NORTH, Frederick, Lord North (1732-92), of Bushey Park, Mdx. and Wroxton Abbey, nr. Banbury, Oxon.

By 1790, when he was returned as always for the family borough of Banbury, Lord North was a spent force politically, with a mere handful of personal followers. He was nearly blind, though according to Horace Walpole and Wraxall, his spirits and intellectual capacity were as lively as ever and Walpole remarked, ‘if ever loss of sight could be compensated, it is by so affectionate a family’.Horace Walpole Corresp. (Yale ed.), xxxiii. 580; Wraxall Mems. ed. Wheatley, i. 371; iii. 426. Shortly after his return, North succeeded his aged father to the title. In the Lords he spoke a few times, still in opposition, though he professed himself willing to support government in ‘repressing any attempt to disturb the public tranquillity’.PRO 30/8/153, f. 83. He died 5 Aug. 1792. On his deathbed, he informed his family

that with regard to his political life, though he could not have the presumption to suppose but what there had been much of error in many things he had done, yet it was a satisfaction which none but himself could in that hour conceive, that on no one act of it could he look back with regret.PRO 30/29/6/3, f. 248.