wren^†, the ultra-Laudian bishop of Norwich (in which diocese Kirtling lay), that they sought assurances from Sir John North. The latter, however, could only report that he had heard nothing about Wren’s ‘proceedings, or intentions about the Church government in his diocese’, save that he intended to implement the general orders which had been given to the bishops.163 Bodl., ms North, C4, f. 11. This is not to say that North feared that Laud was seeking to reverse the Reformation, for in August 1638 he wrote that ‘none should prove so great losers by such a change as our king and archbishop of Canterbury’, both of whom were ‘too wise and sensible of their own power, freedom and splendour ever to consent to re-enthral themselves’ to the papacy.164 [North], Forest of Varieties, 185. Nevertheless, he was grieved by the decision in the late 1630s to pull down the parish church of St Gregory by St Paul’s as part of the improvements to St Paul’s Cathedral. The chancel of the church contained the coat of arms of North’s father, who had been buried there. North wrote two poems on the subject and, in March 1638, personally lobbied members of the Privy Council, only to be told that ‘the king’s resolution for the removing of the church was fixed and would not be altered’.165 J. Schofield, St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren, 205; Harl. 7029, f. 269; [North], Forest of Varieties, 233-5; Bodl, ms North, C4, f 44.

What agitated North most were the growth of ceremonialism and the tendency of the clergy to claim sole control over matters of religion. Writing in September 1638 he stated that ‘decency in worship is all that is required in Christianity’. He argued that ‘abundance of ceremonies were a load to the Jews’ and that ‘the exercise of religion … by the outward senses … is too much the way of Rome’. Some of his friends apparently urged North to publish, but he complained that the clergy controlled the licensing of the press; ‘I must either not come in print or pass their sponge, their castrations, expungings and expurgatories’. To make matters worse, the clergy were claiming a monopoly of all religious matters; ‘they will in some sense be alone privately and exclusively the Church’ and ‘we must be instituted for them, [rather] than they for us’.166 [North], Forest of Varieties, 61-2.

On 3 Feb. 1639 North received the king’s letter summoning him to York to fight the Scottish Covenanters. He responded 13 days later, claiming that ‘I have long laboured in such known infirmity of body and fortune as hath forced me from court and made me unfit for any course abroad’. Though he promised to attend personally, he was unable to specify what forces he would be able to bring with him, because of the ‘shortness of time’. He pointedly concluded with his ‘hearty prayers for his Majesty’s peaceful and happy government’.167 SP16/413/3. Nevertheless, on 20 Feb., it was reported that he had agreed to provide six horses.168 HMC Buccleuch, i. 279.

At York North agreed to take the military oath imposed by Charles on the nobility in order to force them to commit themselves to fighting the Covenanters.169 Cust, 189. Nevertheless, he was unhappy at the prospect of war. In a passage entitled ‘Dream’, and dated April 1639, North wrote an allegorical account of the various groups at York. Much of it is obscure, but he cast himself as ‘a solicitor for old England, in a cause that concerned him for limb, life, and liberty’, and described himself seeking allies among the various factions, some of whom were eager for war whereas ‘my desires were peace’. Another group, ‘on hard Scotch saddles’ who ‘had long since given [up as] desperate the cause of old England, and were now packing and posting for New England and the Isle of Providence’, evidently referred to Viscount Saye and Sele and Robert Greville^*, 2nd Lord Brooke of Beauchamps Court. North tried to persuade one of the ‘New Englanders … for old England’s sake to stay his journey’, but the peer concerned refused, and claimed that ‘he came this way only for his safety to defend himself and nobody else’. North ‘in great despair … asked if there were no conceit of a Parliament’, only to be told by a friend, ‘no, and that another Fawkes had long since blown up that hope’.170 [North], Forest Promiscuous, 221-2.

Poor health gave North an excuse to remain at York, rather than follow the king to the border, where he occupied himself in composing a metrical version of Corinthians 1.13, apparently for the king, possibly in the hope that St Paul’s ‘ecstatical exaltation of charity’ would persuade Charles to be more benevolent to the Scots.171 HMC Cowper, ii. 224; [North], Forest of Varieties, 218-19. By 21 May he had been allowed to return home where he gave a prayer of thanks for his ‘preservation … in the divers accidents, encumbrances and hazards of my late journey’.172 [North], Forest of Varieties, 219-20.

During the Civil War North initially supported Parliament, before retiring from the upper House, in July 1642, on grounds of ill health. He returned in the summer of 1644 in order, according to his grandson, to help the royalists, although he continued to attend the Lords until January 1649. He survived to see the Restoration in 1660, but only attended the restored upper House once before his death in January 1667. North’s will, dated 17 Mar. 1636, is mostly concerned with bequests of money, plate and other goods to his wife, legacies to various servants, and £100 for memorials for deceased members of his family. He added a codicil in April 1662 in which he authorized his executor, his eldest son, Sir Dudley North, to sell a Cambridgeshire property to pay his debts, should it prove necessary. Sir Dudley, by then 4th Lord North, proved the will on 31 Jan. 1667. North was buried at Kirtling.173 PROB 11/323, f. 65v; LJ, v. 123b, 229b; HP Lords 1660-1715, ii. 998-9; R. North, Life of the Lord Kpr. North ed. M. Chan, 174; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 577; Dugdale, iii. 395.