ABSTRACT
Roger North was born at Tostock, Suffolk, on 3 September 1651, the fourteenth and last child of Sir Dudley and Anne. For some years he lived intermittently at Kirtling, Cambridgeshire, in the house of his grandfather, the third baron North, who had dissipated the family fortune. North also was in frequent contact with his brothers Dudley and Montagu, who had been merchant partners in the Levant. The old lord himself had been a lover of music and had employed several resident musicians in the household, so that early in life North and his siblings, both male and female, were taught music 'of some sort'. Susceptibility to illness meant that other parts of North's education were somewhat irregular. During the former year Francis North, as lord keeper of the Great Seal, had removed from the Common Pleas to the Court of Chancery, after which Roger North confined most of his practice there, whence his fees became considerable.
