FRANCIS, LORD KEEPER

GUILFORD,

2

WAS younger son of the lord North before mentioned. Burnet and Kennet have given no very favourable character of the keeper: his relation, Roger North, has defended him in a very bulky work; which, however, does not contribute much to raise our ideas either of the writer or his subject. If that performance and its companion, the Examen 3, had nothing else ridiculous in them, it would be sufficient to blast their reputation, that they aim at decrying that excellent magistrate, the lord chief justice Hale; and that Charles the second, and that wretch the duke of Lauderdale, the king's taking money from France, and the seizure of the charter of

2 It is very remarkable that two peers of this race have suffered by appologies written for them by two of their own relations; but with this difference naturally attending the performances of a sensible man and a weak one: Dudley, lord North, has shown himself an artful and elegant historian; Roger North, a miserable biographer.

3 [This is called a valuable work, in Biog. Brit. vol. ii. p. 824. Note K. Gyll.]

London, are some of the men, and some of the measures, the author defends!

This lord Guilford wrote

"An alphabetical Index of Verbs neuter ; printed with Lilly's Grammar: compiled while he was at Bury school.

4

Argument in a Case between Soams and Bernardiston." 5

"His Argument on a Trial between Charles Howard and the Duke of Norfolk ;" printed with that case.

"The King's Declaration, on the Popish Plot ;"

6

composed chiefly by his lordship. "

A paper

"Of the Non-gravitation of Fluids," considered in the bladders of fishes."

4 Vide Life, p. 12. [It appears that this was printed by Dr. Stevens, the master, for the use of his own school. "This, however easy to be done," adds his biographer, was com

mendable; because boys ordinarily have not a steady application, and being required, seldom perform, industriously and neatly, such a task as that is."]

5 Ib. p. 56.

6 Ib. p. 259.

7 Printed in Lowther's Abridgment of the Philosophical Transactions, vol.ii. p. 845. [It seems that his lordship's hint was laid hold of, approved, and pursued by the virtuosi of the time, particularly by Mr. Boyle and Mr. Ray, whose papers on the subject are noticed in the same collection.]

"An Answer to a Paper of Sir Samuel Moreland, on his Static Barometer."

This was never printed.

8

"A philosophical Essay on Musick;" printed by Martin, printer to the Royal Society, 1677.

"Lord Chief-Justice North's Narrative to the House of Commons, of what Bedloe had sworn before him at Bristol."

"A Narrative of some Passages in, or relating to the Long Parliament, by Sir Francis North, afterwards Lord-Keeper of the Great Seal." 2

Many Notes of Cases, Fragments of Transactions at Court;"

and other papers, published whole or in part, in various parts of his life, by Roger North, and in the Examen.

Lord-keeper Guilford had his grammar-learning at Bury school, whence he was admitted a fellow-commoner of St. John's college, Cambridge, in 1653,

9 Life, p. 293.

9 [Not with the form and exactness of a solemn writer, but as the sense of a man of business, who minds the kernel and not the shell. Life of Lord Guilford, p. 297.]

2 Somers's Tracts, vol. i.

and being designed for the law, after two or three years spent at the university, was removed to the Middle Temple. Here he applied with great diligence to the main object, yet pursued his inquiries into all ingenious arts; and became not only a good lawyer, but very learned in history, mathematics, philosophy, and music. In 1671 he was made the king's solicitor-general, and received the honour of knighthood. In 1673 he was constituted attorney-general; and in the following year was appointed lord-chief-justice of the court of common pleas. Upon the death of the earl of Nottingham, in 1682, the great seal was committed to his custody; and in Sept. 1683 he was created a baron of the realm, by the title of lord Guilford in Surry. He died at his seat at Wroxton, September 5. 1685.4

The author of the Lives of the Lord-chancellors avers, that he ran very much with the stream of the court, to the endangering of the Protestant religion in this kingdom. He certainly did not 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 legal prerogatives; and from these principles he never swerved. His private character is said to have been strictly virtuous and unexceptionable.

In Harl. MSS. 6284, 6800, are two of his speeches; one to sir Robert Granger, on his being elected speaker, and another explanatory of the king's speech.

New Biog. Dict. vol. xi. p. 259.

4 Fasti Oxon. vol. ii. p. 235.

His lordship composed several concertos in two or three parts; and his philosophical theory of music was thus epitomised in the memoir of his life:

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"All musical sounds consist of tones; for irregular noises are foreign to the subject. Every tone consists of distinct pulses or strokes, in equal time; which being indistinguishably swift, seem continual. Swifter pulses are accordingly (in sound) sharper; and the slower, flatter. When diverse run together, if the pulses are timed in certain proportions to each other, which produce coincidences at regular and constant periods, those may be harmonious; else, discord. And, in the practice of musick, the stated accords fall in these proportions of pulsation, viz. 1, §, 1, 4, §. Hence flow the common denominations of 8th, 5th, 4th, 3d, 2d; and these are produced upon a monochord, by abscission of these parts,,,,; of all which the fuller demonstration is a task beyond what is here intended." To accomplish an ocular representation of these pulses, adds the biographer, his lordship made a foundation upon paper by a perpetual order of parallel lines; and those were to signify the flux of time equably: and when a pulse happened, it was marked by a point upon one of those lines; and if continued, so as to sound a bass tone, it was marked upon every eighth line, and that might be termed the bass; and then an upper part, which pulsed as or octave, was marked (beginning with the first of the bass) upon every fourth line, which is twice as swift. And so all the other harmonious pro