ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses issues raised in preparing for publication a manuscript of an early eighteenth-century biography: Roger North's Life of the Lord Keeper North, that is, the Life of his brother, Francis North. The manuscript of the Life is now owned by St. John's College, Cambridge, and consists of ten quarto volumes, containing not only Roger North's Life of his brother but transcriptions of all that survived for him of what Francis North wrote-about the law, mechanics and trade. When the history of the reigns of Charles II and James II was written in the early 1700s Francis North's name was hardly mentioned and where it was mentioned it was with contempt and dismissal of his work. It was mainly because of the criticism leveled at his brother that Roger North wrote his biography, justifying his political role and promoting what are now recognized as his genuine reforms to many aspects of late seventeenth-century law.
