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 abilities, and was remarkable for his studious habits. On 8 June 1653, being then in his sixteenth year, he was admitted at St. John's College, Cambridge, as a fellow commoner. He took no degree at the university, and, as he had early been intended for the profession of the law, he entered at the Middle Temple on 27 Nov. 1655. Chaloner Chute [q. v.], the speaker of the House of Commons in the Long parliament, was treasurer of the inn this year, and, inasmuch as he had married Lady Dacres, the young man's aunt, he gave him back the fees for admission, in happy augury of his future success at the bar.

From the first North gave himself up to hard and unremitting study. He knew that his father was a needy man, burdened with a large family, and with very small chance of being able to provide for them all, and he had made up his mind to carve out a career for himself if it could be done. His brother gives an elaborate account of his habits and industry during these early years. Long before he was called to the bar, and while a mere student of his inn, his grandfather, the third Lord North, with whom he was a great favourite, made him steward of his various manors in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere, and this office brought him in a substantial income. The young man kept the courts in person, dispensing with any deputy, and, while taking all the fees he could get, availed himself of the opportunities afforded him to become acquainted with the procedure of the courts baron and leet, which stood him in good stead as time went on. He was called to the bar on 28 June 1661. Up to this time his allowance from home had never exceeded 80l. a year. This was now curtailed by his father, who was somewhat pinched for money; but it is clear that North had managed to get into practice very early, and when the attorney-general Sir Geoffrey Palmer took him up very warmly, and began to throw business into his way, his success was assured, and the more so as he speedily justified all the expectations that had been formed of him by his friends. His first great case was when, in the absence of the attorney-general, he was called upon to argue in the House of Lords for the King v. Holles and others. He acquitted himself so well that he at once rose into favour with the court. He was appointed king's counsel, and when the benchers of his inn demurred to elect him into their body, the king overruled their objection by a significant hint, the force of which they could well understand. This was in 1668. Before this North had kept the Norfolk circuit, and had made his way steadily. He became chairman of the commission for the drainage of the fens through family interest, and was made judge of the royal franchise of the Isle of Ely about 1670. When Sir Geoffrey Palmer died, Sir Edward Turner, speaker of the House of Commons, became solicitor-general; but on Palmer's promotion to the chief baronry of the exchequer in the following year, North succeeded him as solicitor-general on 20 May 1671. At the same time he received the honour of knighthood; he was then in his thirty-fourth year. Shortly after he was appointed autumn reader at the Middle Temple, and on the ‘grand day’ the usual feast was celebrated with such profusion, and at so huge an expense, that the public readings in the inns of court were discontinued from that time, and the banqueting has ever since been commuted for a fine. Though North's practice was large and his gains considerable, he had up to this time amassed but little, and when he set himself to find a wife whose fortune might help towards his advancement he experienced some difficulty. At length, however, through the good offices of his mother, he succeeded in winning an heiress, Lady Frances Pope, one of the daughters and coheiresses of the Earl of Downe, with a fortune of 14,000l. The marriage took place on 5 March 1672, and was a very happy one. He took a large house in Chancery Lane, and here he appears to have had gatherings of artists, musicians, and other men of culture, who were glad of so pleasant a place of meeting. In 1673 he entered parliament as member for King's Lynn, after a memorable contest, in which the bribing and treating on both sides were more than usually flagrant. On 12 Nov. of this year he succeeded Sir Heneage Finch [q. v.] as attorney-general, and a question was raised whether it was not necessary that he should vacate his seat in the House of Commons. A notice was given upon the question, but it was allowed to drop. All this time he was practising at Westminster Hall, and his brother tells us he was making as much as 7,000l. a year, an exceptionally large income in those days. In January 1675 Vaughan, the chief justice of the common pleas, died, and North was at once raised to the bench, and held the office of chief justice during the next eight years. The court of common pleas had of late suffered greatly from the competition for business which had been going on with the other courts. By dexterous management the new chief justice greatly increased the popularity of his court, but this did not prevent the serjeants from organising a kind of mutiny against his rule when he allowed his brother Roger to make certain motions before him,