North, Roger

, brother of the preceding, and sixth son of Dudley lord North, was likewise brought up to the law, and was attorney-general to James II. and steward of the courts to archbishop Sheldon .*

He published an “Examen into the credit and veracity of a pretended complete History,” viz. Dr. White Kenneths History of England, and also the lives of his three brothers, the lord keeper Guilford, sir Dudley North, and the rev. Dr. John North. In these pieces little ability is displayed, but there is much curious and truly valuable information, and which would have been yet more valuable had not the author’s prejudices led him to defend some of the worst measures and worst men of Charles II. 's reign. He was also, says Dr. Burney, a dilettante musician of considerable taste and knowledge in the art, and watched and recorded its progress during the latter end of the seventeenth, and beginning of the eighteenth century, with judgment and discrimination; leaving behind him at his decease a manuscript, entitled “Memoirs of Music,” which Dr. Burney found of great use in the history of English secular music during the period to which his memoirs are confined. He lived chiefly at Rougham, in Norfolk, where his life was extended to the age of eighty-three. He died in 1733. He had an organ, built by Smith, for a gallery of 60 feet long, which he erected on purpose for its reception. There was not a metal pipe in this instrument, in 1752; yet its tone was as brilliant, and infinitely more sweet, than if the pipes had been all of metal. ²