Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/169

 52). His figure was clumsy and his movements were awkward. According to Walpole, ‘two large prominent eyes that rolled about to no purpose (for he was utterly short-sighted), a wide mouth, thick lips, and inflated visage gave him the air of a blind trumpeter’ (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 78); while Charles Townshend called him a ‘great, heavy, booby-looking seeming changeling’ (Correspondence of George III with Lord North, i. lxxxi).

North received a large number of personal distinctions. On 3 July 1769 he was made an honorary LL.D. of Cambridge. On 14 June 1771 his wife was appointed ranger of Bushey Park (ib. i. 73–4), and on 18 June 1772 he was invested a knight of the Garter (, Hist. of the Orders of British Knighthood, 1842, ii. lxxii), an honour conferred on members of the House of Commons in only three other instances, namely, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Castlereagh, and Lord Palmerston. On 3 Oct. 1772 he was unanimously elected chancellor of Oxford University in succession to George, third earl of Lichfield, and on the 10th of the same month was created a D.C.L. of the university. On 15 March 1774 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Somerset. In September 1777 he received from the king a present of 20,000l. for the payment of his debts (Correspondence of George III with Lord North, ii. 82–3, 428). It appears that at this time North's estates were worth only 2,500l. a year, and that his father made him little or no allowance (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. vi. 18). On 16 June 1778 he accepted the post of lord warden of the Cinque ports, at the king's special wish (Correspondence of George III with Lord North, ii. 193–5, but see, Memoirs of George III, iv. 80 note), the nominal salary of which was 4,000l., though North never received more than 1,000l. a year (Parl. Hist. xx. 926–7).

A portrait of North as chancellor of the exchequer, by Nathaniel Dance, R.A., is at Wroxton Abbey, and is engraved in Lodge's ‘Portraits.’ Another portrait by the same artist is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Cat. of the Guelph Exhibition, 1891, No. 104). A crayon sketch by Dance is in the National Portrait Gallery (Cat. No. 276). Portraits of North were also painted by Reynolds ( and, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1865, i. 155 and 253), Ramsay, Romney, and others. There are numerous engravings of North, and he was frequently depicted in the caricatures of the time.

Four copies of his Latin verse are printed in the first volume of the ‘Musæ Etonenses,’ 1795, pp. 1, 13, 26, 28. Watt erroneously ascribes to him the authorship of ‘A Letter recommending a New Mode of Taxation,’ London, 1770, 8vo. A number of North's letters are preserved at the British Museum among the Egerton and Additional MSS.

North married, on 20 May 1756, Anne, daughter and heiress of George Speke of White Lackington, Somerset, by whom he had four sons—viz.: (1) George Augustus, afterwards third Earl of Guilford (see below); (2) Francis, afterwards fourth Earl of Guilford (see below); (3) Frederick, afterwards fifth Earl of Guilford [q. v.]; (4) Dudley, who was born on 31 May 1777, and died on 18 June 1779; and three daughters: (1) Catherine Anne, born on 16 Feb. 1760, married, on 26 Sept. 1789, Sylvester Douglas, afterwards Lord Glenbervie [q. v.], and died on 6 Feb. 1817; (2) Anne, born on 8 Jan. 1764, who became the third wife of John Baker-Holroyd, first baron Sheffield (afterwards Earl of Sheffield) [q. v.], in January 1798, and died on 18 Jan. 1832; and (3) Charlotte, born in December 1770, who married, on 2 April 1800, Lieutenant-colonel the Hon. John Lindsay, son of James, fifth earl of Balcarres, and died on 25 Oct. 1849. North's widow died on 17 Jan. 1797.

, third (1757–1802), born on 11 Sept. 1757, was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 1 Nov. 1774, and graduated M.A. on 4 June 1777. He represented Harwich from April 1778 to March 1784, Wootton Basset from April 1784 to June 1790, and Petersfield until his father's accession to the peerage, when he was elected for Banbury, for which he continued to sit until his father's death. He was appointed secretary and comptroller of the household to Queen Charlotte on 13 Jan. 1781. Though a supporter of his father's ministry his sympathies were largely with the whigs. Hence he was one of the chief advocates of the coalition between his father and Fox, and it was at his house in Old Burlington Street, Piccadilly, that the first meeting of the new allies took place on 14 Feb. 1783 (, Memorials of Fox, ii. 37). On the formation of the ministry in April 1783 he became his father's under-secretary at the home office, and his name was subsequently set down as one of the commissioners in the East India Bill ({{sc|Lord John Russell}, Life and Times of Fox, 1859, ii. 42). He left office with the rest of the ministry in December 1783, and was dismissed from his post in the queen's household. He acted as footman on Fox's coach when it was drawn by