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The dukes of Suffolk and Northumberland, who were now, upon the fall of Somerset, grown to the height of their wishes in power, upon the decline of the king’s health in 1553, began to think how to prevent thui reverse of fortune which, as things then stood, they foresaw must happen upon his death. To obtain this end, no other remedy was judged sufficient but a ciiange in the succession of the crown, 'and transferring it into their own families. What other steps were taken, preparatory to this bolU attempt, may be seen in the general history, and is foreign to the plan of this memoir, which is concerned only in relating the part that was destined for lady Jane to act in the intended revolution: but this was the principal part; in reality the whole centered in her. Those excellent and amiable qualities, which had rendered her dear to all who had the happiness to know her, joined to her near affinity to the king, subjected her to become the chief tool of an ambition, notoriously not her own. Upon this very account she was married to the lord Guilford Dudley, fourth, son to the duke of Northumberland, without being acquainted with the real design of the match, which was ceJebrated with great pomp in the latter end of May, so much to the king’s satisfaction, that he contributed bounteously to the expence of it from the royal wardrobe. In the mean, time, though the populace were very far from being pleased with the exorbitant greatness of the duke of Northumberland, yet they could not help admiring the beauty and innocence which appeared in lord Guilford and his bride.

But the queen’s charity hurt her more than her justice. The day first fixed for her death was Friday February the 9th; and she had, in some measure, taken leave of the world by writing a letter to her unhappy father, who she heard was more disturbed with the thoughts of being the author of her death than with the apprehension of his own*. In this serene frame of mind, Dr. Feckenham, abbot of Westminster, came to her from the queen, who was very desirous she should die professing herself a papist, as her father-in-law had done. The abbot was indeed a very fit instrument, if any had been fit for the purpose, having, with an acute wit and a plausible tongue, a great tenderiless in his nature. Lady Jane received him with much civility, and behaved towards him with so much calmness and sweetness of temper, that he could not help bein overcome with her distress: so that, either mistaking or pretending to mistake her meaning, he procured a respite of her execution till the 12th. When he acquainted her with it, she told him, “that he had entirely misunderstood her sense of her situation; that, far from desiring her death might be delayed, she expected and wished for it as the period of her miseries, and her entrance into eternal happiness.” Neither did he gain any thing upon her in regard to popery; she heard him indeed patiently, but answered all his arguments with such strength, clearness, and steadiness of mind, as shewed plainly that religion had been her principal care . On Sunday evening, which was the last she was to spend in this world, she wrote a letter in the Greek tongue, as some say, on the blank leaves at the end of a testament in the same language, which she bequeathed as a legacy to her sister the lady Catharine Grey; a piece which, if we had no other left, it is said, were sufficient to render her name immortal. In the morning, the lord Guilford earnestly desired the officers, that he might take his last fare well of her; which though they willingly permitted, yet upon notice she advised the contrary, “assuring him that such a meeting would rather add to his afflictions then increase his quiet, wherewith they had prepared their souls for the stroke of death; that he demanded a lenitive which would put fire into the wound, and that it was to be feared her presence would rather weaken than strengthen him that he ought to take courage from his reason, and derive constancy from his own heart that if his soul were not firm and settled, she could not settle it by her eyes, nor conform it by her words that he should do well to remit this interview to the other world that there, indeed, friendships were happy, and unions indissoluble, and that theirs would be eternal, if their souls carried nothing with them of terrestrial, which might hinder them from rejoicing.” All she could do was, to give him a farewell out of a window, as he passed to the place of his dissolution, which he suffered on the scaffold on Tower-hill with much Christian meekness. She likewise beheld his dead body wrapped in a linen cloth, as it passed under her window to the chapel within the Tower.

, lord Guilford, lord keeper of the great seal in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. was the second son of the preceding, and was born about 1640. He had his grammar learning, in which he was a great proficient, at Bury-school, whence he was admitted a fellowcommoner of St. John’s college, in Cambridge, in 1653. His conversation is said to have been remarkably agreeable and facetious, while his diligent advancement in his studies afforded him more solid claims on the esteem of the society. But, as he was originally designed for the law, after two or three years spent at the university, he was removed to the Middle Temple. Here he applied with great diligence to the main object, yet continued to improve himself in history, classics, and languages. He acquired French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch, and became not only a good lawyer, but was esteemed very accomplished in mathematics, philosophy, and music. He used to say, that, if he had not diverted his attention by these studies, and by the practice of music particularly, he should never have been a lawyer. He used to spend much of his early vacations with his grandfather, who loved to hear him talk of philosophy, and the news of London. The biographer of the Norths informs us that he made him “play at backgammon, and fid lie, whenever he thought fit; and the course of life altogether was not displeasing to a young person, for here was fishing, billiards, hunting, visiting, and all the country amusements.”

He usually attended the Norfolk circuit, and was soon employed as counsel in every important cause. When the great level of the fens was to be divided, he was appointed chairman in the commission, and directed the execution in such a manner as greatly to augment his fame. Dr. Lane, then bishop, likewise constituted him judge of the royal franchise of Ely; a creditable employment, which increased his business in the country. He was also appointed to assist the earl of Oxford, lord chief justice in eyre, in a formal iter, or justice-seat of the forests, which was of great pecuniary advantage to him, and gave him an idea of the ancient Jaw in the immediate practice of it He was promoted to be the king’s solicitor- general, in the room of sir Edward Turner, made lord chief baron, and was knighted the same day, May 23, 1671. He now dropt the circuit, and was chosen to represent the borough of Lynn, in the house of commons. In 1673 he was appointed attorney-general, on the promotion of sir Heneage Finch to the great seal. In former times, when he applied close to his studies, and spent his days in his chamber, he was subject to the spleen, and apprehensive of many imaginary diseases; and by way of prevention, wore warm cloathing, and leather skull-caps, and inclined much to quackery; but as business flowed in, his complaints vanished, and his skull-caps were destined to lie in a drawer, and receive hjs money. Though his profits were now very great, while the king approved his judgment and fidelity, and the chiefs of the law were mostly his friends, yet he soon grew weary of his post, and wished for another, though less profitable, in a calmer region. The court was sunk in pleasure and debauchery; averse to, and ignorant of all business. The great men were many of them corrupt, false, and treacherous; and were continually tormenting him with improper projects and unreasonable importunities. Among all the preferments of the law, his thoughts were most fixed upon that of lord chief justice of the common pleas; the business there being wholly matter of pure law, and having little to do in criminal causes, or court intrigues: and, on the death of lord chief justice Vaughan in 1674 he succeeded to his wishes. While he presided in this court, he was very attentive to regulate what was amiss in the law, arising either from the nature of things changing, or from the corruption of agents: when any abuse or necessity of regulation appeared, he noted it down, and afterwards digested his thought, and brought it into the form of a tract, from which he might prepare acts of parliament, as he had encouragement and opportunity. He had a great hand in “The Statute of Frauds and Perjuries,” of which the lord Nottingham said, that every line was worth a subsidy. In 1679, the king, being under great difficulties from the parliament, in order to bring them to better temper, and that it might not be said he wanted good counsellors, made a reform of his privy-council, dissolved the old, and constituted a new one, which took in the lord Shaftsbury as president, and the heads of the opposition in both houses; but that he might not be entirely at their mercy, he joined some of his friends, in whose fidelity and judgment he had an entire confidence, among whom lord chief justice North had the honour to be one. Not long after this, he was taken into the cabinet, that he might be assistant, not only in the formal proceedings of the privy-council, but also in the more private consultations of his majesty’s government. He was also often obliged to fill the office of speaker, and preside in the House of Lords, in the room of the chancellor Nottingham, who, towards the latter end of his time, was much afflicted with the gout and other infirmities. From his interest with the king he was considered as probable successor to Nottingham, and accordingly, on his death, in 1683, the great seal was committed to his custody, on which occasion he was created a peer, by the title of lord Guilford, barori of Guilford, in the county of Surrey, by patent bearing date Sept. 27th, 1683.

The death of king Charles involving him in much business, and his enemies Sunderland and Jefferies acquiring considerable influence in the new court, he took a resolution to quit the seal, and went to lord Rochester to intercede with his majesty to accept it. But that noble lord, who considered his opposition to the popish inclinations of the court as of great importance, diverted him from his purpose; but, as his health was visibly impaired, lord Rochester obtained of the king, that lord Guilford might retire with the seal into the country, with the proper officers attending, jn hopes that, by proper regimen and fresh air, he might recover his health against the winter. He died, however, Sept. 5, 1685, at his seat at Wroxton, near Ban bury. Burnet and Kennett have given no very favourable character of him; and the author of “The Lives of the Lords Chancellors” accuses him of yielding too much to court-measures. If we may credit his biographer, however, he appears to have exerted considerable independence of mind, and to have disapproved of many of the measures both of Charles II. and James; but such were his notions of loyalty, as to prevent him from an avowed opposition, even when he felt, and to his friends expressed, most disgust. While his private character was strictly virtuous and unexceptionable, he did not, according to his brother’s account, want zeal to promote the good of his country, which he thought would most effectually be done, by supporting the Church and Crown of England in all due and legal prerogatives and from these principles he never swerved. He wrote, 1. a An Alphabetical Index of Verbs Neuter,“printed with Lilly’s Grammar compiled while he was at Bury school. 2. A paper” on the Gravitation of Fluids considered in the Bladders of Fishes,“printed in Lowthorp’s Abridgment of the Philosophical Transactions, vol. II. p. 845. It appears that his lordship’s hint was approved, and pursued, by Mr. Boyle and Mr. Ray, whose papers on that subject are entered in the same collection. 3.” An Answer to a paper of Sir Samuel Moreland on his Static Barometer.“This was never published; but we may observe, to his honour, that it was through his means that barometers were first publicly sold in shops, which before were very rare. 4.” A Philosophical Essay on Music, 1677.“Dr. Burney says, that though some of the philosophy of this essay has been since found to be false, and the rest has been more clearly illustrated and explained, yet, considering the small progress which had been made in so obscure and subtil a subject as the propagation of sound, when this book was written, the experiments and conjectures must be allowed to have considerable merit. The Scheme, or Table of Pulses, at the beginning, shewing the coincidence of vibrations in musical concords, is new, and conveys a clear idea to the eye, of what the ratio of sounds, in numbers, only communicates to the intellect. These coincidences, upon which the degrees of perfection in concords depend, being too rapid for the sense of hearing to enable us to count, are here delineated in such a manner as explains the doctrine of vibrations even to a person that is deaf. This pamphlet, containing only 35 pages, was published without the name of the author; but afterwards acknowledged to have been the work of lord keeper North. His delineation of the harmonical vibration of strings seems to have been adopted by Euler, in his” Tentamen novae Theorise musicae.“The keeper was said, in our last edition, to have composed several concerto* in two and three parts; but no composition, in fewer than four or five parts, is ever honoured with the title of concerto; nor was this title given to instrumental music during the life of lord keeper North. Besides the above, we have from his pen some political essays and narratives, published in whole or part, in his Life by Roger North, and in his” Examen," lord Sommers’ tracts, &c.

, fourth son of Dudley lord North, and brother to the preceding lord Guilford, was born in London, Sept. 4, 1645. In his youth he was of a delicate constitution, and serious turn of mind, circumstances which are said to have determined his parents in the choice of the church as a profession. He received the first principles of education at Bury school, and afterwards, while at home, his father initiated him in logic and metaphysics. In 1661 he was admitted a fellow-commoner of Jesus college, Cambridge, but on the barony descending to his father, he appeared in the academic garb of a nobleman, although without varying from his plan of study, or the punctual obedience he gave to every part of college discipline. He is said to have been particularly attentive to the public exercises and lectures, but was one of the first who conceived that the latter mode of instruction was less useful since students had more easy access to books. The collection of these was one of his earliest passions, and we learn from his brother that he had the usual predilections of a collector for the best editions, fine printing, and elegant bindings, and bought many editions of the same author, and many copies of the same edition, and in this way soon became master of a very valuable library, particularly rich in Greek authors, that and the Hebrew being his favourite studies while at college. After taking his degree of B. A. he was admitted fellow of Jesus, Sept. 28, ie66, by the king’s mandate. He afterwards took his master’s degree, and was incorporated in the same at Oxford, June 15, 1669. In 1671 he was admitted to holy orders, and preached his first, or one of “his first sermons, before Charles II. at Newmarket, which was published the same year. About the same time he assisted Dr. Gale with the” Pythagorica Fragmenta,“published in that learned author’s” Opuscula," who handsomely acknowledges the favour in his preface.

and we have seen already, that either prudence, or more mature consideration, induced him to suppress a considerable part of what he had published. Before the queen’s death appeared his “Force of Religion or,Vanquished Love,” a poem founded on the execution of lady Jane Grey and her husband lord Guilford, This was ushered in by a flattering dedication to the countess of Salisbury, which he afterwards omitted, as he did soon after his extravagant panegyric on king George I.