Family and Education

b. c.1635, o.s. of (Sir) Henry North, 1st Bt. educ. Bury St. Edmunds g.s.; St. John’s, Camb. adm. 25 Feb. 1650, aged 14. unm. suc. fa. 29 Aug. 1671.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Suff. 1673-80, 1689-90, dep. lt. 1676-?Apr. 1688, 1689-d.; conservator, Bedford level 1681-d.2

Biography

North, who may have inherited a tendency to melancholia, developed a fixed belief that the father of the woman whom he wished to marry was his own illegitimate half-brother. She died of smallpox in 1670, and he never married. Even with his cousin Sir Francis North in office as lord keeper, he was not appointed to the commission of the peace, but he was returned to James II’s Parliament as knight of the shire. His only committee was for repealing a clause in the Bedford Level Act. He died on 5 July 1695, the last of this branch of the family, and was buried at Mildenhall. His estate was inherited by his nephew, Sir Thomas Hanmer, 4th Bt.^†, Speaker 1714-15, who sat for Suffolk from 1708 to 1727.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Paula Watson / Basil Duke Henning

Notes

• 1. Bury G.S. List (Suff. Green Bks. xiii), 279.
• 2. Add. 39246, f. 30; S. Wells, Drainage of the Bedford Level, i. 462-9.
• 3. North, Lives, i. 335, 407; Top. and Gen. iv. 5; Collins, Peerage, iv. 464.