Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/184

 of the moment on paper than any serious attempts at authorship. He seems to have had a certain shrinking from publicity, which grew upon him, as it is apt to grow upon a studious recluse. When White Kennett's ‘Complete History of England’ appeared in three volumes folio in 1706, Roger North was greatly disturbed by what he considered to be a perversion of the history of Charles II's reign, and he set himself to compose an elaborate ‘Apology’ for the king and a ‘Vindication’ of his brother, the Lord-keeper North [q. v.], from the attacks of Kennett. This ‘Apology’ evidently occupied him for some years, but was not published till nearly seven years after his death (London, 1740). It extends over more than seven hundred pages quarto, and is entitled ‘Examen, or an Enquiry into the Credit and Veracity of a Pretended Complete History: shewing the perverse and wicked design of it, and the many fallacies and abuses of truth contained in it. Together with some Memoirs occasionally inserted, all tending to vindicate the honour of the late King Charles the Second and his happy reign from the intended Aspersions of that Foul Pen.’

It appears that the ‘Examen’ was finished before the author proceeded with the lives of his brothers, and that his life of the lord keeper was suggested by, and grew out of, his labours upon the ‘Examen.’ The life of Sir Dudley followed, naturally, as a supplement to the other; but it is difficult to understand why he should have written Dr. John North's life at all. His own ‘Autobiography’ seems to have been the last work upon which he was engaged. Whether he ever finished it, or ever intended to carry it any further than down to the death of Charles II, it is impossible to say. He clearly looked upon his own retirement from the bar as the inevitable result of the ascendency which Jeffreys had acquired over James II; and when his conscience forbade him to take the oath of allegiance at the revolution, his career was at an end. He looked upon himself from that time as a banished man.

The labour that North bestowed upon the lives of his brothers was extraordinary. The life of the lord keeper was written and rewritten again and again. Defaced though the style is by the use of some unusual words, there is a certain charm about it which few readers can resist, and the ‘Lives of the Norths’ must always remain an English classic and and a prime authority for the period with which it deals. The ‘Life of Lord-keeper North’ was first issued under Montagu North's editorship in 1742. The ‘Lives’ of Sir Dudley North and Dr. John North followed in 1744. The three lives were published together in two volumes, with notes and illustrations by Henry Roscoe, in 1826; and a complete edition of the ‘Lives of the Norths, with a Selection from the North Correspondence in the British Museum, and Roger North's Autobiography,’ was published in Bohn's ‘Standard Library,’ under the editorship of Dr. Jessopp, 3 vols. 8vo, 1890. The only work which Roger North published during his lifetime was ‘A Discourse on Fish and Fish Ponds,’ issued in quarto in 1863, and reprinted in 1713 and 1715; all the editions are scarce. His remaining work, ‘A Discourse on the Study of the Laws,’ was first published in 1824 (London, 8vo).

Roger North was held in great and increasing respect by his neighbours as an authority on questions of law, and was frequently consulted by the magnates of the county, and sometimes chosen to arbitrate when disputes arose. On one occasion he was called in to settle some difference between Sir Robert Walpole and his mother. The country people called him ‘Solomon,’ as in his early days the pamphleteers had styled him ‘Roger the Fiddler.’ He retained his vigour and brightness of intellect to the last, and one of his latest letters was written when he was nearly eighty years old, in answer to some one who had applied to him for advice as to the best course of reading for the bar. He died at Rougham on 1 March 1733–4, in his eighty-first year. By his wife, whom he appears to have survived some few years, he had a family of two sons and five daughters. He made his will in October 1730; in it he left all his papers and manuscripts to his son Montagu. The elder son, Roger, was baptised 26 Jan. 1703; from him are descended the Norths of Rougham, who are the only representatives in the male line of, fourth baron North [q. v.], by Anne Montagu. The younger son, Montagu, was born in December 1712. He entered at Jesus College, Cambridge, 26 June 1730, was elected scholar of his college, and continued to reside at the university for the next seven years. He was admitted to holy orders in 1738, became rector of Sternfield in Suffolk in 1767, and a canon of Windsor in 1775. He died in 1779. Besides the sons there were five daughters. Roger, the heir, was the only one of his generation who left issue. Sir Peter Lely's portrait (1740), which was engraved for the ‘Examen’ by George Vertue, is preserved at Rougham Hall. [The sources for Roger North's biography are mainly his own Lives of the Norths, and for the early part of his career his entertaining Autobio-