NORTH, Francis (1637-85)

North was reckoned by John Evelyn to have been ‘a most knowing, learned, ingenious gent… of an ingenuous sweet disposition, very skilful in music, painting, the new philosophy and politer studies’. Evelyn Diary, iv. 299. The description was echoed by North’s brother, Roger, who represented him as a virtuous man, able to stand apart from the political upheavals of his time and to rise through sheer merit. North, according to Roger, was 'modest to a weakness', so much so that many doubted his ability to survive the cut and thrust of court life. R. North, Examen, (1740), 512.

The truth was far removed from this halcyon idyll. North may have been cultured but he was not the political innocent his brother depicted. He was a talented lawyer, well-connected and possessed of a self-assurance that made him an easy target for ridicule. He well understood the workings of faction and the need for government to keep control of information networks. G. Tapsell, Personal Rule of Charles II 1681-1685, 95-96. As an expert in corporation law he proved of supreme use to the court in the years following the exclusion crisis as efforts were made to reclaim control of the cities, through the surrender of charters. As North argued it, corporations were the king's by right and so could be repossessed at any time. Their warrants enabled corporations to function as an extraordinary way of running the cities for the king's convenience; by replacing the corporations with direct rule the king was merely re-asserting a former reality. P. Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic, 221.

North's early success at the bar appears to have come in the face of some opposition from his colleagues at the Middle Temple. By May 1671 he had been brought into the administration as solicitor-general and the following year he consolidated his position with a prestigious marriage to Lady Frances Pope, who hailed from a prominent cavalier family in Oxfordshire. North, Lives, i. 160-2. In 1673 North was returned to the Commons and soon promoted to the office of attorney-general. He relinquished his seat on his appointment as lord chief justice of common pleas in December 1674. It was presumably his appointment to this last post that elicited warm congratulations from Thomas Stephens, who congratulated North for rising ‘to this high tribunal’. Bodl. North c. 5, f. 27.

With North's legal offices came experience of the Lords long before he was summoned to the chamber as a peer. As lord chief justice of common pleas he was called upon on numerous occasions to assist with committees and to report the opinion of his fellow judges relating to specific items. He first attended in this capacity on his appointment to the Lords committee on the bill for the prevention of forgeries on 19 Apr. 1675. He was ordered to assist at the committee on 24 Apr. on the bill against popish recusants and on 2 June communicated a message to the Commons that the Lords sought a conference about the arrest of the lawyer, Sir John Churchill^‡. During the ensuing two sessions he was again active in assisting on committees and preparing drafts for new legislation.

North attended the Lords as speaker for the first time on 11 Apr. 1678. He presided again four days later. HMC Le Fleming, 144. In May and June he was required to assist on two committees. The continuing ill health of the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch, Baron Finch (later earl of Nottingham), and his rumoured refusal to seal an order concerning martial law (a rumour perhaps confusing him with his predecessor) may have been the source of reports that North had been offered the lord keepership but refused it. BL, Verney ms mic. M636/31, J. to Sir R. Verney, 25 Apr. 1678. Over the summer he departed on the western circuit where he was involved in a disagreement between the corporation of Bristol and church authorities about attendance at the assize sermon. In keeping with his usual interest in seeking a moderate approach, North appears to have advocated accommodation between ‘the church and this forward city’ as Guy Carleton, bishop of Bristol, put it in a letter to William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. Bodl. Tanner 129, f. 82. Later that year he was again required to act as temporary speaker between 16 and 21 Dec. and on 27 Dec. he was one of the judges to deliver an opinion about bailing Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds).

North took a prominent role in drafting various pieces of legislation in 1679 including the habeas corpus bill and the bill for excluding Catholics from attending the inns of court. LJ, xiii. 487. That summer he was one of the judges to sit on the trials of five Jesuits accused of treason and later of Sir George Wakeman, the royal physician. The former trial was dominated by the spirited defence offered by one of the accused, John Gavan, who succeeded in rattling the chief witness, Titus Oates, to the extent that North was forced to order him not to ‘give the king’s witnesses ill words.’ Kenyon, Popish Plot, (2000), 180-1. Gavan’s efforts did not avail him or his colleagues who were all condemned. The following year North was noteworthy as the only one of the judges presiding in the court of delegates over the Emerton-Hyde marriage to conclude that it was not a valid one, the outcome favoured by Danby. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 52.

North's position at court brought him to the attention of the opposition, particularly in the city of London. Soon after the opening of the new Parliament, North was summoned to the Commons on 28 Oct. 1680 to inform them what he had been told by the dying William Bedloe while on his western circuit that summer concerning the extent to which York was privy to the details of the plot. Hatton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxii), 234; Kenyon, Popish Plot, 230. The following month the Commons set about preparing articles of impeachment against him for his role in drawing up the proclamation against tumultuous petitioning. Lord chief justice Scroggs and two other senior officers of the judiciary were also targeted. The committee for drawing up the impeachment got as far as meeting but the attempt was then lost by the dissolution. Haley, Shaftesbury, 617; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 244, 249-50; HMC Finch, ii. 103. While the impeachment was being prepared North was involved with the trial of William Howard, Viscount Stafford. In response to a question whether Stafford was permitted to have access to papers for his defence, North advised that he might only be helped to material then before the court. HMC Lords, i. 43.

North arrived in Oxford shortly after the opening of the new Parliament in March 1681. He lodged at Trinity, taking advantage of his late wife's privileges as a coheir of the college's founder. Once again he attracted the opposition's notice for his role in drafting the king's explanation for dissolving Parliament. He also irritated Danby whose own draft had been rejected in favour of North's more concise document. In April North joined with the lord chancellor and lord president (John Robartes, earl of Radnor) in advising the king that he was not able to discharge Danby from the Tower. Add. 28040, f. 10. In August 1681 North was a prominent participant in the trial of Stephen College. Normally well known for his even-handed treatment of defendants, on this occasion North attracted opprobrious comments for his confiscation of some of College's papers. On his arrival in Oxford, North had been the subject of threats and abuse, which may account for his severity; though it was clear that he was merely following the court's very clear direction that College should not be allowed to escape. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 284; North, Examen, 588-9.

The following year North played a significant role in the court effort to take back control of the city of London when he suggested to the lord mayor, Sir John Moore^‡ that he nominate his brother, Dudley, as sheriff. Dudley's nomination provoked division and resulted in the June election being abandoned and a second poll held in July 1682. HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 150. In September North's western circuit was again interrupted by disagreements between the church and corporation in Bristol when the mayor insisted on processing behind his ceremonial sword of office. North concurred with William Gulston, who had succeeded Carleton as bishop of Bristol, that a new mayor should be elected unanimously to avoid further divisions within the city. Bodl. Tanner 35, f. 87.

North’s continuing ascendancy at court was reflected in a series of rumours at this time suggesting that he might replace the ailing (and increasingly unpopular) Lord Chancellor Nottingham (as Finch had since become). In December 1682 he finally succeeded to the office of lord keeper (not lord chancellor as was reported early on). North's success led Sir Ralph Verney^‡ to comment how ‘all the Norths are happy and like to be exceeding rich’, though Roger North thought accepting the office was the only significant error his brother had ever made. Verney ms mic. M636/37, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 4 Dec. 1682, Sir R. to J. Verney, 16 Apr. 1683; North, Examen, 514.

North’s appointment emphasized the administration’s eagerness to consolidate its gains as the Tory reaction took hold. North employed himself with the composition of a tract, clearly intended for wider distribution, which he hoped would be used ‘for undeceiving the people about the late Popish Plot.’ His conviction of the fallaciousness of the Plot represented a striking change of heart from the summer of 1679 when he had been all too willing to be offended by remarks made by one of Wakeman’s co-defendants that the scaffold speeches of the five Jesuits condemned shortly before the Wakeman trial had been clear evidence not only of their innocence but also of the non-existence of the plot. Kenyon, Popish Plot, 199. In his opening paragraph he set out his aims but also acknowledged the difficulties before him:

The intended discourse must be written persuasively, it cannot be written authoritatively that is, by laying down facts, which must be believed upon the credit of the author, because so great authority has appeared on the other side, as will outweigh all that can be pretended to.

North then proceeded to consider the way in which the republicans, whom he thought at the bottom of the troubles, had plotted their moves since the Restoration. They had found, he considered:

There would be no good done by way of insurrection, and thought the more effectual and secure course, would be to divide the gentry, to that degree as to make a rebellion, whereby they might get into arms upon pretence of taking part with that side which is opposite to the court, and afterwards set up for themselves. Add. 32518, ff. 144-5.

The summer of 1683 found North once again prominent in efforts to bring London into line. In mid-June he harangued the representatives of the corporation who had presented a petition complaining about the quo warranto, emphasizing how they had attracted the king’s displeasure for their behaviour in attempting to insist on the election of the Whigs Thomas Papillon^‡ and John Dubois^‡ in the shrieval elections in place of Dudley North and his Tory partner, Peter Rich. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 314; Evelyn Diary, iv. 319. Such uncompromising pronouncements no doubt helped earn him a place on at least one death list alongside of the lord mayor and the two sheriffs. CSP Dom. 1683, p. 433.

North was out of town briefly in September 1683, forcing the postponement of the ministry’s investigation into the ‘black box libel’ until his return. CSP Dom. 1683, pp. 386, 392-3. Nine months after his appointment as lord keeper, North was raised to the peerage as Baron Guilford. Roger North insisted that the new peer could have had an earldom had he wished it but was content to accept a barony. Guilford’s choice of title was intended as a mark of respect to his friend, John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale [S] (who had sat in the Lords as earl of Guilford); there was also talk that he intended to marry Lauderdale's widow. North, Lives, ii. 161-2.

The new peer’s opinion of his altered condition was not entirely positive. At some stage he committed his thoughts to paper on the subject of the constitution, giving particular attention to the peers’ privileges. These he considered to be ‘rather a disadvantage than any real benefit to them’ continuing to list a variety of instances where supposed privileges left the peers vulnerable in a way that was not true of non-nobles. Freedom of arrest for debt he reckoned only to result in the limitation of peers’ abilities to negotiate competitive rates from brokers. The public availability of the Lords Journal he thought a particular problem as it was thus open to be consulted by the Commons, while the Commons’ records were accounted private and thus ‘none of right can demand inspection’. Add. 32520, f. 215. Guilford was also suspicious of some of his new confrères and in particular their apparent interest in acquiring what he considered to be empty titles in the new city charters. Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic, 235.

Although untrammelled by parliamentary concerns in his first year as lord keeper, Guilford continued to face difficulties arising out of Danby's imprisonment. In February he was reported to have emerged looking 'very melancholy' from a meeting with the king where Charles had overruled the judges' advice about bailing the former lord treasurer. Add. 28049, ff. 220-1. This may suggest that he had by then altered his opinion about the possibility of releasing Danby without the Lords' agreement. Guilford was also engaged with settling disputes over the issuing of new city charters and in July 1684 was thought to be favourable to the city of Oxford's claims in its struggle with the university. Bodl. ms Eng. misc. c 75, f. 12. Active in his efforts to employ his interest on behalf of friends and family, Guilford was upbraided by Laurence Womock, bishop of St Davids, for appointing clergy to livings in Wales who were unable to speak the local language. Womock pleaded with Guilford to consult him in future. Bodl. Tanner 32, f. 119.

In October 1684 Narcissus Luttrell^‡ recorded that Guilford and George Savile, marquess of Halifax, had joined ‘their interests at court’. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 317. This was as a result of both men speaking out against a proposal promoted by George Jeffreys, later Baron Jeffreys, in association with James Stuart, duke of York, which aimed at securing a pardon for Catholics imprisoned under the recusancy laws in the wake of the Popish Plot. The Works of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax ed. M. Brown, i. 51-2. By the beginning of 1685 it was rumoured that Guilford might be one of those affected by the expected changes at court, though it was not known whether he would be promoted lord treasurer or dismissed from the administration. It was thought that he would be replaced as lord keeper by Jeffreys. Verney ms mic. M636/38, Sir R. to J. Verney, 2 Jan. 1685. He was by then closely associated with the moderate court faction identified with Halifax. Despite this and in spite of being on poor terms both with the Hyde brothers (Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester) and with Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, Guilford remained in post on James's succession to the throne and proved active in employing his interest for the court in the elections for the new Parliament. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 508. He had a hand in the return of at least five members, among them his brother Dudley at Banbury and his brother-in-law, Robert Foley^‡, at Grampound. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 163, 286, 358, 396, 406. Although he co-operated with Jeffreys in several of these contests, Guilford's relationship with his colleague was far from harmonious. He appears to have taken Sir Ralph Verney's part when Jeffreys upbraided him for failing to turn out for the court candidates for Buckinghamshire. Verney ms mic. M636/39, Sir R. to J. Verney, 12 Apr. 1685. In May there was new talk of Guilford being replaced by his rival. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 343; Evelyn Diary, iv. 445.

Guilford was one of several 'great persons' thought likely to be summoned by sub poena by Titus Oates for his anticipated trial in the early summer of 1685. Verney ms mic. M636/40, J. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 8 May 1685. It was with this threat hanging over his head that Guilford took his seat in the House for the first time on 19 May, introduced between Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington) and William Maynard, 2nd Baron Maynard. At the beginning of the session, Guilford attracted the ire of Danby’s friends when he noticed significant differences in the wording of Danby’s petition compared with those of the other peers who had been incarcerated in the Tower. HMC Lords, i. 275-6; Bodl. ms Eng. hist. c. 46, ff. 37-46. His uncertain standing within the new regime too was reflected in comments made both by Verney and Evelyn that Guilford (unusually for the presiding officer of the House) had yet to make a speech. Evelyn recorded in addition that it was already put about that Guilford would shortly be dismissed from his post. Verney ms mic. M636/40, Sir R. to J. Verney, 23 May 1685’ Evelyn Diary, iv. 445.

In spite of this inauspicious beginning, Guilford was present on 32 occasions between the opening of the session and the adjournment at the beginning of July and on 26 May he was entrusted with the proxy of his weak-minded neighbour, William Fiennes, 3rd Viscount Saye and Sele. Towards the end of July Guilford left town to drink the waters at Astrop, a spa near to his seat of Wroxton. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 29. This may explain his absence at the adjournment on 4 Aug., where he was described as ‘so infirm, that he cannot constantly attend’ the Lords. His rapidly deteriorating condition, by then a topic of discourse within the Verney circle, seems to have puzzled both patient and physicians alike. Verney ms mic. M636/40, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 4 Aug. 1685; Bodl. Tanner 114, f. 25. At the end of August (ironically in view of his opinion of such things) he was named within the new charter for Guildford as the town's high steward. He did not live to take up the post. He died at Wroxton on 5 September. CSP Dom. 1685, p. 315; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 357; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 159-60.

By the time of his death, Guilford had repented of certain aspects of the policy of granting new charters to cities. He had intended only moderate changes to their constitutions and bemoaned the extreme alterations ushered in by Jeffreys. Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic, 228. Although Roger North was at pains to portray his brother as a paragon, others thought far less highly of him. Sunderland, who had taken enormous pleasure in ridiculing Guilford, whom he thought pompous, by circulating stories that he had been seen riding a rhinoceros, certainly did not mince his words when he condemned Guilford as ‘partial, passionate, unreasonable, impotent, corrupt, arbitrary, popish and ignorant’. Kenyon, Sunderland, 89, 91. In 1690 efforts were made to have him impeached posthumously and complaints about his conduct as a judge persisted into the late 1690s. In his will, composed on the day of his death, Guilford directed that he should be buried at Wroxton if he happened to die outside of London (if in London he wished to be interred in the ‘cathedral church of Westminster’). He bequeathed £4,000 to his daughter Anne, provided she married with the consent of his brothers Dudley and Roger; the sum was to be halved if she did so without their permission. Guilford left his younger son, Charles^‡ (who later sat in the Commons for Banbury), £2,000 as well as £100 intended specifically for the purchase of ‘the most useful common law books for him’. Guilford nominated his brothers, Dudley, Montagu and Roger as co-executors. TNA, PROB 11/380. He was succeeded in the peerage by his heir, also Francis as 2nd Baron Guilford.