For a version of this introduction with notes please download here.
The North family fortunes were founded by the remarkable career in difficult times of Edward North. Edward, born c. 1504, the son of prosperous London citizens (Roger North and his wife Christian Warcup), studied at St Paul’s School, and then perhaps at Peterhouse, Cambridge (he left a rectory to them in his will), and then certainly at Lincoln’s Inn. He became a counsel to the City of London, later a clerk to Parliament, and then servant to Henry VIII, who knighted him. He served as a privy counsellor and was treasurer to the Court of Augmentation, at that time the largest and richest of the royal revenue courts, which administered the sequestering of church lands. He obtained a significant amount of land for himself, including the manor of Kirtling in Cambridgeshire. During Henry’s reign he served as sheriff for Cambridgeshire and as one of its representatives in Parliament. He was one of the executors of the king’s will. He was a privy counsellor to both Edward VI and Mary. It was Mary who ennobled him in 1554 as Lord North of Kirtling. Under Mary he served on the commission for the suppression of heresy and as Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire. In 1558, while preparing for her coronation, Elizabeth kept her court at his home, the Charterhouse near Smithfield. (Edward had obtained this property in 1545, demolishing the monastic buildings to build a substantial mansion. Although they had been briefly confiscated by Northumberland, they were restored to him by Mary. The buildings would later serve as the home of the celebrated school.) As well as enriching himself by way of his profession, Edward North made two very profitable marriages to wealthy widows. By his first wife, Alice Brigantine, née Squire, he had two sons and two daughters. Both of his daughters made advantageous and aristocratic marriages, Christiane marrying the Earl of Worcester, and Mary marrying Lord Scrope. His elder son, Roger, inherited the title becoming the second Baron North. Edward North died rich, and a devout Catholic, in 1564. Edward North was the very type of the Tudor New Man, but even before his death his New Man’s family had started to become an Old Family.
Roger, 2nd Baron North, was born in 1530. He was not trained for a profession. It is possible that he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge (his younger brother Thomas certainly did), but although he spent some time at Lincoln’s Inn, he did not become a lawyer. He continued the pattern set by his father, combining both local Cambridgeshire politics and a position at court, but he did it as a gentleman, not as a lawyer. Roger went on at least two foreign embassies for Elizabeth, to Vienna in 1567-8, and later to France. He was apparently a skilled linguist (a characteristic of many of the Norths). He was a keen improver of his lands, and an administrator in Cambridgeshire. He was a promoter, friend and then supporter of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and served with him in the Netherlands. Roger’s younger brother was Sir Thomas North, translator of Plutarch (or rather, translator of Bishop Amyot’s French translation). Sir Thomas had not been trained for any profession either, although he held a benefice for a while and could, conceivably, have had a career in the church, instead he relied on his older brother for support. Roger’s most distinguished position came late in life as Treasurer of the Royal Household, a post he held for four years until his death in 1600. He married Winifred Rich, daughter of Richard Rich (another New Man) and Elizabeth Dudley. They had three sons who survived infancy, and one daughter. Roger was succeeded in the title by his grandson, Dudley, born in 1582 (his son John, a soldier, having died in 1597).
Dudley, 3rd baron North, like his father and grandfather, was a proper older son in what was now becoming a properly old family. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, although he did not take a degree. Coming into his fortune and title very young, he promptly married sixteen-year-old Frances Brockett. He left her almost immediately to go soldiering and touring in Europe. When he returned he became a courtier in the circle of Prince Henry, the great hope of protestant Europe, attending masques and tourneys and substantially reducing the fortune built up by the first two barons. After the death of Henry, in 1611, his role at court diminished, he never became close to the new heir apparent, Prince Charles. He was involved, both on his own account and through his younger brother, in a number of American adventures. Captain Roger North had served on the second Raleigh expedition to El Dorado in 1617, he was subsequently a founder of the Amazon Company, and the principal player in the debacle of 1620 when he led an unofficial expedition to Brazil. King James did not approve of such adventuring and provocation of the Spanish, and both brothers were threatened with imprisonment. In 1527 Roger was involved in founding the Guiana Company with Charles’ favourite, Buckingham. By then Dudley was inclined to support parliament’s opposition to Charles’ increasingly autocratic rule. Meanwhile he cultivated his interests in poetry and notably in music, the servants and family at home at Kirtling forming an ensemble. During the 1630s he re-emerged as a supporter of the parliamentary cause, becoming even more politically active during the 1640s. A former courtier, and trusted by both sides, he was employed as a negotiator between the King and Parliament. He was speaker of the House of Lords, briefly, in 1648. He was strongly opposed to the trial and execution of the king, pleading with his Cambridgeshire neighbour Oliver Cromwell to prevent it. He quit political life following a confrontation with Fairfax. After the Restoration he once more took his seat in the House of Lords. He died in 1666. Dudley North seems to have suffered extended periods of melancholy and to have been a hypochondriac given to pessimistic reflection on his own health. He is accounted to have been the discoverer, in 1606, of Tunbridge Wells water, possibly after having come across the use of curative waters during his first trip to Europe.
Dudley, 4th Baron North, was born in 1602. Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he was not prepared for a profession. He was educated at St John’s, Cambridge, and briefly at Gray’s Inn, before going soldiering in Germany in support of the Protestant cause. He travelled in France, Italy and Spain, returning to England before setting off again to go fighting in the service of the Prince of Orange. He married relatively late, in 1632, to Anne Montagu, an accomplished woman who figures large in (our) Roger North’s biographical and autobiographical writings. Most of his adult life was lived under the shadow of his glamorous and increasing cantankerous father. Their family, for example, was obliged to stay with the Baron, pay rent and support a carriage. Dudley and Anne eventually purchased their own property at Tostock in Suffolk. During the Civil War, he served as MP for Cambridgeshire and sat in both the Short and the Long Parliaments. Like his father, he was a monarchist who pragmatically (and to some extent ideologically) supported the parliamentary cause. He was actively involved in draining the fenlands. He published on a number of conventional and pious topics. He was not an enthusiastic restorationist, revealing, perhaps, that as in many other aspects of his life other than, perhaps, his love of music, he was someone formed in truculent opposition to a domineering father.
Brothers North
The Roger North with whom we are concerned was the youngest of the 4th Baron’s ten surviving children (six sons and four daughters). Like his father, grandfather, great- and great-great-grandfather, Charles, the eldest brother and heir to the title did not train for a profession. He married well and became a courtier. He scarcely appears in Roger North’s accounts. For the rest, and according to the express policy of the prudent 4th Baron, the boys were prepared to make their own ways in the world. Frances, the second son, was sent to train as a lawyer, rising to be Lord Keeper of the Seal. John became a scholar, first as a classicist at Jesus College, and later as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Dudley was apprenticed to a Turkey merchant, spending fifteen years in Turkey and retiring rich. Montagu, the fifth brother, was also sent to be a Turkey merchant. He was less successful than Dudley (most Turkey merchants were less successful than Dudley) and was unfortunate enough to spend three years imprisoned in France on a charge of espionage in the early 1690s. The sisters were Mary, Anne, Elizabeth and Christian. Mary married Sir William Spring of Pakenham, Suffolk, and died young, in childbirth. Anne married Lord Foley, and Roger remained close to her, corresponding regularly. Elizabeth was widowed young, becoming rich and available, there followed an unpleasant family dispute in which the eldest brother, Charles, sought to marry her and her fortune off to fellow courtier. Francis and Roger fought a breach of promise suit launched by their brother’s friend, while Elizabeth quietly married into the Paston family. Christian married Sir George Wenyeve. Roger North, writing in the 1710s, said of his siblings:
… the Case is Memorable ffor the Happy circumstance of a flock so numerous and diffused as this of the Last Dudley Lord North’s was, and No one scabby sheep in it, considering what temptations & snares have layn In their way is not of Every days Notice. It was their good fortune to be surrounded with a kindred of ye Greatest Estimation & value more anciently derived then those I have Named wch are a sort of obligation to good behaviour … [BL Add. MS 32526, f. 132r; see on this website. Note that in this introduction I have tidied the quotations, they differ from the transcriptions in the pdfs.]
Roger North’s education began with his mother and continued at schools in Bury St Edmunds and Thetford. He then prepared for university with his father, they read logic and mathematics together. He went up to Cambridge in 1667, sharing his brother John’s rooms and spending his time reading and, by the way, ‘discovering’ Descartes. He stayed a year. In 1669 he was enrolled at the Middle Temple and began his training in the law. He entered the circle of his brother, Francis, the coming man of legal London. Francis had just been appointed king’s counsel and over the following decade, in rapid succession, became a circuit judge and then solicitor-general, was knighted, was elected MP for King’s Lynn, was appointed attorney-general, became chief justice of common pleas and in 1682 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, he was ennobled as Baron Guildford in the following year. This was the highest position in public life held by any member of the North family until Francis’s great-grandson, Lord North, became Prime Minister in 1770. Francis was the means of Roger’s rapid ascent through the legal profession. Roger and Francis were very close, he lived at his brother’s house where their circle of friends included Sir Peter Lely, who painted both their portraits. As well as sharing professional interests, they shared an enthusiasm for natural philosophy and for music. Roger’s legal career was a modest shadow of his brother’s, but it made him independently wealthy. He was called to the bar in 1674, and served with his brother on the circuit in various parts of England. He was appointed steward to the See of Canterbury in 1679, becoming a close friend of Archbishop Sancroft. He continued to rise rapidly in the law, becoming a king’s counsel. He was appointed solicitor-general to the Duke of York. When, in 1685, the duke became James II, Roger took over the management of the finances of his wife, the Queen, Mary of Modena. He was elected MP for Dunwich in 1685, and in the same year was appointed recorder for the city of Bristol.
The North brothers were involved in the corrosive politics of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis. No one comes out well from the morass of bad faith and madness of the 1670s and 1680s, certainly not the Norths. At the heart of the several interlocking disputes was the determination of the Whigs to exclude James from the succession on account of his Catholicism. Francis, as the King’s senior lawyer, was the legal fixer for the Tories. Whigs and Tories are hard to understand in modern-day party terms. The North’s were as anti-catholic as any Whig, but they were as monarchist as any Tory, asserting the right of the King. When Dudley returned from Constantinople in 1680 he arrived in the middle of it all and was drawn in. He was appointed a City of London Sheriff, prosecuting anti-court elements in the capital. He eventually entered parliament and joined the government as a Commissioner of the Treasury. He also maintained his business interests in the Turkey Company, joined the Russia Company and was involved with at least one East India Company voyage. His interests extended across the whole trading world. In 1681 he bought stock in the Royal African Company, the largest slave-trading organization of them all. King Charles died in February 1685, and Francis died in September of the same year. At the time of his death Francis was seven months months past the peak of his legal and political career. As long as Charles lived, the ‘Catholic threat’ remained only a threat, the dispute was over the King’s right, but when James succeeded, the new King’s determination to reintroduce the Catholic religion created problems for families such as the Norths. This compromise of loyalties was dramatically tested, and is dramatically narrated, in Roger’s account of a clandestine, late-night interview with the King where he confessed that he could not offer the King his unconditional support. He was dismissed from James’s presence, the King telling him that he was, ‘in plain English, a trimmer’. There was little room for the nuanced politics of personal honour (such as it seemed to be for Roger North) in late-Stuart London. Roger could not support the king’s policies on Catholic toleration and the maintaining of a standing army, nor the employment of Catholic officers in the army, but neither could he obstruct his King (even one that he described as ‘ill-advised’). He remained a courtier, but not an important one, and definitely not a player. He retained several important posts, remaining Attorney-General to the Queen and Steward to the See of Canterbury (that is, legal advisor to Archbishop Sancroft). In the latter role he became immersed in the church’s resistance to James’s Declaration of Indulgence, and it seems likely that his first publications were pamphlets composed in support of the church’s opposition to the king.
When James quit the country in 1688, and when in 1689 William and Mary were given the joint throne, Roger found himself further confounded by circumstances. He lost his seat in parliament. Both he and Dudley were called before a House of Lords committee to answer for their previous actions, notably the prosecution of the Rye House Plotters. He felt unable to sign the oath of loyalty to the new regime becoming a ‘non juror’ (i.e., one unable to swear). He became involved in helping other nonjurors protect themselves against the consequences of the Revolution. One of many was Archbishop Sancroft, who was promptly replaced at Canterbury. Some managed to adapt readily enough, Charles, the eldest brother, embraced the new regime. In December 1690 Roger North completed his purchase of a country seat, Rougham, in the remotest north of Norfolk. In December 1691, a few days less than a year later, his brother Dudley died. Roger and Dudley had become close since the death of Francis. They were enthusiastic co-experimenters, sharing interests across a wide range of subjects including technology, science (‘natural philosophy’), economics and social policy. Roger published Dudley’s Discourses on Trade and Money within months of his brother’s death, annotations in Dudley’s hand in the manuscript in the British Library show that the preparation of this project was well advanced before Dudley died. A synthesis of the two men’s social theory, a Discourse of the Poor, was published by Roger’s son Montagu, in Roger’s name, many years later in 1753. Both discourses would have fitted easily onto the bookshelves of any monied man with Free Trade sympathies, Tory or Whig. So it was that at the age of forty Roger North entered his long retirement from public life. For a few years he remained in London, in the Covent Garden house of Sir Peter Lely (Lely had died in 1680, and the artist’s affairs had long been managed by Roger, his executor and guardian to his children).
The North brothers were neither liked nor trusted. Francis, John and Roger had all gained preferments young, and proceeded very rapidly in their careers. Roger’s biographies of his brothers do not disguise the resentment of less well-sponsored contemporaries who saw, for example, John North get a doctorate through the influence of the Duke of Hamilton, and then the Mastership of Trinity and several profitable church appointments; he died in 1683. Francis flew up through the ranks of the legal profession with the support of the King, meanwhile incurring the resentment of other, perhaps equally deserving, contemporaries. His relentless prosecution of the King’s Whig opponents ensured that after the Revolution his name and reputation never (indeed, have never) recovered. The eldest brother, Charles, also progressed, but he did so in the rarefied spaces of the factions at court. Following his marriage to Catherine, daughter of Baron Grey of Warke (and widow of Sir Edward Mosley of Rolleston), Charles had gained an independent title, entering the House of Lords in 1672 as Baron Grey of Rolleston (helped by his well-placed brother, Francis). On the death of his father, the third Baron, he combined the titles as Lord North and Grey. He, too, died in 1691. So Roger found himself, the youngest son, as the paterfamilias, guardian and advisor of several groupings of nieces and nephews from a number of out-of-favour families. And these family relations had repercussions, for example, the career of his nephew, Charles’ son William, cast a shadow over the rest of his life.
Retirement/Retreat
Roger and Montagu (who had returned from prison in France in 1693), the two surviving North brothers, lived quiet lives. Montagu retained some business interests but was largely retired. Judging by family letters he became a genial uncle, circulating around the houses of his sisters, nieces and nephews. Roger, having been an object of resentment before the Revolution, became an object of suspicion after it. He was responsible for the safety of others, which number would in time include his own growing family, so he was disinclined to pursue an active political life. His retirement became something of a defiant retreat on the model of a noble Roman. He presented no real threat, he passively conformed, but he had dangerous friends. In 1696 he married Mary Gayer, the daughter of Sir Robert Gayer, just at the moment when Sir Robert was obliged to flee the country on account of his role in the Duke of Berwick’s plot. Rougham was searched for arms, it was searched again in 1715 during the Jacobite Rebellion, and for a third time during the panic over the Atterbury Plot in 1722. For more than forty years Roger North remained disloyal, which is to say, in his own terms, loyal. Although he urged others, including his own family, for their own safety and comfort, to sign the various oaths of allegiance at each change of monarch, Roger saw his role as holding fast to the divine (and legal) right held, though abused, by the male Stuart line. He would possibly have signed an oath of allegiance to William and Mary, or to William, or to Anne as regents, but not as monarchs.
The first task Roger North undertook during his retirement was the improvement of his estate at Rougham. He was an amateur architect, both a friend of Christopher Wren and an acquaintance of Nicholas Barbon, and was likely to have been the designer of his own house. That house was demolished by his grandson and is sadly lost to us; Howard Colvin and John Newman have brought together the manuscript materials that reveal him to be one of the more interesting commentators on architecture during the period. He was a very busy manager of his estate, attending to issues both legal and financial and he was busy not only with his own estate, but also those of his clients and relations (and neighbours, he advised the nearby Walpole family in the early 1700s). There are a considerable number of manuscript papers devoted to such matters in the British Library and at Rougham. He also wrote a book instructing his contemporaries on how to manage their financial affairs which he published anonymously. He published (anonymously) on a number of subjects, but only one of those publications goes anywhere near the topic of contemporary politics: an attack upon a recent anti-Stuart history, rather than a piece of current polemic. Roger North remained anonymous and apolitical. Meanwhile, in the private sphere of his manuscript world, he set about an unending routine of research and writing. This work in the private, intimate space of his study produced what has been called ‘a trackless sea of loose papers and manuscripts’. But although Roger North’s manuscript remains are large they are not trackless. We can find paths through it, tracing four projects which occupied him for more than thirty years.
A Life in Manuscript
The first project was the biographies of his brothers Francis, Dudley and John. These were published posthumously, under Roger’s name, by his second son, Montagu. At the same time as the biographies, he wrote the Examen, a critique of a history on the later Stuarts by White Kennet (the object of his anonymous pamphlet of 1711 mentioned above). This first project, therefore, was an attempt to rewrite the recent history of England following the ‘Glorious Revolution’ from a Stuart-loyalist point of view. More personally than that, in assembling and organising the literary remains of his brothers, he was continuing a number of individual projects associated with his own relationships with his brothers. This had begun in 1691 with seeing Dudley’s Discourses through the press. Francis’s will had asked Roger to organise his literary remains and books for his children, and Roger interpreted this generously enough to ensure the transcription and filing of every surviving paper. Roger North’s first project can be grandly subsumed within a project to stabilise a past for his family in a present in which it was threatened by annihilation from a new and triumphant anti-Stuart historicism.
The second project overlaps with the first and is traced through manuscript strata devoted to the history and analysis of the law. This material is not always separable from that of the first project, and although Roger never got further than drafting and preparation, the end result, in 1824, was the emergence of a book based upon the manuscript material. There was no legal education, as such, in seventeenth-century London. As at the universities, young men succeeded or failed in obtaining knowledge according to their guardian’s judgment in the choice of teacher. A lawyer accumulated knowledge by copying out abstracts of court cases, judgments influential in the law, and any number of other materials, into a commonplace book. He would then seek to hold all of that material in his memory. The numerous plans, prefaces and indices we find in Roger North’s manuscripts bear witness to this memory tactic at work. A good teacher would direct one to good sources or allow his own collected materials to be copied. The ability to follow legal Latin and make sense of medieval French was also helpful. There had been one serious attempt at a reform of the law, led by Matthew Hale during the Interregnum (the Hale Commission). Had his recommendations been carried out, there may well have been a corresponding change in the processes for the training of lawyers. Hale’s intended reforms had been to address not only law as a profession, but also the very law itself, to inaugurate Cromwell’s new society. Change was anyway happening. There was the ongoing coalition of function and confusion of status between the various courts of Common Law and Equity, and there was a change in conduct of legal practice as a number of specialised functions (clerks, solicitors, attorneys and barristers) emerged. A society undergoing radical agricultural, commercial and industrial transformation required legal forms for its efficient functioning.
The third project, his work on music, is the area of research and manuscript writing that has earned Roger North his most significant recognition among scholars. As noted above, his father and grandfather, as well as his older brother Francis, had been enthusiastic musicians. Roger took what was a longstanding family interest in music to another level. When Charles Burney began his research into the history of music, he sought out the North manuscripts. Since that time, Roger North has played an important role in any account not only of the history of music in England, but also for the history of musical theory. There is a growing recent bibliography that builds upon his first ‘discovery’ in the nineteenth century.
The fourth project is natural philosophy, which is the focus of the materials on this website. You will find other material here explaining the scope and interest of Roger North’s scientific writings, but a few points ought to be made. Roger wrote first-hand reports of natural phenomena, communicated with other scholars by letter, experimented with prisms and lenses, discussed scientific method at the level of epistemology, phenomenology and the physiology of the senses, assessed the claims of the competing cosmological systems of the New Philosophy, described his own experiments with barometers, criticised the methodology of Newtonian mathematical physics, reviewed the history of scientific knowledge from ancient to modern times, played with mechanical problems of turning and rolling forms, and studied the mathematics of the conic section. The list is not endless, but it is long. The purpose was the desire of a man with a ready wit, access to books, command of languages and a curious mind to play a part in what was happening in the world around him. The longer-term project was the preparation of a book, promised (according to Mary Chan) as early as the 1680s. There is a passage in BL Add. MS 32526 (see on this website) which sets out this ambition:
The principles of Natural philosofy, have bin Much agitated among learned men, and at last they have have taken up with Experimt, as ye onely Criterium of Invention; but are so well weary, or ye Subject so high driven that it is almost at rest. and then it is high time to Give it to ye world in English & plain language; ye french have done it some time Since, as Malbrance, but so awd with holy church, as it want’s ye freedome Such a designe Should have. and besides he swell’s into Such Speculation as looseth the certeinty’s. I Intend a plan of ye Same Sort, but Mor Restreined to phisicall probabilitys, how wel it succeds is a matter of my wish & care, but Not of my solicitude or [fear], for I wear a vail, and wtever My Modesty is, I will not be Seen to blush. [BL Add. MS 32526, f. 68r]
Through a series of essays and specific papers, and numerous prefaces and indices, this project found its fulfilment in a transcription edited by his son Montagu, the Physica (BL Add. MS 32544; see on this website). Roger North’s science is not quite the cranky enthusiasm of an autodidact and outsider, but it very nearly is. When he and Francis experimented with ‘baroscopes’ in the 1670s, they were at the sharp end of current practice, experimenting with the new laws of gases described by Robert Boyle. When he worked with metals and machines with Dudley in the late 1680s, he was also very much of his time. But as we read through the manuscript materials leading up the Physica, we realise that there is another agenda which is more to do with the politics of natural philosophy than its putative ‘principles’.
Descartes was, for Roger North, the most important thinker of modern times. Not because Descartes was always right (although, for Roger, he often was), but because Descartes had made it possible to be right. Roger North makes the point frequently, and states it nicely when he says:
ye Noble D. Cartes is an Example, who having Restored If not Invented ye true Methods of philosofising And lay’d open Nature, ffor all men to Inspect & Examine, is twitch’t by Every paltry writer. as pardies, becaus he hitt not ye Mark Exactly in his law’s of motion. but did Not he discover that motion had law? [BL Add. MS 32526, ff 67r-67v ]
In declaring for Descartes North embraces some assumptions that you will read about in the manuscripts. Descartes’ laws of motion, as interpreted by North, state that all motion is caused by contact, so that, for instance, planetary motion was caused by the force of a stream of ‘aether’, a mass of tiny particles. One thing operates on another. The Cartesian universe is a ‘plenum’ (i.e., a fullness) and not a vacuum. Roger North argued that in the ocean of aether, light was not rays, or particles projected from a source, but vibrations in the aether, just as sound was a vibration in the air. Like Descartes, he was a rigorous materialist. For both of them what was not material was not an object of natural philosophy. Roger North was a furious uncoverer of what he considered to be out-dated scholastic, that is to say, Aristotelian, tendencies. He argued, for example, that ‘qualities’ (such as redness, loudness, lovability, smallness) were not the properties of objects, but effects produced in the observer. Gravity, he argued, was not the ‘quality’ of attraction (which for him implied a magical consciousness in inert matter), but the result of a fluid dynamics, the result of the flow of aether. To North, Newton’s gravity was no better than a schoolman’s fantasy, and the idea of the mutal attraction of masses was meaningless, indeed absurd. He was suspicious of Isaac Newton, the hero of the age, his brother John’s contemporary at Cambridge. He acknowledged that he was a genius, but feared that his brilliance blinded his admirers to his prejudices. One of the most beguiling experiences of reading North’s criticism of Newton is to follow the way that he moves from accepting the mathematics to denying its applicability (the universe is not exact) and to identifying its heresies and (to use a term) ‘whiggishness’. Newton described a mathematical perfection in the natural world. For the Newtonian, the mathematically perfect universe can become God itself, being self-sufficient, needing only a clockmaker to have set it in motion. For Roger North, the threat presented by Newton was Deism.
Roger North therefore offers an instructive historical reading of Newton. He laboured long and hard over the Principia and he produced a knowledge, but he did not understand him so much as have an understanding of him. Stuart England was an age innocent of the modern notions of disciplines and specialists, an age in which anyone (i.e, any gentleman) might feel that he had the right to engage with advanced science from the standpoint of a general education. Isaac Newton himself had strong interests and opinions beyond the field of his own expertise. In as much as there were areas of expertise, they would be what Roger North called ‘arts’. Isaac Newton commanded the ‘art’ of calculation and was a calculating natural philosopher. Robert Hooke commanded the ‘art’ of experiment and observation, and was an experimenting and observing natural philosopher. Roger North was a reasoning natural philosopher, trained in the ‘art’ of jurisprudence. All three could also calculate, experiment and reason beyond their determined areas of competence, however they risked taking with them prejudices which compromised their judgments.
What Roger North calls ‘Mathematicks’ errs on the side of over-exactness, nature is never as precise as our diagrams. As to experimental science, it is ultimately limited to the isolated instance, or accident. It is possible to work inductively, from the individual instance, but for Roger North the truths of natural philosophy are not to be induced, the natural philosopher returns always to deduction by reason, through laws. Induction’s real area of operation is natural history, the collecting of evidence. Reasoning must bring it all together. For Roger North reason is limited to explaining the material world, as he explains in his essay on Reason, it cannot and must not engage with the truths of Revelation, for above and beyond any understanding of the material world is the certain truth of revealed religion. If Newton was the calculating philosopher, and Hooke the experimenting and observing philosopher, Roger North was the reasoning and judging philosopher. His legal mind organises the material into arguments which are presented as proofs and opinions within the limitation of what can be proved and opined. He can even determine the boundaries of the discourse, of what is and is not natural philosophy. His is the job of identifying and interpreting the laws of nature (which are Descartes’s laws of motion). He can, of course, introduce fancies, it is an important part of his thinking, but he only does it as fancy, as the expression of his esprit, he has a great deal of faith in intuition. What results from the combination of calculation, experiment and observation, intuition and reason, is ‘a demonstration’, that is, the ‘presentation before the people’ of a best account.
It may be that Roger North would never have been at home in the Royal Society, but we have plenty of evidence that he was respected as a natural philosopher, and not only by partisan judges. He and his brothers were not members when they might have commanded membership. In the 1670s and 1680s they kept themselves above and apart. According to the Lives they preferred evenings of familial intimacy and music; they discussed and experimented at home. Following his retirement he might have joined, he would not have been the only Jacobite corresponding member, but he never joined, although he evidently read the Society’s publications. Whether it was hauteur or self-conscious awkwardness, we might still be engaged by his (elegantly and rhetorically expressed) embarrassment, ‘for I wear a vail, and wtever My Modesty is, I will not be Seen to blush’.
Roger North died in 1734 at what would have been a grand old age at any time in human history. As has been explained above, his death precipitated a number of publications, the biographies, the Examen. His death also inaugurated his emergence as a named Author. The publications did not have the desired effect of changing the course of English history writing, and the ‘Whig’ narrative of history has remained dominant, even since Butterfield identified it as an ideology. From the 1680s Roger North had sat at his desk drafting, writing, re-writing and re-drafting. His manuscripts are repetitive, but the repetition works like baroque counterpoint, bringing something new to the surface of the familiar with every re-working. What is constantly revealed and re-revealed is a restless, persistent, humorous, satirical and independent mind. The manuscript materials also represent and document a life occupied in continual, laborious writing. Roger North spells the word ‘wrighting’, imposing an association with making. But one does wonder at the sheer volume of material, and one does ask why Roger North wrote, and why he wrote (or wrought) so much. In the ‘prfando’ (i.e., preface) which opens BL Add MS32526 (f. 2r; see on this website) he says:
Insatiable desire to know, ambitious thincking, care of prserving Even ye hints, & Embrio’s of thought designe of Improving. facility, as well as pleasure, In scribling, and Courting a style, are a Combination of Inducem’ts to what you find here, and also Much More of like fustian, In other places, wch by their solemne appearance In books, seem to have had somewhat of ye polite, [but?] In truth are but Extemporaneous sentiments, from one that writes swifter then thincks, and hath No test of his owne thoughts but his Review after wrighting.
Such a confession encourages us to pathologise his writing habit, to conjure up a term such as ‘graphomania’. Certainly, the physical reality of one of his manuscript volumes is a shocking thing for the twenty-first century reader. It is messy. There is a solid, opaque physicality, a menace in this material. The manuscripts are often unresolvable and ambiguous, they are self-communications that we violate by reading. We are the generation of the screen, and we tend to think of what people write as immaterial data mediated by means of a transparent surface. We are inheritors of the printed book, and we think of the book as an already resolved text, something that was always going to be what we see before us, something always-already. The footnote and the variorum edition destabilises this model of pre-determined-ness a little, but only enough to emphasise the editorial privilege of some final, canonical original intended version, or meaning. But manuscripts are more than simply objects to be read, they appear to trace a mind in process.
Something else addresses us through these sentences, something that we are familiar with in our post-Romantic world, a pained loneliness. There is no doubt that Roger North’s self-regard included a degree of persecution anxiety, not a disabling amount, but perhaps more than was best for comfortable self-consciousness. This is exactly his theory of pleasure and pain at work, so to some extent it comes with his own Hobbesian-Cartesian ‘microcosmick science’. There is also a degree of middle-aged grumpiness. But it is also, perversely, a complaint of exclusion by someone who refused to be a joiner:
Men of collegiate conversation, have often freedome of comunicating sentiment’s, & so test them upon others understanding, wch where candor dwells, is of admirable use and satisfaction! but few ages allow a sett of Men of [this?] candor, to admitt such freedomes without censure, Either [the?] church or some stage principles may be hurt by ye Consequence even of a truth as they thinck, & then it is discourag[ed?] or Els some state policy, or faction may be Interested, & for that cause, truth Is to be supprest, or Els ill Nature, love of contradiction, raiseth a battery Impertinently, or a plagiary humour, If a thought be good, to run away [with?] & then claime it, hinder this freedome of Conversation, [Whereby?], In our pudle & slough of time, that advantage is denyed … Oh! for the Age of hero’s. [BL Add MS32526, f. 2r.]
Roger North is one of those characters from the past who seems to speak to us very directly, as a ‘modern’, which is, of course, an absurd idea. This is perhaps enhanced by the access we have to him by our snooping though private papers.
The Lives of the Manuscripts
The manuscripts on this website were written over a forty-year period extending from the1680s to the 1730s. The bulk of them were bought by the British Museum in 1885. They have had had an interesting career of their own, one related by Peter Millard in a 1973 article. Sold at various moments by various North descendants in various lots, they were picked up by collectors who competed not only out of scholarly interest, but also in the hope of financial gain. Despite the fact that we have an enormous number of manuscripts it is likely that many have been lost. We have to work with what we have. The nature of the manuscripts which survive encourage us to believe that even in losing some we have not lost sight of any side of ‘Roger North’. What are now bound volumes are packed with multiple versions and reworkings of topics, grouped thematically by the curators. We can read for date by cross-referencing internal evidence, and we have some insight from the study of watermarks. Even when he reworked a topic Roger North was liable to repeat himself, the effect is not always tedious re-recognition, sometimes it is delighted deja vu. The central intellectual tenets remain consistent.
There is evidence of earlier organisations, previous page numberings inserted in pencil by British Museum curators crossed out and (scrupulously) left visible. There was an alphabetical marking, presumably of bundles of pages before binding, these might be of any date. A number of pages are marked by exposure to light and dust suggesting the material history of paper piled on shelves. Roger North was clearly fond of ordering his thoughts and materials, there are numerous prefaces and contents pages scattered through the volumes, so we can suppose that had the manuscripts in an order that made sense to him. But whether the papers rose in piles geologically, or were arranged in carefully assigned groupings, we cannot tell. The Rougham church library catalogue (see on this website) is organised by subject-matter and format size, but with no ordering by date, nor any alphabetical order. The paper he used was folded down from large sheets, uncut folds sometimes remain where blank pages have been left, sometimes there are margins in black lead or pencil. Most of the British Library’s volumes are ‘small quarto’ size, i.e., about the size of a hardback novel, but there are also folio-sized volumes (see list of manuscripts below). Occasionally scrap or re-purposed paper was used to note down an idea.
What on earth was an English nonjuror lawyer living a retired life in the country doing writing all this? To whom did he write? Do we need a pathological explanation? Clearly he wrote for the pleasure of writing, as he himself confesses at more than one point. When we look at the manuscripts we find that the conventions of expression are uniformly ‘polite’, as if a reader is addressed. This is not always the case, sometimes an idea is simply noted down, but it is generally the case that Roger North, the author, goes to some lengths to make himself clear to a reader. He uses irony, comic hyperbole, oblique allusion, all the tricks of literary communication, suggesting that the manuscripts are indeed communications, intended to be read. Surviving letters suggest that some of the texts were circulated for comment, but there is not much evidence of commentary and marginalia by others. Several of his texts were transcribed by his friend and local priest Ambrose Pimlowe, and there are editorial interventions and markings in manuscripts later published by his his second son, Montagu, but usually we are alone with him. In the ‘prfando’ quoted above he makes a heartfelt plea for a more collegial culture of circulating texts, one that he associates with the generation before him, and with the humanists before that. It is entirely likely that the manuscripts were made to be shared with others, or maybe even read aloud to visitors. And we should bear in mind that all these manuscripts were only one part of the paper heritage of this one family, the family patrimony. At Rougham, Kirtling and elsewhere, there were any number of documents, many going back much more than a hundred years, many in duplicate form, copies shared with the wider family, all afloat in a vast plenitude. These manuscripts joined that mass, Roger North was also writing to the future.
Method
What I represent here, as faithfully as I can, is an account of my encounter with the text, presented as an ‘imitation’. My imitation is limited by my abilities as a copyist, and further limited by my tendency to interpret what I see, but it is made with what Robert Hooke, in the preface to the Micrographia, called ‘a sincere hand and a faithful eye’.
The mimetic representation of anything is not a truth of or about it, it is an effect, a effect of truth. It is an effect produced by conventions to which you subscribe in recognising the mimesis. Mimesis is never complete. Even a photograph or a scan of, say, a manuscript requires that you sacrifice the many aspects of the experience of an encounter with a thing in a place and at a moment. The computer screen is an extraordinarily versatile site for mimetic effects as was the book before it, and as has been the speaking human voice and the performing human body at all times, but there are limits.
I can represent crossings out, but I have to footnote the violence, absoluteness or otherwise in any instance. Manuscripts reveal the provisionality of the text, they record traces of the process of writing. Handwriting can be gestural, it can become crowded as ideas expand against the limits of the page, it can veer into the urgently scribbled, it can strut across the page self-assertively. All this I can only footnote. A printed page, on the other hand, is just that, printed. It is an opaque surface representing a final statement made available in any number of reproductions. The printed page commands a reading and suppresses ambiguity. A manuscript offers a reading set in a time, at a moment, when things could have been different, where changes of mind are physically traceable.
I have kept original pagination, with turnable pages, inserting footnotes specific to each page. This is why the texts are on pdfs rather than on the endless scrolling screen. The point about a page is that you can see it all at once, and in seeing that page, you are unable at the same time to see any other. Pages are also pictures, organised according to conventions, they are, in their way, complete. In the library, the experience of reading the manuscript also offers prefigurations of the next page, the ghost of the previous page, because the paper is sometimes porous and Roger North’s penmanship can be clumsy. I cannot imitate this, but where it is an issue (for example, as regards legibility) I point that out in a footnote.
In making a mimetic transcription I use what I hope is are ‘common sense’ conventions. Crossing out is crossed out, insertions are marked by /these marks\. If I am not sure of my reading of something I use [square brackets?], if I cannot even read it I use […?], and if I can’t read something crossed out, then the dots are crossed out. I hope that as you read through the texts you will find that my common sense is your common sense.
I have been indulgent with capitalisations. It is quite possible that another transcriber would have been less indulgent and identified fewer. The long ‘s’ is rendered by me as a capital ‘S’. Roger North occasionally displays ebullience, the letter ‘S’ is a particular vehicle for this, also his sometimes flamboyant underlining. Roger North’s favoured Greek ‘e’ is rendered as a capital ‘E’. I cannot do justice to his elaborate and enviably medieval capital ‘T’, it is about the only accomplished looking letter in his alphabet, the rest being unremarkable. He frequently capitalises ‘N’ and ‘M’, but if he uses a capitalised ‘P’, then I have been unable to discern it, so you will only find lower case ‘p’s here. I have consistently transcribed his use of ‘ff’ where many would have substituted a capital ‘F’. I was encouraged to do this when I discovered, quite early on in the transcription process, that he would occasionally use a capital ‘F’, and felt I had therefore to maintain the difference.
Roger North was an inconsistent and expressionistic scribe. In one sentence he can spell a word in two or more ways, capitalising or not in an arbitrary fashion. He rarely uses underlining, but when he does, it is as communicative as any other element of the text. When he gets excited, his letter formation disintegrates and his spelling becomes stranger. His words may be crowded together to fit into the bottom of a page. His lower case ‘d’ is often a picture to look at. His penmanship is a readable space of performance at the level of the letters themselves. One area of consistency (almost always) is the use of superscript in words and abbreviations such as ye (the), wch (which), or (our) and prjudice (prejudice). He is also moderately consistent in using apostrophes for plurals (plural’s). There is no exact relation between what Roger North used punctuation for and what we understand punctuation to do in the present. Any attempt to impose a present day punctuation works against the nature of his expression which, like this sentence, runs into subordinate clauses (parentheses too), and commentary-within, which reveal the degree to which Roger North works with what is essentially spoken language, requiring the reader to attend to punctuation in the same way as they would attend to gesture or breathing in a speaking subject.
I copy the original spelling (and misspelling) and avoided endlessly inserting ‘sic’, the whole transcription project should be headed ‘sic’. I have footnoted difficult passages, but I have only my own idea of what is difficult to go on, and I do not understand everything myself. Remember that ambiguity is a possible reading and that it is not really the job of a reader, and certainly not that of an editor, to render the whole text unambiguous, but rather to negotiate (check the etymology of this word) with the text.
Most of Roger North’s parentheses (brackets) seem to have been inserted after the initial composition of the texts, it would seem he did this at the same time as he made other secondary alterations and amendments. This tallies with an idea that the texts were written to be read through, and to be read out loud (implying, perhaps, an intended audience). That they were read out loud is corroborated by the consistent use of catchwords (the words at the bottom of each page, linking to the next page), to enable uninterrupted reading during page turning. Catchwords have sometimes been inserted later, like the parentheses.
A Provisional List of Roger North’s manuscripts in the British Library (these manuscripts belong to you.)
This list employs the information made available in the British Library catalogue in May, 2013. I have limited my research to the British Library’s resources simply to produce some boundary to research inflation and drift, rationalising my decision by thinking of an archaeological dig, where one is limited to a particular place. I have, of course, drawn on researches made at other sites.
Add MS 16174: ORIGINAL Book of Accompts of the Hon. Roger North, Dr. William Stokeham, and Hugh May, executors of Sir Peter Lely, during the years 1679-1692. Among the general subjects of the accompts, the following matters may be more particularly referred to:- Funeral charges, f. 7 b.;-Occasional sales of paintings, etc., ff. 9, 10, 37, 48 The Collection of Pictures and other rarities, as the same were sold by publick outcry,” 1683, f. 37 b.;-” The sale of drawings and prints,” 16-24 Apr. 1688, f. 85 b.;-Sale of furniture, china, and other effects, ff. 14, 17, 37 ; -School and personal expenses of John Lely, ff. 54 b., 74, 94 b., 109 b. xviith cent. Large Folio.
Add MS 29566: VOL. XVII. f. 201 Roger North, son of Dudley, 4th Baron North: Letters to Lord Hatton: 1687, 1688, 1696.
Add MS 29580: ORIGINAL letters of members of the family of North, chiefly addressed to Christopher Hatton, 2nd Lord and 1st Viscount Hatton; 1653-1688. . Roger North [6th son of Dudley, 4th Lord North]; 8 Feb. 168.6/7-2 Feb. 168.7/8, ff. 13, 14, 15, 18.
Add MS 32500: Vol. I., ff. 216, 1660-1702; Hon John North, STP; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge: Letters to his sister, Anne Foley: 1677, n.d. North family; Barons North and Earls of Guilford: Family correspondence: 1660-1728. Anne Foley, wife of Robert Foley, Roger North, son of Dudley, 4th Baron North: Letters to his sister, Anne Foley, and her family: 1677-1728. etc..
Add MS 32501: Vol. II., ff. 220, 1703-1728. Roger North, son of Dudley, 4th Baron North: Letters to his sister, Anne Foley, and her family: 1677-1728. Hon John North, STP; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge: Letters to his sister, Anne Foley: 1677, n.d. North family
Add MS 32502: MISCELLANEOUS papers, including a few business letters, of the family of North; 1563-1789. At the end are added some letters addressed to the late owner of the North MSS., James Crossley, of Manchester, chiefly from Dawson Turner, in relation to the sale of a part of the collection in his possession; 1838-1846. Paper; ff. 280. Folio.
Add MS 32503: LETTER-BOOK of business letters of Hon. Roger North, the greater part relating to the administration of the estate of Sir Robert Gayer, of Stoke Pages, his father-in-law, including accompts; 1702-1710, 1717. Paper; ff. 171. Small Folio.
Add MS 32504: 1. “A REGISTER of pictures belonging to Ro[ger] North, together with ye materiall circumstances relating to them”; 1701. ff. 1, 62 b. 2. Notes of engines, and on dialling. f. 45 b. 3. Project for rebuilding Whitehall after the fire of 1698. f. 54. 4. “Of a perpetuall motion.” f. 57 b. 5. Plan of “A cheap barn, built at leisure.” f. 60 b. The above are in the hand of Roger North. There are also the following notes copied from his papers by his son :- 6. “Humoursome Nick-Names” of Lord Shaftesbury and others. f. 38 b. 7. “Some gross Idioms”: peculiarities of provincial pronunciation. f. 41 b. 8. “Sounds from things”: words derived from imitation of sounds. f. 66 b. 9. “Words of a good sense diverted to a worse.” f. 68 b. Paper; ff. 71. XVIIIth cent. Duodecimo.
Add MS 32505: MEMORANDA of planting, felling, dyking, etc., in the lands and gardens of Rougham, co. Norf., by Roger North; 1691-1709. Paper; ff. 24. Duodecimo.
Add MS 32506: “NOTES of Me”: autobiography of Roger North. Unfinished. Autogr. Paper; ff. 193. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32507: The Life, Actions, and Caracter of the Right Honble Francis [North], Lord Guilford, late Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England By Roger North. The original autograph work, containing many passages not given in the printed editions. Paper; ff. 187. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32508: LIFE of Lord Keeper Guilford [A transcript of Add. MS. 32,507], with notes and corrections in the hand of Roger North, as prepared for press. The passages omitted in the printed editions are marked for excision, and there are also some variations from the published text. Paper; ff. 154. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32510: Vol. II. contains “Benefactions,” “Accusations,” “Slander,” “Caracters,” “Retirement”; and at the beginning an “Advertisement” or Introduction, at the head of which there is the following memorandum:-“Note y e matter of this is taken into a pamplet about ye life of Mr. Lock and a treatise in 3 parts agt ye Compleat history, tituled Examen; except ye History of ye lives of ye Lord Chancrs not taken notice of then.” etc..
Add MS 32511: COLLECTIONS for the Life of Lord Keeper Guilford By Roger North, arranged under the heads of “Preferrments” (ff. 1, 198), “Benevolences” (f. 24), “Accusations” (f. 55), “Contumelys” (f. 110), “Franchises” (f. 158), “His Match” (f. 182), “Contemporarys” (f. 222), “Trade” (f. 25 1), “Wrightings” (f. 254) partly adapted from Add. MSS. 32,509-10. Autograph. Paper; ff. 275. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32512: “MEMORIALLS of the Liffe and actions of Sir Dudley North, Kt, With divers relations, tracts, censures, and a letter in Italian, collected and put together by R[oger] N [orth]. Anno 1709”: the first sketch of the Life, which was afterwards re-cast for publication. Originally it included copies of several papers and tracts written by Sir Dudley North, but all, with one exception: “Of the Laws for ye poor,” have been removed. At f. 166 is a paper entitled “Advertisement,” intended as an introduction to the Examen for the events of 1682, in connection with Sir D. North’s election as sheriff of London. Autograph . Paper; ff. 211. A.D. 1709. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32513: “THE LIFE of Sir Dudley North,” by Roger North: a re-cast of Add. MS. 32,512, as revised for press. The early part is not in this volume, which begins with the paragraph “His height in Turkye”: see the edition of 1826, vol. iii., p. 38. On the other hand, there are many passages which are not given in print. Autograph. Paper; ff. 180. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32514: 1. “THE Life of the Honble John North, S.T.P., late Professor of the Greek tongue, and Master of Trinity Colledg in Cambridg, and one of the prebends of Westminster. With a dissertation of the new and moderne (new) philosofye inserted. By a friend [Roger North], 1728. The dissertation does not appear in the printed editions. Autograph. f. 1. 2. “Notes of Dr. North”: critical notes by Dr. North, copied and arranged under the heads of “Theologia,” “Critica,” “Philosofica,” and “Politica,” by Roger North. f. 167. Paper; ff. 227. Early XVIIIth century. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32515: MEMOIRES of the honble John North, S.T.P., sometime Master of Trinity Colledg in Cambridge: An earlier sketch of the Life in Add. MS. 32,514, by Roger North. Autograph. Paper ; ff. 89. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32516: THE Life of Dr. John North Another sketch, by Roger North. Autograph. Paper; ff. 118. Early XVIIIth century. Small Folio.
Add MS 32517: “SOME, notes of Dr, [John] North, late Mr of Trinity Colledg in Cambridg, transcribed from black-lead in a pocket-book”; the rough copy by Roger North of the critical notes, arranged and faircopied in Add. MS. 32,514, art. 2. Paper; ff. 79. Early XVIIIth century. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32518-32520: COPIES and extracts of papers, on political, legal, and other matters, of Lord Keeper Guilford; transcribed by Roger North. Three volumes. Paper. Early XVIIIth century. Folio.
Add MS 32519: Vol. II. (ff. 241). 1. History of Faction: on the circumstances of the Rye-House Plot. (Used by Roger North in his Examen.) f. 2. 2. “Notes out of the day papers of causes,” of Chancery cases. f. 40. 3. “The speech of the Ld. Ch. Justice, who was made Speaker of the Lords’ hous, when Sr Rt Sawyer was admitted Speaker of ye hous of Commons.” f. 70. etc..
Add MS 32521: “AN EXTRACT out of his Lops. [Lord Keeper Guilfords] court note books of divers cases wch came afore him as Judg, wheretoo he had affixed any speciall observations of his owne, or were by himself reported at large,” copied by Roger North; with tables at the end. Paper; ff. 66. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32522: WRITINGS of Sir Dudley North; edited by Roger North:- 1. “Discourses of Trade, principally directed to ye cases of the Interest, Free Coynage, Clipping, Increas of Mony” (published in 1691). 2. “Concerning ye valties of land, and fall of Rents”: apparently intended as a continuation of the Discourses of Trade. f. 17. 3. “Relations of some voyages and forrein Transactions and Avanias in Turky. Extracted from the papers of an honble person deceased; with a Proposall intended to be made in parliment in order to regulate ye Coyne, in 1683,” a fragment consisting of a Preface, part of the Proposal on the Coinage, and “Some notes concerning the laws for ye poor.” f. 26. 4. “Voyage to Archangel”; “Voyage from Archangel” to Leghorn; Residence in Italy”: an unfinished transcript. (See the Life of Sir Dudley North, in which the contents of this paper are incorporated). f. 33. Paper; ff. 50. Early XVIIIth cent. Folio.
Add MS 32523: POLITICAL and other papers, chiefly in the handwriting of, and composed by, Roger North, viz.:- 1. Particulars in the life of Lord Keeper Guilford. f. 1. 2. “Some hints in a paper explained, out of my memory”: notes on political events in the reign of Charles II., in connection with Lord Keeper Guilford. f. 24. 3. Copy of a letter from Roger North to [Francis North, 2nd] Baron Guilford, on an examination of Lord Keeper Guilford’s law-reports; 1 0ct. 1709. f. 33. 4. “Memoranda Historica”: rough heads, in the hand of Lord Keeper Guilford. f. 36. 5. Notes of “a Relation of the proceeding against Mr. Samuel Atkins, who was a clerk in ye office of ye Admiralty,” on the charge of murdering Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey. f. 38. 6. “Arguments against “the case of a Divorce by act of parliment.” f. 42. 7. “Matter of fact concerning ye dispensing power”: on the Declarations of Indulgence of 1663 and 1672. f. 47. 8. “Concerning ye act imposing ye test, 1678.” f. 48 b. 9. Instructions in wrighting delivered in charg from his Matie [to the Judges of Assize] for the forming their behaviour, in ye Lent Circuits, 1687.” f. 54. 10. “Memorandums for those yt goe into ye country to dispose ye Corporations to a good Election for Members of Parlt. To be read by them often [1688].” f. 56 b. 11. “Case of All Souls Colledg,” Oxford: a submission of several points concerning the constitution of the college, with autograph opinions of Lord Keeper Guilford. f. 59. 12. “The patent for ye installing John Massey D[ean] of Christ Church in Oxford”; [19 Dec. 1686]. f. 61. 13. “The answer of ye vicechancelor and senate of ye university of Cambridg to ye question why they did not admitt Alban Francis to ye degree of Master of Arts”: April-May, 1687. f. 64. 14. “A state of the right of patronage of St. Katherine’s Hospitall neer ye Tower and of the Queen’s interest therein with respect to ye power of visiting of it” ; 28 Feb. 168.7/8. f. 68. 15. “A Case upon ye Statute for abrogating ye oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy; [ 1689].” f. 70. 16. “A resolution of questions about Bishops’ deprivation, by a Civilian.” f. 78. 17. “A Discours of y e Poor”: partly rough draughts. (See the printed tract published in 1753.) f. 82. 18. “Frauds to ye Crowne”: instances of how abuses may be practised in various departments. f. 102. 19. Tract on “publik Notarys.” f. 106. 20. Essays on various subjecs:- a. On Republics. f. 110. b. “Reflections on our common failings.” f. 114. c. On pride. f. 122. d. On breeding f. 132. 21. Various papers on the Common Law of England. f. 142. 22. “A Digest of ye book of Rates and some other laws relating to ye Customes.” f. 222. 23. On Natural Philosophy. f. 269. Paper; ff. 272. XVIIth, XVIIIth centt. Small Folio.
Add MS 32524: TRACTS by Roger North:- 1. “A letter in answer to an Inquiry touching an act of paines and penaltys mentioned in ye printed votes, – Jan. 1689. Against legislative Convictions.” f. 1. 2. “A Collection of opinions, tracts, and advices, framed upon severall occasions, fitt to be preserved for private memory and use, but not for ye publik”; 1695, 1696. They are :- a. “A copy of a letter containing matter of law touching ye parlt. in 1694” in answer to the question “whither by ye late Queen’s death ye present parlt. be dissolved or not ?” f. 14. b. “A perswasion touching the oaths, 30 Apr. 1696. In a letter.” f. 29 b. c. “A discours concerning ye laws for ye poor ” (published in 1753). f. 43 b. Paper; ff. 87 . Autograph. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32525: CRITICISMS of passages in the third volume of White Kennett’s “Complete History of England,” by Roger North: being a part of the material which he afterwards worked into his “Examen”; with a General Preface. Prefixed are two imperfect draughts of the Preface in different form; the first being a transcript by R. North’s son. Paper; ff. 169. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Folio.
Add MS 32526: ESSAYS, by Roger North; partly fair-copied, partly in rough draughts, viz. :- 1. “Of prejudices.” ff. 2, 96. 2. “Of sence.” f. 8 b. 3. “Of sleep and dreams.” f. 16. 4. “Of pleasure and pain.” f. 19 b. 5. “Of Humane Capacity.” f. 34 b. 6. “Of Pride.” f. 48 b. 7. “Of Breeding.” f. 50 b. 8. “Of Affectation.” f. 55. 9. “Of Dressing.” f. 57. 10. “Of Selling.” f. 60. 11. “Preface to a philosofick essay on natural philosophy.” f. 64 b. 12. “Of ye Generall Conduct of Weomen.” f. 68 b. 13. “Of ye English Militia.” f. 74 b. 14. “Of the Clergy of England.” f. 79 b. 15. “Power of humane understanding.” f. 88. 16. On the prosperity of the vicious and the virtuous. f. 90. 17. “Of Pleasure.” f. 108. 18. “Reason.” “By the Honble. R. North, 1732.” f. 120. 19. On Religion: a fragment. f. 124. 20. “A demonstration of free will.” f. 126. 21. On authorship: a fragment. f. 128. At the end (f. 130) is a part of the “Generall Preface” to the Lives of the Norths. Paper; ff. 132. Early, XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32527: ABSTRACTS of law cases, by Roger North; 1671-1678. Paper; ff. 107. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32528-32551: WORKS of Roger North: Accounts, Etymology, Music, Perspective, Building, the Barometer and Baroscope, Natural Philosophy, etc.; nearly all in his own hand. Twenty-four volumes.
Add MS 32528: Vol. I. “THE GENTLEMAN Accountant: or an Essay to unfold the Mistery of Accounts by way of Debitor and Creditor, comonly called Merchants-accounts, and applying the same to the concernes of the Nobility and Gentry of England……….B Eubule Thorne,
Add MS 32529-32530: Voll. II., III. “OF ETIMOLOGY”: draughts and revises of an essay on etymology, chiefly in connection with the study of the Common Law of England. Two volumes. At the end of the second volume (f. 112) are “Conjecturall Etimologyes,” or explanations of various words and political and other nick-names; and (f. 147 b) peculiarities of the Norfolk dialect, etc. Paper; ff. 238, 152. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto, and Small Folio.
Add MS 32529: Vol. II, ff. 238, early XVIIIth cent. Philology: On etymology, by R. North: 18th cent.Roger North, son of Dudley, 4th Baron North: Essays on etymology: 18th cent.Law: Essay on etymology in connection with the Law, by R. North:
Add MS 32531: Vol. IV. 1. “SHORT, easy, and plaine rules to learne in a few days the principles of Musick, and chiefly what relates to ye use of the Espinette, Harpsicord, or Organ”; and a treatise on “continued or thro-base”: being two tracts composed by – Prencourt, etc.
Add MS 32532: Vol. V. “SOME MEMORANDUMS concerning Musick”: comprising, “Hints about Musick,” “The Doctrine of Discords,” “Graces in playing,” “Of soft and lowd,” “Of stop or paus,” “Of fuge,” “Of ye different sorts of Musick,” “For keeping time,” “Examen of ye ordinary musicall rules,” “Of Harmony,” “Of Descant,” “Performance,” etc . Paper; ff. 26. Early XVIIIth cent. Quarto.
Add MS 32533: Vol. VI. “THE MUSICALL Grammarian, or a practick Essay upon Harmony, plain and artificiall, with notes of comparison between the Elder and Later Musick, and somewhat Historicall of both.” [The first Part of Musical Recollections.] It was from another revise of this essay that Rimbault extracted the Memoirs of Musick by the Hon. Roger North, 1816. The text of the present volume differs in some respects from that of the Memoirs. Paper; ff. 181. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32534: Vol. VII. “THE THEORY of Sounds, taking rise from the first principles of action that affect the sence of hearing, and giving phisicall solutions of tone, harmony, and discord, shewing their anatomy, with ye manner how most Instruments of Musick are made to yeild delicious as well as triumphant sounds, with intent to leav no mistery in Musick untoucht. Being the 2d part of the Musicall Recollections.” Paper; ff. 82. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32535: Vol. VIII. “THEORY of Sounds. Shewing the Genesis, Propagation, Effects, and Augmentations of them. Reduced to a Specifick Inquiry into the Cripticks of Harmony and Discord, with Eikons annexed exposing them to occular inspection”: two revises of the above essay in Add. MS. 32,534, dated 1726 and l728. Paper; ff. 149. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32536: Vol. IX. “AN ESSAY of Musicall Ayre. Tending chiefly to shew the foundations of Melody joyned with Harmony, whereby may be discovered the native genius of good Musick, and concluding with some notes concerning the excellent art of Voluntary. Being the 3d and last part of the Musicall Recollections.” Paper ; ff. 90. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32537: Vol. X. “THE MUSICALL Grammarian,” and “Theory of Sound”: rough draughts of the musical essays, imperfect and partially disconnected. Paper ; ff. 241. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32538-32539: Voll. XI., XII. “SPECULUM Opticum. Being a short Idea of Perspective, clearly explicated, as well by a series of discours, as by apt schematismes, wech may be perused either conjoyntly or apart, and each sufficient, with or without ye other. By one of the Executors of ye late Sir P. Lely”: draughts and revises on the subject, in various stages. Two volumes. Paper; ff. 191, 221. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32538: Vol. XI, ff. 191, early XVIIIth cent. Optics: Treatise on perspective, by R. North: 18th cent. Roger North, son of Dudley, 4th Baron North: On perspective:
Add MS 32540: Vol. Xlll. 1. ESSAY “of Building.” f. 1. 2. “Architecture.” f. 69. 3. “Mechanick Notes.” f. 81. 4. “Explanation of Algebra.” f. 138. At the end, f. 150, are some notes respecting Matlock, co. Derby, by Roger North’s son, Montague. Paper; ff. 151. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32541: Vol. XIV. “ESSAY of the Barometer”: draughts of the essay in two forms, the second beginning at f. 161. Paper; ff. 297. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32542: Vol. XV. “THE AIR-GAGER. Being a meteorologicall essay of the Barometer. Attempting, by undoubted principles of phisicks, to demonstrate the connection of ye propertys of the air with the movement of the mercury; whereby the Instrument becomes a prognostick of weather. With ye rules and observations subservient thereunto”: another revise of the essay. Paper; ff. 114. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32543: Vol. XVI. “AN ESSAY concerning the Reason and use of ye Baroscope.” A second and earlier form of the essay is annexed, f. 23, written in another hand, but with Roger North’s corrections. Paper; ff. 33. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32544: Vol. XVII. “PHYSICA”: an essay on Natural Philosophy; transcribed by Montague North. Paper; ff. 274. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32545: Vol. XVIII. DRAUGHTS, more or less imperfect, of essays on Natural Philosophy, including the heads of “Phisicks,” “Principles,” “Hypotheses,” “Experiments,” “Contintuity,” “Complexitys,” “Plenitude,” “Absolutes and Relatives,” “Phantasmes,” and “Resolves.” At the beginning is a portion of a preface containing autobiographical particulars connected with R. North’s studies in this subject. Paper; ff. 346. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32546: Vol. XIX. A VOLUME similar to the last, containing:- 1. A general introductory essay. f. 1. 2. On the system of the world. f. 25 b. 3. “Gravitation.” f. 91. 4. “Fire.” f. 112. 5. “Explosion.” f. 120. 6. On an extraordinary appearance of lights in the sky, etc..
Add MS 32547: Vol. XX. ON MOTION: draughts of writings on the subject, more or less imperfect and disconnected Paper; ff. 430. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32548: Vol. XXI. “Loci phisiologici, ordine fortuito”: a series of note-books containing essays and collections, some of which are embodied in other volumes. The contents are 1. “Extension and Body.” f. 2. 2. “Of Magnitude.” f. 5. 3. “Of continuity or cohesion of bodies”, etc..
Add MS 32549: Vol. XXII. A VOLUME somewhat similar to the last, made up of note-books; the contents of which are as follows :- 1. Rules for the harpsichord, etc.; and on thorough-bass. (See Add. MS. 32,531. f. 1). f. 1. 2. “A discours concerning ye musicall notes of ye trumpett and trumpetmarine.” f. 31. etc..
Add MS 32550: Vol. XXIII. ANSWER to Dr. Samuel Clarke’s “Scripture doctrine of the Trinity,” in the form of a letter to Dr. Clarke; 10 Feb. 1712: a draught with corrections. Paper; ff. 79. Small Quarto.
Add MS 32551: Vol. XXIV. FAIR-COPY of the above Answer to Dr. Clarke, with some further alterations; followed by a copy of a letter from Dr. George Hickes to Roger North, 23 May, 1713, and of North’s reply, 2 June, 1713, on the subject; and preceded by a copy of a letter from Roger North to the “Rev. Mr………” describing his reasons for entering into the controversy. Paper; ff. 36. Early XVIIIth cent. Small Folio.
Add MS 32552: “A METHOD of Studying Physick…….By the learned Herman Boerhaave”: a transcript by Roger North [son of Hon. Roger North], of Trinity College, Cambridge, of Dr. Robert Samber’s translation of Boerhaave’s Methodus discendi Medicinam (London, 1719). Paper; ff. 149. A.D. 1720. Small Octavo
Egerton MS 2721: Vol. ix. (ff. 506). 1708-1751.includes: f. 467 Roger North, of Rougham, county Norfolk: Letter to P. Le Neve: 1721.
Hargrave MS 319: A Common Place Book of Collections on Law: said to have been made by Roger North Esqr. youngest brother to the Lord Keeper Guildford. Quarto; on paper.
Hargrave MS 339: A Volume of Papers; consisting of Cases, Arguments, &c. formerly belonging to Roger North, Esqr. one of the Brothers of the Lord Keeper. Containing,1. Some few Cases in B. R. Easter Term, 19 Cha. II. The first, and principal one being the Case of Sir Hugh Wyndham and others, of a Somersetshire Grand Jury fined by Lord Ch. J. Keeling for a finding against his direction. fol. 1., etc.
Hargrave MS 394: A Discourse on the Study of the Laws: by Roger North., Esqr. youngest Brother to the Lord Keeper Guildford. Quarto.