NORTH, FREDERICK, Lord, Earl of Guilford (1732-92). An English statesman. lie was a son of Baron Guilford. After a course at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, and a period of Continental travel. North was at the age of twenty-two sent to the House of Commons as member from Banbury. a borough controlled by his father. From 1739 until the fall of the Rockingham :Ministry in 1765 he held the posi tion of a junior lord of the treasury. In De cember, 1766, after a short tenure of the °Mee of paymaster, he was admitted as a member of the Privy Council. His ability won for him, in March. 1767. an offer of the chancellorship of the exchequer. which he at first declined, but 1111011 the death of Townshend in September finally accepted. With this post went the leadership of the House of Commons, for which he was well qualified by his eloquence, good humor, wit, and readiness of resource. His attitude on the Townsbend tea tax, however, was one of the immediate causes of the American war. It was North's own boast that as a member of the Commons he had "voted against all popular and in favor of all unpopular measures." In 1770 he succeeded the Duke of Grafton as Prime Minister. He was ealled by Horace Walpole the ostensible Minister; for the real lliniste• was King George M. It has since been proved that North as early as 1776 believed that the unyielding policy he was pursuing with regard to the American colonies would end in ruin to the King and to the country; yet in the face of the powerful opposition of Fox and Burke, he allowed his own convictions to be overborne by the obstinacy of King George's ultra-Tory purpose. In 1778
he was forced to a renunciation of the right to tax the colonies: but the eoncession came too late, and in 1782. finding it impossible to carry on the war any longer, he resigned. With North's retirement came to an end George In.'s seheme of governing the country by his own will. and of ruling the Hong(' of Conunnwx. Soon, however. Fox entered into a coalition with North, against whom he had for so many years in veighed. North and Fox took office under the Duke of Portland in 1783, but the coalition lasted only a few months. Ile succeeded his father as Earl of Guilford in 1790. During the last five years of his life North was totally blind. lle bore his afflictions with great cheerfulness. He died August 5, 1792. North was an amiable man, possessed of considerable wit and talent, but lacking those powers necessary to carry a country well through a crisis like that which England experienced during his administration. Consult Donne, Correspondence of George III. with Lord North (London, 1867).