Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/North, Dudley (1581-1666)
NORTH, DUDLEY, third Lord North (1581–1666), eldest son of Sir John North [q. v.], was born in London in 1581, and succeeded his grandfather Roger, second baron [q. v.], at the age of nineteen. After completing his education at Cambridge, where, however, he did not graduate, he married, in 1599, Frances, daughter of Sir John Brockett of Brockett Hall, Hertfordshire, a wife not altogether of his own choice; she was barely sixteen at the time. He tells how his grandfather, after a desperate illness, lived just long enough to arrange the marriage, while he was himself disposed to wait until the age of thirty at the least. He was, according to his grandson Roger, a person ‘full of spirit and flame,’ and he chafed at the thought of finding himself ‘pent and engaged to wife and children’ before he had crossed the sea or tasted independence. In the spring of 1602, however, he set forth to the Low Countries for the summer's campaign, accompanied by Mr. Saunders, a cousin of Sir Dudley Carleton. Saunders died of the plague in Italy, and, soon after, North journeyed to London alone. To escape the infection, he had largely dieted himself on hot treacle, and to the immoderate use of this preventive he repeatedly ascribes his impaired health in after life. On his return to England he threw himself with ardour into the extravagant amusements of the court, and became one of the most conspicuous figures there. He was a finished musician and a graceful poet, while at tilt or masque he held his own with the first gallants of the day. Congenial tastes had won for him the close friendship of Prince Henry; but a hasty and imperious temper, on the other hand, made him enemies. Once there were ‘rough words between my lord chancellor [Bacon] and my Lord North; the occasion, my Lord North's finding fault that my lord chancellor, coming into the house, did no reverence, as he said the custom was.’
In the spring of 1606 North's health failed him, and he retired to Lord Abergavenny's hunting seat of Eridge in Kent. The whole of the surrounding district then consisted of uncultivated forest, without a single habitation save Eridge itself and a neighbouring cottage on the road to London. While returning to the metropolis, North noticed near the cottage a clear spring of water, which bore on its surface a shining scum, and left in its course down a neighbouring brook a ruddy, ochreous track. He tasted the water, at the same time sending one of his servants back to Eridge for some bottles in which to take a sample to his London physician. A favourable judgment was pronounced upon the quality of the springs, which became known as Tunbridge Wells, and North thus first discovered the waters of that subsequently famous resort. The wells grew steadily in favour until, in 1630, the fortunes of the place were established by a visit from Queen Henrietta Maria, acting under the advice of her physicians. North also made known the virtues of the waters of Epsom, and counted this no small boon to society; for, he says, ‘the Spaw is a chargeable and inconvenient journey to sick bodies, besides the money it caries out of the Kingdome, and inconvenience to Religion.’ After returning to drink the waters of Tunbridge Wells for about three months, he again settled in London, completely healed of his disorder. On 4 June 1610 he was in attendance on Prince Henry at his creation as Prince of Wales, and took part in the tournament by which the occasion was celebrated. North's impoverished condition in after life was in large measure due to his participation in such entertainments. On 23 March 1612, while tilting with the Earl of Montgomery, he was wounded in the arm by a splintered lance, and was prevented from taking part in the tournament on ‘Kings' Day,’ the anniversary of the accession. On 27 April 1613 he was one of the performers in ‘a gallant masque’ on the occasion of the queen's visit to Lord Knollys at Caversham House.
When his younger brother Roger (1585?–1652?) [q. v.] projected, in 1619, a voyage of exploration to Guiana, North, with the Earls of Arundel, Warwick, and others, supplied funds for the venture. Roger sailed without leave, and North was committed for two days to the Fleet, on the charge of abetting his brother. His warm support of Roger's enterprise also led him into a quarrel with John, lord Digby [q. v.] North soon regained the king's favour. He took part in the state procession to St. Paul's on 26 March 1620, when his majesty attended a solemn service there, ‘to give countenance and encouragement to the repairs of that ruinous fabric;’ and in 1622 he conducted the Venetian and Persian ambassadors to audiences with the king. But he was no blind supporter of the new king, Charles, and the favourite, Buckingham. In the parliament of 1626 he was prominent among the peers in opposition in the House of Lords, and was closely allied with William Fiennes, lord Saye and Sele. Lord Holland said of him in his public career, ‘he knew no man less swayed with passion, and sooner carried with reason and justice.’
Subsequently North spent much time at Kirtling, and was soon content to learn what was passing in London from the letters of his brother, Sir John North, the king's gentleman-usher. In March 1637 he vainly protested against the demolition of the church of ‘St. Gregory by Paul's,’ which was the burial-place of his father, and wrote two poems lamenting its destruction.
In February 1639 North attended Charles I at York, in the expedition to Scotland; but he soon returned to Kirtling, resolved to devote himself exclusively to ‘the œconomy of his soule and family.’ Nevertheless public affairs caused him continual anxiety, and, after the dissolution of the Short parliament, he signed, in August 1640, with seventeen other peers, a petition praying that a parliament might be summoned with all speed. In November 1640 the calling of the Long parliament, which required North's presence in London, filled him with new hope. In his letters to his family and friends he expressed his faith in the king's ‘wisdom, goodness, and constancy,’ and was ready to vote plentiful supplies. He was no bitter partisan in church matters. ‘I would be sorry,’ he says, ‘to see cutting of throats for Discipline and Ceremonie; Charity ought to yeeld farre in things indifferent. But must all the yeelding be on the governours' part?’ At the close of the year he returned to Kirtling, but the course of affairs apparently drew him to the side of the Commons, although he took no part in the civil war. In 1645 he was placed by the parliament, with the Earls of Northumberland, Essex, Warwick, and others, on a commission for the management of the affairs of the admiralty, and he served as lord-lieutenant of Cambridgeshire.
His later years, owing to ill-health and a greatly impaired fortune, were passed quietly in the country at Kirtling, where also resided his son Sir Dudley, with his wife and children; Roger, and Francis, the future lord-keeper, and North's widowed eldest daughter, Lady Dacres. Sir Dudley's wife made it a grievance that her husband was required by his father to contribute from 200l. to 300l. a year towards household expenses. When his fortune and family increased, the sum touched 400l., sinking again in 1649 to 300l. His son's children took part with their mother, and his grandson Roger gave him a grim aspect in his ‘Life of the Lord-keeper Guilford.’ Francis was at one time an especial favourite with his grandfather, who, when the young man was rising at the bar, loved to hear from him all the gossip from town, to listen to his fiddling, or play a game of backgammon with him. But he gave offence by some interference with the domestic arrangements, and the old lord cut him out of his will, and professedly cast him off altogether, but had still a lurking affection for him, ‘and was—teeth outwards—kind to him,’ as Roger puts it. To his son Dudley, North finally gave up the control of his estates, receiving only an annual payment. ‘I have made myself his pensioner,’ wrote the old man, ‘and I wish no worldly happiness more than his prosperity.’ He was, however, long an active justice of the peace; and, besides interesting himself in gardening, ‘found employment with many airy entertainments,’ his grandson Roger wrote, ‘as poetry, writing essays, building, making mottoes and inscriptions.’ He was an accomplished player on the treble viol, and delighted to gather his family and household to join in concert with him, singing songs the words of which he had himself composed. About a mile from Kirtling lay a wood called Bansteads, in which he cut glades and made arbours, and ‘no name would fit the place but Tempe. Here he would convoke his musical family, and songs were made and set for celebrating the joys there, which were performed, and provisions carried up.’
North was an author on divers subjects. An excellent French scholar, he translated into that language many passages from scripture, which he committed to memory, and repeated each morning before rising. Of his essays and other prose works, the greater number were written during the years 1637–1644; the poems, he tells us, were, for the most part, of earlier date. ‘The idle hours of three months brought them forth, except some few, the children of little more than my childhood.’ In 1645 he made a miscellaneous collection of his essays, letters, poems, devotional meditations, and ‘characters.’ This very rare and curious work was privately printed, under the title of ‘A Forest of Varieties.’ A copy, which belonged to the late C. A. North, bears a dedication to Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia. After correction and expurgation it was published, in 1659, under the title of ‘A Forest promiscuous of various Seasons' Productions,’ with a dedication addressed to the university of Cambridge.
North died at Kirtling, aged 85, on 16 Jan. 1666. His wife outlived him till 1677, and was buried by his side at Kirtling. Three of Lord North's six children survived him: Sir Dudley, who succeeded his father in the barony, and is noticed separately; John, who married Sara, widow of Charles Drury of Rougham, Suffolk, and was afterwards twice married, to wives whose names are unrecorded; and Dorothy, who married in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, 4 Jan. 1625, Richard, lord Dacres of the South, and, secondly, Challoner Chute of the Vyne, Hampshire; ‘no great preferment,’ writes Chamberlain of the first match, ‘for so fine a gentlewoman to have a widower with two or three sons at the least.’ Three children died unmarried during their father's lifetime—namely, Charles, Robert, and Elizabeth. The latter caught ‘a spotted fever akin to the plague,’ which was raging in London in the summer of 1624; and, being sent with her mother to Tunbridge Wells, died there in August, almost immediately on her arrival, before she had tasted the waters.
There are two portraits of North, by Cornelius Janssen; one of these is at Waldershare, the other at Wroxton. In the latter he is represented in an elaborately embroidered suit of black and silver. A third portrait of him is in the collection at Kirtling. These pictures show him to have been tall and handsome, with abundant hair of a warm colour, inclining to red.
[A Forest of Varieties, by Dudley, third lord North; A Forest promiscuous of several Seasons' Productions, by Dudley, third lord North; Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North, ed. Jessopp, pp. 68–9; Cal. State Papers (addenda), vol. clxxi. No. 66, Dom. vol. cccclxv. No. 19; Camden's Annals; Gardiner's History of England; Hume's History of England, vi. 259; Letters of Dorothy Osborn, ed. Parry, p. 25; Letters of Sir John North, K.B. (unpublished); North's Life of the Lord-keeper Guilford; Lingard's History of England, ix. 361; Nichols's Progresses of King James I, ii. 324, 361, 497, 629, 729, iii. 964, iv. 594, 768; Sidney State Papers, ii. 223, 575; State Papers. Dom. Eliz. vol. cclxxxiv. Nos. 14, 37, James I, vol. lxviii. No. 83, vol. cxv. No. 33, Charles I, vol. ccccxiii. No. 3; Owen's Weekly Chronicle and Westminster Journal, 5–12 July 1766; Pepys's Diary (Braybrooke's edit.), p. 25; Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, p. 370; Will of Dudley, third lord North.]