Frederick North, Lord North

Biography

Frederick North was born in London in 1732, the son of Francis North, later 1st Earl of Guilford. He was educated at Eton from 1742 to 1748 and at Trinity College, Oxford, which awarded him an MA in 1750, and then travelled on a Grand Tour that included a long stay in Leipzig. In 1754 he was elected member of Parliament for Banbury, a seat he held until 1790.

He became a junior lord of the Treasury in 1759 and won a reputation as a capable administrator and debater; in 1763 he moved the government motion to expel John Wilkes from the Commons. He was joint Paymaster of the Forces from 1766, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1767 and Leader of the House of Commons from 1768. Though he began as a Whig, his sympathies were increasingly Tory.

On the Duke of Grafton's resignation in January 1770 North formed a government and led it for twelve years. He settled the Falklands crisis with Spain in 1770, introduced the Tea Act in 1773 and, after the Boston Tea Party, the punitive Coercive Acts of 1774 that helped push the American colonies into rebellion. He left the conduct of the war largely to Lord George Germain and the Earl of Sandwich. After the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 he lost the confidence of the Commons and resigned in March 1782.

In April 1783 he returned to office as Home Secretary in a coalition with Charles James Fox under the Duke of Portland, which concluded the Treaty of Paris but fell in December 1783. He never held office again. Losing his sight from 1786, he succeeded his father as Earl of Guilford in 1790 and died in London in August 1792. He is chiefly remembered as the prime minister who lost the American colonies.