THE FAMILY BACKGROUND

Sir Dudley North, fourth Baron North (1602-1677), was a conservative, Christian gentleman who lived to a ripeness and saw much. Born at the close of Elizabeth's reign, he was knighted by James, participated uneasily in the Long Parliament until shortly before the stormy close of Charles's life, retreated to manage the affairs of his family seat in Cambridgeshire during the days of "Leviathan" Cromwell, and enjoyed a reasonably content old age, surrounded in his library by quantities of books, papers, and parchments, including a pardon from Charles II. Through the years, like many another English gentleman, North occasionally took to his pen. Apparently he had doubts about appearing in print, partly because of a natural reticence, partly because he realized that his skills were limited, and partly because gentlemen were supposed to be uneager to appear in the marketplace. On the other hand, in his sixty-seventh year, he finally did offer the reading public his Observations and Advices Oeconomical (1669), a handbook in which he endeavored to tell how a great house might be managed without a great fortune. The following year he published A Narrative of Some Passages in or Relating to the Long Parliament. Then finally, five years after his death, his family made a collection of his miscellaneous prose writings (devotional, discursive, and biographical) and for the first time placed his name on a title page: Light in the Way to Paradise (1682). Students of the seventeenth century, therefore, have long had some cause to know of Sir Dudley North. Nevertheless, it is only with the discovery of a manuscript that has lain in private hands for about three hundred years that we discover North to have been a writer of verse. Introduction of the life and verse of this minor seventeenth-century writer is the purpose of the present book.

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In a biography that he wrote in 1658 Sir Dudley North speaks of Edward, first Lord North, as "the common Parent and raiser of our Family," the man "to whom we owe our eminency, if any we have." Identifying himself as the grandchild of Edward's grandchild, Sir Dudley gives a favorable but largely factual account of the striking career of his ancestor. Born about 1496 into a family which had come to London from Walkeringham, Nottinghamshire, Edward North studied at St. Paul's School under William Lily, continued his education at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and eventually was called to the bar. His rise thereafter suggests something of both the man and his time. After serving as Advocate for the City of London, he rose to be Clerk of the Parliament and then King's Serjeant-at-Law. These posts made his abilities increasingly conspicuous, and in 1540 he was named treasurer of the Court of Augmentations, a court which had come into being recently because of the flood of business following the phenomenal "augmentation" of royal holdings when the monasteries were dissolved. In the years 1540-1543 North served as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and in 1542 he was knighted. Three times he served in Parliament (1542-1544, 1547-1552, and 1553), and in 1544 he ascended to the chancellorship of the Court of Augmentations—at first a joint appointment with Sir Richard Rich, and later one that he enjoyed alone. Vast wealth passed through Edward North's hands, and a certain amount of it doubtless found its way into his pockets. Still more important to his family's future, however, is the fact that as a trusty servant of the King he received extensive grants of abbey and other crown lands. Lawrence Stone observes that "Wentworth, Windsor, Cromwell, Seymour, Eure, Russell, Paulet, Wharton, Wriothesley, Darcy of Chiche, Paget, Rich, Sheffield, Herbert, Browne, North, and Williams were substantially, and in some cases almost entirely, the product of the great share-out among officials, soldiers, and courtiers of the property seized from the Church between 1536 and 1553." Making his position yet stronger, North in 1546 joined Henry's Privy Council.

As early as 1532, four years before the monastic dissolution began, North had become sufficiently affluent to acquire the seat of Kirtling (or, familiarly, Catlage) in Cambridgeshire. Kirtling at the time was an old moated castle near the border of Suffolk, some six miles southeast of Newmarket in the southeastern corner of the county. North razed the castle and on its site, within the large moat, erected a splendid, sprawling, redbrick mansion which in the next century was to provide the fourth Lord North with most of his knowledge about great-house economy. Approached by an imposing new gatehouse with fifty-five-foot turrets, and situated "on a prettie Hill," the new Kirtling was said to have "a most statelie Rise by very many Steppes up into the House wherein you may behould a great Part both of this Shire & Suffolke...." As a matter of fact, the same source continues, "saving that yt standeth somwhat upon a wett Soile, yt is hardlie paraleild in both Sheires." To the old Norman church that stood close to the grounds of the house, Edward added a large family chapel, and eventually he was buried in a fine black marble tomb between the chancel and the chapel. There his successors might ponder his motto, Serva Fidem, and his arms, a lion passant amidst three fleurs-de-lis.

North's capabilities had been considerably enhanced through the years by his acquisition of a wealthy wife. At the age of about thirty-three he married Alice, daughter of Oliver Squire of Southby, Hampshire, and widow of Edward Myrffin (still earlier, she had been the widow of John Brigadine). The union of Edward North and Alice resulted not only in the rearing of the new mansion at Kirtling but also in the birth of four children, two of whom are of special concern here. Thomas (1535?-1601?) was to become the most famous writer that the North family ever produced. Though he had other skills as well, it is as a translator of Guevara, Bidpai, and, above all, Plutarch that he is remembered. Knighted about 1591, Sir Thomas was both a skillful writer himself and the source of skillful writing in others, most notably Shakespeare, who turned to North's Plutarch when writing his Roman plays. The other North offspring of concern here is Roger, who was to become the greatgrandfather of Sir Dudley.

In 1543, when both his family and his fortunes were burgeoning, Edward...