Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/164

 weak constitution, and both died young and unmarried.

The lord keeper was a staunch and uncompromising royalist through evil report and good report, at a time when the courtiers who were sincere supporters of the crown were few, and when the several factions hated one another with the most acrimonious rancour. Scarcely less fierce has been the animosity exhibited towards his memory by those politicians of the present century who have inherited the prejudices and the personal rivalries of the days of Charles II. Perhaps in all our literature there is not a more venomous piece of writing than the sketch of the lordkeeper's character and career which Lord Campbell has given in his ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’ North was clearly a man of vast knowledge and wide culture, an accomplished musician, a friend and patron of artists, and especially of Sir Peter Lely, whom he befriended in many ways. He was greatly interested in the progress of natural science, though he refused to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society, whose meetings he could not possibly have attended regularly. As a lawyer he was held in great respect; nor did any of his contemporaries venture to dispute the technical ability and legality of his decisions. If there had been ground for setting aside any of those decisions, we should have heard of it long ago. He died in the prime of life, at one of the most critical moments of our history. He lived in an age when social and political morality were at a deplorably low level—an age when a miserable mediocrity of talent in church and state, in literature and art, made it a matter of chance or chicane who should rise to the surface, or who should keep his place when he won it. There was no career for an enthusiast or a hero, and the worst that can be said of the Lord-keeper Guilford is that he was neither the one nor the other.

A portrait ad vivum was engraved by D. Loggan, and was re-engraved by G. Vertue for the ‘Lives of the Norths.’ 

NORTH, FRANCIS, first (1704–1790), born on 13 April 1704, was eldest son of Francis, second baron Guilford, by his second wife, Alice, second daughter and coheiress of Sir John Brownlow, bart. of Belton, Lincolnshire, and grandson of, first baron Guilford [q. v.] He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 25 March 1721, but does not appear to have taken any degree. At the general election in August 1727 he was returned to the House of Commons for Banbury. He succeeded his father as third Baron Guilford on 17 Oct. 1729, and took his seat in the House of Lords on 13 Jan. 1730 (Journals of the House of Lords, xxiii. 450). On 17 Oct. 1730 he was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber to Frederick, prince of Wales, and on 31 Oct. 1734 succeeded his kinsman,, baron North and Grey [q. v.], as seventh Baron North of Kirtling in Cambridgeshire. On 30 Sept. 1750 he became governor to Prince George and Prince Edward, but was superseded on the Prince of Wales's death by Earl Harcourt, a nominee of the Pelhams, who wished to control the education of the young princes (, Memoirs of George II, 1847, i. 86). He was created Earl of Guilford on 8 April 1752. In September 1763 Grenville's proposal that Guilford should succeed Bute as keeper of the privy purse was negatived by the king, who considered that ‘it was not of sufficient rank for him’ (Grenville Papers, 1852, ii. 208–9). He was appointed treasurer to Queen Charlotte on 29 Dec. 1773, at the age of sixty-nine. ‘The town laughs,’ writes Horace Walpole, and says ‘that the reversion of that place is promised to Lord Bathurst,’ who was then in his ninetieth year (Letters, vi. 37).

Walpole describes Guilford as an ‘amiable, worthy man, of no great genius’ (Memoirs of George II, i. 86). He was an intimate personal friend of George III and Queen Charlotte (, Autobiography, 2nd ser. iii. 292), and sympathised with the king's dislike of the coalition (, Last Journals, 1859, ii. 597;, Life of Shelburne, 1876, iii. 372; , Memorials of Fox, 1853, ii. 41). Though a wealthy man, and on affectionate terms with his son, he would never make Lord North an adequate allowance (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. vi. p. 18). Guilford died in Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, on 4 Aug. 1790, and was buried at Wroxton, Oxfordshire.

He married, first, on 16 June 1728, Lady Lucy, daughter of George Montagu, second earl of Halifax, by whom he had an only son,, who succeeded him as second