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 however, compelled on 2 April to appoint North and Fox joint secretaries of state under the Duke of Portland as first lord of the treasury, North taking the home department. The only adherents of North who were admitted to the coalition cabinet were Lords Stormont and Carlisle (ib. i. 141–230, and, Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 588–612). As a personal arrangement the coalition was successful. ‘I do assure you,’ wrote Fox to the Duke of Manchester on 21 Sept. 1783, ‘… that it is impossible for people to act more cordially together, and with less jealousy than we have done’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. ii. p. 133). In the country, however, it was extremely unpopular, and even North's own constituency of Banbury subsequently thanked the king for dismissing it (London Gazette, 1784, No. 12521). The only important public measure of the coalition government was the East India Bill. Though it properly lay in his department, North had little to do with the bill, which he described as ‘a good receipt to knock up an administration’ (, Recollections, 1822, i. 56). Though carried through the commons by large majorities, it was rejected by the lords on 17 Dec. 1783 by 95 votes to 76, owing to the unconstitutional use of the king's name by Lord Temple (Parl. Hist. xxiv. 196). The ministry was dismissed by the king on the following day. When the messenger arrived for the seals, North, who was in bed with his wife, said that if any one wished to see him, they must see Lady North too, and accordingly the messenger entered the bedroom (manuscript quoted in, Hist. of England, vol. iii. 1860, p. 209, note; see , Hist. and Posth. Memoirs, iii. 198).

Henceforward, to the end of his life, North acted with the opposition against Pitt. In May 1785 he expressed a strong opinion in favour of a union with Ireland (Parl. Hist. xxv. 633). At the beginning of 1787 his sight began to fail, and he soon became totally blind. North approved of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, which was decided on in March 1787, though he declined to act as a manager (, Life of Pitt, 1861, i. 352). In the same year, and again in 1789, he opposed the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (Parl. Hist. xxvi. 818–23, xxviii. 16–22, 26–7). By 1788 his personal following in the house had dwindled to seventeen (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. ix. p. 373). He took a considerable part in the debates on the Regency Bill in the session of 1788–9, and deprecated any discussion on the abstract right of the Prince of Wales (Parl. Hist. xxvii. 749–52). On 4 Aug. 1790 he succeeded his father as second Earl of Guilford, and took his seat in the House of Lords on 25 Nov. following (Journals of the House of Lords, xxxix. 6). He spoke in the House of Lords for the first time on 1 April 1791, when he attacked Pitt's Russian policy (Parl. Hist. xxix. 86–93). He only spoke there on three other occasions (ib. pp. 537–8, 855–60, 1003–6). His last years were chiefly spent in retirement with his wife and family, to whom he was deeply attached. Walpole, in a charming account of a visit to Bushey in October 1787, says that he ‘never saw a more interesting scene. Lord North's spirits, good humour, wit, sense, drollery, are as perfect as ever—the unremitting attention of Lady North and his children most touching. … If ever loss of sight could be compensated, it is by so affectionate a family’ (Letters, ix. 114). Gibbon also bears testimony to ‘the lively vigour of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper’ during his blindness (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iv. 1788, p. iv; see Miscellaneous Works, 1815, iii. 637–8). North died of dropsy on 5 Aug. 1792 at his house in Grosvenor Square, London, aged 60. He was buried on the 14th of the same month in the family vault at All Saints Church, Wroxton, Oxfordshire, where there is a mural monument to him by Flaxman.

North was an easy-going, obstinate man, with a quick wit and a sweet temper. He was neither a great statesman nor a great orator, though his tact was unfailing and his powers as a debater were unquestioned. Burke, in the ‘Letter to a Noble Lord,’ describes him as ‘a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding, fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested;’ adding, however, that ‘it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honour the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time required’ (Works, 1815, viii. 14). Several specimens of North's undoubted powers of humour will be found in the ‘European Magazine’ (xxx. 82–4), ‘The Georgian Era’ (i. 317), and scattered through the pages of Walpole and Wraxall. In face North bore a striking resemblance, especially in his youth, to George III, which caused Frederick, prince of Wales, to suggest to the first Earl of Guilford that one of their wives must have played them false (, Hist. and Posth. Memoirs, i. 310, and Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 207, 317, viii. 183, 230, 303, x.